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Phallic Monism
Phallic monism is a term introduced by Chasseguet-Smirgel to refer to the theory that in both sexes the male organ—i.e. the question of possessing the penis or not—was the key to psychosexual development. The theory was upheld by Sigmund Freud. His critics maintain it was a result of an unconscious adherence to an infantile sexual theory. Freud Freud identified as the central theme of the phallic stage a state of mind in which "''maleness'' exists, but not femaleness. The antithesis here is between having ''a male genital'' and being castrated". He believed that the mind-set was shared both by little boys and little girls—a viewpoint shared by the orthodox strand of his following, as epitomised for example in the work of Otto Fenichel. Freud considered such phallic monism to be at the core of neurosis to the very end of his career. Critics Trenchant early criticism of Freud's monism was made by Karen Horney, who suggested that the psychoanalytic view had itself become fix ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Monism
Monism attributes oneness or singleness (Greek: μόνος) to a concept e.g., existence. Various kinds of monism can be distinguished: * Priority monism states that all existing things go back to a source that is distinct from them; e.g., in Neoplatonism everything is derived from The One. In this view only the One is ontologically basic or prior to everything else. * Existence monism posits that, strictly speaking, there exists only a single thing, the universe, which can only be artificially and arbitrarily divided into many things. * Substance monism asserts that a variety of existing things can be explained in terms of a single reality or substance. Substance monism posits that only one kind of substance exists, although many things may be made up of this substance, e.g., matter or mind. * Dual-aspect monism is the view that the mental and the physical are two aspects of, or perspectives on, the same substance. * Neutral monism believes the fundamental nature of reality ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sexual Fetishism
Sexual fetishism or erotic fetishism is a sexual fixation on a nonliving object or nongenital body part. The object of interest is called the fetish; the person who has ''a fetish'' for that object is a fetishist. A sexual fetish may be regarded as a non-pathological aid to sexual excitement, or as a mental disorder if it causes significant psychosocial distress for the person or has detrimental effects on important areas of their life. Sexual arousal from a particular body part can be further classified as partialism. While medical definitions restrict the term ''sexual fetishism'' to objects or body parts, ''fetish'' can, in common discourse, also refer to sexual interest in specific activities. Definitions In common parlance, the word ''fetish'' is used to refer to any sexually arousing stimuli, not all of which meet the medical criteria for fetishism. This broader usage of ''fetish'' covers parts or features of the body (including obesity and body modifications), objec ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Feminist Theory
Feminist theory is the extension of feminism into theoretical, fictional, or philosophical discourse. It aims to understand the nature of gender inequality. It examines women's and men's social roles, experiences, interests, chores, and feminist politics in a variety of fields, such as anthropology and sociology, communication, media studies, psychoanalysis,Chodorow, Nancy J., Feminism and Psychoanalytic Theory' (Yale University Press: 1989, 1991) political theory, home economics, literature, education, and philosophy. Feminist theory often focuses on analyzing gender inequality. Themes often explored in feminist theory include discrimination, objectification (especially sexual objectification), oppression, patriarchy,Gilligan, Carol, 'In a Different Voice: Women's Conceptions of Self and Morality' in ''Harvard Educational Review'' (1977)Lerman, Hannah, ''Feminist Ethics in Psychotherapy'' (Springer Publishing Company, 1990) stereotyping, art history and contemporary art ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Critical Theory
A critical theory is any approach to social philosophy that focuses on society and culture to reveal, critique and challenge power structures. With roots in sociology and literary criticism, it argues that social problems stem more from social structures and cultural assumptions than from individuals. It argues that ideology is the principal obstacle to human liberation. Critical theory finds applications in various fields of study, including psychoanalysis, sociology, history, communication theory, philosophy and feminist theory. Specifically, Critical Theory (capitalized) is a school of thought practiced by the Frankfurt School theoreticians Herbert Marcuse, Theodor Adorno, Walter Benjamin, Erich Fromm, and Max Horkheimer. Horkheimer described a theory as critical insofar as it seeks "to liberate human beings from the circumstances that enslave them." Although a product of modernism, and although many of the progenitors of Critical Theory were skeptical of postmode ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Penis Envy
Penis envy (german: Penisneid) is a stage theorized by Sigmund Freud regarding female psychosexual development, in which young girls experience anxiety upon realization that they do not have a penis. Freud considered this realization a defining moment in a series of transitions toward a mature female sexuality. In Freudian theory, the penis envy stage begins the transition from an attachment to the mother to competition with the mother for the attention, recognition and affection of the father. The parallel reaction of a boy's realization that women do not have a penis is castration anxiety. Freud's theory on penis envy was criticized and debated by other psychoanalysts, such as Karen Horney, Ernest Jones, Helene Deutsch, and Melanie Klein, specifically on the treatment of penis envy as a fixed operation as opposed to a formation constructed or used in a secondary manner to fend off earlier wishes. Freud's theory Freud introduced the concept of interest and envy of the penis ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Phallocentrism
Phallocentrism is the ideology that the phallus, or male sexual organ, is the central element in the organization of the social world. Phallocentrism has been analyzed in literary criticism, psychoanalysis and psychology, linguistics, medicine and health care, and philosophy. First phase The term was coined in 1927 by Ernest Jones, as part of his debate with Freud over the role of the phallic stage in childhood development, when he argued that "men analysts have been led to adopt an unduly phallo-centric view". Drawing on the earlier arguments of Karen Horney, Jones, in a series of articles, maintained the position that women were not disappointed creatures driven by penis envy. Instead, this belief was itself a theoretical defense against castration anxiety. Freud, however, remained unmoved in his opposition to the Horney/Jones thesis, and his was the predominant psychoanalytic position thereafter, though some like Janet Malcolm would modify his position to the effect that " ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Narcissism Of Small Differences
In psychoanalysis, the narcissism of small differences (german: der Narzissmus der kleinen Differenzen) is the idea that the more a relationship or community shares commonalities, the more likely the people in it are to engage in interpersonal feuds and mutual ridicule because of hypersensitivity to minor differences perceived in each other. The term was coined by Sigmund Freud in 1917, based on the earlier work of English anthropologist Ernest Crawley. Crawley theorized that each individual is separated from others by a taboo of personal isolation, which is effectively a narcissism of minor differences. Usage The term appeared in Freud's '' Civilization and Its Discontents'' (1929–30) in relation to the application of the inborn aggression in man to ethnic (and other) conflicts, a process still considered by Freud, at that point, as a convenient and relatively harmless satisfaction of the inclination to aggression. For Lacanians, the concept clearly related to the sphere of t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Eros
In Greek mythology, Eros (, ; grc, Ἔρως, Érōs, Love, Desire) is the Greek god of love and sex. His Roman counterpart was Cupid ("desire").''Larousse Desk Reference Encyclopedia'', The Book People, Haydock, 1995, p. 215. In the earliest account, he is a primordial god, while in later accounts he is described as one of the children of Aphrodite and Ares and, with some of his siblings, was one of the Erotes, a group of winged love gods. Etymology The Greek , meaning 'desire', comes from 'to desire, love', of uncertain etymology. R. S. P. Beekes has suggested a Pre-Greek origin. Cult and depiction Eros appears in ancient Greek sources under several different guises. In the earliest sources (the cosmogonies, the earliest philosophers, and texts referring to the mystery religions), he is one of the primordial gods involved in the coming into being of the cosmos. In later sources, however, Eros is represented as the son of Aphrodite, whose mischievous interventi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Écriture Féminine
''Écriture féminine,'' or "women's writing", is a term coined by French feminist and literary theorist Hélène Cixous in her 1975 essay " The Laugh of the Medusa". Cixous aimed to establish a genre of literary writing that deviates from traditional masculine styles of writing, one which examines the relationship between the cultural and psychological inscription of the female body and female difference in language and text. This strand of feminist literary theory originated in France in the early 1970s through the works of Cixous and other theorists including Luce Irigaray, Chantal Chawaf, Catherine Clément, and Julia Kristeva and has subsequently been expanded upon by writers such as psychoanalytic theorist Bracha Ettinger. who emerged in this field in the early 1990s, ''Écriture féminine'' as a theory foregrounds the importance of language for the psychic understanding of self. Cixous is searching for what Isidore Isou refers to as the "hidden signifer" in language w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Amphimixis (psychology)
Amphimixis is the psychoanalytic term for the merging of pleasure-centres into an amorphous unity. Early Sandor Ferenczi introduced the term into psychoanalysis in ''Thalassa'' (1924), where he used it to describe the process of merging of the partial drives, to create a diffuse state of infant and childhood pleasure. Ferenczi's idea was developed by Helene Deutsch in her description of female sexuality; but would subsequently be criticised for conflating forepleasure and end pleasure by Michael Balint. Much later, amphimixis was extended to include a central pleasure centre in the self by Neville Symington, who saw it as providing the erotic basis for the self-love (amour propre) of the narcissist.N. Symington, ''Narcissism'' (1993) p. 55 See also *Oral stage *Phallic monism *Psychosexual development In Freudian psychology, psychosexual development is a central element of the psychoanalytic sexual drive theory. Freud believed that personality developed through a series of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Super-ego
The id, ego, and super-ego are a set of three concepts in psychoanalytic theory describing distinct, interacting agents in the psychic apparatus (defined in Sigmund Freud's structural model of the psyche). The three agents are theoretical constructs that describe the activities and interactions of the mental life of a person. In the ego psychology model of the psyche, the id is the set of uncoordinated instinctual desires; the super-ego plays the critical and moralizing role; and the ego is the organized, realistic agent that mediates between the instinctual desires of the id and the critical super-ego; Freud explained that: The functional importance of the ego is manifested in the fact that, normally, control over the approaches to motility devolves upon it. Thus, in its relation to the id, he egois like a man on horseback, who has to hold in check the superior strength of the horse; with this difference, that the rider tries to do so with his own strength, while the ego u ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Second-wave Feminism
Second-wave feminism was a period of feminist activity that began in the early 1960s and lasted roughly two decades. It took place throughout the Western world, and aimed to increase equality for women by building on previous feminist gains. Whereas first-wave feminism focused mainly on suffrage and overturning legal obstacles to gender equality (''e.g.'', voting rights and property rights), second-wave feminism broadened the debate to include a wider range of issues: sexuality, family, domesticity, the workplace, reproductive rights, ''de facto'' inequalities, and official legal inequalities. It was a movement that was focused on critiquing the patriarchal, or male-dominated, institutions and cultural practices throughout society. Second-wave feminism also drew attention to the issues of domestic violence and marital rape, created rape-crisis centers and women's shelters, and brought about changes in custody laws and divorce law. Feminist-owned bookstores, credit unions ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
