Obsession

Obsession can be defined as a burdensome and uncontrollable compulsion to repeat an idea, emotion, or thought, for example, a ritualized pattern of consumption. Often, this obsessive repetition is accompanied by feelings of distress or anxiety in the consciousness of the obsessive person. Although linked to concepts such as infatuation, intoxication, or lust, obsession is unique in that it is both an unwelcome burden that produces fear or anxiety in relation to the object repeated in consciousness (i.e., idea, emotion, thought, etc.) and is an uncontrollable repetition that fixates the consciousness of the person on a particular object. While obsession is often considered pathological, such a definition is possible only if the obsession obstructs the free will of the person in a prohibitive and disquieting way, and a survey of current media may indicate some misuse of the term to define a generic passionate attachment to an object or idea only.

In terms of commodification and consumption, obsession is characteristic of impulsive exchanges wherein the obsessive person will seek out support for their exchanges through other people, such as reviews, professional opinions, and other such confidants. The obsessive person generally exhibits an aggressive disposition toward the object of his or her obsession, and this leads these exchanges to often be wrought with great psychodynamic tension, guilt, and a sense of helplessness. Hence, obsession is often cast as a pathological engagement with a conscious object such as an idea, emotion, or thought, and is here distinct from commodity fetishism, which entails endlessly repeated consumption and longing and can contribute to the “hype” generated by some marketing and advertising strategies.

Although obsession has a long and varied history in literature, poetry, theater, and mythology, our contemporary conception of it is greatly indebted to the metapsychological foundations laid by Sigmund Freud's clinical psychoanalytic theorizing and modeling of psychodynamic processes. According to the classical psychoanalytic framework developed by Freud, obsession shares its neurotic disposition with phobias and some forms of narcissism. The obsessional neurotic suffers from a sense of external overdetermination by something akin to providence, fate, or destiny. In turn, this overly noisy authority produces the feeling of guilt in the obsessional neurotic because his or her sense of personal freedom cannot accord to the overdetermination of this ideal authority. According to Freud, obsessional neurotics carry within themselves a fear of conscience and a strong degree of self-reliance, and their obsessive rituals are reminiscent of religious practices. In their rebellion against this overly noisy authority, the ego of obsessional neurotics situates any objectionable impulses outside itself (i.e., in the [Page 1056]authority itself) leading to contradictory reaction-formations that rebel against the ideal authority only to find this authority overdetermining these reactions. In this death and resuscitation of fate, the obsessional neurotic falls into an interminable self-torment that can lead to the torturing of the compulsively repeated object.

The Freudian view situates obsession in the species of transference neuroses already stated: obsessions, phobias, and narcissism. This facilitates a reading of obsession through a character typology that economizes the storage and discharge of psychical energy, or libido. Within this typology, obsession is given three structures: obsessional neurosis, erotic-obsessiveness, and narcissistic-obsession. In the former, obsessional neurosis, the transference between the person and others is forged through a diverse range of references to the compulsively repeated object. This transference need not be limited to human beings but always retains a structure that futilely attempts to defer the object of obsession because it is a neurosis. One might easily observe this psychodynamic process in any conservative view's distaste for elaborate upheaval and change, which itself is inevitable, as is perhaps the case with contemporary discourses around beauty products and antiaging treatments wherein the markets for these commodities are noticeably fearful of the inevitability of aging. That is not to say that all consumers of beauty products and antiaging treatments are neurotic but rather that the psychodynamics of the markets opened up by these products and treatments function by way of an obsessive repetition to “aging” and/or “beauty” as an idea, emotion, or thought: a conscious object.

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