Castration Anxiety Research Articles

Uncanny Narration in Moby-Dick

THE word strange appears in nearly every chapter of MobyDick. Why? To what effects? Is repetition of strange itself strange? Three arguments developed from Freud's essay, Uncanny, will orient following discussion. (i) The structure of uncanny is structure of repression. Phenomenologically, uncanny is experienced as a certain frightful feeling: it belongs all that is terrible, Freud says, to all that arouses dread and . . . creeping horror.' This uncanny emotionality, however, functions within an economy of knowledge. On one hand, the 'uncanny' is that class of terrifying which leads back long known us, once very familiar but now forgotten. On other hand, everything is uncanny that ought have remained hidden and secret, and yet comes light.2 The uncanny signals a return of repressed. This is Freud's interest: not affective topography of uncanny but its signifying character, that was known and will be known again. (2) Freud identifies this something as the dread of and, in his analysis of Hoffman's Sand Man, locates it in child's castration complex. However, if one were understand cutting off of a part of body in castration as a particular instance of a larger category of severings, and if one were understand certain of infant's early experiences of separations from mother as experiences of being cut off, then one would be able conceptualize uncanny in preoedipal as well as oedipal terms.

‘PATER ABSCONDITUS’: DELVING INTO WERTHER’S NEUROSES

In all the voluminous critical works on 'Werther', I Ernst Feise's Adlerian study of 1929, Goethes Werther als nervoser Charakter,2 stood almost alone in measuring the work against twentieth century psychoanalysis until K.R. Eissler's Goethe: A psycho-analytic study 1775-1786 of 1963.3 Applying text-book psychoanalysis to literature has its dangers. One could think, for example, of Ernest Jones's study of Hamlet's Oedipus Complex which would have startled Shakespeare; and H.J. Eysenck4 quotes one Schilder who links 'Alice' with 'phallus' in proof of Lewis Carroll's castration complex. Eissler, closely tied to Freud's works, adduces much impressive evidence to suggest Goethe's subconscious incestuous feelings for his sister Cornelia, even if it involves also a great deal of speculation on possibilities, which he himself acknowledges (at times almost apologetically). Whereas the Freudians use the work to psychoanalyse the author, the Jungians, interested more in indications of insight into universal human nature, tend to be more flexible than the more dogmatic and mechanistic Freudians. But they can fall into the trap too: Heidi M. Rockwood in Jungs psychological types and Goethes 'Die Leiden des jungen Werthers'5 starts from the thesis of Jung's 'four' types, those of sensation, thinking, feeling and intuition. * Thus: Werther is an introverted feeler, Albert an extroverted thinker, Lotte (after some hesitation) is a partly extroverted sensing type and anima figure. So far so good; but Rockwood now feels that Goethe, as a convinced Jungian, must have included an intuitive type, and in glorious disregard for normal literary laws of evidence from the text, lights on none other than the shadowy Wllhelm to fill the role. However, Werther may profitably be studied, not as a substitute Goethe, but in his own right as a fictional character perfectly compatible with psychoanalytical theory. This is consistent with Goethe and his time. Psychology was in the air, and Goethe was interested. Herder's essay 'Yom Erkennen und Empfinden der menschlichen Seele' was read in the first of its three versions6 by Goethe before 'Werther' appeared. The influence of Lavater is well described in Stuart Atkins' study J.G. Lavater and Goethe7, and he is mentioned twice in the

Facing Reality: Castration Anxiety Reconsidered

Relation du moi a la realite genitale et importance de l'angoisse de castration dans ce contexte. L'idee de mutilation genitale n'est pas simplement un element inevitable accompagnant le developpement individuel vers la vie genitale procreatrice; ce n'est qu'apres integration dans le moi global de la menace de castration que la notion de realite genitale pourra se degager. La nature traumatique de l'idee de castration est liee a la crainte de la perte de cette possibilite

Possession Anxiety: The Other Side of the Castration Complex

ABSTRACT Castration anxiety ‐ which is related to the expectation of the loss of a precious object ‐ is only one aspect of the castration complex. Attention is here drawn to its other side, so far neglected in psychoanalytic theory, which I propose to term‘possession anxiety’. Possession anxiety relates to the presence of an ambivalently charged object, which can take its power from the person possessing it. The person will then fear losing control over the object. Possession anxiety is a normal phenomenon, though it is most evident in sexual perversions and anorexia nervosa. It is symbolically represented by the phallus and is associated to the genital stage of psychosexual development.I briefly examine this concept from the viewpoint of its temporal connotations and in its psychotherapeutic significance for the understanding of the transference. I use as illustration fragments from child observation and from my clinical work with analytic patients.

Another look at castration anxiety and fear of death.

Another look at castration anxiety and fear of death.

The metamorphosis of ‘culture-bound’ syndromes

Starting from a critical review of the concept of ‘culture-bound’ disorders and its development in comparative psychiatry, the authors present the changing aspects of two so-called culture-bound syndromes as paradigms of transcultural metamorphosis ( koro) and intra-cultural metamorphosis (Salish Indian spirit sickness), respectively. The authors present recent data on epidemics of koro, which is supposedly bound to Chinese culture, in Thailand and India among non-Chinese populations. Neither the model of Oedipal castration anxiety nor the model of culture-specific pathogenicity, commonly adduced in psychiatric and ethnological literature, explain these phenomena. The authors' data on Salish Indian spirit sickness describes the contemporary condition as anomic depression, which is significantly different from its traditional namesake. The traditional concept was redefined by Salish ritual specialists in response to current needs imposed by social changes. The stresses involved in creating the contemporary phenomena of koro and spirit sickness are neither culture-specific nor culture-inherent, as postulated for ‘culture-bound’ syndromes, rather they are generated by a feeling of powerlessness caused by perceived threats to ethnic survival.

Makbara-Metaphysical Metaphor or Goytisolian World Revisited?

AT the end of Makbara, published in 1980, Goytisolo refers to lectura en palimpsesto,' an unconsciously accurate description of his own novel, a document that has been written upon before with remnants of earlier imperfectly erased writing still visible. In his earlier works he, a self-described literary outsider, prevailed through his sincerity, satire, and even apparent sadism. In this latest novel, Goytisolo, now an established international writer, has created a parody of himself and his fiction, composed from the detritus of his public pose as an enfant terrible and from the solipsistic reflection of fantasies born of his own inner needs. Morbidly preoccupied with internal states, he externalizes them with apparent great daring, but they fall within societally (in 1980) acceptable if somewhat repulsive limits. Goytisolo, in Makbara, repeats what he has done in his previous fiction, that is, he blends literary allusions, psychological symbols, and linguistic forms (together with a critique of religious, political, social, and sexual institutions) in order to convey a fragmented concept of reality through which his inner vision may encroach on the surface logic of the reality we all know. Goytisolo incorporates once more his psychological apprehensions, his womb fixation, a return to mother, castration fears, homosexuality, bodily secretions, scatological and sadistic imagery, attacks on the institutions of society, a plea for sexual freedom, and the figure of the pariah, a standard component of his gallery of grotesque psychopathic deviates.2 His protagonists reiterate the theme of the suffering hero who faces a dangerous world where justice and understanding are non-existent and which rejects the lonely unfortunates with whom Goytisolo identifies. He thus justifies his own sadistic attacks which, through the veneer of the stylistic innovations and ironic contrasts found in all of his novels, become elevated, at times, to a poetic and fantastic realm above external reality. Goytisolo frames his histories of love, real and imagined, devoted primarily to a single entity, through the device of a narrator who cannot affirm the veracity of any specific version of the many he is telling about the earthly stay and loves of a fallen angel. The narrator, described as a juglar, with the habilidad de poeta (M., p. 49), sells dreams to the gathered listeners in the market place whom he uses as a kind of chorus for his fable of Paradise and the world. An angel, unable to accept the heavenly bureaucracy to which it is subjected, is expelled and soon discovers the same frozen, petrified society in the Occidental world; for democracy is not liberty. The angel's only salvation lies in the experience of true earthly love which will free it, since sexual revolution and freedom imply political freedom,3 an appetency involving the modification of society. Through its encounters with society's rejects, the author once more criticizes contemporary institutions, drawing a parodic parallel between structured religion's concept of heaven and life on earth.

Lacan, Literature and the Look Woman in the Eye of Psychoanalysis

Roughly midway through his Le Seminaire XX entitled Encore (in English again or still); a book that elaborates the dynamics of female sexuality and of the relations between the sexes, Lacan states that Nothing can be said about the woman.' At first glance the statement seems totally meaningless within the context of a work that so obviously deals with women. However, it is precisely the relation between talking and seeing that I would like to explore here, a relation that provides the support for Lacan's paradoxical declaration, in order to illuminate woman's enigmatic position and function in psychoanalytic theory; and through the display of the full ambiguity of this position to raise some necessary questions about the nature and/or possibility of feminist gestures within psychoanalysis as well as in other domains. I emphasize seeing because it is a certain visibility that is presented as being at the origin of the characteristics that establish human beings as speaking subjects, as sexual beings, and that determines the nature of their sexual relations in Lacan's work, namely, the visibility of the male sexual organ. The process functions in approximately the following manner: The unconscious castration complex regulates the development of the unconscious position through which the subject is able to identify itself with the ideal type of its sex.2 In classically Freudian terms, it is through the castration complex that the Oedipus complex can be overcome. The advent of the former is precipitated by the sight of female genitalia that are perceived as castrated thereby rendering the loss of the penis imaginable. The male child, because it now believes in the threat of the loss of a penis as punishment or as a prerequisite for the gratification of a sexual love for one or the other of his parents, desexualizes that love and transforms it into an identification with his own sex as well as an internalization of a prohibition against incest which forms the beginnings of the superego. The two sexes, however, relate to this complex in different ways because of anatomical differences. The female child accepts castration as an established fact, sees herself just as the boy sees her, sees herself as already castrated. She

Sociology in Shorts: Sociology as Obsessional Neurosis

In a character analysis of mainstream sociology in Sweden the compulsive character is found to be similar to the characteristics of the behaviour of the rigorous empiricist The choice of paradigm in Swedish sociology is seen as a reaction to smallness. The relationship between social democracy and sociology is described as an unfortunate combination of great expectations and castration anxiety. The identity crisis of sociology in the 1970's is assumed to have two possible outcomes Regression or maturation. Finally there is a vision of a Sociology, of passion.

Anxieties of the Castrator

The purpose of this study is to describe and to define the anxieties of the castrator, which are the symmetrical opposite of castration anxieties, and induce the castrator to expose himself to retaliation. The fact that the castrator's anxieties have been neglected in psychoanalytic literature is nearly incomprehensible. Though I do not think that any professional castrator of human beings was ever analyzed, the reactions of fathers who caused their sons to be circumcised as well as my clinical data concerning a gelder of stallions and bulls (Devereux 1969) do provide adequate clues to the anxieties of real castrators.

The Perversion of Fetishism in Women

This paper attempts to demonstrate that fetishism as defined by Freud in males also exists among women. Freud described fetishism as a defense against castration anxiety arising from the perception of the female genitals. It is suggested that the main difference between male fetishism and female fetishism is that because of developmental factors involving the phallic phase, for women the fetish represents the penis of the father, not of the mother. Clinical material is presented to support these hypotheses.

Color in the Dreams of the Color-Blind

This paper attempts to illustrate how three color-blind patients utilized color in their dreams in such a manner as to actively deny their visual defect. These patients had displaced to the eyes some critical conflicts about other body parts. The use of color to deny color blindness thus further served to deny other physical defects, both real and imaginary. In addition, this defense helped to fend off intense affects related to these defects as well as associated castration anxieties.

Archaic introjects and the cosmology of H.G. Wells.

The roles of the archaic loving and hating introjects are traced in the early scientific romances and the life work of H.G. Wells. The preambivalent polarization of the early loving introjects of an archaic ego ideal (giving rise to utopian fantasies and, later, to promulgations of a new world state) and the early hostile introjects of an archaic superego (giving rise to fears of death and, later, to fears of cosmic dissolution) is represented in eschatological preoccupations with death, the Last Judgment, heaven and hell. These religious preoccupations are derivatives of wishes for maternal union and bliss on the one hand, and of castration anxiety and fears of personal annihilation on the other. Further transformations of the archaic introjects are traced through an indentification with the role of redeemer, and later, through his scientific studies, to an espousal of T.H. Huxley's teachings of organic evolution and to the development of cosmological themes in his work.

Castration symbolism in Baudelaire's Fleurs du Mal: An essay in psychoanalytic content analysis of literary texts

In this paper the processes typical of empirical research are exemplified using a content analysis of the castration symbolism in Baudelaire's Fleurs du Mal. The two psychoanalytic constructs “dream symbolism” and “castration anxiety” are explicated and, on the basis of these explications, three hypotheses are formulated as follows: in the three “women's cycles” of Fleurs du Mal, the intensity of the castration anxiety depends on the “internal addressee” of the texts; this anxiety forms an underlying structuring principle in the overall structure of Fleurs du Mal; and it represents a reaction to the mass trauma of the 1848 Revolution and its suppression. The hypotheses are operationalised and considered systematically. It is found that the first and the third hypotheses may be confirmed in full, the second in part. The empirical results are interpreted and aims and methods of the study then discussed from the point of view of the theory of literature ( i.e. the theory of the nature of literature, of the practice of literary criticism and of the empirical science of literature).

Emotional reactions of expectant fathers to their wives' first pregnancy.

A group of 51 expectant fathers, whose wives were in the last three months of their first pregnancy, was compared to a control group of 51 married men without children. On the Anxiety Scale Questionnaire the expectant fathers were significantly higher in overall anxiety (both overt and covert), as well as in tension and apprehensiveness. The Blacky Picture Test indicated stronger Oedipal intensity, sibling rivalry and guilt feelings in the experimental group than in the control group. Clinical interviews with six of the subjects revealed considerable ambivalence, frequently related to re-aroused infantile fantasies, feminine identifications, castration fears and Oedipal themes, as well as attempt to defend against the ambivalent feelings through negation, denial, isolation, repression, intellectualization and reaction formation. While the higher levels of anxiety could be understood as a reaction to a reality stress situation, the Blacky Test results and the interview material point to more specific dynamic factors, and support several psychoanalytic hypothesis about significance of pregnancy for the prospective father. The inner conflict aroused contributes to the intensified anxiety, which is likely to be overdetermined.

Castration fantasies and assertiveness in father-absent males.

In a previous report (Shill 1981), father-absence was linked to insecurity in core male gender identity in a nonclinical sample of college males. The present paper describes further aspects of the experimental use of projective techniques, based on psychoanalytic theory and clinical discussions, to assess the effect of father-absence on male personality development. Castration fantasies and sense of competence in the mastery of external reality as an index of masculine self-representation were coded from the projective test responses of 103 father-present and 28 father-absent college males. When given a choice of castrating figure at the human or animal level, all subjects identified the human mother rather than the father as the more frightening castrating figure. Father-absent subjects, however, identified the animal mother as the more frightening castrating figure, compared to the animal father, more frequently than the father-present subjects, suggesting a denial and displacement of castration fear toward the human mother onto the animal substitute. The father-absent subjects also evidence significantly less sense of mastery, suggesting less self-assertiveness and sense of competence than the father-present controls. The importance of identification with the father as the basis for a masculine ego style and of father absence as a developmental interference affecting the appropriate management of aggression in males is discussed.

Self-Inflicted Ocular Mutilation

Self-inflicted mutilation of the eyes is an uncommon but fairly distinct entity. Patients are typically young men; they often have criminal records and histories of drug abuse. Underlying schizophrenia is a common feature. The patients frequently suffer from castration fears, oedipal conflicts, repressed homosexual impulses, severe guilt, and a need for punishment. We treated two patients with this disorder. The first, a 26-year-old prison inmate convicted of murdering his grandfather, cut his eyes with a razor blade. He had previously attempted to commit suicide, suffered from delusions, and experienced auditory hallucinations. Surgical repair of his injuries improved his visual acuity to R.E.: 6/15 (20/50) and L.E.: 6/30 (20/100). The second patient, a 24-year-old inmate of a mental institution, had previously undergone a lensectomy for a hypermature cataract induced by a self-inflicted lye burn in his left eye. One year later, he was treated for lacerations of his right eye and partial amputation of his tongue. In the year between admissions, he had enucleated his left eye. Visual acuity in his remaining eye was no light perception, so no surgery was performed.

TAT measures of gender identity (castration anxiety) in father-absent males.

DAT stories of 28 father-absent (FA) and 103 father-present (FP) college males were coded for castration anxiety. Relying on Stoller's (1974) use of castration anxiety (CA) as an index of core male gender identity, it was predicted that FA males would have less secure gender identity and higher CA than FP males. The FP subjects were grouped into three subgroups according to ratings of the quality of father-son interaction (positive, neutral and negative). Social class, age, SAT scores and story-length did not discriminate between FAs and FPs. FAs were significantly higher in CA, but there were no significant differences between the three FP subgroups. Age at father-loss did not affect CA, although father-absence through death rather than divorce, separation or desertion was associated with higher CA. Presence of a stepfather, other significant older male, sibling sex or birth-order did not affect CA level of FAs.

Operated hypospadiacs: Late follow-up. Social, sexual, and psychological adaptation

Thirty-four adult men operated upon for hypospadias in childhood and 36 controls were examined by interview and psychological tests. During childhood hypospadiacs had enuresis, showed shyness, and were mobbed more often than controls. Hypospadiac's sexual debut, but not the first ejaculation, was delayed. Most hypospadiacs had a satisfactory sexual life, albeit restricted to fewer partners. Socially, hypospadiacs showed normal adjustment but had less qualified professions than controls. Hypospadiacs showed a more doubtful sexual identity and greater castration anxiety combined with lesser utilization of cognitive and emotional resources than controls. Early operated hypospadiacs had a more infantile sexual identity than those operated later (less than 5 yr).

Oedipal motives in adolescent chess players

Twenty‐six adolescent boys, regular participants of chess clubs, were compared to a matched control group of 26 non‐players. Two cards of the Blacky Test, four fable completion tasks, and three Thematic Apperception Test cards were administered, and indices were constructed to measure three aspects of oedipal dynamics. Chess players displayed significantly more jealousy regarding father's relationship with mother, and significantly more castration anxiety. No significant difference was found in expressions of father‐son aggression. A composite index also showed greater preoccupation with oedipal themes in chess players. The results are seen as supporting the psychoanalytic view that oedipal motives contribute to interest in chess.