Toni Morrison’s Beloved … and “thick love”

Was Toni Morrison’s Beloved essentially a cautionary tale about our tendency toward “thick love”?

We tend to cling. “Thick love” is about over-attachment . . . the aura of The Beloved as a cocoon, a palliative.

Sethe’s thick love for Beloved depletes Sethe and almost ruins her.

* * * *

There is a relation to what Freud called “cathexis”: emotional investment, projection, discourse, meaning.

But in a case of “thick love” The Beloved tends to become an over-important part of our world. We get preoccupied with, we make too much of The Beloved.

It’s for the best not to do that, but it’s hard not to do that.

Commonly … not being able to rely upon just-people, The Beloved will be elevated or abstract: Jesus the Savior or the Lord in the sky. It can be a sports team, a celebrity, a politician.