Decathexis describes both the action and the result of withdrawing psychic energy—usually libido—away from where it had been attached to a psychic formation, a bodily phenomenon, or an object.

The idea of decathexis, or withdrawal of cathexis, is linked to the notion of psychic energy and occurs very early on in Freud's work, although the term itself or its equivalents are not explicitly used. As early as "The Neuro-Psychoses of Defence" (1894a), Freud outlines certain mechanisms for repressing representations when he writes that we have "an approximate fulfilment of the task if the ego succeeds in turning this powerful idea into a weak one, in robbing it of the affect—the sum of excitation—with which it is loaded" (1894a, p. 48). In fact the notion of decathexis first appears as a means of repression in his work on the paranoia of Justice Schreber: "It is quite possible that a detachment of the libido is the...