psychoanalytic theory Psychoanalytic theory is the theory of personality organization and the dynamics of personality development that guides psychoanalysis, a clinical method for treating psychopathology. First laid out by Sigmund Freud in the late 19th century, psyc ...

, aphanisis (; from the

Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...

ἀφάνισις ''aphanisis'', "disappearance") is the disappearance of

sexual desire Sexual desire is an emotion and motivational state characterized by an interest in sexual objects or activities, or by a drive to seek out sexual objects or to engage in sexual activities. It is an aspect of sexuality, which varies significantly ...

. The etymology of the term refers to it as the absence of brilliance in the astronomical sense such as the fading or the disappearance of a star. The term was later applied to the disappearance of the

subject Subject ( la, subiectus "lying beneath") may refer to: Philosophy *''Hypokeimenon'', or ''subiectum'', in metaphysics, the "internal", non-objective being of a thing **Subject (philosophy), a being that has subjective experiences, subjective cons ...

Jones

According to the theories of

Ernest Jones Alfred Ernest Jones (1 January 1879 – 11 February 1958) was a Welsh neurologist and psychoanalyst. A lifelong friend and colleague of Sigmund Freud from their first meeting in 1908, he became his official biographer. Jones was the first ...

, who coined the term in 1927, ''aphanisis'' is the foundation of all

neuroses Neurosis is a class of functional mental disorders involving chronic distress, but neither delusions nor hallucinations. The term is no longer used by the professional psychiatric community in the United States, having been eliminated from th ...

. Jones suggested that fear of ''aphanisis'' was in both sexes more fundamental than

castration anxiety Castration anxiety is the fear of emasculation in both the literal and metaphorical sense. Castration anxiety is an overwhelming fear of damage to, or loss of, the penis—one of Sigmund Freud's earliest psychoanalytic theories. Although Freud ...

, an argument he used against

Sigmund Freud Sigmund Freud ( , ; born Sigismund Schlomo Freud; 6 May 1856 – 23 September 1939) was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for evaluating and treating psychopathology, pathologies explained as originatin ...

in their debate over female sexuality. Jones considered that the

Oedipus complex The Oedipus complex (also spelled Œdipus complex) is an idea in psychoanalytic theory. The complex is an ostensibly universal phase in the life of a young boy in which, to try to immediately satisfy basic desires, he unconsciously wishes to h ...

confronted each sex with the threat of ''aphanisis'', and the choice of giving up "either their sex or their incest". Jones originally proposed ''aphanisis'' as a condition of female subjects based on their

physiological Physiology (; ) is the scientific study of functions and mechanisms in a living system. As a sub-discipline of biology, physiology focuses on how organisms, organ systems, individual organs, cells, and biomolecules carry out the chemica ...

characteristics. He stressed that women depend more, for physiological reasons, on men for their sexual satisfaction and that the loss of sexual desire is associated with abandonment. Jones subsequently linked ''aphanisis'' to Freud's concept of the trauma of separation, a point taken up by John Bowlby in the context of his own theory of

separation anxiety Separation anxiety disorder (SAD) is an anxiety disorder in which an individual experiences excessive anxiety regarding separation from home and/or from people to whom the individual has a strong emotional attachment (e.g., a parent, caregiver ...

Lacan

Lacan Jacques Marie Émile Lacan (, , ; 13 April 1901 – 9 September 1981) was a French psychoanalyst and psychiatrist. Described as "the most controversial psycho-analyst since Freud", Lacan gave yearly seminars in Paris from 1953 to 1981, and pu ...

adapted Jones's term to a new meaning: "''aphanisis'' is to be situated in a more radical way at the level at which the subject manifests himself in this movement of disappearance...the ''fading'' of the subject". He diverged from Jones' theory by maintaining that this phenomenon does not have a purely physiological basis, arguing that it is in the plane of intersubjective desire based in the signifier. In Lacanian theory, ''aphanisis'' describes the process through which a subject is partially eclipsed behind any signifier used to conceive of him/her: "when the subject appears somewhere as meaning, he is manifested elsewhere as 'fading', as disappearance...''aphanisis''". The subject as such is, accordingly, barred and riven by the Other (of language), a subject has no choice but to conceive of themself ''vis-a-vis'' something other than their self, something 'outside' or radically separated from them. Because the Other is the sole means through which a 'subject' can be rendered thinkable, ''aphanisis'', the disappearance or the fading of the subject behind any signifier used to conceive of it, is an essential concept for understanding subjectivity and the peril of the subject's fundamental emptiness. Žižek developed the concept of ''aphanisis'' in terms of the dialectic of presence and absence—the gap between the core of the personality and the symbolic narrative in which the individual lives.

Literary examples

Montaigne has been seen as a classic example of the exploration of the ''aphanisis'' of the subject.W. Apollon/R. Feldstein, ''Lacan, Politics, Aestetics'' (1996) p. 136

References

{{reflist, 2}

Jones

Lacan

Literary examples

See also

References

Further reading