Decathexis

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[2] In narcissistic neurosis, cathexis is withdrawn from external instinctual objects (or rather their unconscious representations)[3] and turned on the ego – a process Freud highlighted in the Schreber case,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.