THE WOUND, THE BOW AND THE SHADOW OF THE OBJECT Notes on Freud’s ‘Mourning and Melancholia

Consider these quotes from ‘Mourning and Melancholia’ (1917):

Thus the shadow of the object fell upon the ego, and the latter could henceforth be judged by a special agency, as though it were an object, the forsaken object. (p. 249)

And

The ego wants to incorporate this object into itself, and, in accordance with the oral or cannibalistic phase of libidinal development in which it is, it wants to do so by devouring it. (pp. 249–50)