In depression, in certain cases, it strikes me that there can be a an inner reversion to which we might call something like “oceanic striving”, where the individual unconsciously wishes to return to a state of fusion with the original caregiver(s). One may also look for partners who are seen to have the capacity to fulfill this wish, and who will later become co-conspirators in a particularly destructive union.

In this wished for scenario, there are no problems anymore, and growing up is unnecessary. I suppose this is something like what Michael Balint called “malignant regression”. The partner is recruited to become an idealised lost mother object of yearning, and together the pair then enter a vortex of mutually destructive longing from which it is very hard to escape. The partner has also been chosen as they are wounded in a destructively complementary way; the individual experiences the wounded aspects of his/her partner as a potent “empathic” elixir which he/ she feels will satiate the oceanic striving. You will perhaps have seen plenty online about “empaths” and “narcissists” which often over-simplifies the dynamic I briefly describe, by locating all the “badness” in the other, and encouraging people to continue to oscillate between idealisation and denigration of themselves and other people. This unfortunately continues to bolster an unconscious strategy to avoid mourning, and ensures that the individual remains walled in by depression and self-loathing (melancholia). This can become very destructive as it is a malignant spell, and which prevents mourning of the wounded self.

In order to begin healing from this form of depression, it is therefore important to recognise the hurt in oneself, and the associated feelings of aggression, rather than locating them in others as “narcissists”, or any other terms which limit the spectrum of human experience.