Fixation () is a concept (in human psychology) that was originated by Sigmund Freud (1905) to denote the persistence of anachronistic sexual traits. The term subsequently came to denote object relationships with attachments to people or things in general persisting from childhood into adult life.
Freud In Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (1905), Freud distinguished the fixations of the libido on an incestuous object from a fixation upon a specific, partial aim, such as voyeurism.Sigmund Freud, On Sexuality (Penguin Freud Library 7) pp. 68–70 and p. 151
Freud theorized that some humans may develop psychological fixation due to one or more of the following: A lack of proper gratification during one of the psychosexual stages of development. Receiving a strong impression from one of these stages, in which case the person's personality would reflect that stage throughout adult life.Freud, Sexuality p. 167 "An excessively strong manifestation of these instincts at a very early age [which] leads to a kind of partial fixation, which then constitutes a weak point in the structure of the sexual function".Sigmund Freud, Five Lectures on Psycho-Analysis (Penguin 1995) p. 73
As Freud's thought developed, so did the range of possible 'fixation points' he saw as significant in producing particular neuroses.Angela Richards, "Editor's Note", Sigmund Freud, On Psychopathology (Penguin Freud Library 10) p. 132 However, he continued to view fixation as "the manifestation of very early linkages which it is hard to between instincts and impressions and the objects involved in those impressions".Freud, Psychopathology pp. 137–8
Psychoanalytic therapy involved producing a new transference fixation in place of the old one.Bruce Fink, A Clinical Introduction to Lacanian Psychoanalysis (Harvard 1999) p. 53 The new for example a father-transference onto the may be very different from the old, but will absorb its energies and enable them eventually to be released for non-fixated purposes.Sigmund Freud, Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis (Penguin Freud Library 1) p. 509
Objections Whether a particularly obsessive attachment is a fixation or a defensible expression of love is at times debatable. Fixation to intangibles (i.e., ideas, ideologies, etc.) can also occur. The obsessive factor of fixation is also found in symptoms pertaining to obsessive compulsive disorder, which psychoanalysts linked to a mix of early (pregenital) frustrations and gratifications.Otto Fenichel, The Psychoanalytic Theory of Neurosis (London 1946) p. 305 Fixation has been compared to psychological imprintingJanet Malcolm, Psychoanalysis: The Impossible Profession (London 1988) p. 158 at an early and sensitive period of development.Richard L. Gregory ed, The Oxford Companion to the Mind (Oxford 1987) p. 356 Others object that Freud was attempting to stress the looseness of the ties between libido and object, and the need to find a specific cause any given (perverse or neurotic) fixation.Stephen A. Mitchell, Relational Concepts in Psychoanalysis (1988) p. 78
Post-Freudians Melanie Klein saw fixation as inherently pathologicalC. Geissmann-Chambon/P. Geissmann, A History of Child Psychoanalysis (Routledge 1998) p. 129 – a blocking of potential sublimation by way of repression.Lyndsey Stonebridge/John Phillips, Reading Melanie Klein (1998) p. 243n
Erik H. Erikson distinguished fixation to zone – oral or anal, for example – from fixation to mode, such as taking in, as with his instance of the man who "may eagerly absorb the 'milk of wisdom' where he once desired more tangible fluids from more sensuous containers".Erik H. Erikson, Childhood and Society (Penguin 1973) p. 72 and p. 57 Eric Berne, developed his insight further as part of transactional analysis, suggesting that "particular games and scripts, and their accompanying physical symptoms, are based in appropriate zones and modes".Erik Berne, What Do You Say After You Say Hello? (Corgi 1975) p. 161
Heinz Kohut saw the grandiose self as a fixation upon a normal childhood stage;Akhtar, p. 124 while other post-Freudians explored the role of fixation in aggression and criminality.Jo Brunas-Wagstaff, Personality: A Cognitive Approach (1998) p. 34
In popular culture Coleridge's Christabel has been seen as using witchcraft as a vehicle to explore psychological fixation.Harold Bloom, Samuel Taylor Coleridge (2010) p. 189 Tennyson has been considered to show a romantic fixation on days of old.Kathryn Ledbetter, Tennyson and Victorian Periodicals (2007) p. 52
See also
References
External links Claude Smadja, "Fixation" Fixation