"The Sexual Aberrations"
"A certain degree of fetishism is thus habitually present in normal love, especially in those stages of it in which the normal sexual aim seems unattainable or its fulfillment prevented" (20)
Although Freud lays out the conditions under which fetishism becomes a pathology (when "the fetish . . . takes the place of a normal aim," and "when the fetish becomes detached from a particular individual and becomes the sole sexual object"), how might Freud's conception of the "sexual object" reintroduce the pathological in the normal? Or, in Derridean terms, can the concept of "fetish" be controlled, limited, expunged from the normal, or is it a sort of dangerous supplement?
"Infantile Sexuality"
I was particularly struck by Freud's concept of infantile amnesia. What is the role of nostalgia in this formulation? Is the retrieval of a repressed trauma nostalgic? Is there a nostalgia for a certain kind of continuity? For knowledge?
"Transformations of Puberty"
"A child's affection for his parents is no doubt the most important infantile trace which, after being revived at puberty, points the way to his choice of an object" (94).
How might we read Freud's emphasis on parents' role other than as a statement of fact? For example, as an effect of his milieu? As a legitimating myth?
"Splitting of the Ego in the Process of Defence"
What interested me in this essay is not necessarily the specifics of the boy's case, but the way in which repression is formulated. In order to continue masturbating, the boy must repress his fear of castration, which emerges later as a symptom. My question: Is desire formulated as some kind of substance, as matter? Can the ego be similarly imagined as material?
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2 comments:
On your first question:
I agree with your pointing out of the circularity of Freud's notion of the fetish. Can the fetish be a supplement? Is it? For the fetish to be a sort of "supplement" to it would also have to function as the condition of possibility for the object or desire it serves to supplement. The specter of the fetish, even for Freud, seems to appear in all objects and formulations of desire. I think Freud recognizes this circularity -- which is, of course, not properly contradictory either -- in his predication of a "loss" that is the precondition for desire. Even the pleasure-mechanisms that fulfill and prolong the infant's psychosexual desires are governed by some "original" loss, which they nonetheless serve to supplement; they are always "blocked" : the desire is always precluded from achieving the full materialization it served to achieve. Or the supplement-as-fetish, in that it serves somewhat to delineate the bounds of the supplementED/"normal", is also the "normal's" original manifestation; this fact blocks itself from achieving full materialization (the desire is nonetheless always thwarted by the conditions of normalcy or taboo). I think the logic of supplementarity is not inappropriate here.
On your first question:
I agree with your pointing out of the circularity of Freud's notion of the fetish. Can the fetish be a supplement? Is it? For the fetish to be a sort of "supplement" to it would also have to function as the condition of possibility for the object or desire it serves to supplement. The specter of the fetish, even for Freud, seems to appear in all objects and formulations of desire. I think Freud recognizes this circularity -- which is, of course, not properly contradictory either -- in his predication of a "loss" that is the precondition for desire. Even the pleasure-mechanisms that fulfill and prolong the infant's psychosexual desires are governed by some "original" loss, which they nonetheless serve to supplement; they are always "blocked" : the desire is always precluded from achieving the full materialization it served to achieve. Or the supplement-as-fetish, in that it serves somewhat to delineate the bounds of the supplementED/"normal", is also the "normal's" original manifestation; this fact blocks itself from achieving full materialization (the desire is nonetheless always thwarted by the conditions of normalcy or taboo). I think the logic of supplementarity is not inappropriate here.
pablo
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