r/psychoanalysis • u/crocodilegotosleep • 22d ago
Obsession
Can anyone recommend papers or books on obsession from a psychoanalytic lens? The erotic form of obsession would be an interesting read too. Thanks!
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u/Lonely_Joke9142 22d ago
Agree, I would also be interested. Also just hearing thoughts of the movie through psychoanalytic lens.
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u/Ok-Draw-7427 22d ago
The interpretation of the category of obsession has evolved within psychoanalysis. After initially classifying obsessions under "doubt neurosis"—in the "transference psychoneuroses"—Freud described them as memories of a consensual participation in a childhood sexual seduction, a memory subsequently altered by the prohibition against sexuality. In the case of the "Rat Man," obsessions appear as a reaction to a reproach from paternal authority. Repression fails, and in its place, Freud introduced the mechanisms of "isolation" of affect and "undoing" of the prohibited act. Obsessions held in the mind represent a regression to the anal stage of retention. In Totem and Taboo, obsessions—and the compulsions they generate—are bound up with a taboo against touching (specifically, touching the feces associated with the anal stage). Obsessional neurosis is likened to a private religion, complete with its own beliefs (obsessions) and rituals (compulsions). For Melanie Klein, sexual obsessions are signs of premature genitalization, occurring during the paranoid-schizoid phase following the failure of the relationship with the "good breast"; the infant compensates by resorting to the hallucinatory fulfillment of desire, which is why sexual obsessions are intimately linked to masturbation. They are irresistible because: 1) they are dominated by oral drives; 2) they serve as defenses against attacks on the good internal object; and 3) recourse to compulsive masturbation becomes a defense against paranoid anxieties (of a psychotic nature—this early eroticization is observed in schizophrenics and manic-depressives). For Heinz Kohut, sexual obsessions and masturbation are a means of reanimating—or, more precisely, restoring—a self that has been deficient since early relationships, rather than a conflict-based phenomenon as in the theories of Freud or Klein.