Obsessionality

On Drugs explores philosopher Chris Fleming’s experience of addiction, which begins when he is a student and escalates into a life-threatening compulsion.

In a memoir by turns insightful and outlandish, Fleming combines meticulous observation with a keen sense of the absurdity of his actions. He describes the intricacies of drug use and acquisition, the impact of drugs on the intellect and emotions, and the chaos that emerges as his tightly managed existence unravels into hospitalisations, arrests and family breakdown. His account is accompanied by searching reflections on his childhood, during which he developed acute obsessive compulsive disorder and became fixated on the rituals of martial arts, music-making and bodybuilding.

In confronting the pathos and comedy of drug use, On Drugs also opens out into meditations on the self and its deceptions, religion, masculinity, mental illness, and the tortuous path to recovery.

‘A searching, considered account of drug and alcohol use and the mechanisms of addiction.’ Books+Publishing

Abstract: The paper opens with a brief overview of ‘limerence’ or obsessive love disorder (OLD) from the perspectives of psychology, neurology, anthropology, and sociology, but concludes that certain unique characteristics of the condition suggest that it is better understood as a
form of ‘divine madness’, resulting from the failure of the Platonic ascent of love to follow its natural trajectory. The paper focuses on Plotinus’s model of the erotic ascent from the one to the ONE, drawing parallels with the Indian bhakti tradition and other models derived from transpersonal psychology. The final section explores the distinction between pagan and Christian Platonism and the entailments of the latter for secular perspectives on love.

Keywords: limerence; obsessive love disorder; Platonism; Plotinus;
bhakti yoga; transpersonal psychology.

The aim of the study is to analyze Bataille’s Story of the Eye (1928) and Buñuel’s An Andalusian Dog (1929) as accurate examples of artworks that were broadly inspired by images from subconsciousness. Both authors are particularly fascinated by the ‘eye’ which becomes an object of obsession in their output. The ocular reference is however often replaced with the image of the egg, by the process of metonymy that has its origin in Bataille’s imagination and early compulsions. As such, both eye and egg, initially being almost divine, gradually become deformed, abject and, ultimately, annihilated. The image of eye and egg, symbolically the birth of universe, becomes paradoxal in the textual layer, as it’s constantly being deformed by obsessive thoughts from the past.

The central site in his corpus at which Freud elaborates his theory of obsessional neurosis is the ‘Notes upon a case of obsessional neurosis’, which details the case of Ernst Lanzer. Lanzer entered treatment with Freud in 1907. His personal and professional life had come to an impasse in the face of inhibitions and compulsive thoughts. Freud called Lanzer ‘the Rat Man’ in his published ‘Notes upon a case of obsessional neurosis’, since many of these compulsions were organised by the theme of rats. Whilst lateral relations are not highlighted in the published text, the significance of Lorenz’s siblings to his neurosis is evident in Freud’s case notes. It was Freud’s practice to make written notes on his cases ‘on the evening of the day of treatment’ ([1909a] 2001, 159). Usually these were destroyed. However, the first four months of case notes on the Rat Man were found among Freud’s papers in London upon his death. In reframing the ‘Notes upon a case of obsessional neurosis’, the chapter sheds new light on the significance of siblings to the Rat Man case study, and through this lay the groundwork for future reflections on the role of the lateral axis in obsessional neurosis.

‘Unresolved dissonances between the characters and dispositions of the parents
continue to reverberate in the nature of the child and make up the history of its inner
sufferings.’ Friedrich Nietzsche discerned in the 19th century that children suffered,
had suffered and will suffer under the transferred inner conflicts of their parents. In a
minor way, his statement prefigures Elizabeth Young-Bruehl’s realization of childism.
Young-Bruehl expanded on a term which discloses prejudice against children; and ‘a
prejudice is a developmental problem played out projectively in the world, among
people.’ Compendiously, adults project their problems on to children. Childism,
prejudice against children, permeates societies, families and individuals and shapes the
ideological filter through which one approaches children. This ideological filter changes
across societies, families and individuals, which implies a malleability of the concept of
the child and by association, the adult. For instance, the narrator of J. D. Salinger’s novel
The Catcher in the Rye provides a singularly idealized depiction of children. This essay
posits the adolescent Holden Caulfield as both the victim and perpetrator of childism,
torn between an existence as an oppressed child and an oppressing adult. It will discuss
whether Holden, in his spiritual endeavor to protect children from harm, breaks or
perpetuates the cycle of childism. It asserts that Holden’s adventure is imbued with
childism but suggests that the protagonist might break free of his prejudice.
Finally, a new perspective on how to complicate the figure of the child will be offered.
Children are identified with the potential to fulfill the role of God. This is exemplified by
Holden’s judgement of his brother Allie.

Toute activité sportive est perçue en général comme étant positive et bénéfique. Mais quand, cette activité libératrice à la base, devient addiction, teintée de souffrance et des syndromes de manque, elle n’est plus centrée sur le plaisir, mais elle empêche le bon fonctionnement du sujet dans les autres domaines de sa vie. Creusant cette problématique, particulièrement dans l’activité de la musculation, nous avons touché au fond de la psyché, à un complexe, celui d’Adonis, qui englobe notamment les domaines du narcissisme défaillant, de l’estime de soi oscillante, et ses répercussions sur l’image du corps que l’Adonis travaille à changer, pour relayer à des assises narcissiques défaillantes. À travers les thèses analytiques des relations d’objets, les thèses sociales, passants par les thèses neurobiologiques, nous avons démontré notre problématique. Puis à travers des entretiens cliniques et des tests scientifiques administrés à des hommes qui fréquentent les salles de gym pour exercer la musculation, nous avons vérifié nos hypothèses. Tout cela dans le but d’aider les hommes à trouver des moyens pour désamorcer leur insatisfaction corporelle et apprendre à reconnaître leurs problèmes, trouver de nouvelles manières de percevoir leur corps et découvrir d’autres façons d’avoir confiance en eux-mêmes et un sentiment d’accomplissement en soi, loin de toute forme d’addiction.

Activité physique - Addiction - Anorexie masculine renversée - Anxiété - Complexe d’Adonis - Compulsion - Corps - Défaillance narcissique - Dépendance - Dépression - Dysmorphophobie - Dysmorphie - Estime de soi - Fixation – Homosexualité - Image corporelle - Masochisme - Musculation - Narcissisme - Narcissisme primaire - Narcissisme secondaire - Phobie - Relation d’objet narcissique - Sport - Théorie de la Relation d’objet - Trouble obsessionnel compulsif -

Sexual offenders against children are generally inadequate in their social functioning and diverse in their psychopathology. The degree to which this inadequate functioning and psychopathology influences therapeutic interventions brings into question the belief that generic non clinical programmatic treatment work is always appropriate for such a cohort. The Sex Offenders Assessment Package (SOAP) measures inadequate social functioning and sexual deviance, but has not been linked to broader individual differences and generic psychopathology. We collected information examining the relationship between the SOAP and standard measures of personality (the NEO-FFI) and obsessive-compulsiveness (MOCI) in a sample of 200 sexual offenders against children seen by the Probation Service. Factor analysis was used to reduce the SOAP to three reliable factors: emotional distress, cognitions supporting sex with children, and concern for others. These factors correlated respectively with higher Neuroticism and lower Extroversion; greater obsessive-compulsiveness on the MOCI, and trait Agreeableness, irrespective of whether or not one corrected for socially desirable responding. When partial correlation controlled for the influence of Neuroticism on the correlation between cognitions supporting sex with children and the MOCI, there was no change in the association between these variables. These results show that negative affect and obsessional tendencies are important underlying influences on the feelings and behavior of sexual offenders, that the obsessionality of the group is not attributable to Neuroticism, and suggest useful additional foci to enhance the treatment of this diverse clinical group.

In 2014, stories appeared in national and international media claiming that the condition of 'selfitis' (the obsessive taking of selfies) was to be classed as a mental disorder by the American Psychiatric Association and that the condition could be borderline, acute, or chronic. However, the stories were a hoax but this did not stop empirical research being carried out into the concept. The present study empirically explored the concept and collected data on the existence of selfitis with respect to the three alleged levels (borderline, acute, and chronic) and developed the Selfitis Behavior Scale (SBS). Initially, focus group interviews with 225 Indian university students were carried out to generate potential items for the SBS. The SBS was then validated using 400 Indian university students via exploratory factor analysis (EFA). Six factors were identified in the EFA comprising environmental enhancement, social competition , attention seeking, mood modification, self-confidence, and social conformity. The findings demonstrate that the SBS appears to be a reliable and valid instrument for assessing selfitis but that confirmatory studies are needed to validate the concept more rigorously.

A 35 year old man undergoes 19 surgeries and spent almost 4400 US dollars to become the “Living Superman.” He’s very fond of superman since he was kid and his collections of superman memorabilia reached to 1,253 and won the title in Guinness Book of World Record of “Biggest collections of superman memorabilia and stuffs.” He gained publicity through this and continue to inspire many Filipinos who loves fan fiction characters. This essays intended to discuss and look forward to the life of Mr. Herbert Chavez, his accomplishments and the trials he faced to become superman of the Filipinos and it’s relations to Osgood’s Congruity Theory and Goffman’s Theory of Self Presentation.

Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is a disabling disorder with a variety of clinical presentations. Recently, research has begun to explore relationship-centered obsessive-compulsive (OC) symptoms, which include obsessions, checking, and reassurance seeking behaviors centered on an individual’s feelings towards his or her partner and the ‘‘rightness’’ of their relationship. The present investigation extends previous research by examining OC symptoms focused on one’s partner’s perceived flaws. We report on the development and validation of the Partner-Related Obsessive-Compulsive Symptoms Inventory (PROCSI), a 24-item self-report scale assessing the severity of partner-focused OC symptoms in six domains: physical appearance, sociability, morality, emotional stability, intelligence and competence. The PROCSI was found to be internally consistent, and its factorial structure was supported by confirmatory factor analysis. Moreover, the PROCSI showed the expected associations
with measures of OCD symptoms and cognitions, negative affect and relationship functioning, and significantly predicted depression and relationship-related distress over and above other symptom and relationship measures (Study 1). In addition, longitudinal analyses suggested reciprocal links between
relationship-centered OC symptoms and partner-focused OC symptoms. Links between body dysmorphic concerns and partner-focused OC symptoms were also found (Study 2). Implications for theory and treatment are discussed.

In his short novel Bruges-la-Morte Georges Rodenbach presents an inconsolable widower, Hugues Viane, who tries to immortalise his dead wife by the worship of her souvenirs and installing himself in Bruges, a “dead town”. The aim of the study is to examine how the absence changes into presence. Firstly, the Dead returns in Hugues Viane’s mind, the spouse appears in multiple portraits the widower contemplates every day and especially in the cult of her hair. Then, she reveals herself also in the history and the actual state of Bruges. Finally, the dead woman returns in her “double” – Jane Scott, a theatre dancer, who becomes for Hugues Viane his wife risen from the dead, unfortunately only for a while. Georges Rodenbach chooses absence as the main aspect of his novel but he joins it to all kind of attempts, especially related to the fantastique, to transform it into presence.

American Psycho is a legend and Bret Easton Ellis is its prophet. It happens when violence becomes the normal expression of a repressed Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder in a human being, generally the result of some trauma in infancy or childhood. What's more, Bret Easton Ellis's style is unique in this shift from OCD to, in his case, complex nominal composition. Enjoy the trip in the films and some literary extension, and then a very close study of the Obsessive-Compulsive Disordered nominal phrase complexity. Even Shakespeare would not have dared to go that far, even in A Midsummer Night's Dream.

resumo: Ao considerar o sofrimento gerado pelas relações amo-rosas como causa de demanda terapêutica, na clínica psicanalítica, procurou-se interrogar aqui em que sentido o parceiro sexual pode vir a constituir um sintoma para o sujeito. No encaminhamento dessa questão, examinou-se, mais especificamente, o modo de par-ceria sintomática entre sujeitos obsessivos e histéricos, apoiando-se na teoria psicanalítica do parceiro sintoma. Procura-se demonstrar de que maneira os sujeitos histéricos e obsessivos respondem, no nível dessa parceria, aos impasses engendrados pela ausência de inscrição simbólica da relação sexual. Palavras-chave: Psicanálise lacaniana, histeria, neurose obsessiva, parceiro sintoma. AbstrAct: The symptomatic wedding of the obsessive with the hysterical. When considering the suffering produced by loving relationships as the cause of therapeutic demand in the psychoanalytic clinic, we try to discuss the way in which a sexual partner can become a symptom to the subject. In the treatment of this issue, the author has examined, more specifically, the mode of symptomatic partnership between obsessive and hysterical subjects, relying on the psychoanalytic theory of the symptom partner. In this way, the article shows how obsessive and hysterical subjects respond, at the level of this partnership, to the impasses related by the absence of the symbolic inscription of the sexual report.

The progress report by Drs. Foa and Kozac on the DSM-IV diagnostic criteria for obsessive-compulsive disorder in the July issue is marred by misunderstandings.  It is simply false to claim, as they do, that “the traditional view” maintains that “obsessions are mental” and “compulsions are behavioral,” or that “obsessions and compulsions can be independent of each other,” or that “individuals can always recognize that their obsessions and compulsions are senseless.”  Furthermore, the DSM-III-R approach to obsessions and compulsions is easy to criticize, reflecting as it does many decades of neglect and disinterest in phenomenology.  However, the authors take an admittedly bad situation and make it worse.

Traditionally, the term obsession refers to besiegement.  In the Middle Ages, for example, agents of the Inquisition attempted to distinguish between individuals possessed by demons and these merely obsessed by them. With respect to obsession (2), the devils and demons vexed, hovered about, and harassed the victim, but they did not possess him, which means that they did not enter into his body and soul and totally overcome him.  Possession was somehow resisted (2). In psychiatry, the distinction between obsession and possession is replaced with a distinction between obsession and delusion.  The one must be understood in contradistinction to the other.

The term compulsion has equally old usage and refers to the condition of being compelled, constrained, obliged or coerced.  By this usage, actions and behaviors can be compelled but so can thoughts, moods, and even obsessions. An obsessive-compulsive patient is compelled to think obsessive thoughts and to behave in congruence with them or in response to them.

Finally, pleasureful preoccupations (that is to say, “overvalued ideas”) are not obsessive-compulsive since they are not besetting and onerous but are instead motivated by self-indulgence and attraction.

Very few, if any, collectible objects present themselves as such, as if naturally. Collectibles are objects which have been imagined and transformed within networks of discourses, ideas, technologies, and techniques which characterise and define them. Over

De Haan et al. (2013) have argued that the traditional Western concept of freedom is not applicable to certain cases of mental illness. Using the specific example of obsessive-compulsive disorder, they challenge the traditional notion that an increased level of conscious control equates to an increased subjective experience of freedom. Subsequently, they claim that, in respect to mental illness such as OCD, a scale of conscious control can be imagined, on which there is a certain 'tipping point' at which exertion of conscious control becomes pathological.

This discussion will consider the utility and applicability of this notion of a scale of conscious control. To do this, cases of OCD in animals and 'socially accepted' cases of obsessions and compulsions will be analysed. I will loosely claim that a scale of conscious control may not always be sufficient to encompass the complicated relationship between unreflective and conscious or reflective modes. This problematises the concept of freedom in mental illness further.

Aim: Gender has been considered as one of the possible factors mediating phenotypic expression of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). We examined gender differences in a large sample of subjects with OCD from India with respect to socio-demographic parameters, symptom characteristics, and
comorbidity patterns.

Methods: Consecutive patients (n = 545) who consulted a specialty OCD clinic over 5 years at a large psychiatric hospital in India were evaluated.

Results: Men (n = 332) compared to women (n = 213) with OCD had an earlier onset (p < 0.001), higher frequency of sexual (p < 0.001) and religious obsessions (p = 0.001) pathological doubts (p < 0.001) and checking (p < 0.001) and repeating compulsions (p < 0.001), and a greater tendency to have comorbid
social phobia (p = 0.006). Women compared to men were more likely to be married, had a higher frequency of fear of contamination (p = 0.017), comorbid depression (p = 0.014) and greater suicidal risk (p = 0.003).

Conclusions: Our study provides further evidence for gender related differences in clinical features of obsessive-compulsive disorder. Our findings are only partly comparable with results from studies across the world possibly due to various biological and cultural factors mediating the phenotypic expression of
OCD across the genders. There is a need to examine the biological basis for these gender differences

In this chapter I analyze how Lacan criticizes ego-psychologists for having turned Freud’s approach to psychoanalysis into a form of “therapeutical abuse” in which the analyst is supposed to adopt a parental position in regard to the patient, and the patient a loving position in regard to the analyst. Opposing this normative trend, I show how Lacan suggests in “Demand and Desire in the Oral and Anal Stage” that the role of the analyst is not to repress the patient’s desire in the name of the satisfaction of its needs but, on the contrary, to help the patient retrieve their desire against what is normally supporting its erasure.

Am I writing angrily or are you reading angrily? When someone is morally outraged at a perceived injustice, where does the outrage stem from, the injustice or the person perceiving it? And even if it really is an injustice (who would guarantee this?), is being outraged productive or might we benefit from a Stoic approach?

In his short novel Bruges-la-Morte Georges Rodenbach presents an inconsolable widower, Hugues Vianne, who ties to immortalise his dead wife by the worship of her souvenirs and installing himself in Bruges, a “dead town”. The aim of the study is to examine how the absence changes into presence. Firstly, the Dead returns in Hugues Vian’s mind, the spouse appears in multiple portraits the widower contemplates every day and especially in the cult of her hair. Then, she reveals herself also in the history and the actual state of Bruges. Finally, the dead woman returns in her “double” – Jane Scott, a theatre dancer, who becomes for Hugues Vianes, his wife risen from the dead, unfortunately only for a while. Georges Rodenbach chooses absence as the main aspect of his novel but he joins it to all kind of attempts, especially related to the fantastique, to transform it into presence.

The article describes essence of the book "Mediumism - gift or ordeal" by  A.Filozof. It contans synthesis of science, religions and Agni Yoga concerning views on consciousness and distinguishing inner processes from outer influences, and also ways of restoring conscience after outer invasions.