THE CAUSES OF PARAPHILIA
There are some objects that we treat as means to certain ends that merely symbolize other more important objects. Money, for example, stands for the things it can buy and the pleasures it can bring. Similarly, some of our acquaintances are merely contacts we value not for themselves but because of what they do for us...
Other objects serve no other master and become an
end in themselves: stamps for the stamp collector, work for a "workaholic,"
power for some politicians. Above all, the objects of sexual choice become
ends in themselves: women for most men, shoes for a shoe fetishist, inflicting
suffering for a sadist, shocking an unsuspecting woman for the exhibitionist.
This is the stuff out of which human passion is made.
Where does it begin and how do these processes go awry to produce the paraphilias?
Two schools of thought, the psychodynamic and the behavioral, have wrestled
with the problem of the origin of paraphilias. While neither has been completely
successful, both have contributed to our understanding.
The Psychodynamic View of Paraphilia's
According to Freud, the concepts of "fixation," "object-cathexis," and "sexual
object choice" are attempts to describe and explain how certain objects
become imbued with erotic attraction for certain individuals as they grow
up. Cathexis refers to the charging ofa neutral object with psychical energy,
either positive or negative. In the case of a "positive cathexis" the libido, or
the sexual drive, attaches to the object, and it becomes loved. In the case of a
"negative cathexis," the object becomes feared. Freud described the case of the
typical foot fetishist who recalled that when he was six, his governess,
wearing a velvet slipper, stretched her foot out on a cushion.
Although it was decently concealed, this kind of foot, thin
and scraggy as it was, thereafter became his only sexual interest (Freud,
1920/1976, p. 348).
The fetishist had cathected onto this kind offoot. Freud
considered this cathexis to be a concentration of very high psychical energy,
bounded and protected by a shield of dead layers. This protection against
external stimuli allowed the cathected object to retain its erotic power
through life, and only traumatic experiences could breach the protective
gates.
Cathected paraphilias have the same three properties as other objects of
sexual interest:
(I) they have their beginnings in childhood experience; (2)
they resist change, particularly rational change; and (3) they last and lastusually
remaining for a lifetime. Thus, for example, a foot fetish begins in
childhood; telling a foot fetishist that feet don't ordinarily signal sexual
pleasure does not diminish their attractiveness; and generally a foot fetish
will endure for a lifetime.
While the concept of cathexis is useful descriptively, it is not a satisfactory
explanation, for as Freud acknowledged, it is unknown why it strikes one individual
rather than another. And this is the main question that concerns us
here. The psychodynamic view is content to describethe origins of passion
for the fetishist, the transvestite, the sadist, the masochist, the exhibitionist,
the voyeur, and the pedophilic as an acquired cathexis. But it only describes
the fact that for all of these individuals their sexual object choice is not a
means to an end but an end in itself, that it is persistent, and that it does not
yield to reason. Cathexis does not explain how this happens.
Other objects serve no other master and become an
end in themselves: stamps for the stamp collector, work for a "workaholic,"
power for some politicians. Above all, the objects of sexual choice become
ends in themselves: women for most men, shoes for a shoe fetishist, inflicting
suffering for a sadist, shocking an unsuspecting woman for the exhibitionist.
This is the stuff out of which human passion is made.
Where does it begin and how do these processes go awry to produce the paraphilias?
Two schools of thought, the psychodynamic and the behavioral, have wrestled
with the problem of the origin of paraphilias. While neither has been completely
successful, both have contributed to our understanding.
The Psychodynamic View of Paraphilia's
According to Freud, the concepts of "fixation," "object-cathexis," and "sexual
object choice" are attempts to describe and explain how certain objects
become imbued with erotic attraction for certain individuals as they grow
up. Cathexis refers to the charging ofa neutral object with psychical energy,
either positive or negative. In the case of a "positive cathexis" the libido, or
the sexual drive, attaches to the object, and it becomes loved. In the case of a
"negative cathexis," the object becomes feared. Freud described the case of the
typical foot fetishist who recalled that when he was six, his governess,
wearing a velvet slipper, stretched her foot out on a cushion.
Although it was decently concealed, this kind of foot, thin
and scraggy as it was, thereafter became his only sexual interest (Freud,
1920/1976, p. 348).
The fetishist had cathected onto this kind offoot. Freud
considered this cathexis to be a concentration of very high psychical energy,
bounded and protected by a shield of dead layers. This protection against
external stimuli allowed the cathected object to retain its erotic power
through life, and only traumatic experiences could breach the protective
gates.
Cathected paraphilias have the same three properties as other objects of
sexual interest:
(I) they have their beginnings in childhood experience; (2)
they resist change, particularly rational change; and (3) they last and lastusually
remaining for a lifetime. Thus, for example, a foot fetish begins in
childhood; telling a foot fetishist that feet don't ordinarily signal sexual
pleasure does not diminish their attractiveness; and generally a foot fetish
will endure for a lifetime.
While the concept of cathexis is useful descriptively, it is not a satisfactory
explanation, for as Freud acknowledged, it is unknown why it strikes one individual
rather than another. And this is the main question that concerns us
here. The psychodynamic view is content to describethe origins of passion
for the fetishist, the transvestite, the sadist, the masochist, the exhibitionist,
the voyeur, and the pedophilic as an acquired cathexis. But it only describes
the fact that for all of these individuals their sexual object choice is not a
means to an end but an end in itself, that it is persistent, and that it does not
yield to reason. Cathexis does not explain how this happens.
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