In psychoanalysis, decathexis is the withdrawal of cathexis from an idea or instinctual object. [1]
Decathexis is the process of dis-investment of mental or emotional energy in a person, object, or idea. [2]
In narcissistic neurosis, cathexis is withdrawn from external instinctual objects (or rather their unconscious representations) [3] and turned on the ego – a process Freud highlighted in the Schreber case, and linked to the subject's ensuing megalomania. [4]
A similar decathexis of energy has been linked to the emergence of symptoms of hypochondriasis, [5] as well as of melancholia. [6]
André Green saw decathexis as the product of the death drive, blanking out the possibility of thinking by a process of what he called de-objectilizing. [7]
Decathexis of the lost person in grief was seen as a regular part of the mourning process by Freud, although later analysts have argued that such decathexis was rather the result of inhibited or partial mourning, not of successful mourning. [8]