Checking saved dictionary data and trusted language sources. This will stop automatically if a source does not respond.
/kəˈθɛkt/ · verb
(transitive, psychology) To focus one's emotional energies on someone or something..
1978 [Simon & Schuster], M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Travelled, 2012, Random House (Rider), page 105, The feeling of love is the emotion that accompanies the experience of cathecting. Cathecting, it will be remembered, is the process by which an object becomes important to us. Once cathected, the object, commonly referred to as a 'love object,' is invested with our energy as if it were part of ourselves, and this relationship between the us and the invested object is called a cathexis.
Narcissism theorists talk about the work of the narcissism period being a "cathecting of the self." In fact, they should be talking about a "cathecting of the rudimentary self." Since all that gets cathected here are merely individually emerging ego self representations and not ego self structure—the latter amounting to an internally integrated network of agency dispositions—it really makes no sense to talk about cathecting a self per se.
Apparently it is possible for an individual to cathect any person, object, idea, or image. Of considerable importance to a possible analogy between cathexis and the emotion of interest, is Freud's notion that an individual can cathect thought or thinking as well as attention and perception.
Use cathect when its meaning, tone and grammar fit the full sentence. A synonym is not always a direct replacement.
Cathect means (transitive, psychology) To focus one's emotional energies on someone or something..
The closest synonym depends on the sentence and intended sense.
The opposite depends on the specific sense.
1978 [Simon & Schuster], M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Travelled, 2012, Random House (Rider), page 105, The feeling of love is the emotion that accompanies the experience of cathecting. Cathecting, it will be remembered, is the process by which an object becomes important to us. Once cathected, the object, commonly referred to as a 'love object,' is invested with our energy as if it were part of ourselves, and this relationship between the us and the invested object is called a cathexis.
FreeDictionaryAPI.com / Wiktionary · Original source · CC BY-SA 4.0
Dictionary data is provided by FreeDictionaryAPI.com and sourced from Wiktionary under its stated license.