cathect

[kuh-thekt, ka-]

verb (used with object)

Psychoanalysis.

1. to invest emotion or feeling in (an idea, object, or another person).

Word History and Origins

Origin of cathect¹

First recorded in 1930–35; back formation from cathectic “relating to cathexis”; cathexis

Example Sentences

It’s unsurprising that a microcosm containing different types of people with little to do but reflect and cathect provided fiction writers with a generative setting, one which everyone from George Eliot to Henry James to Guy de Maupassant took advantage of.

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