Whether a particularly obsessive attachment is a fixation or a defensible expression of is at times debatable. Fixation to intangibles (i.e., ideas, ideologies, etc.) can also occur. The obsessive factor of fixation is also found in symptoms pertaining to obsessive compulsive disorder, which psychoanalysts linked to a mix of early (pregenital) frustrations and gratifications.[11]

love

Fixation has been compared to [12] at an early and sensitive period of development.[13] others object that Freud was attempting to stress the looseness of the ties between libido and object, and the need to find a specific cause any given (perverse or neurotic) fixation.[14]

psychological imprinting

Post-Freudians[edit]

Melanie Klein saw fixation as inherently pathological[15] – a blocking of potential sublimation by way of repression.[16]


Erik H. Erikson distinguished fixation to zone – oral or anal, for example – from fixation to mode, such as taking in, as with his instance of the man who "may eagerly absorb the 'milk of wisdom' where he once desired more tangible fluids from more sensuous containers".[17] Eric Berne, developed his insight further as part of transactional analysis, suggesting that "particular games and scripts, and their accompanying physical symptoms, are based in appropriate zones and modes".[18]


Heinz Kohut saw the grandiose self as a fixation upon a normal childhood stage;[19] while other post-Freudians explored the role of fixation in aggression and criminality.[20]

Coleridge's has been seen as using witchcraft as a vehicle to explore psychological fixation.[21]

Christabel

has been considered to show a romantic fixation on days of old.[22]

Tennyson

Claude Smadja, "Fixation"

Fixation