Counterphobic attitude
Counterphobic attitude is a response to anxiety that, instead of fleeing the source of fear in the manner of a phobia, actively seeks it out, in the hope of overcoming the original anxiousness.[1]
In terms of avoidant personality disorder, the counterphobic represents the less usual, but not totally uncommon, response of apparently seeking out what is feared:[2] codependents may fall into a subcategory of this group, hiding their fears of attachment in over-dependency.[3]
Action
Dare-devil activities are often undertaken in a counterphobic spirit, as a denial of the fears attached to them - a denial that may be only partially successful.[4] Acting out in general may have a counterphobic source,[5] reflecting a false self over-concerned with compulsive doing to preserve a sense of power and control.[6]
Sex is a key area for counterphobic activity, sometimes powering hypersexuality in people who are actually afraid of the objects they believe they love.[7] Adolescents, fearing sex play, may jump over to a kind of spurious full sexuality;[8] adults may overvalue sex to cover an unconscious fear of the harm it may do.[9] Such a counterphobic approach may indeed be socially celebrated[10] in a postmodern vision of sex as gymnastic performance or hygiene[11] - fuelled by what Ken Wilbur described as "an exuberant and fearless shallowness".[12]
Traffic accidents have been linked to a counterphobic, manic attitude in the driver.[13]
Sprache
Julia Kristeva considered that language could be used by the developing child as a counterphobic object,[14] protecting against anxiety and loss.[15]
Ego psychology points out that through the ambiguities of language, the concrete meanings of words may break down the counterphobic attitude and return the child to a state of fear.[16]
Freud
Didier Anzieu saw Freud's theorisation of psychoanalysis as a counterphobic defence against anxiety through intellectualisation - permanently ruminating on the instinctive, emotional world that was the actual object of fear.[17]
Wilhelm Fliess has been seen as playing the role of counterphobic object for Freud during the period of the latter's self-analysis.[18]
Therapy
Otto Fenichel considered that underdoing systematised counterphobic defences was only a first step in therapy, needing to be followed by analysis of the original anxiety itself.[19] He also considered that psychological trauma could break down counterphobic defences, with results that "may be very painful for the patient; they are, from a therapeutic point of view, favorable".[20]
David Rapaport emphasised the need for caution and extreme slowness in analyzing counterphobic defences.[21]
Cultural examples
The attraction of horror movies has been seen to lie in a counterphobic impulse.[22]
Actors often have a shy personality, released counterphobically in conditions of performance.[23]
See also
References
- ^ Otto Fenichel, The Psychoanalytic Theory of Neurosis (1946) p. 480-1
- ^ Martin Kantor, The Essential Guide to Overcoming Avoidant Personality Disorder (2010) p. 30
- ^ Kantor, p. 36
- ^ Salman Akhtar, Comprehensive Dictionary of Psychoanalysis (2009) p. 60
- ^ Judy Cooper, Speak of Me as I Am (2011) p. 66
- ^ Rosalind Minsky, Psychoanalysis and Gender (1996) p. 122
- ^ Fenichel, p. 518
- ^ D. W. Winnicott, The Child, the Family, and the Outside World (1973) p. 218
- ^ Julia Segal, Melanie Klein (2001) p. 46
- ^ Lesley Caldwell ed., Sex and Sexuality (2010) p. 116
- ^ Elisabeth Roudinesco, Philosophy in Turbulent Times (2008) p. xi
- ^ Ken Wilbur, Sex, Ecology, Spirituality (2000) p. 7
- ^ Graham P. Bartley, Traffic Accidents (2008) p. 166
- ^ Julia Kristeva, Powers of Horror (1982) p. 41
- ^ Adam Phillips, On Flirtation (1994) p. 82-3
- ^ Selma H. Fraiberg, The Magic Years (1987) p. 123-5
- ^ Didier Anzieu, Freud's Self-Analysis (1986) p. 182 and p. 577-581
- ^ Lydia Flem, Freud the Man (2003) p. 59
- ^ Fenichel, p. 485
- ^ Fenichel, p. 549-53
- ^ David Rapaport, 'The Autonomy of the Ego', in Glen T. Morris ed., Dimensions of Psychology (nd) p. 14
- ^ Robert Newman, Transgressions of Reading (1993) p. 63
- ^ Kantor, p. 62
Further Reading
Ernst Kris, 'Ego Development and the Comic', International Journal of Psychoanalysis XIX (1938)
Nina Searl, 'The Flight to Reality', International Journal of Psychoanalysis X (1929)
Thomas S. Langer, Choices for Living (2002)