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In classic psychoanalysis, the investment of psychic energy in a person or object connected with the gratification of instincts.

The English word for cathexis—which replaces the German besetzung—is derived from the Greek word for "I occupy." Through the process of cathexis, which Sigmund Freud saw as analogous to the channeling of an electrical charge, the psychic energy of the id is bound to a selection of objects. An infant's earliest cathected objects are his mother's breast, his own mouth, and the process of sucking.

When a cathected object becomes a source of conflict, as parents do during the Oedipal stage, anti-cathexes redirect all thoughts about the object to the