Summary: Close Reading Of Freud's Fetishism

Personality is a concept that will continue to studied and improved upon. Theories of Sigmund Freud, Carl G. Jung, Alfred Adler, Karen Horney, Anna Freud, and Heinz Hartmann and several others have contributed significant ideas to the study of personality and have had impacts on our current approaches. The purpose of this paper is to compare two sources of the motivations concerning why people behave the way they do. Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytic approach will be discussed and compared to the approach of neo-analyst Karen Horney. Karen Horney claimed that psychoanalysis is not the only way to resolve inner conflicts and she offered a uniquely feminist perspective for her time that disputed the Freudian theory of penis envy.

“In men, in general, sexual desire is inherent and spontaneous” whereas “in the other sex, the desire is dormant, if not non-existent, till excited” (457). Greg’s terminology is extremely power-laden. “Spontaneous” has the connotation of energy and activity, whereas “dormant” and “victim” imply inactivity. An important concept is the assumption that men, the “coarser sex,” act on women, the “weaker sex” (457).

Freud’s theory of personality examined the interplay between the primitive, instinctual urges—the ‘id’; the practical and rational ‘ego’; and the morally attuned ‘superego’; ‘object relations’ refer to the "object" of an instinct”, which is “the agent through which the instinctual aim is achieved”—most often a person and, according to Freud, most often the mother (Ainsworth 1969, p. 1). The psychosexual development theory that Freud launched reduces our behaviour to mechanistic responses to an instinctive need for pleasure fueled by the ‘libido’ and barriers or distortions to the gratification of the libido at various delineated stages of development were responsible for later problems in life (Kail & Zolner 2012, p. 5). Erik Erikson later added depth to the approach by including more humanistic elements to Freud’s stages and including more periods of development (p.

When a person experiences chills or goose bumps as a reaction to something strange or unusual, they are being affected by a sense of uncanniness. The psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud endeavored to explain this feeling of uncanniness in his essay entitled “The Uncanny”. Freud’s theory focuses around two different causes for this reaction. Freud attributes the feeling of uncanniness to repressed infantile complexes that have been revived by some impression, or when primitive beliefs that have been surmounted seem once more to be confirmed. The first point of his theory that Freud discusses in the essay is the repression of infantile complexes that cause an uncanny experience.

The paraphilia that I choose to dicuss is transvestic fetishism which has two parts for the diagnosis they are a) over a period of at least 6 months, in a heterosexual male, recurrent, intense sexually arousing fantasies, sexual urges, or behaviors involving cross-dressing and b) the fantasies, sexual urges, or behaviors cause clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning. There mey be an increased risk for sexual acting out for example, subjects have accidentally died when they were engaged in autoerotic asphyxia, which is a high risk paraphilic behavior based on self-induced cerebral anoxia by hanging or suffocation during masturbation. In one study results indicated that 36 men and 5 women ever having experienced sexual arousal from actual cross-dressing behavior, results suggest that sexual arousal to cross-dressing is rare, but could be associated with potentially criminal paraphilic sexual behavior such as voyeuristic and exhibitionistic acts, and there was a non-significant trend suggesting that childhood sexual victimization was related to transvestic fetishism.

Freud argued that an individual’s instinctual drive was sexually orientated. In the same way that “hunger seeks nutrition,

The main aim of this essay is to demonstrate an understanding of Freud’s theory of psychosexual development and how this theory may help us to explain and identify adult neurotic behaviour. I shall be evaluating the pros and cons of psychosexual theory and the extent to which it helps us to understand a client’s presenting issue. I shall also define and consider the relationship between the Id, Ego and Superego and the way in which these constructs of our psyche are in many ways representative of earlier experiences and of those early

Two Cases (Murat and Mucahit,2013), it concluded two adolescents who suffered in sexual fetishism. The most common fetish objects were female undergarments and shoes among those with sexual fetishism. Besides, conduct disorder, attention deficit hyperactivity (ADHD), substance abuse, and mood disorder and social anxiety disorder (SAD) were the common comorbid psychiatric disorders. The prevalence was 43.3% among those sex offenders paraphiliacs with ADHD. Meanwhile, paraphilias resulted in several kinds of psychological disturbances, guilt, shame, depression, and impaired social and sexual relationships as examples. To manage those with sexual

Freud saw this gratification to be one of the basic human needs. In much the same way, Golding portrayed the hunt as a rape with the boys ravenously jumping on top of the pig and brutalizing it. This alludes to Freud's explanation of the pleasure drive, he called the libido. The term serves as a dual intent in its psychodynamic and physically sexual sense.

From the case study of Mary, we propose the notion of perverse feminine masochism as antinomic with erotic feminine masochism, the latter being based on the change of desired object. The desire to be penetrated by the father, then by the lover, supports the investment of penetration as a promised opening. Thus, whereas erotic feminine masochism relies on the primary erogenous masochism, constitutes a basis of the first narcissistic foundations and counterinvests moral masochism, for some people, the encounter with the sexual might be contrastingly traumatizing and reactive pregenital anxieties of intrusion that may be compared with a revivification of incest (Schaeffer, 2002). Perverse feminine masochism is made

Freud’s concept of the “uncanny” is a highly influential and valued in psychoanalysis and literature. As Freud explains, it reveals much about his understanding of human beings as being essentially determined by their fears and unconscious desires. His interpretation of uncanny can be analyzed in two ways: linguistic and actual. In the beginning, he starts with the term “uncanny”, which is taken from German word “unheimlich”, literally meaning “un-home-like” – something unfamiliar and unknown, never experienced before. The problem is that the definition of the word and the linguistic peculiarities take half of the whole reading, so we get to the point after the second half.

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), was an influential Austrian psychologist and the founder of psychoanalysis. Freud went on to produce several theories, such as his theory on psychosexual development, which will be the focus of this assignment. Using the case study of a six-year-old patient, I will discuss the key principles of Freud’s theory on psychosexual development. Including, comprehensive definitions of the concepts used, and the stages of Freud’s psychosexual development. Lastly using Freud’s theory, I will explain how the patient’s current behaviour, could impact her behaviour in adulthood.

Children who complete these stages successfully, grow to be calm and well centered adults (Ku,

Nonetheless, the idea of penis envy becomes extremely important when examining Freud’s view on women for several reasons. Freud based the majority of his work on female sexual and personality development around penis envy, and Freud held the view that considered penis envy as natural and universal in all women (Slipp 16). According to Freud, the realization by the little girl that they had no penis was the defining moment in the realization of a female’s sexual identity. In The Feminist Legacy of Karen Horney, Marcia Westkott comments: “In sum, the Freudian concept of penis envy explains all one needs to understand of female behavior” (53). Freud

From a Freudian perspective human development is based on psychosexual theory. From a psychosexual perspective maturation of the sex drives underlies stages of personality development (Shaffer et al., 2010). Ultimately, Freud believed that sex was the most important instinct and any mental disturbance revolved around sexual conflicts that were suppressed from childhood. Furthermore, Freud believed that parents permitting too much or too little gratification of sexual needs led