the foundation of object relations theory. Thinking Freud saw thinking as an experimental process involving minimal amounts of cathexis, "in the same way as a general shifts small figures about on a map". In delusions, it was the hypercathexis (or over-charging) of ideas previously dismissed as odd or eccentric which he saw as causing the subsequent pathology. Art Eric Berne raised the possibility that child art often represented the intensity of cathexis invested in an object, rather than its objective form. Criticism Critics charge that the term provides a potentially misleading neurophysiological analogy, which might be applicable to the cathexis of ideas but certainly not of objects. Further ambiguity in Freud's usage emerges in the contrast between cathexis as a measurable load of (undifferentiated) libido, and as a qualitatively distinct type of affect – as in a "cathexis of longing". See also Notes References External links Cathexis Cathexis and Anticathexis Psychoanalytic terminology Freudian psychology