Biomedical subjects

V Calef

Publications and source records attributed to V Calef.

14 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed1984

Anxiety and the restitutional function of homosexual cruising.

Psychoanalytical exploration of latent homosexuality, of homosexual cruising and the related fantasies indicates that it is (among other things) an act of restitution, an effort to resurrect the father, to contradict the ambivalent wishes to rob and murder him, to make sure that he is alive and well and not the victim of the cruiser's competitiveness and destructiveness, to idealize him and render him into an object of love; thus to avoid anxiety and to preclude the father's wrath and retaliation. That such restitutional attempts fail and instead reflect the murderous (both the anal and the genital) intent is no surprise for the psychoanalyst who regularly witnesses contradictory aims in the manifestations of all the neuroses and psychoses including the obsessional. The observations (as well as a host of other clinical phenomena) indicate the intimate relation of anxiety to the aggressive strivings (despite the fact that anxiety instigates repression of the sexual wishes). Anxiety serves as a precipitant of repression and symptom formation while guilt, both conscious and unconscious manifestations, is a product of the oedipal sexual wishes.

Adult↗

PubMed1983

A note on consummation and termination.

The sensation sometimes expressed by analytic patients, most notably during termination of having left some "unfinished business" (to which they hope to return) is not necessarily simply a judgment about the analysis; frequently it is an affective component of the wish for consummation which has not been granted by the analysis. Simultaneously, it expresses the defense against that very consummation. The wish to give the analyst a gift is in some sense the direct opposite, or more correctly, expresses the defense more openly as a bribe and warning to the analyst that he should not expect or hope for consummation of the instinctual wishes which have been the center of analytic work; i.e., it is a defense against the fulfillment of those wishes almost as if the analyst, by attempting to analyze them, insists upon their enactment. Nevertheless, and despite the apparent contradiction, both affects, which serve similar functions, may appear simultaneously.

Coitus↗

PubMed1981

Some clinical consequences of introjection: gaslighting.

In the regression from the oedipal impulses some, perhaps many, people retreat to the introjective (oral) mode of defense. This and other defensive maneuvers culminate in a variety of behaviors which have been extensively and variously described in the literature. The authors describe, under the rubric of "gaslighting," an outcome of the introjective defense in which a victim and a victimizer join psychological modes in expressing and defending themselves against oral, incorporative impulses (greed), each in his or her own way.

Defense Mechanisms↗

PubMed1980

Enuresis: a functional equivalent of a fetish.

The split in the ego between consciousness and unconsciousness which sometimes eventuates in fetishism can also be clinically manifested in sleep disturbances, depersonalization, dejà vu and a variety of alterations in the sense of reality. It is suggested that this same split comprises the central dynamic mechanism in enuresis. The sleep disturbance which accompanies enuresis involves a confusion between waking and sleeping, sometimes taking the form of a dream that one is awake. Three patients(adult males) revealed in the course of their analyses that they suffered from childhood enuresis accompanied by a sleep disturbance. Milder forms of sleep disturbances persisted into adult life. In these analyses, certain perceptual distortions, difficulties in the sense of reality, and between fantasy and reality, confusions between waking and sleeping, could all be linked to the functional split between consciousness and unconsciousness and eventually to disavowal of the female genitals. The enuresis represented a functional equivalent of the fetish (and it may be that the urinary stream itself actually served as a fetish). Psychological test data from nine enuretic boys were examined as well. This material clearly demonstrated that these boys wished to deny the differences between males and females, that they suffered from sleep disturbances and that they confused reality and fantasy, sleeping and waking. The combined data suggest the existence of a functional split in the ego used in the service of defence, the product of a regressive fixation and a reinstatement of an archaic mode of thought.

Adolescent↗

PubMed1973