#when it comes to psychosexuality and related behaviours

[luckycl0ve]

octavian 'tav'. i like him i'm normal about him 👍🏻

[transmutationisms]

feel free to ignore because i know you get one million asks per day but if you have the chance i would welcome any + all thoughts on lolita 👀

no please im dying to talk about lolita

so, i feel like i have to start with the critique of psychiatry, specifically psychoanalysis, that runs through the entire book. humbert tells us that he revels in making himself obscure to psychiatrists by lying to them; the extent of the actual deceit is ofc unclear because he's an unreliable narrator, but certainly it's true that psychoanalysis fails to 'fix' humbert or to save dolores, most obviously when the beardsley teachers believe she's psychosexually underdeveloped and approach humbert to discuss it. humbert delights in pointing out that the patterns the analyst seeks in human behaviour and desires simply fail, again and again, to correct or prevent his preying on children; also, obviously, psychiatry operates within / continuous to the institution of the family, and so is often categorically incapable of preventing or even perceiving violence that occurs as a result of a familial relationship, as in humbert's use of the father role to enable his rape of dolores.

and like, sure, humbert has plenty of self-interested reason to disdain psychoanalysis, as a science that positions itself as potentially aiming to prevent his sexual abuse. but the reasons he generally gives for his criticism are clustered around the idea that psychoanalysis seeks patterns where there are none to be found, and makes meaning out of nothing (eg, "the scholastic rigamarole and standardised symbols of the psychoanalytic racket"). of course, in truth humbert himself seeks patterns and order constantly, from his emphasis on his european morals and the contrast to the unruly america (particularly the western states), to his supposed talent in seeing the stratagems of chess laid out neatly on the board in contrast to gaston perceiving "all ooze and squidcloud," to his use of tennis as a kind of disciplinary measure with dolores, aimed at making the "symmetry" of the court bring out the "harmonies latent in her." and, nabokov goes out of his way to tell us that humbert also retains belief in those two other viennese sciences of pattern-seeking par excellence: phrenology (historically more inclusive a science than how we think of it today, and very much growing from and encompassing physiognomy, to which humbert makes at least one explicit reference and on which he implicitly relies constantly throughout the book) and mesmerism (encountered in this time period as the 'hypnotism' humbert speaks highly of numerous times, along with the fact that at the very end of the book he tells us that one pseudonym he considered using was "mesmer mesmer", a reference to franz mesmer).

this got me thinking about what nabokov was trying to convey by giving us this very clear picture of humbert as someone who, though hostile to psychoanalysis in particular, is generally not only amenable to this type of pattern-seeking and narrativising but often actually dependent on it. and then i thought, well, it's not really about order or patterns in themselves at all. what's at stake for humbert, and for us as readers, is the power relations underlying various discourses of social order, and the pattern of control thus enabled. humbert's problem with psychoanalysis is that it positions itself, however ineffectually, as trying to create subjects who are sexually 'developed' and 'healthy', which he encounters as being directly oppositional to his own interest in preying on girls, and his attempts to make dolores into lolita, whom he wants to be cultured and mannered rather than unruly—but the sense of rule and order needs to come from himself, not from the abstract and distant authority that the analyst speaks on behalf of. so, the critique of psychoanalysis is twofold. 1) analysts fail to see the danger of humbert or the rape of dolores even when it's occurring almost in front of them; but, 2) even if they were to perceive these things, what the analyst can offer is really just an alternate version of the same sort of disciplinary ordering that humbert tries to subject dolores to, only with the definition of order or normality or health coming from a whole social matrix rather than from one man. analogously, humbert can wield the threat of child protective services against dolores, because although it would remove her from his control, she would be at the mercy of a different source of violence, namely the state. in this way, of course, humbert's abuse and rape of dolores is not actually oppositional to but metonymic of these broader structures of violence, control, and coercion, which fits also with the way we can read his use of the father role as pointing to the violence inherent to the patriarchal family structure and specifically the father-daughter relationship.

this sort of interrogation of the relationship between institutional violence and coercion and humbert's rape of dolores is pushed even further, i think, when we consider psychiatry as a subset of medical practice, and medicine's role in the book. most obviously, there is humbert's use of psychotropic drugs in his attempt to rape dolores the first time; drugging her is something he previously fantasised about and practiced by administering sleeping pills to charlotte. but the book is also littered with medical intervention that humbert perceives as akin to, or symbolic of, sexual violation. when humbert visits quilty's dentist uncle, for example, he says that the uncle perceived his mouth as "a splendid cave full of priceless treasures", but that humbert "denied him access". his arrest he describes as "surrendering like a patient". describing the moments of "paradise" he experienced sometimes after raping dolores, he compares her to "a little patient still in the confusion of a drug after a major operation". this obviously recalls humbert's own willingness to drug dolores in order to rape her; however, it also suggests that there is a very real way in which medical intervention—frequently coercive, invasive, authoritarian, &c—is itself already a site of bodily violation and violence. once again, the institution or the social ordering of a relationship—doctor–patient, father–daughter—is an obfuscatory device. the relation creates and enables violence, then defines it out of existence. in 'lolita', humbert's ultimate use of this process is through the re-naming of dolores and his continuous efforts to force her to become the 'nymphet', a figure that replaces 'child' and re-defines her as seductive, otherworldly, &c.

i think this is also something nabokov plays with in humbert's and dolores's travels westward. humbert sees america generally as coarser, less well-mannered, and more unruly than the continent. thus, he perceives their travels as taking them outside the bounds of the social limitations and norms that could prevent or frown upon his rape of dolores: the school, the neighbours, and so forth. but this is clearly at odds with both his continued reliance on the father–daughter relationship in order to abuse dolores, and the fact that westward expansion never simply meant encountering a 'wilderness', but overruling whatever did exist before and installing the very social forms and institutions that, in the novel, enable humbert's rape and abuse of dolores: the state, the family, and so forth. in other words, humbert perceives his movement west as escaping some strictures of modern sexual mores and interference; in his mind, then, the 'conquering' of land is continuous with the sexual abuse of a girl. what nabokov points out is that, although humbert is not in fact 'escaping' into a wilder world, he is in some ways correct to perceive this broader project of expansion west as enabling rape, situated in the context of the broader violence of such expansion. for nabokov this can all be contextualised, i think, as part of the overarching centuries-long post-enlightenment discourses of ordering, controlling, and disciplining nature (which itself is often spoken of in the feminine), where humbert embraces and extolls such acts of discipline and control so long as he is their director, and opposes them only insofar as he perceives them as challenging his own authority—as in the case of his fear and disdain of psychoanalysis.

also: since you are the person who introduced me to tlt–lolita readings, i'm not sure if you've written about this, but it did seem to me like the narrative use of swordfighting in 'gideon the ninth' is expanding on how nabokov uses tennis in 'lolita'. i'm thinking of tennis as a measure by which humbert tries to discipline dolores, hence the emphasis on symmetry and, eg, his pride at having apparently taught her the "continental method" of retrieving a tennis ball with her racket/foot: again, trying to instill refined and ordered european manners over what he sees as her unruly american nature. in comparison, for gideon, refining her swordfighting and learning new techniques is essentially training her body to be first a soldier in the cohort, then a cavalier destined for the 'cannibalistic' death of harrow's lyctorhood. so, the way that humbert is trying to destroy dolores and replace her with lolita, gideon is being trained to become a weapon and a tool of empire (also re-named), with muir again suggesting that these forms of violence are continuous, can represent one another in a narrative, and exist in a causal relation where imperial expansion creates sexual violence. i also suspect there's a close read to be done here comparing the passages that describe dolores's movements on the tennis court to the ones in gtn focussing on gideon's and the other cavaliers' exact fighting techniques; i'm not sure what a person would find exactly lol, but i suspect there's something interesting there.

[crazycoke-addict]

Explaining Veronica's Therapy scene

On Riverdale Season 4 episode 8 called "In Treatment", the core four including each have a therapy session with their gauidance counselor Mrs Burble. Because exams are coming up and letters from college, its a very stressful time for seniors. However for the core four and cheryl it becomes more than just  school work they are have problems with. Alice constanst snooping around is suffocating betty and the fact that she growing up. Archie's anger of not protecting his friends and mother. Jughead's obsession with making grandfather this wronged hero while ignoring the sacrific his father had to face. And cheryl's inability to let go of her twin brother. But there was one therapy session that I thought was more interesting; Veronica's one.

The reason why Veronica's one is interesting is how people misunderstand the situation on what Mrs Burble is explaining to her. The scene sets where Veronica gets a call from The Dean in Harvard saying she's been accepted into the college but finds out her father Hiram sent them rum. During the therapy session Veronica expresses her hatred towards her father and list the many horrible things he has done. Mrs Burble tells her that this isn't hatred it's obsession. Her and her father are obsessed with each other. Mrs Burble also brings up a theory that was conducted by Sigmund called The Opedius Electra Complex. Since the two words have a different meaning where gonna focused on the Electra complex. Electra complex is when the girl becomes at the ages between 3 and 6, she is subconsciously sexually attached to her father and is hostile towards mother. It's that keyword "Subconsciously" that i feel like many people tend to look over. Subconsciously is concerning the part of the mind which one is not fully aware but which influence one's actions and feelings.

She'll be close to the mother but when she realises her mother lacks the male genitals and when she too finds out she doesn't have one.  She becomes attached to her father due him being a male species whom are considered to be dominant species she starts resenting her mother whom blames her for her "catrastion". I think what this complex implying is that the reason why the girl becomes attached to her father is because she wants to be like him. He's the dominant species, he's the patriach of the household. Later on, she starts to accept her indentity as a female and emulates her behaviour of fear of losing her mother's love. When she hits puberty, she's attracted to men who aren't related to her. The problem is some adults could regress to the phallic stage or never grow out of the phallic stage leaving them sexually attached to their parent.

In today's day and age the Electra Complex isn't widely accepted in psychology nowadays. In a 2015 paper points out frued's idea about psychosexual developments have been criticized as outdated because they rely on century-old gender roles.

When you understand the electra complex and think of Veronica's relationship with her parents it does make sense. Her and mother had a good relationship in season 1 right up until Hiram returns from prison. In season 2, their relationship becomes strained. Although you could argue that their relationship became strained because of Hiram. During season 2, Veronica helps her father out and slowly we the viewers start to see her becoming like her father. Why I mean that is by the time, we get to season 4, Veronica has two thriving businesses, a straight A student and got accept into Harvard in which she ends up turning down of course. But whenever money, a business idea especially that time she ran an illegal casino, this is feels like something Hiram would do. At the end of last episode of season 3, both Hermione and Hiram are arrested. During season 4 Veronica works to find a way to get her mother out of prison and keep her father in. This is similar what I was saying early about the girl not wanting to loose her mother's love.

Another character whom I think fits the Electra complex is Cersei Lannister from Game of Thrones. Cersei has said time and time again that she wishes she was born a man. She admires her father Tywin Lannister who is the most powerful men and how she wishes to be like him.

[how-to-psychology]

Major Themes & Assumptions of Psychoanalytic Theory

Firstly, it is important to understand that psychoanalytic theory was not designed as a personality theory per se.  Rather, it was the first major, coherent, psychological theory.  Psychoanalytic is broad in scope and offered unique, controversial insights into how the human mind worked.  In addition, psychoanalytic theory provided a new approach to psychotherapy, thus it provided new treatment techniques for psychological problems that had previously puzzled doctors and others.  Unlike other personality theories, the psychoanalytic theory is relatively cohesive (e.g., the Biological Theory consists of many different, separate ideas, models and theories).  This approach to personality takes up the challenge of explaining what is going on when what is going on is difficult to understand.

The main thrusts of the psychoanalytic perspective on personality are that:

Psychic energy is needed to make the mind go & the energy (motivation) cannot be destroyed, it must be expressed: The psychoanalytic approach assumes that the psychological apparatus of the mind needs some kind of energy to make it go. This energy is used in psychological work such as planning, thinking, feeling, remembering. The psychic energy is thought to come from 2 main drives: Eros (or libido, the life and sexual instincts) and Thanatos (death instinct). The thinking is that at any time there is only a finite amount of energy available and if it�s busily being used say to repress memories, and deal with anxieties, then it�s not being used fruitfully.  If the neuroses can be resolved, then the psychic energy can be freed to use more creatively and productively.

Psychic Determinism: Everything that happens in a person�s mind and everything a person does has a specific, identifiable cause i.e. psychic determinism. Psychoanalysis has no room for miracles, accidents or free will. All seeming contradictions of mind and behaviour can be resolved: nothing is accidental, e.g., it is not accidental when you forget someone�s name, drop something, say one thing and do another. The purpose of psychoanalysis is to dig these hidden causes out, bring them into conscious awareness, and through this insight, the cause can be resolved.

Humans have base instincts (unconscious urges): In Freudian psychology, the unconscious is extremely important in determining behaviour. This is a pervasive theme of the approach: that a lot of desires, motivations and conflicts are seething below the surface, below the level of consciousness. Freud believed that people are driven, fundamentally, by unconscious, animalistic, instinctual urges, particularly lust (eros) and aggression (thanatos).  These urges are often in conflict with the demands of society.  For example, humans desire pleasure, but society places limits on the kinds of pleasure-seeking which it deems acceptable.  Freud emphasizes the extent to which humans are motivated by psychosexual pleasure.

Topography of the psyche (unconscious, pre-conscious, conscious): Using an iceberg metaphor, the unconscious is understood to be the large part of the mind, which is hidden from view.  The pre-conscious is represented by the waterline - but it is the zone in which there are fleeting glimpses of the unconscious, "flickering" across the screen of consciousness.  Finally, the relatively small part of the iceberg which sticks of the water is seen as equivalent to the small amount of conscious awareness that the human experiences.  Freud also believed that if there was information that was too painful for the conscious part to bear, that defense mechanisms would act to push it down it into the unconscious part of the mind.

Structure of Mind (Id, Ego, Superego): The mind has an internal structure -- three parts with separate motivations: Id (irrational and emotional part of the mind); the Ego (rational part); and the Superego (the moral part).

The Way Psychic Conflicts are Resolved Shapes Personality: Personality characteristics are determined by the way in which a person learns to resolve unconscious conflicts amongst the Id, Ego & Superego.  This evolves from how people handle several psychosexual stages during childhood.  Personality is very strongly influenced by early experiences. Freud was the first to really emphasize the importance of early childhood experiences.  People's Id, Ego and Superego develop characteristic patterns of interaction which for them resolve the urges for psychosexual pleasures. However, in some people, a psychosexual stage may not be effectively resolved and this leads to adult personalities characterized being "stuck" at a particular psychosexual stage (e.g., anally retentive or anally expulsive if the 2nd psychosexual stage "anal" (learning how to "let go" of faeces)) is not resolved, depending on which of the Id, Ego, and Superego becomes more dominant.  The quality of a person's mental health was seen as determined by the extent to which psychic conflicts had been effectively resolved.  If the forces of mind are in balance, according to Freud, then good psychological health ensued.  Personality is viewed as a dynamic set of process which are always in motion i.e. psychodynamic.  Because of the dynamism, it is possible for an adult personality characteristic to be altered quite dramatically through therapeutic (psychodynamic) insight.

Life is Painful, Therefore We Use Defense Mechanisms to Shield Our Psyche's from the Pain: Psychological defenses are proposed as important aspects of human functioning.  Because of human's desire for pleasure (note, they also have destructive instincts), life is essentially too painful for the human being to endure consciously, therefore much of the pain and conflict is diverted via defence mechanisms and kept within the unconscious.  It is within the hidden unconscious that much of the conflict takes place, and these conflicts in the unconscious mind are seen as the root of behavior and conscious experience.  Apparently paradoxical or irrational behaviors can be accounted for by these inner conflicts, i.e., psychic determinism.*

*Psychic determinism is a type of determinism that theorizes that all mental processes are not spontaneous but are determined by the unconscious or preexisting mental complexes. It relies on the causality principle applied to psychic occurrences in which nothing happens by chance or by accidental arbitrary ways.

Unconscious Leaks Into Conscious Awareness via dreams, slips of the tongue, psychosomatic symptoms, and so on: The unconscious is dynamic, and the psychic energy must go somewhere, plus there is psychic determinism.  In other words, whilst the unconscious conflicts may be largely kept from conscious awareness, they still significantly influence behaviors, psychosomatics, plus leak into the preconscious.

Therapeutic Relief Can be Achieved Through Insight into the Unconscious: Therapeutic relief can be effected by helping a person to bring underlying conflicts, often related to past negative learning experiences during critical psychosexual stages.  To the extent that insight and understanding can be achieved, and a person can resolve many psychological problems.  Note that the therapeutic emphasis on the role and value of achieving "self-insight" is a notion later explored by humanistic psychology.  Psychoanalytic therapy was the first "talk therapy" -- it was noticed for the first time formally in psychology that talking about it helps!  Psychotherapy may also use project assessment techniques, such as the Rorschach Inkblot Test.

RESOURCE

[eugenialapteva]

Young Love

The scene:

A young woman, I shall call her Eliza, is sitting next to a young man, whom I shall refer to as Ethan. They seem to be of a similar age, perhaps 16 or 17 years old, and it is clear from the way in which they are seated, close to each other and holding hands, that they are a romantic couple. They are travelling by coach to the airport furthest away from central Stockholm. Eliza is wearing blue jeans and a cream coloured woollen jumper, her boots are sturdy but smart looking and her brown hair is neatly tied up in a bun. She looks confident and self-assured. Ethan is wearing a generic dark coloured jumper and black jeans. The observed interaction begins just after Eliza has come off the phone with her mother.

Ethan: I still can’t understand anything [he chuckles]. No, actually, I think I understood a little – “dobzhe”, that means “good” right?

Eliza: Yeah, “dobry”, it can mean a lot of things. Like “ladny”, which also means nice. But it’s pronounced differently depending on if it’s a person or a thing. For example, if I say “it tastes good”, or “she’s nice”… [She continues to explain the various uses of the word in detail]

Ethan: Oh so it’s like for an item or object?

Eliza: Exactly.

There is a short silence.

Ethan: Good chat with your mum?

Eliza: Yeah, always good chat with her. We always have good talks.

Ethan: Ah good. That’s what I like to hear [He is stroking her hand gently, silently]

Do you think it’s good business this – going back and forth to the airport?

Eliza: Yeah I think it’s good, not only for the shuttle bus to this airport – all capitals have the same system. But this company benefits from it being the only mode of transport to the airport. No trains go there. So they have a monopoly […]

Eliza takes out her phone and is looking at a ‘story’ on Instagram. Ethan leans over to have a look, still caressing her hand.

Ethan: Where is that?

Eliza: Canada.

Ethan: Where in Canada?

Eliza: I don’t know.

Ethan: Cos there’s the English speaking part and the French speaking part.

Eliza: Eh, yeah.. of course, I know that. I went to school you know, I know about the world. We go to school in Poland too!

Ethan: Oh really? I didn’t think so. So you know how the world works then?

Eliza: Yeah.

He smiles and humours her cheerfully, still caressing her hand, his body snuggled up beside her. They start planning their week and Eliza checks the calendar on her phone.

Ethan: Sure, you can see your friends on Friday, that’s absolutely fine with me. I can see you on the weekend. I’m around.

Eliza: I’m working Monday and Tuesday 9-5, Thursday 2-8. You’re off Sunday right?

Ethan: Monday.

Eliza: Oh right.

Ethan: So Saturday? When do you find out your schedule? […] Yeah, yeah that’s cool.

Eliza: Do you have plans Monday?

Ethan: No, just going to be off. If you’re free…and if the trains are running…

Eliza: You do what you need to.

Ethan: Yeah, I'll wait to see what you say.

Both on their phones, but Eliza looks more engrossed in the activity. Ethan is staring at his phone rather purposelessly. As they are approaching the airport, Eliza gathers her things and puts on her coat in preparation.

Ethan: You checked in?

Eliza: Yeah [her voice sounds impatient]

Ethan: So we just go straight in. Easy.

As if noticing her sharp tone of voice, retrospectively, she gives him a little cuddle. They speak inaudibly and suddenly Eliza exclaims:

Yes! 2-1. Winner, that’s me [pointing at herself triumphantly].

Ethan smiles, but does not say anything.

Outside the bus Eliza heads straight for the luggage compartment. She locates their bags within seconds and points to them.

Eliza: They’re there. One over there and the other one is behind.

She takes a step back, to allow him to go ahead and collect them.

Analysis:

As I conjure up the scene of these two adolescents in love and in conversation, I am struck afresh by the same sense of nostalgia which I felt at the time of the observation. The image of this outwardly self-possessed and poised Eastern European princess on a journey with her doting and starry-eyed young prince, taps into my personal narrative of adolescent love, evoking within me a sense of poignancy and pain; a curious fantasy of familiarity and kindred minds.

Within a minute or two of observing the contact between Eliza and Ethan and listening to their dialogue, I was overcome by a powerful feeling that I already knew the power dynamics of their relationship; I could foresee the inevitable calamity and heartbreak that is built into the choreography of their complementary dance. Of course, I soon became aware of how intensely coloured these presumptions were by my own psychical templates and interpersonal experiences from infancy onward. That said, by the same token, this spontaneous reaction of mine – bearing in mind with vigilance its subjective and affective quality – seemed to provide a useful instrument for the observation; a way in, as it were, to the internal worlds of Eliza and Ethan and their romantic relationship.  

The journey of human development is by no means simple. The path toward psychosexual maturity, as Freud astutely proposed, is a long and precarious undertaking for all human beings. Twisting through the plethora of infantile desires, wishes, impulses, obstacles, deprivations, identifications, satisfactions and loss, its course depends on the negotiation of a highly complicated set of developmental stages and processes in early childhood, adolescence and adulthood. The successful transition from one phase to the next is determined by a unique combination of fortuitous and constitutional factors – a mixture, if you like, of our innate genetic makeup and the dynamics of our lived experiences and relations with others and within the self.

According to Freud, then, even the most seemingly unobtrusive symptoms and pointless actions (much like parapraxes, jokes, gestures and dreams) have an intention and bear a connection to the person’s past experiences. In other words, the secret of neurosis in general is that the symptoms, however vicariously, are closely connected to the person’s innermost phantasies and early experiences of sexual life.[1] ‘Sucking at the mother’s breast’, Freud explained, ‘is the starting-point of the whole sexual life […] This sucking involves making the mother’s breast the first object of the sexual instinct.’[2] By discovering what he believed to be the sexual causation of neuroses Freud radically extended the concept of sexuality.

Central to this Freudian thesis was the fact that we must relinquish our first and primary love-object (typically this is the mother) in order to be able to advance to a sexually fulfilling and affectionate non-incestuous love relationship as an adult. In effect of this renunciation, however, ‘the final object of the sexual instinct is never any longer the original object but only a surrogate for it’[3] [emphasis mine]. Following up Freud’s formulations, perhaps a closer glance at the body language of Ethan and Eliza might offer a good point of entry to start understanding their ways of relating to each other psychoanalytically.

From the outset, Ethan’s body is somewhat bent and twisted toward Eliza – he strokes her hand fondly and remains seated in the same position of proximity throughout the journey. Meanwhile Eliza, adopting a more assertive stance, has a straight back and is faced at an angle away from Ethan in the direction of the bus. It is interesting to notice how the nature of their respective body languages mimic the different levels of engagement in their spoken conversation too. From what we observe, a structural imbalance of kind seems to permeate the relationship in multiple ways. While Ethan displays a keen interest in Eliza’s family and culture – he inquires about the Polish language and wants to know more about her conversation with mum – Eliza, on the other hand, seems to make minimal effort to reciprocate these gestures. Furthermore, it is Ethan who initiates conversation when they fall silent, he who suggests they meet up the following week, and he who listens attentively and responds to Eliza’s remarks and deliberations about the Polish word for nice and airport shuttle bus service.

On the surface, then, Ethan appears to be active and outspoken. His gratuitous engagement could be seen as a demonstration of the positive excitement and enthusiasm of being in love with someone whom he greatly admires – a harmless feature of the loving experience. Having said that, I wonder if Ethan’s propensity for ‘activity’ also signals a protective measure of the ego aimed at the avoidance of painful affects of passivation. His eagerness to adapt to Eliza’s schedule and to comply with her needs and demands (accepting her triumph, collecting their bags), parallels his accommodating body language and is suggestive of a denial of self – an unconscious subservient mode of defence against fear and anxiety about abandonment, the origins of which would date back to his childhood.

One could propose, in Freudian terms, that Ethan’s readiness to submit to Eliza’s mental organisation, through idealisation and his compliant attitude, provides him with a familiar way of sustaining psychic equilibrium, which must have taken precedence over the satisfaction of his individual desires and needs at some point in infancy. For one reason or another, something in early childhood might have prohibited Ethan from being able to freely express his wants and wishes to his primary carer – without fear of persecution – causing these incestuous wishful impulses to be forced into repression prematurely. This means that some psychical processes were denied satisfaction through discharge and cast out of consciousness; however, as we learn from reading Freud, in the dark and delirious unconscious they continue to grow and flourish, acting as a constant impediment to the adult’s libido and freedom.[4]

The patterns of behaviour we notice in Ethan might well be manifestations of benign defenses that help us to adapt to reality. My own experience of love – and retrospective exploration of my own role in that dynamic: as the idealised object – has made me deeply conscious of the subtle line between healthy admiration and violent idealisation, while also being cautious about how easily exploited that position of idealised object can be, albeit unconsciously. What is more, as I witnessed the interaction between these two lovers, the irritation and impatience in Eliza’s voice seemed agonizingly tangible. Clearly – or at least that was my impression – she is an educated, intelligent and competent young woman, but equally evident was that she seemed unaware of the impact of her words and actions on her loved one (with the exception of that one significant moment in the interaction, after her abrupt sounding ‘yeah’, when she gave Ethan a little hug).

Speculatively, one might draw from this relative lack of sensibility and tendency toward omnipotence – revealed in the way she asserts, and indeed prioritizes, her needs and wishes over Ethan’s – that circumstances were ‘good enough’ (to borrow Winnicott’s term) during her childhood. Perhaps, unlike Ethan, as a child she was freer to act and exist without taking into careful consideration the other’s separate existence and personal interests. Her phone call to her mum (the close attachment they seem to have) suggests possibly that family members for Eliza can be taken for granted, approached more or less as things that exist in service of her own needs – as blank screens onto which we are allowed to project and express all our anger, wants and needs without undue punishment.

In a different but related vein, psychoanalyst Jessica Benjamin writes that: ‘The ability to enter into exchange with the outside object implies a successful shift from the pleasure principle, self-containment in phantasy, toward the reality principle. That is, the individual’s entrance into a shared reality of creative inter-relationships built on mutual recognition and exchange.[5]

Having recognised this curious conjunction between the mother’s care and her baby’s sexual activity, we are arguably in a better position to appreciate how Freud’s remark on incest helps us understand how in various ways both Eliza and Ethan remain under the sway of the pleasure principle, lodged within the incestuous family matrix: a milieu, which as Luce Irigaray so pertinently puts it, ultimately favours cohesion and unity over difference and desire.[6] Together, Eliza’s competitive and perhaps somewhat inflated self-perception, and Ethan’s compliant approach and underlying sense of inadequacy, seem to complement each other in a dyadic structure which is both fragile and romantic.

[1] Sigmund Freud, (1917) Introductory Lecture on Psychoanalysis: XVII, p. 257

[2] Freud, (1917) Introductory Lecture on Psychoanalysis: XX, p. 314

[3] Freud, ‘On the Universal Tendency to Debasement in the Sphere of Love’, S.E. 11, p. 189

[4] Freud, ‘A Special Type of Choice of Object Made by Men’, pp. 169-171

[5] Jessica Benjamin, The Bonds of Love, pp. 37-38  

[6] Luce Irigaray, (2017) To be Born, p. 47

[dayquercus]

introjection

what’s the value

there’s a difference

when you express own sexuality (pleasure principles , free animals or feminists ect.) and (morally shameless) after causing pain to others - e.g. home wreckers (of all sex genders) then happy about it (self being xxliked by some guys) then unhappy about it (self being dumped by the same guy)

where’s the empowerment ?

lack of love in the family ? or father ? or spoiled : have both yet not (happy) enough (purpose of life : fill the empty hollowness) , self image is probably too high (thanks to her mum or family)

or the wrong image :

‘High self-esteem is not just liking yourself but generally affording yourself love, value, dignity, and respect, too.’

what a heart of consideration hearts of kindness is that ? respectful big smiles . actually dependant on opposite sex (gratification) and 🎷 (obsessive or compulsive - unhealthy sexual nature) , otherwise sad to live on , that’s an addiction (o “love”) to compete

simple

is feminism a cover-up for own (…..all is right- do what I want) behaviours ….

why children in some community don’t know what’s right what’s not ? all the land is shared-own , public footpath there’s no clear boundaries . caring self more to ruin others relationships (including nature , environment ect.) social influences where it is cultured , to the development of personality (behaviours thinkings ect.)

development : psychosexual + psychosocial

imagine friend-her-bestie poaching while claiming own liberation when she’s not present in the picture …. big smiles or her crying face again (they fail to put self in others shoes) .. what kind of marriage does she want when lying in bed - staring at her screen) ? after likes from guys ….

why don’t you express that sexual energy in public ? “free” 60s claiming , ah shame ? can you feel it ? excuses on the social-cultural contexts

‘cheating (…..) can never be a decidedly positive feminist act’

a result of a secret life , leading others who fantasise (volunteers) for gaining own comforts (validation affection ect.) , it’s a match : likes from others

she deserves ‘phoenix’ , after all

hope s and dream s , happy about self life first (o life hasn’t started yet)

edit-add: 

there’s a difference when you express own sexuality (pleasure principles , free animals or feminists ect.) and (morally shameless) after causing pain to others - e.g. home wreckers (of all sex genders) then happy about it (self being xxliked by some guys) then unhappy about it (self being dumped by the same guy)where’s the empowerment ?object relations , if without , who shall she be ? :lack of love in the family ? or spoiled : have both yet not (happy) enough (purpose of life : fill the empty hollowness - sex! or cheat while in a relationship or right after separation - same two‘High self-esteem is not just liking yourself but generally affording yourself love, value, dignity, and respect, too.’what a heart of consideration hearts of kindness is that ?actually dependant on opposite sex (gratification) and  (obsessive or compulsive - unhealthy sexual nature) , otherwise sad to live on , addiction vs love.

is feminism a cover-up for own (…..all is right- do what I want) behaviours ….‘cheating (…..) can never be a decidedly positive feminist act.’

she deserves a ‘phoenix’ , after all , ‘forever’ (coming back after the same things again and again)

[boldcare]

What is stress-induced erectile dysfunction?

​Erectile dysfunction or Erectile Dysfunction Treatment In Kolkata occurs when you’re unable to get or maintain an erection that’s firm enough or lasts long enough for satisfactory sex. It’s normal to experience trouble with getting an erection from time to time, but if it’s a frequent occurrence and interferes with the quality of your sex life, you might have ED. ​ There are several psychological and physiological factors that might cause you to experience ED. Stress — or anxiety — is one of the most common psychological causes. In fact, research has shown that up to 20% of ED cases are due to psychological causes. These are no less valid than physiological reasons, and are just as deserving of help. If you think that you might be suffering from ED, it’s important to consult with a qualified doctor. They can help you find out if stress is what’s causing your ED. ​How can stress cause Erectile Dysfunction Best Treatment In India? Stress can take a toll on your body in many different ways. Many of us think of stress as something that lives exclusively in our minds, and that can either be willed away or that has no real ramifications on our bodies. However, the truth is that psychological stress can and does have numerous physiological manifestations and effects. It can cause headaches, issues with digestive health, including acidity and stomach aches, increases in blood sugar, and a weakening of the immune system, and can lead to insomnia and depression. Ultimately, stress is a major factor when it comes to the functioning of almost all our physiological processes, and can harm us in many different ways. Erectile and sexual health is no exception to this, and stress plays a major role in ED because of the way in which it interferes with your brain’s signals to your body. Men experience 3 different types of erections: reflexive erections, caused due to physical stimulation; psychogenic erections, stimulated by visual or mental images; and nocturnal erections, which occur when you’re asleep. All three of these involve your brain sending out certain signals, that in turn cause your body to respond in certain ways, finally leading to an erection. The primary function involved in this is an increase in the blood flow into the penis and a decrease in the blood flow out. But when you’re stressed or anxious, even though you may be sexually aroused or experiencing mental and emotional sexual desire, you can struggle to get an erection because of the interference in these signals. This is because your sympathetic nervous system or SNS is activated when you’re stressed, which causes a decrease in the blood flow to the penis. You may even struggle with performance related anxiety, where ED stems from fears of not being able to perform sexually or leaving your partner unsatisfied. In situations like ED, this stress can become not just a cause, but also a result, leading to a vicious cycle. You’re unable to get or maintain an erection because you’re stressed, which in turn leads to more anxiety over your sexual life, which then makes it even more difficult to achieve or maintain an erection. Stress can begin to both cause and perpetuate ED. Cortisol and ED One of the ways in which this works is through the function of cortisol. Cortisol is a hormone released by our body when it perceives us to be under threat or danger. It’s more commonly known as the hormone that causes our fight or flight response, and works alongside adrenaline to deal with a dangerous or stressful situation. It regulates our body functions to be able to meet that threat. However, it also has the effect of constricting the blood vessels in the penis. This stops blood from being able to flow properly into the penis, and makes it more difficult to achieve an erection. What’s more, if you suffer from chronic or long-term stress, elevated levels of cortisol can also cause your testosterone levels to decrease, leading to more trouble with your sexual and erectile health. How can I address stress-induced ED? If you’re struggling with stress or anxiety, it can often be compounded by any unhealthy coping mechanisms you may have adopted to deal with that stress or anxiety. One might take to excessively consuming alcohol, tobacco products or recreational drugs to cope. However, these can further cause problems with ED, and harm you in the long run rather than helping. Instead, there are multiple routes that you can explore to addressing not just stress-induced ED, but the underlying reasons behind that stress. Counselling or talk therapy Very often, we ourselves might be unaware of what the root is to our stress or anxiety. Working through this with a professional can help you recognise and identify the stressors in your life, and talking about it with someone qualified can help you address those stressors and lessen their effect on your life. Your counsellor or therapist may also recommend trying cognitive behavioural therapy, or CBT, for addressing issues with depression and/or anxiety. CBT is a type of therapy that helps to identify and change unhealthy patterns of thought and behaviour. It can be helpful not just for people who struggle with their mental health, but also to address the psychological factors behind ED. Psychosexual therapy This is a type of therapy that couples can undergo together. Confiding in your partner about your struggles with ED and the role of stress or anxiety behind it can go a long way in helping you address the root cause behind it. If you’re both comfortable and eager, you can explore psychosexual therapy as a way to help deal with stress-induced ED, as well as any other issues with your sex life. It can also help address any relationship issues that may be present. Routines to help reduce stress Apart from this, making small but pivotal changes to your daily routine can help you feel calmer through the day and more in control of your anxiety or stress. Integrating time for meditation into your day, even for just 10-15 minutes, can go a long way in helping you be more mindful and feel more relaxed. Starting and ending your day with deep breathing exercises can also help reduce stress. If you’re more inclined towards exercise-based activities, regularly practicing yoga can also help you manage your stress better. Ultimately, it’s important to identify the daily stressors in your life and find healthy ways to let go of some of your anxiety through mindfulness techniques. It won’t just affect your sexual health, but will also help improve your general wellbeing.

[sam-breakwell-bcu-viscom-blog]

Contextual Studies Lectures: Psychoanalysis

Psychoanalysis is defined as: ‘A system of psychological theory and therapy which aims to treat mental disorders by investigating the interaction of conscious and unconscious elements in the mind and bringing repressed fears and conflicts into the conscious mind by techniques such as dream interpretation and free association.’ The idea of the ‘unconscious mind’ is key to psychoanalysis. The treatment itself revolved around the analysis of various things Sigmund Freud believed brought it to the surface, including:- Free association, dreams and parapraxis Freud believed that unlocking the unconscious was key to curing his patients.

Sigmund Freud

Id, Ego, and Superego:

The id - our basic ‘animal instincts’ and primal desires - it works on the pleasure principle  

The ego - this can also be thought of as ‘I’. The ego mediates between the id and the real world, working on the reality principle  

The superego - this can be thought of as ‘the conscience’ and incorporates learned societal values and morals, and works on an idealistic principle

A neurosis is defined as: ‘A relatively mild mental illness that is not caused by organic disease, involving symptoms of stress (depression, anxiety, obsessive behaviour, hypochondria) but not a radical loss of touch with reality.’ (Oxford Dictionary online) Freud believed that these were caused by repressions, both of the pleasure principle and of childhood traumas. 

For Freud, an infant’s psychological development was intrinsically linked to a series of five psychosexual stages: 

- The oral phase (0-1 year) 

- The anal phase (1-3 years)

- The phallic phase (3-5 or 6 years) 

- The latent phase (5 or 6 to puberty) 

- The genital phase (puberty to adult) 

He believed that a trauma or a disruption during the early stages was responsible for the creation of neuroses in later life.

The Oedipus complex is one of Freud’s most controversial ideas, and one which many people immediately reject. It is the idea that, during the phallic stage, a young boy (sexually) desires his mother, and therefore wants to remove the father. Irrationally, the young boy believes that should his father find out about these desires, he would remove what the boy loves the most (his penis). This is known as castration anxiety. The young boy then aims to resolve the issue by imitating his father’s masculine traits, and taking on the male gender role. 

Something else that Freud believed ought to be analysed as it brought the unconscious to the surface was parapraxis - or, as they are more commonly known, ‘Freudian slips’. Parapraxes reveal that we are not always in control of our own speech or actions, and for Freud, they were telling of repressed desires. An example here could be writing ‘thigh’ instead of ‘though’, or trying to open your car with your house keys, possibly signalling you’d rather be staying at home.

In 1919 Freud published a book entitled ‘the uncanny’. He was particularly interested in the psychological effect that something which was simultaneously familiar and unfamiliar had. This unsettling feeling is often employed by creatives and designers - for instance within health campaigns. 

Criticisms of Freud’s Theories:

- Some of his data is not credible 

- His patients only represented a very small demographic 

- There is no evidence to support his theories of child sexuality 

- Some of his theories can be damaging to certain groups, for instance his belief that homosexuality was a failure to reconcile the anal phase - and his now laughable idea of ‘penis envy’

John Bowlby

John Bowlby (1907-1990) was a British psychologist and psychoanalyst who had a particular interest in child development. He is most famous for his work on attachment theory. One huge insight of psychoanalysis is that challenges of life start when we are young. John Bowlby traced many problems back to issues with maternal care. In 1959 Bowlby wrote a very influential book called Separation Anxiety about what happens when there isn’t enough maternal care in a child’s life. If a child is separated for too long, they begin to think all good things will disappear at any given moment, therefore becoming anxious or volatile - or they may become detached as a way of dealing with this. 

Jaques Lacan

Jacques Lacan (1901 - 1981) was a French psychoanalyst and philosopher, considered by many to be the most influential after Freud. His work was perhaps more influential in universities rather than consulting rooms across the UK. Within the arts he is most well known for his idea of ‘the mirror phase’. Lacan divided the psyche into three orders of experience to do with development, which begin with the mirror phase. Extremely simplified, they are:

- The Imaginary: The newborn baby does not realise it is a separate being from its mother; as it gains a visual image of itself (the mirror phase) it starts to understand that it is a distinct object 

- The Symbolic: The infant comes to realise all experiences are filtered through language 

- The Real: This is the leftover from our pre-language stages. This is when an experience or thought occurs that language cannot symbolise

‘This illusion of unity, in which a human being is always looking forward to self-mastery, entails a constant danger of sliding back again into the chaos from which he started; it hangs over the abyss of a dizzy Assent in which one can perhaps see the very essence of Anxiety.’ Jacques Lacan, Some Reflections on the Ego (1951)

The Male Gaze

British feminist film theorist Laura Mulvey is best known for her 1975 essay Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema in which she discusses the concept of ‘the male gaze’. Mulvey used previously psychoanalytical ideas to deconstruct cinema from a feminist perspective.

Abjection

Julia Kristeva is a Bulgarian-French philosopher, feminist, and psychoanalyst. She is famous for her work on the abject - ‘subjective horror’ - in her book The Powers of Horror. It is centred around the idea of the feeling one experience when one is confronted by their ‘corporeal reality’ and is disgusted by their own body (specifically feminine) - it is a theory which builds on the work of Freud and Lacan. It is also related to the work of Barbara Creed on ‘the monstrous feminine’

[harrisonkitteridge-blog]

The Lying Detective: I’m Actively Hate-watching Now

SPOILERS FOLLOW

I didn’t like the first episode of the new season of Sherlock, but I sincerely hoped having the risible nonsense of the Mary Watson/AGRA storyline tied up would free things up a bit. I think the Culverton Smith case might have delivered, but they went all in on the “I’m so beset by grief I’m hallucinating my dead spouse” gambit. Really? In what we keep being told is “clever” television? Grief is about absence, about a space that can’t be filled, about feeling trapped and asphyxiated by it. But we were never actually shown Mary and John’s relationship, so all the emotional heavy lifting is being done retroactively, and it’s heavy-handed, saccharine, out-of-character claptrap. John being with Rosie, struggling to parent alone would have had me in floods, but Moftiss always chooses exposition when there isn’t a gun being pulled or a joke being cracked. There is something about genuine, non-sensational emotion that seems to make them uncomfortable; it always has to be book-ended by effacing humour. As much as I dislike the “I see dead people” shortcut to exploring grief, I understand that it probably worked for most of the viewing audience, but Moftiss could have at least allowed some of those moments sink in. They just had to cut off the opening scene in the therapist’s office with police sirens and helicopters in service to a gag about Sherlock’s penchant for grand entrances.

Twists>Action>Jokes>>>>>>>>Characters.

The “Culverton Smith is a serial killer case” was serviceable (in spite of the horrible pun they worked in), and I liked Toby Jones’s performance, but they oversold him as a villain, and it didn’t really live up to the hype. There was too much extemporizing – all that soliloquizing in the boardroom had me staring off into space after a while. Giving Toby Jones all the scenery in Greater London to chew isn’t the same as making his character “evil”. There being no victims was a huge omission, in my opinion. You have to see what they’ve done, whom they’ve hurt or none of it really matters. Them erasing all of Smith’s victims sits really poorly with me, and it goes back to the heart of my problem with the direction of the show – the people don’t matter. Not really. Nevertheless, the story held my interest, and (before the twist at the end) I actually quite liked Sherlock’s interaction with Culverton’s “daughter” (even though it was a bit drawn out).

The middle episode of each season tends to be the weakest, and The Lying Detective was definitely one of the better offerings, and I loved Mrs. Hudson deducing Sherlock, her recognising that he’s not a “cold reasoning machine”. So why am I actively hate-watching?

That third act…

Gurl…

Where to begin?

“I killed his wife.”

No you didn’t, Sherlock. Stop making everything about you. Don’t get me wrong, I understand the potential source of the guilt ��� he thinks he should have seen it coming and is gutted that he didn’t. That feeling that there’s something incongruous about his reaction stems from Moftiss’s story being driven solely by plot. The entire premise of The Lying Detective is that, even off his head on drugs, Sherlock can predict other people’s behaviour a fortnight out. So why the Norbury deduction, then? You didn’t have to be a genius to see that de-escalation was the only play. So, is Moftiss’s Sherlock clever or isn’t he? It depends on what direction they want to take the plot. They play up his intellect for style when it suits them and ignore it when it gets in the way of having a trigger pulled. If he’d given it all he had, used the full power of his mind and still failed, Mary had still died, that twinge of the ego and John’s irrational feeling of betrayal would have been more warranted. All the stubbled, Byronic theatrics would have been earned. He would have been replaying everything in his mind to see what he missed. But he didn’t miss anything. He just acted like a not very clever arrogant cock.

I’ve made it pretty clear that I think the Mary Watson/AGRA storyline was a steaming pile. I didn’t like or believe her character. The character is head-spinningly inconsistent because they keep shoving her around in the plot and not reconciling the conflicts that arise. Nevertheless, I’m sickened by how ill-used she’s been. If The Six Thatchers didn’t already demonstrate it, Mary’s story was all in service to ramping up the man-emo quotient – to get John and Sherlock to gnash their teeth and rend their garments. The loving spouse, smiling beatifically and giving emotional advice from beyond the veil – that’s where they decided to take the BAMF assassin. They can take that nonsense straight back to the vomitorium where they sourced it. But that’s not really my biggest problem with the narrative.

“The only way to save John is to make him save you.”

As, Moftiss has written it, the entire construct of the Sherlock-John-Mary relationship is organised around John being an object – there to be manipulated. Mary couldn’t advise Sherlock to treat John like an adult and be patient and do the unsexy, heavy lifting of being a best mate. That would mean treating John like a person, not a series of buttons to push. Do you know what works with most non-personality disordered people who have “trust issues”? Persistence. But that’s not flashy enough, though, is it? Telling a drug addict who has a history of reckless behaviour that might reasonably be classified as self-harm to put himself in terrible danger to spur John into action is something a psychopath would suggest. That is Moftiss’s vision of the loving spouse whose spectre is haunting John. Except I honestly don’t think they even see the deeply disturbed psychology they’ve conjured. In their minds, Mary has been completely rehabilitated, and her egging Sherlock into self-harm is noble, just like shooting and nearly killing him somehow was. Are mature adults who’ve actually been in relationships or who’ve just interacted with other human beings for any length of time really meant to be taking any of this seriously? And then there’s the notion that someone as warped as Mary had much to teach John about being a good man – that her vision of him was somehow superior to what he already is. John Watson isn’t perfect, but this idea that he needed Mary to improve him and get him up to scratch is not only unsupported by everything that’s come before but relies on the grotesque stereotype that every man is a bumbling dumb fuck who needs a “good woman” to straighten him out. Disgusting. Moftiss have constructed a reality in which a person who is willing to shoot and kill people to hide her past ill deeds has a superior moral compass to someone who inappropriately texted a woman he met on a bus. All the brutal violence Mary did to the eponymous hero of the show is inconsequential, but John flirting via text is of great importance. It’s no wonder the story is careening out of control. The things that should matter don’t.

The return of Irene Adler.

A few months ago, in an Instagram post, I theorised that Sherlolly was the ship Moftiss would most likely go for (there was never going to be Johnlock). I knew an attractive woman was always going to be their play, so, barring a newcomer, I assumed it would be Molly. Irene Adler would be next in line. Sherlolly just seemed like the likeliest outcome given Molly helping Sherlock fake his death and the way she came out of her shell and started calling him on his bullshit. But I underestimated just how much Moftiss esteem flash over substance. I do not like the handling of Irene Adler in any of the recent incarnations of Sherlock Holmes and will continue to argue until there is no breath left in me that: Irene Adler is not Delilah to Sherlock Holmes’s Samson! In the original Arthur Conan Doyle story, A Scandal in Bohemia, she beats him while keeping all of her clothes on and by outstrategising him, not by distracting him and drugging him. Not-quite-dead Mary cackling, “I bet you saved her! The posh boy loves the dominatrix!” made me want to rage puke. The whole point of Irene Adler, what makes her “The Woman”, is that she doesn’t need anyone, least of all Sherlock Holmes to White Knight for her. She handles her business better than he ever could.

Moving on.

I can’t believe they actually had a middle-aged adult tell another middle-aged adult: “romantic entanglement would complete you as a human being.“ Our relationships (romantic and otherwise) should enrich and improve our lives, but this notion that we’re all hobbled and shambling through life and need to be repaired by our “soulmates” has got to stop. It’s why so many people can’t have healthy romantic relationships grounded in reality – they’ve set their significant others (and themselves) unmeetable, fairy tale standards, and their disappointment and ensuing resentment are foregone conclusions.

Take it all straight back to the vomitorium.

Miss me?

No, Jim. I don’t. Whenever a show circles back to the vanquished supervillain, Fonzie is prepping his water skis.

The secret brother is really a secret sister whose name is The East Wind, and she’s completely unhinged and may be Moriarty or is at least connected to him, and there’s some weird psychosexual element between her and her brother who doesn’t seem to know what she looks like, and…

GTFOH AND GTFOH FOREVER!

Once Mary Watson said “It’s a skip code”, a preposterous story became virtually inevitable, so I’m not surprised Sherlock has descended into near pantomime. The real reason I’m pre-emptively upset about the finale is because I know Eurus’s mental illness will be treated solely as a plot driver. Moftiss will only scratch the surface of the pain, the fear, the feelings of failure, the societally enforced shame, the hopelessness that a family goes through when one of them is diagnosed with a mental illness serious enough to require long-term institutionalisation. Really think about what it means to be related to someone who is criminally insane and how much good drama lives there. There will be helicopters and gunfights and fisticuffs, maybe even abseiling, in the finale, but virtually no real examination of the damage done by the emotional claymore mine that went off, kept going off and is still going off in the Holmes family after Eurus was diagnosed. And Eurus herself? Maybe they’ll show her as a child strangling a cat or hurting Redbeard (if they even pay her that much attention outside of letting her gorge herself on the scenery), but she’ll be a caricature, a monster with no inner life. How do I know they’ll do this? Because they spent this entire episode using visual and auditory hallucinations – signs of extreme mental disturbance and distress that require urgent psychiatric intervention – as shorthand for “I’m grieving the death of my spouse”. They couldn’t show John alone, struggling with a newborn, suffering through the feelings of abandonment and intense isolation that underpin grief because it’s too ordinary.

Everyone has been pointing out all the call-backs to previous episodes and what they mean. Here’s my go at it: I predict that John’s grief and psychiatric issues are now magically fixed, just like his limp and his PTSD. Moftiss told us from the very beginning that Sherlock was shallow and emotionally incoherent. But:

I’ll hate-watch the finale just for the sake of completion and as source material for the inevitable rant.

Moftiss…

Ugh…

Thank goodness for the palate cleanser of Elementary…

[maleenhancementmd]

premature ejaculation high blood pressure

Contents

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Physical causes of premature ejaculation can include: increased penile sensitivity and lower ejaculatory threshold (in primary premature ejaculation); erectile dysfunction; an underlying condition such as high blood pressure or a hormone imbalance; alcohol; and; side effects from medicines. Diagnosis and tests

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premature ejaculation omega toxin  · There are multiple psychosexual and pharmacological treatments for premature ejaculation (PE). PE treatment strategies include psychosexual counselling, and daily or on-demand pharmacotherapy, either alone or in combination as part of an integrated treatment program ().Men with lifelong premature ejaculation (L-PE) are best managed with PE pharmacotherapy alone or in.

Premature ejaculation is often a punchline. For the estimated 1 in 3 men who will cope with premature ejaculation at some point in their lives, the laughs only go so far. When the lights go out in the bedroom, premature ejaculation is no laughing matter. Sex is a basic human need -.

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[shmosnet2]

Why Do We Experience Sudden Ideas Of Random Violence In Our Head? » Science ABC

Why Do We Experience Sudden Ideas Of Random Violence In Our Head? » Science ABC

It turns out that these automatic thoughts could be a suggestion from the primordial human psyche to the conscious mind. Imagine this… you’ve come home after a long day at work and are sitting in front of your laptop with some chai in your hand, a soft blanket by your feet, all set for a nice warm evening. In that moment, your laptop starts to take its sweet time powering up. Out of nowhere, an image of you smashing the laptop against the wall flashes before your eyes. You get startled about where the image came from. It goes away in nearly the same breath, so you continue to sip your chai and wait. Sound familiar? Have you experienced this once or twice when you were feeling frustrated? Well, don’t fret, as you’re definitely not alone here. It happens to the best of us, but why does it happen? And how do we stop ourselves from feeling this way? Ever had one of those times where you really wanted to go home, but the other person just wouldn’t stop talking?! (Photo Credit : durantelallera/ Shutterstock) Of the various perspectives that can offer explanations, Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis, had one of the most compelling ones. Before we look at why we experience these emotions, it’s beneficial to look into the ABCs of psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysis and the idea of personality Freud, famous for his concept of the psychosexual stages of development, also put forth a famous explanation of personality. In Freud’s view, the human psyche, or the personality, consists of the conscious mind, the preconscious and the unconscious mind. The conscious mind, as the name suggests, allows us to constantly process the world around us, and is accessible to us whenever we want. The preconscious is the collection of experiences and memories that we had. Although it was not consciously available, it was always accessible when we needed it. Then came the unconscious mind, hidden away and waiting in the darkness to creep up on us when we least expect it, e.g., “a slip of tongue”. This unconscious mind was seen as being largely responsible for the thoughts that we have. So, to explain it better, let’s assume our mind looked like an iceberg. This iceberg was divided into three parts: the super ego, the ego (the two more visible parts of the iceberg), and the id (the huge chunk of iceberg hidden beneath the water). The id is the first part of the personality to develop, right when we’re wee little babies. It’s largely made of impulses. It screams for its needs to be satisfied immediately. It seeks to avoid pain and be happy all day long. It can also go to any extent for this need to be gratified. It is primitive and selfish. Next develops the ego, the ego is the part that helps us reason and act rationally. It operates with accordance to the reality and environment around it. It evaluates the situation and see what an appropriate response would be. It sees how best to give the id what it wants. The last to develop is the superego. This develops largely from the people we grow up with. As children, we are constantly told by our parents about what is right and wrong. As we grow up, this external rules and regulations slowly becomes internalized, and we begin to monitor ourselves. We eventually develop our own morals and ideals and constantly check if our actions are in sync with these ideals. Generation of Impulsive Thoughts The super ego is a part of our psyche that is like an overly strict principal; its standards are too high. The id, on the other hand, is like little baby—it wants what it wants, when it wants. The ego is stuck somewhere between the two. It tries to mediate and gratify the needs of the id in a subtle way. What often happens is that these three don’t always get along. When they have misunderstandings, we feel “anxious”. The purpose of this anxiety is to let us know that all is not well. When the id and the super ego fight, it causes fear of one’s conscience. When we have a flash of aggressive thought, it could simply be one of the id’s primitive suggestions. Freud demonstrating what happens if your ego is on a holiday Dealing with these thoughts It often happens, that these forbidden thoughts that we have, the super ego makes sure that we feel a lot of guilt and shame. The level of guilt largely depends on how rigid the super ego is. If our parents were rather strict (authoritarian parenting), or if we were from a superstitious or inflexible religious/ cultural background, the amount of guilt associated is tremendous. The ego, on spying these negative emotions, feels threatened, and immediately dismisses this thought. It always helps to observe the thought and let it pass, accept that a thought is just a thought and not the commandment one has to act on. After all, aggression is instinctual. The more we beat ourselves up about why we had such a thought, more is the distress. Another way of dealing with it, is to share it with some one that you trust. It’s most likely that they’ll relate to this as they might have experienced similar distressing thoughts. And the last, is to laugh about it. Humour is a great way to make anything distressing into something funny like how Professor Lupin taught the students in Defense Against the Dark Arts class to face their fear by turning the boggart into something hilarious. A scary professor or a dynamic grandma? Another extreme to it will be when these thoughts become compulsive, we pay so much attention to it that it starts to control and take over our lives. Then it turns into a full-fledged disorder whose most prominent feature is intrusive thinking. Individuals who go through obsessive-compulsive disorder, have unrelenting thoughts of aggression, sexual desires, or even death. These themes vary from person to person. When faced with a situation like this, it is better to consult a therapist and a psychiatrist. Another extreme is when these thoughts do occur, and the individual is completely unperturbed by them. This kind of behaviour in its extremity would be characteristic trait of anti-social personality disorder, better known as sociopathy. If you looked at a serial killer lacking any remorse after multiple crimes it is the lack of ability to feel guilt, and hence a poorly developed super ego. Lastly, these thoughts of violence are normal. We all have the capacity and capability to be aggressive, as it’s in our genes, we see it on television, and it seems to be all around us. It’s an adaptive response that facilitates the fittest of us to survive and procreate. However, the biggest question is, do you react to these thoughts? Do you carry them out? Because that’s when it becomes a problem. Until then, it is what it is—just a thought! References

https://ift.tt/31LiJnD . Foreign Articles October 03, 2019 at 10:19PM

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Psychoanalysis

Psychoanalysis is defined as a system of psychological theory and therapy which aims to treat mental disorders by investigating the interaction of conscious and unconscious elements in the mind and bringing repressed fears and conflicts into the conscious mind by techniques such as dream interpretation and free association. 

Sigmund Freud, an Austrian neurologist, is often referred to as the father and founder of psychoanalysis.

The Unconscious

The idea of the unconscious mind is a key component to psychoanalysis. The treatment itself revolved around the analysis of various things Freud believed brought it to the surface including free association, dreams and parapraxis. Freud believed that unlocking the unconscious was key to curing his patients.

In Freud’s psychoanalytic theory of personality, the pleasure principle is the driving force of the id that seeks immediate gratification of all needs, wants and urges. The pleasure principle strives to fulfil our most basic primitive urges, including hunger, thirst, anger and sex. 

Id, Ego and Superego

The id - It is our most basic “animal instinct” and primal desires. The seat of our impulses

The ego - It mediates between the id and the real world, working on the reality principle. Negotiating with the id and pleasing the superego

The superego - It can be thought as “the conscience”. It incorporates learned societal values and morals, and works on an idealistic principle.

The id is the urge, impulse or desire that has to be satisfied. Relentlessly driven by a force Freud called the libido, the collective energy of life’s instincts and will to survive, the id must be satisfied. The ego is Freud’s second mental apparatus of personality. The ego’s main function is to mediate between the id’s demands and the external world around us. Even though the ego finds itself in conflict with the id, satisfaction is not abandoned. The ego accomplishes this important task by converting, diverting, and transforming the powerful forces of the id into more useful and realistic modes of satisfaction. It attempts to harness the id’s power, regulating it in order to achieve satisfaction despite the limits of reality. Superego is another name for your conscience. It expects your ego to be strong and effective in its struggles against the libido’s force.

Neuroses

A neurosis is defined as a relatively mild mental illness that is not caused by organic disease, involving symptoms of stress (depression, anxiety, obsessive behaviour, hypochondria) but not a radical loss of touch with reality. Freud believed these were caused by repressions, both of the pleasure principle and of childhood traumas. 

Freud’s Psychosexual Stages

For Freud, an infant’s psychological development was intrinsically linked to a series of five psychosexual stages. The pleasure sought by your inborn instincts is focused on sexual desire and gratification, through proper stimulation of each erogenous zone. If properly stimulated, you progress to the top of Freud’s psychosexual peak, sexual and psychological maturity. If not, you’re fixated on that particular zone and stuck in that particular stage.

Oral Stage (Birth to 18 months)

The oral stage is the first stage of personality development. From birth until about 18 months of age, an infant’s life centers on his mouth. The main task of this stage is to satisfy oral desire by stimulating the erogenous zone of the mouth. Infants are born with a very well-developed sense of taste, and their mouths are the most sophisticated tools they have to explore their world. 

Anal Stage (18 months to 3 years)

The second stage of personality development is the anal stage. Freud emphasised a person’s a person’s control over defecating as the pleasure centre from 18 months to 3 years old. Children this age want the ability to defecate whenever tehy want and wherever they want. According to Freud, creativity and productivity are indicators of how well a person has successfully navigated the anal stage. If you’re stuck in the anal stage, you’re dominated by anal satisfaction. This satisfaction can come in one of two ways: if you’re messy, sloppy or careless, it indicates an expulsive rebellion against parental control: if you’re withholding, obstinate and obsessed with neatness, you’ve learned control in reaction to your toilet-training experience

Phallic Stage (3 years to 7-8 years)

The 3- to 5-year-old child is focused on the erogenous stimulation of the genital area, the penis and vagina specifically. In the phallic stage, gratification begins with masturbation. As sexual satisfaction expands, a child finds himself within the realm of one of Freud’s most controversial and strange contributions to the study of personality, the Oedipus complex.

The Oedipus Complex is one of Freud’s most controversial ideas. It is the idea that, during the phallic stage, a young boy (sexually) desires his mother, and therefore wants to remove the father. Irrationally, the young boy believes that should his father find out about this desires, he would remove what the boy loves the most (his penis).  This is known as castration anxiety. The young boy then aims to resolve the issue by imitating his father’s masculine traits, and taking on the male gender role. For girls, this is called the Electra complex, where it is the psychosexual competition with her mother for possession of her father. Freud proposes that girls and boys resolve their complexes differently - she via penis envy, he via castration anxiety. 

Sublimation

Sublimation is defined as expressing strong emotions or use energy by doing an activity, especially an activity that is considered socially acceptable. Through sublimation, people are able to transform unwanted impulses into something that is less harmful and often even helpful. For example, when a person finds themselves overcome with anger instead of blowing up in a fit of rage they could channel their emotions into doing something productive, such as cleaning the house. Sublimation is a type of defence mechanism, an unconscious psychological defence that reduces the anxiety that might result from unacceptable urges or harmful stimuli. 

Sigmund Freud noted a number of ego defences which he refers to throughout his written works which is daughter Anna developed and elaborated on, adding ten of her own. We use defense mechanisms to protect ourselves from feelings of anxiety or guilt, which arise because we feel threatened, or because our id or superego becomes too demanding.  They are not under our conscious control, and are non-voluntaristic. 

Denial - Involves blocking external events from awareness. If some situation is just too much to handle, the person just refuses to experience it

Regression - This is a movement back in psychological time when one is faced with stress. 

Projection - This involves individuals attributing their own unacceptable thoughts, feeling and motives to another person

Displacement - Satisfying an impulse with a substitute object

Rationalisation - The cognitive distortion of “the facts” to make an event or an impulse less threatening. 

Torches of Freedom

Psychoanalysis could also be used in advertising and marketing. Before the 20th century smoking was seen as a habit that was corrupt and inappropriate for women.   In 1929 a cigarette company contacted Edward Bernays, an austrian-american pioneer in the field of public relations and propaganda, to market cigarettes to women and encourage them to smoke in public despite social taboos.He gained advice from psychoanalyst A. A. Brill, who stated that it was normal for women to smoke because of oral fixation and said, “Today the emancipation of women has suppressed many of their feminine desires. Bernays hired women to march while smoking their “torches of freedom” in the Easter Sunday Parade which was a significant moment for fighting social barriers for women smokers. He hired his own photographers to make sure that good pictures were taken and then published around the world. The targeting of women in tobacco advertising led to higher rates of smoking among women. 

Parapraxis 

Parapraxis is most commonly known as Freudian slips. It reveals that we are not always in control of our own speech or actions, and for Freud, they were telling of repressed desires. 

The Uncanny

In 1919 Freud published a book entitled “the uncanny”. He was particularly interested in the psychological effect that something which was simultaneously familiar and unfamiliar had. This unsettling feeling is often employed by creatives and designers - for instance within health campaigns. 

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Mindful sex: could it put an end to unhappiness in bed?

Mindfulness has been used to treat depression and encourage healthy eating. Now, with huge numbers of men and women reporting sexual dissatisfaction, it is being applied to our relationships So there you are, in bed with your partner, having perfectly pleasant if serviceable sex, when your mind starts to wander: what was it you meant to put on your shopping list? Why didnt your boss reply to your email? Dont forget its bin day tomorrow. Many of us feel disconnected during sex some or most of the time. At the more extreme end, sexual dysfunction erectile problems, vaginal pain, zero libido can severely hamper our quality of life and our relationships. In many cases, there could be a relatively simple, if not easily achieved, fix: mindfulness. In essence, mindfulness involves paying attention to what is happening in the present moment and noticing, without judgment, your thoughts and feelings. It can reconnect us with our bodies stopping us spending so much time in our heads and reduce stress. It has been used by the NHS as a treatment for recurrent depression and popular books and apps have made it part of many peoples everyday lives. After mindful eating, drinking, parenting and working, mindful lovemaking is starting to be recognised more widely as a way to improve ones sex life. (Earlier this year, the couples therapist Diana Richardson gave a TEDx talk on mindfulness in sex, which has been viewed 170,000 times on YouTube.) A survey published in June by Public Health England found that 49% of 25- to 34-year-old women complained of a lack of sexual enjoyment; across all ages, 42% of women were dissatisfied. The most recent National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles, published in 2013, found that people in Britain were having less sex than they once did, with low sexual function affecting about 15% of men and 30% of women. Difficulty achieving orgasm was reported by 16% of women, while 15% of men suffered premature ejaculation and 13% experienced erectile dysfunction. Problems with sexual response were common, affecting 42% of men and 51% of women who reported one or more problems in the last year. Watch Diana Richardsons TEDx talk on mindfulness in sex. At the time, the researchers said modern life could be affecting our sex drives. People are worried about their jobs, worried about money. They are not in the mood for sex, said Cath Mercer from University College London. But we also think modern technologies are behind the trend, too. People have tablets and smartphones and they are taking them into the bedroom, using Twitter and Facebook, answering emails. Mindfulness is one of the tools that can help people focus in a world full of distractions. Kate Moyle, a psychosexual and couples therapist, says mindfulness is a recognised part of therapeutic work, even if it has not always been given that name. When people have sexual problems, a lot of the time its anxiety-related and theyre not really in their bodies, or in the moment. Mindfulness brings them back into the moment. When people say theyve had the best sex and you ask them what they were thinking about, they cant tell you, because they werent thinking about anything, they were just enjoying the moment. Thats mindfulness. Moyle says the techniques involve encouraging people to focus on their sensations, explore their senses, hone in on what is happening in their body and how theyre experiencing it. A simple exercise Moyle recommends is getting in touch with the senses in the shower listen to the noise, the sensation of the water on your skin, notice any smells, see what the water tastes like, look around you. Youre really encouraging people to try to stay in their bodies, rather than be in their heads. Its about refocusing their attention on what they can feel right now. Ammanda Major, the head of clinical practice at the relationship support organisation Relate, says mindful sex is about focusing in the moment on whats going on for you and making sure all the extraneous things get left behind. For example, if youre being touched by your partner, its really focusing on those sensations. People may find themselves very distracted during sex, so this is a way of bringing themselves into their body and being totally aware of themselves in that moment. It is now part of the standard advice and support Relate offers to clients, she says. It can feel clunky to start with, but with practice people realise theyre able to engage in mindfulness without realising theyre doing it. In short, it becomes a way of life. Other than focusing on sensations, people can bring into sex an awareness of how nice your partner feels, or how nice they smell, or the sound of their voice something that will bring you right back into the moment. When you have thoughts that distract you, one of the key issues is not to blame yourself, but just to acknowledge it and cast them adrift. Kate Moyle recommends getting in touch with the senses in the shower listen to the noise, the sensation of the water on your skin … Illustration: Joel Burden/Guardian At the Jane Wadsworth sexual function clinic at St Marys hospital in London, mindfulness is used in almost all sexual problems, says David Goldmeier, a clinical lead and consultant in sexual medicine. These approaches have been used in sex therapy since the 50s, but they were not known as mindfulness at the time. The American researchers William Masters and Virginia Johnson used a technique called sensate focus, emphasising the exploration of physical sensations rather than focusing on the goal of orgasm. A mindful approach can help men with erectile dysfunction and premature ejaculation. If you have a man who has an erection problem and is stressed by it, a lot of his mind [during sex] will be worrying: Have I got an erection or not? says Goldmeier. It is also used to help men and women who find it hard to orgasm or have low desire, as well as in sexual problems relating to abuse. In our clinic, we see an awful lot of people with historical sexual abuse and [mindfulness is] a foundation for the trauma therapy they have. It is useful in sexual problems that are based in large part on past sexual abuse, he says. Lori Brotto, one of the leading researchers in this area, agrees. In her book Better Sex Through Mindfulness, she wrote of a study she published in 2012, which noted that teaching sexual abuse survivors to mindfully pay attention to the present moment, to notice their genital sensations and to observe thoughts simply as events of the mind, led to marked reductions in their levels of distress during sex. Brotto is a professor of psychology at the University of British Columbia and the executive director of the Womens Health Research Institute in Canada. Having started sex research during her graduate degree, she began studying mindfulness in 2002. Mindfulness-based treatments had been used effectively for people with suicidal tendencies these ancient techniques started to be used widely in western medicine in the 70s and Brotto realised they could also be helpful for addressing the sexual concerns of women who had survived cancer. What struck me was … how the patients I was seeing with suicidal tendencies, who would talk about feeling disconnected from themselves and having a real lack of awareness of their internal sensations, were very similar to the women with sexual concerns, she says. At that time, I thought: If mindfulness could be an effective way of staying in the present and helping them manage these out-of-control behaviours, I wonder if it could also be a tool to help women reconnect with their sexual selves and improve their sexual functioning. Sexual problems can be caused by a huge range of factors. Depression and stress can be triggers, as can the side-effects of antidepressants. Over time, these side-effects can become a psychological factor, as people worry that they are no longer sexually responsive. Problems can also be caused by physical conditions such as vaginal pain, or inhibitions and shame about sexual desire, particularly for some women and people in same-sex relationships. Survivors of sexual abuse, who learned to dissociate during an assault, can also experience distressing sexual problems in a later consensual and otherwise happy relationship. Mindfulness is such a simple practice, but it really addresses many of the reasons why people have sexual concerns, says Brotto. At its most basic, she explains, mindfulness is defined as present-moment nonjudgmental awareness. Each of those three components are critical for healthy sexual function. For a lot of women who report low desire, lack of response and low arousal in particular, all three of those domains are problematic. Being present is critical. Then there is the nonjudgmental part countless studies have shown that people who have sexual difficulties tend also to have very negative and catastrophic thoughts: If I dont respond, my partner will leave me, or: If I dont have an adequate level of desire, Im broken. Mindfulness and paying attention nonjudgmentally is about evoking compassion for yourself. Body image issues come up consistently, she says. Women will often say they prefer to have the lights off, or theyll redirect their partners hands away from the areas of their body theyre not happy with, or they may be worrying that a partner is perceiving their body in a negative way. All of those things serve to remove them from the present moment. William Masters and Virginia Johnson. Photograph: Alamy As for awareness, Brotto says, lots of data shows us that women, more so than men, tend to be somewhat disconnected from whats happening in their bodies. Her experiments have shown that women can experience physical arousal, such as increased blood flow to their vagina, but it barely registers mentally. There may be a strong physiological response, [but] theres no awareness in their mind of that response. We know that healthy sexual response requires the integration of the brain and body, so when the mind is elsewhere whether its distracted or consumed with catastrophic thoughts all of that serves to interrupt that really important feedback loop. It can be the same for some men, she says, but there tends to be more concordance between the bodys arousal and the minds arousal. When men have a physical response, theyre also much more likely to have a mental sexual arousal response. While working with a group or a sex therapist can be helpful for people with sexual concerns, others can teach themselves mindfulness techniques using books or any number of apps. In her book, Brotto says mindfulness practice can be as simple as focusing on your breath. An exercise she uses involves focusing on a raisin (this is a well-established practice and there are many tutorials online). First, scrutinise it its shape, size, smell, feel, its ridges and valleys then put it to your lips and notice your anticipation and salivary response; finally, bite into it and observe, in detail, the taste and texture. This can teach us to focus on sensations and the moment, rather than mindlessly eating a handful of raisins. The same sort of attention can be applied to sex. In Brottos eight-week group programme, people practice mindfulness techniques for 30 minutes each day, followed by a maintenance plan of between 10 and 15 minutes a day. For someone doing it on their own, she recommends starting with 10 minutes a day and trying to include a few 30-minute sessions. The benefit of a longer practice is you get to deal with things such as boredom and frustration, and physical discomfort in the body, all of which you want to be able to work through, she says. A body scan is one of our favourites within the sexuality realm that involves closing your eyes and really tuning in to the different sensations in different parts of your body and not trying to change anything, just observing. If people can start to do that in their life generally, on a regular basis, they strengthen that mindfulness muscle and start to become more aware generally and they can take that newfound awareness into their sexuality. When we have better sex, we tend to want more of it, so it becomes a satisfying circle. Desire is not a fixed level that each one of us has, but rather is adaptive and responsive to our situation, says Brotto. When sex is not satisfying, it makes sense that the brain adjusts itself and creates less [desire]. Mindful sex does not have to be an intense, time-consuming session. It can be very everyday; it doesnt have to be a different type of sex, says Moyle. You might have sex the same way, in the same position, but youre in a different headspace, so youre experiencing it differently. People can think: Im not into mindfulness, or: Its a bit spiritual and Im not, but it doesnt have to be that. It can just be really straightforward focusing your attention and fully experiencing sensations. Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2018/aug/28/mindful-sex-could-it-put-an-end-to-unhappiness-in-bed http://dailybuzznetwork.com/index.php/2018/10/06/mindful-sex-could-it-put-an-end-to-unhappiness-in-bed/