Melancholy and Grief in Analytic Psychology and Psychoanalysis - Siegmund Hurwitz, in Lilith, The First Eve

In his work on grief and melancholy, Freud elaborated a difference between the two states. According to him, grief is conditioned by the real, i.e. external loss of a love object, either through death or by the object turning away from the Ego. Under normal circumstance, the "respect of reality" will gradually assert itself in such a case and the Ego will be restored to its former condition "at the end of the period of mourning", i.e., it will once again be free and untrammelled. 

Freud holds that the situation is somewhat different in the case of melancholy. As with grief, a "bond between the libido and a particular person" was originally forged. However, as a result of a "real affront or disappointment" on the part of the love object, this object relationship is severely shaken. This is made all the more possible either because the emotional relationship with the object was of an ambivalent nature or because the object cast in that role proved to be too little resistant, resulting in its being relinquished. However, the newly released libido was "not directed towards another object but drawn back into the Ego"; in other words, it was introjected, which led to a "narcissitic identification" of the Ego with the object it had relinquished. As a result the object loss had "turned into an Ego loss, and the conflict between the Ego and the beloved into a struggle between Ego criticism and the Ego which had been changes by identification.

In Freud's view, therefore, melancholy - like grief - is, in fact, a "reaction to the real loss of the love object". But in the case of melancholy, in addition to this grief, there is the fact that the emotions, in retreating from the object into the Ego, finally turn against the Ego. 

It seems to me that Freud with the problem of melancholy in too narrow a fashion, because he identified it with neurotic depression. Jung, on the other hand, saw the problem somewhat differently. Ho made a precise distinction between true melancholy and psychogenic depression - the latter generally being of neurotic origin. Jung sees the difference between melancholy and depression as being that the latter is based on the existence of unconscious figments of the imagination. Exactly the opposite is the case with true melancholy: "The patient has such fantasies because he is in a depressed condition".

According to Jung, depression is above all:

"relative dissociations, a conflict between the Ego and a conflicting force which is based on unconscious contents. These meanings have lost their connection with the psychic whole, to a greater or lesser extent".

From this point of view, it is understandable that Jung stresses that the only way to escape from depression is to call up these contents from the unconscious - in other words, to allow oneself to be led by the unconscious, which may express itself in the form of dreams, fantasies, visions and especially in the so-called active imagination. The prerequisite for this, though, is that the depressive should accept his condition and take it seriously.  In this way, he no longer suffers his condition in a purely passive manner, but attempts to take an active and reactive part in it.  Hence, the contents of the unconscious, which up until now have been themselves unconscious, can be integrated into the Ego.

Siegmund Hurwitz, in Lilith, The First Eve: Historical and Psychological Aspects of the Dark Feminine.