decathect
decathect verb: to detach or withdraw one's emotional energies (libido) from (something or someone).
Verb
decathect (third-person singular simple present decathects, present participle decathecting, simple past and past participle decathected)
- To detach or withdraw one's emotional energies (libido) from (something or someone).
- “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 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
Examples of decathect in a sentence
- 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, Marvin J. Miller, “Factitious Illness Reconsidered”, in The Journal of the Indiana State Medical Association, volume 76, number...
- 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...
Forms of decathect
| third-person singular present | decathects |
|---|---|
| present participle | decathecting |
| past participle | decathected |
| past | decathected |
Origin of decathect
From de- + cathect or a back-formation from decathexis, decathectic.
Questions about decathect
- What does decathect mean?
- Decathect means to detach or withdraw one's emotional energies (libido) from (something or someone).
- How do you use decathect in a sentence?
- 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.
- What part of speech is decathect?
- Decathect is a verb.
- What is the past tense of decathect?
- The past tense of decathect is decathected.
Words near decathect in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: decathect (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Cite this entry: “decathect.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/decathect. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.