Aphanisis is a term introduced by freudian psychoanalyst Ernest Jones: it is the disappearance of sexual desire. According to Jones aphanisis is "the object, in both sexes, of a fear more profound than the fear of castration." Lacanian psychoanalyst Slavoj Žižek said that the ultimate melancholical experience is the loss of desire.
It is not exactly the anhedonia in it´s right sense?
Hi Michal!
Conceptually: You should look at what exactly defines Anhedonia and an ultimate melancholical experience. Is anhedonia ONLY about sexual desire and melancholia about ANY desire? Then either you talk about two different states or anhedonia is (logically) a sepcific type of an ultimate melancholical experience. Unfortunately, the latter might not be the case if reasons (antecedents) and/or other simptoms differ. If ther are different physiological mechanisms for both states, these are two completely different concept with some similar simptoms. Look by neurscientists for recent research in this field.
Best,
Eugene
I think that anhedonia is not just about losing pleasure and losing the ability to experience pleasure, but that it could be about something deeper. Psychoanalytically speaking, the loss of desire itself could be one of the causes of anhedonia, although neurobiologically it is closer to motivational aspects of anhedonia (so-called anticipatory anhedonia) than to the consuming aspects. There are no neuroscientific data about a desire (psychoanalytic theory), but there is plenty of information about wanting and motivation (for example incentive senzitization theory).
For me, it is very interesting to try to connect the world of psychoanalysis with the world of psychiatry and neurobiology.
I apologize to the colleagues who have spoken before, as they are clearly highly educated and very well-trained. For me, in my work as a clinician. I am markedly less fond of psychoanalytic theory. For the children and parents, the young adults and elders that I see in my consulting room (smile) each day, anhedonia means very simply and starkly that they have lost the ability to feel. It is truly a terrible, perhaps even horrific place to inhabit. It is one of the most painful symptoms I have observed as a clinician; oftentimes worse than even the grief of losing a child. If one has no joy, no sadness, no affect at all in one‘s life, how are you to know who you are? How can you tell where you stand in relation to the rest of the world? Your spouse, parents, children, supervisor, co-workers?
In essence, the lack of affect of which anhedonia speaks results in an erasure of the human being behind it.
Thank you for accepting it so graciously. I work now as both a neuropsychologist (primarily diagnostics) and a treating clinician (mostly very young children), but in the past I have done more research and held academic positions. If I had not, I fear I could not have kept up you or your colleague, Yevgen.
- Badges
- Science topic
- Similar topics
- Biological Science
- Molecular Cell Biology
- Culture Cells
- Cell Line