프로이트의 멜랑콜리론 - 서양 주체의 문화적 기질(disposition)론

Abstract

This paper aims to reconstruct Freud’ Melancholy Theory in the context of inter-cultural philosophy. Fist of all, it brings focus into analyzing the psychological mechanism in the process of converting the ordinary sorrow to a melancholic mood. In addition, this paper will reveal a tangent point between Freud’ Melancholy Theory and the western philosophical tradition. In other words, the basic presupposition which gives support to Freud’ Melancholy Theory to the last extremity, is the narcissism and it is fundamental culture traits of the western Self-centric ontology. Melancholy begins with the lost of beloved object. It is singular that the melancholic do not know what they have lost. According to Freud, their loving object conceals itself in consciousness. In other words, their love is suppressed to be unconscious because of the social taboo. If the work of mourning recovering from the loss of beloved object fails, melancholic people enshrine it in their own inside, i.e. identify it with themselves. They hate the object, which was enshrined in them through identification. The ‘ambivalence’ of love and hate is the terminology which explains the extreme cruel self-blame, the one of melancholic symptoms. In this way, Freud explains primary symptoms of the melancholic, that is to say, “self-reproach without shame” and “sorrow without reason”, through these concepts, i.e., unconsciousness, identification and ambivalence. This Freud’ analysis elucidates, in the end, the melancholy as the regression to the original narcissism. But this narcissism is at the same time the traditional philosophical trait i.e. the kernel of the Self-centric ontology. In this point, Freud’ theory can be said to succeed to the western philosophy in relation to the long history of western melancholy-discussions. In conclusion, Freud’ Melancholy Theory is not a universal scientific theory, but a kind of culture theory which elucidates ‘the cultural disposition’ of the western subject.