Reinvesting Energy: Freud’s Cathexis and the Elastic Self: When Doc Shauna Springer, Ph.D. and I sat down over coffee, our conversation, as they often do, stretched from leadership to human behavior, from the tactical to the deeply personal.We found ourselves talking about Freud’s idea of cathexis, how we invest emotional energy into people, ideas, or missions. But what happens when that energy stays locked in the wrong place?

In the mid-20th century, psychologist Erik Erikson described eight stages of psychosocial development. From infancy to late adulthood, each stage presents a challenge: trust versus mistrust, identity versus role confusion, integrity versus despair.