... It is remarkable that this painful displeasure is taken as a matter of course by us. The fact is, however, that when the work of mourning is completed the ego becomes free and uninhibited again."
... Why this compromise, by which the command of reality is restored piece by piece, should be so extraordinarily painful is not at all easy to explain ...
... Each single one of the memories and expectations in which the libido is bound to the object is brought up and hyper-cathected, and detachment of the libido is accomplished in respect of it ...
... Normally, respect for reality eventually triumphs. Nevertheless its orders cannot be obeyed at once. They are carried out bit by bit, at great expense of time and cathectic energy, and in the meantime the existence of the lost object is psychically prolonged ...
... This opposition can be so intense that a turning away from reality takes place and a clinging to the object through the medium of a hallucinatory wishful psychosis ...
... This demand arouses understandable opposition—It is a matter of general observation that people never willingly abandon a libidinal position, not even, indeed, when a substitute is already beckoning to them ...
"Reality has shown that the loved object no longer exists, and it proceeds to demand that all libido shall be withdrawn from its attachments to that object ...