cathect

Verb

cathect (third-person singular simple present cathects, present participle cathecting, simple past and past participle cathected)

1. (transitive) 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...
   • 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...1994, Howard Kamler, Identification and Character, SUNY Press, page 56