Word-Built World: cathect

A.Word.A.Day
with Anu Garg

cathect

PRONUNCIATION:(kuh-THEKT) 

MEANING:verb tr.: To invest mental or emotional energy in an idea, object, or person.

ETYMOLOGY:Back-formation from Greek kathexis (the investment of emotional energy in something). Ultimately from the Indo-European root segh- (to hold) that is also the source of words such as hectic, scheme, and scholar.

Fairbairns’ idea that traumatic relationships in the child’s life are recreated within picks up on Ferenczi’s and Anna Freud’s early emphasis on the child’s ‘identification with the aggressor.’ Agression tath rightfully belonged ‘in the world’ asa healthy impulse toward an outer abuser, was invered back into the psyche, attacking the animated child inside the system and leading to the psychic equivalent of autoimmune disease.

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