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Concept
Fixation (psychology)
Summary
Fixation (Fixierung) is a concept (in human psychology) that was originated by Sigmund Freud (1905) to denote the persistence of anachronistic sexual traits. The term subsequently came to denote object relationships with attachments to people or things in general persisting from childhood into adult life.
In Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (1905), Freud distinguished the fixations of the libido on an incestuous object from a fixation upon a specific, partial aim, such as voyeurism.
Freud theorized that some humans may develop psychological fixation due to one or more of the following:
A lack of proper gratification during one of the psychosexual stages of development.
Receiving a strong impression from one of these stages, in which case the person's personality would reflect that stage throughout adult life.
"An excessively strong manifestation of these instincts at a very early age [which] leads to a kind of partial fixation, which then constitutes a weak point in the structure of the sexual function".
As Freud's thought developed, so did the range of possible 'fixation points' he saw as significant in producing particular neuroses. However, he continued to view fixation as "the manifestation of very early linkageslinkages which it is hard to resolvebetween instincts and impressions and the objects involved in those impressions".
Psychoanalytic therapy involved producing a new transference fixation in place of the old one. The new fixationfor example a father-transference onto the analystmay be very different from the old, but will absorb its energies and enable them eventually to be released for non-fixated purposes.
Whether a particularly obsessive attachment is a fixation or a defensible expression of love is at times debatable. Fixation to intangibles (i.e., ideas, ideologies, etc.) can also occur. The obsessive factor of fixation is also found in symptoms pertaining to obsessive compulsive disorder, which psychoanalysts linked to a mix of early (pregenital) frustrations and gratifications.
Official source
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