It is exactly α hundred years since Sigmund Freud set pen to paper to write his groundbreaking paper Mourning and Melancholia. Published in 1917, Freud distinguished between two responses to loss: mourning, when the object of loss is clear and obvious, and thus can be emotionally processed; and melancholia, a state of being in which one is affected by a loss that one is unable to name. This state of melancholia is often associated with depression. [1]
And melancholia is often associated with depression, the plague which affects almost 1 in every 5 people today in developed countries. [source]
The dead refuse to stay dead. Only by re-membering the dead would melancholia be converted into plain old mourning. [1] Or even a re-birth.
Nietsche said it a long time ago: God is dead.
Could our distance from Him be the reason for our melancholia?
All we have to do know is accept it and rediscover Him.
Because he DID die. For us. Not now. A long long time ago…
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