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Concept
Scopophilia
Summary
In psychology and psychiatry, scopophilia or scoptophilia (σκοπέω skopeō, "look to", "to examine" + φῐλῐ́ᾱ philíā, "the tendency towards") is an aesthetic pleasure drawn from looking at an object or a person. In human sexuality, the term scoptophilia describes the sexual pleasure that a person derives from looking at prurient objects of eroticism, such as pornography, the nude body, and fetishes, as a substitute for actual participation in a sexual relationship.
Sigmund Freud used the term scopophilia to describe, analyse, and explain the concept of Schaulust, the pleasure in looking, a curiosity which he considered a partial-instinct innate to the childhood process of forming a personality; and that such a pleasure-instinct might be sublimated, either into Aesthetics, looking at objets d'art or sublimated into an obsessional neurosis "a burning and tormenting curiosity to see the female body", which afflicted the Rat Man patient of the psychoanalyst Freud. From that initial interpretation of Schaulust arose the psycho-medical belief that the inhibition of the scopic drive might lead to actual, physical illness, such as physiologic disturbances of vision and eyesight. In contrast to Freud's interpretation of the scopic drive, other psychoanalytic theories proposed that the practices of scopophilia might lead to madness — either insanity or a mental disorder — which is the scopophilic person's retreat from the concrete world of reality into an abstract world of fantasy.
The theoretic bases of scopophilia were developed by the psychoanalyst Otto Fenichel, in special reference to the process and stages of psychological identification. That in developing a personal identity, "a child, who is looking for libidinous purposes ... wants to look at an object in order [for it] to 'feel along with him'." That the impersonal interaction of scopophilia (between the looker and the looked-at) sometimes replaced personal interactions in the psychological life of a person who is socially anxious, and seeks to avoid feelings of guilt.
Official source
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