Transcript Psychological Diseases

Freud: Consequences of
Repression
Psychological Disorders
1. Civilization
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The result of our
transformation/sublimation of unconscious
desires.
Psychological reactions &
disorders
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Fixation, Regression
Sexual deviance & Perversion
Neurosis
Psychosis
Fixation and regression
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The psychic reversion to childhood desires. When
normally functioning desire meets with powerful
external obstacles, which prevent satisfaction of
those desires, the subject sometimes regresses to
an earlier phase in normal psychosexual
development. (source)
Fixation-- can be a cause for regression. “The
stronger one's fixations on earlier sexual objects (eg.
the mouth, the anus), the more likely that, when a
subject is confronted with obstacles to heterosexual
satisfaction, that subject will respond by way of
regression to an earlier phase.”
Perversion: 5 forms
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1.
2.
3.
Freud: The pursuit of "abnormal" sexual objects
without repression.
five forms of perversion
disregarding the barrier of species (the gulf
between men and animals),
secondly, by overstepping the barrier against
disgust,
against incest (the prohibition against seeking
sexual satisfaction from near blood-relations),
Perversion:
4. That against members of one's own sex
5. the transferring of the part played by the genitals to
other organs and areas of the body" (Introductory
Lectures 15.208)
 He makes clear that a young child will not
recognize any of these five points as abnormal—
and only does so through the process of education.
For this reason, he calls children "polymorphously
perverse" (Introductory Lectures15.209). (Freud, Sigmund.
The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. Trans. James Strachey.
24 vols. London: Hogarth, 1953-74. )
Fetishism
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An erotic attachment to an inanimate object or
an ordinarily asexual part of the human body.
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"The fetishist is the adult who, because of his
attachment to the fetish, is 'saved‘ from
psychosis (which is the more typical
consequence of disavowal in
adults). . . . (Elizabeth Grosz Jacque Lacan: A Feminist
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Introduction p. 118)
Fetishism (2)
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from Lacan Ecrit p. 197-98
The whole problem of the perversions consists in
conceiving how the child, in his relation to the
mother, in his relation to the mother, a relation
constituted in analysis not by his vital
dependence on her but by his dependence on her
love, that is to say, by the desire for her
desire,. . .identifies himself with the imaginary
object of this desire in so far as the mother
herself symbolizes it in the phallus.
Neurosis
Definition: an exaggeration of normal patterns of
behaviour and may become incapacitated. For
example they may feel the need to constantly
check the time or that doors are locked.
 e.g. anxiety disorder  phobia; hysteria (now
called conversion disorder)
 e.g. the neurotic begins over-eating;
the pervert gives up men and becomes a lesbian.
(an idea of Freud’s which is later criticized.
source)
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Psychosis
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The inability of a person to distinguish
between what is real and what is
imaginary.
Symptoms: hallucination, self-delusions
E.g. schizophrenia and manic depression.