Toc, obsessional neurosis: Symptoms

Speaking of obsessional neurosis is to talk about one of the more complex psychic structures. And one of the complexities raised in this structure are its symptoms.

For psychoanalysis, a symptom is a way to process an intolerable desire for the subject. A symptom is a solution. And this is not better or worse, is one way, but there are others that produce different results. In many cases, the symptoms to help patients get to see a psychoanalyst, a doctor.

The main difference between the two disciplines is that psychoanalysis as a health plan production, while medicine uses the disease, its symptoms, as a study method to develop a diagnosis and symptoms tratamiento.Los for medicine, are phenomena reveal a disease symptoms studied psychoanalysis as solutions to a situation not tolerated by that particular subject.

The proliferation of symptoms is so wide, that psychoanalysis does not read as indicative of a diagnosis, but rather as an elaboration, studied and complex, what is at stake in that patient. Therefore, diagnosis and treatment are simultaneous. This elaboration is unknown to the subject, who knows nothing of it, because, in addition to consciousness, in other instances live psychic apparatus, preconscious and unconscious, ego, and superego. Thus, the multiplicity of intra-systemic and inter-system, lead to different subjects.

In psychoanalysis, there is nothing before the psychoanalytic interpretation, which is produced under the pact analytical, and only in that context.

In 1896, Freud states that in the etiology of obsessional neurosis, as in hysteria, there is a child sexual component acts as a motor, as desired. We speak of a repressed childhood sexual desire.

The difference between the two conditions is that in obsessional neurosis, the sexual component is filled with pleasure, the subject has this experience so that all his life searching for the repetition, it is impossible its realization. In contrast to the hysteria that experience is unpleasant. In both cases we speak of an experience phantasmatically against the constitution of their own sexuality. The guilt and blame, in obsessional neurosis are very present. The subject is blamed for having enjoyed and should be punished, the instinctual satisfaction component, becomes unconscious through repression. The obsessive feels guilty of something unknown, guilty of something he did not commit. This is the main conflict of obsessional neurosis.

Most of the symptoms, obsessional neurosis, are transformed reproaches which return from repression and refer to a sexual situation of children executed with pleasure.

It is very important to discriminate the obsessional neurosis with hysteria and phobia (ie, the transference neurosis), we speak of a conflict against infantile sexuality, while neurasthenia, anxiety neurosis and hypochondria (the neuroses calls), are based on a conflict before the actual sex.

The symptoms are so abundant in obsessional neurosis, are grouped by their tendency. On the one hand, there are prohibitions and penances and preventive measures on the other, symbolically disguised substitutive satisfactions. Although the real triumph of the formation of symptoms occurs when both tendencies are united, where the prohibitions, preventive measures or penance provide satisfaction to the subject.

In severe cases manifest in symptoms, emotional ambivalence, appearing next to an emotional significance, its opposite. Recall Freud's case in which the subject showed that ambivalence by placing a stone in the road where the carriage was going to happen to his beloved and then removing it.

The obsessional neurotic undertakes, in their symptoms, a defense against libidinal demands of the Oedipus complex. After the constitution of libidinal organization, reached the genital stage of libido, there is a regression to the anal sadistic stage, which marks a predominance of anal eroticism in the obsessive.

The latency period ensures the child sexual constitution of any subject, the dissolution of the Oedipus complex, the creation of the superego and the formation of ethical limits on the self. In the neurotic obsessive, this period involves the regression of the libido, the formation of a very severe superego gives the ethical boundaries I, in obedience to the severity of the superego. This is why it develops in the form of reaction formation hypermorality, compassion and excessive cleaning.

In the latency period, as in any other period, the process is the same for a healthy subject for a sick person, but the latter goes a step further, or exaggerated in any direction its development.

Therefore, the fear of castration obsessional neurotic, the threat of castration, is amplified. In obsessional neurosis is achieved symptom satisfaction in the form of obsessive acts, for instance, gets forty times and pulled out the sock as a metaphor for masturbation.

Puberty ties the disease process in obsessional neurosis, where aggressive impulses aroused by sadistic anal phase, phase conquered by the regression of the libido and unite, these impulses, with new libidinal impulses arising in the constitution of adult sexuality and the paths followed by regression, resulting in aggressive and destructive tendencies. The regression motivates, in this case, both the defense forces and the forces that should be rejected, become more intolerable worsening the conflict in the neuroses.

Repression, in the obsessive, is carried out stripping the accompanying affect representation, but unlike that in hysteria, the representation is not forgotten, although completely detached affection which, in turn, maintains displaced, it is say, on behalf representation is constantly producing ideas or obsessions. Meanwhile, the representation is desafectivizada for the subject, appears as a conscious memory for him, but has no meaning, no value.

To repression, superego knows more than I do, so I expressed to me his aggressive impulses and, although it is believed innocent I also feel a sense of guilt, feeling a responsibility that can not be explained. The demands of the superego, the ego drive to seek satisfaction in symptoms.

A key feature of obsessional neurosis is the eroticization of thought to the mental overload that confronts the self in relation to the requirements imposed by the superego, reality and consciousness. The self, from a position obsessive, developing techniques that favor the creation of symptoms: how to undo what happened and isolation.

In the first, we see manifested the love-hate ambivalence: undo what has been done as if the first act had not happened, although it has happened, something I hated loves overly previously thought. Action, in addition, repeated endlessly, is the repetition compulsion, which shows the obsessive.

With regard to isolation, say that the subject, after some unpleasant (an event, a thought, for example), a pause in which nothing should happen. I have already mentioned that the representation after the crackdown, it is not forgotten, but to be deprived of affection, is isolated from the chain of associations, interrupting mental coherence.

This way of obsessional neurosis disturbs, among other things, work, due to continual distraction and loss of time and repeats the incessant interruption.

The insulation is to obsessional neurosis, one of the most important commandments: the taboo on contact. If we compare this process with that of infectious patients in a hospital, we see a clear similarity, since they are isolated to prevent transmission to other patients. The same happens in obsessional neurosis, but at the level of associations and connections of thought.

The touch, contact, contagion, are closest to the burden of object, which can be aggressive or loving. In obsessional neurosis staged a conflict between ego libido and object libido. Addition, obsessional neurosis aims, initially, the erotic contact and then, after regression, seeks contact disguised aggression. Through the isolation, completely suppressed the possibility of contact. In this symptom, it is clear that the obsessive avoided, in fact, be a mortal among other mortals.

Before closing, I would like to relate the formation of symptoms in general and especially in obsessional neurosis, with the development of anxiety, and most importantly it is noted that the formation of symptoms is to avoid the anguish.

If we refer the development of distress real dangerous situation, the symptoms are created to rid me of this situation. The dangerous situation against which the ego defends itself by means of the symptom, it is the desire.

In the phobia and obsessional neurosis we see, either one or the other, they develop symptoms to not feel anxiety, that is, if we prevent the obsessive perform their rituals or their ablutions or any of its symptoms, it automatically enters angst. In the phobic, we see how it goes severing his life, to avoid the horror that makes you feel anxiety.

On the other hand, adding that the distress necessary for the development and evolution of the subject, but the anguish understood as the way to the desire. When you sit on the body and, therefore, be avoided, we speak of neurotic anxiety.

To conclude this overview of obsessional neurosis and its symptoms, say that the obsessional neurotic does not tolerate differences in sexuality proposals, therefore, are imprisoned where neither man nor woman is fleeing from anything that reminds you of your mortality. To do this, you develop symptoms, blooming wildly succeed in satisfying your desire impossible, of immortality.

Finally, a Menassa aphorism:

There is no death, she is also a construction of our desires. Miguel Oscar Menassa. In his book Aphorisms and sayings 1958-2008.