Dictionary

decathect en · VERB

Etymology

From de- + cathect or a back-formation from decathexis, decathectic.

Meanings

1. (ambitransitive) To detach or withdraw one's emotional energies (libido) from (something or someone).
   • The writer only tried to decathect these obsolete and irrational reactions, especially by strengthening certain other—and just as typically Wolf Indian—vital and effective reactions, which counterbalanced the former, and were rooted in different aspects of Wolf ethics and mores. 1969 [1951], George Devereux, Reality and Dream: Psychotherapy of a Plains Indian, New York: Anchor Books, page 174:
   • “He will continue manipulating Jonathan. We must get Jonathan to decathect from Michael.” 1969 August 12, Chaim Potok, chapter 12, in The Promise, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, page 242:
   • The psychiatric consultant in this situation often needs to spend as much time decathecting the anger of the treating physician as in dealing with the patient. 1983 March 14, Marvin J. Miller, “Factitious Illness Reconsidered”, in The Journal of the Indiana State Medical Association, volume 76, number 3, page 180:
   • Such objects emphasize the physicality, the materiality of art—qualities which, as adults acculturated into a universe of abstract codes, we learn early on to decathect. 1989, Ellen Handler Spitz, “Primary Art Objects: Psychoanalytic Reflections on Picturebooks for Children”, in The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child, volume 44, page 367:

Forms