Scopophilia

In psychology and psychiatry,scopophiliaorscoptophilia(Ancient Greek:σκοπέωskopeō,"look to", "to examine" +φῐλῐ́ᾱphilíā,"the tendency towards" ) is an aesthetic pleasure drawn from looking at an object or a person. Inhuman sexuality,the term scoptophilia describes thesexual pleasurethat a person derives from looking at prurient objects of eroticism, such aspornography,thenude body,andfetishes,as a substitute for actual participation in a sexual relationship.^[1]

Psychoanalysis

Sigmund Freud used the termscopophiliato describe, analyze, and explain the concept ofSchaulust,the pleasure in looking,^[2]a curiosity which he considered a partial-instinct innate to the childhood process of forming apersonality;^[3]and that such a pleasure-instinct might besublimated,either intoAesthetics,looking atobjets d'artor sublimated into anobsessional neurosis"a burning and tormenting curiosity to see the female body", which afflicted theRat Manpatient of the psychoanalyst Freud.^[4]From that initial interpretation ofSchaulustarose the psycho-medical belief that the inhibition of thescopic drivemight lead to actual, physical illness, such as physiologic disturbances of vision and eyesight.^[5]In contrast to Freud's interpretation of thescopic drive,other psychoanalytic theories proposed that the practices of scopophilia might lead to madness — eitherinsanityor amental disorder— which is the scopophilic person's retreat from the concrete world of reality into an abstract world offantasy.^[6]

The theoretic bases of scopophilia were developed by the psychoanalystOtto Fenichel,in special reference to the process and stages of psychologicalidentification.^[7]That in developing a personal identity, "a child, who is looking for libidinous purposes... wants to look at an object in order [for it] to 'feel along with him'."^[8]That the impersonal interaction of scopophilia (between the looker and the looked-at) sometimes replaced personal interactions in the psychological life of a person who is sociallyanxious,and seeks to avoid feelings ofguilt.^[9]

Lacan's conceptual development ofthe gazelinked the pleasure of scopophilia to the person's apprehension of theOther(person) who is not theSelf;that is: "The gaze is this object lost, and suddenly re-found, in the conflagration of shame, by the introduction of the Other."^[10]The practice of scopophilia is how a person'sdesireis captured by theimaginaryrepresentation of the Other.^[11]Theories alternative to Lacan's interpretations of scopophilia andthe gazeproposed that a child's discovery of genital difference, and the accompanying anxiety about not knowing the difference of the Other sex, is the experience that subsequently impels the child's scopic drive to fulfil the desire to look and to look at.^[12]

Literary examples

TheSatyricon(The Book of Satyr-like Adventures,AD 1st c.), byGaius Petronius Arbiter,presents the scopophilic description of a priestess ofPriapusas the woman who was "the first to put an inquisitive eye to a crack she had naughtily opened, and spy on their play with prurient eagerness."^[13]
Secret Sexualities: A Sourcebook of 17th and 18th Century Writing(2003), by Ian McCormick, shows thattransgressive sexualityis composed of the inter-relationships between the public and the private spheres and between the open and the secret aspects of a person's life. The example isMemoirs of a Woman of Pleasure(1749), in which the protagonist Fanny Hill gives her scoptophilic observations of twosodomites,which include descriptions of the furnishings and thedécorof the room in which they are copulating: "... at length I observed a paper patch of the same colour as the wainscot, which I took to conceal some flaw; but then it was so high that I was obliged to stand upon a chair to reach it, which I did, as soft as possible, and, with a point of a bodkin, soon pierced it, and opened myself espial room sufficient. And now, applying my eye close, I commanded the room perfectly, and could see my two young sparks romping and pulling one another about, entirely, to my imagination, in frolic and innocent play.”^[14]

Race

Critical race theorists,such asbell hooks,^[15]Shannon Winnubst,^[16]andDavid Marriott^[17]present and describe scopophilia and the scopic drive as the psychological and social mechanisms that realize the practices ofOther-inga person to exclude them from society (see alsoscopophobia). The social practice of scopophilia is supposed to fix the appearance and identity of the Other (person), who is not theSelf,by way ofthe gazethat objectifies and dehumanizes them as "not I" and thus "not one of us". In that vein, the practices of cultural scopophilia restrict the number and type of visible representations of "outsiders" in a society.^[18]

Cinema

InPsycho(1960), directed by Alfred Hitchcock, the protagonistNorman Batesis avoyeurwhose motel rooms feature peepholes. In the course of the story, the motel manager Norman spies upon theanti-heroineas she undresses in her ostensibly private room. InPeeping Tom(1960), directed byMichael Powell,scopophilia is mentioned as a psychological affliction of the protagonist, Mark Lewis. As narrative cinema,Peeping Tomis a deliberate exercise in voyeurism for the protagonist and for the spectator, which demonstrates how readily the protagonist and the spectator are mentally willing and morally capable of watching atrocities (torture, mutilation, death) that should not be gazed upon as narrative movies. The mentally ill protagonist acted as he acted consequent to severe mental mistreatment in boyhood, by his film-maker father; the paternal abuse mentally malformed Mark into a reclusive, introverted man comfortable with torturing and killing people.

In the 1970s, parting from Lacan's propositions, psychoanalysts of the cinema used the term scopophilia to identify and to describe the aesthetic and emotional pleasures (often pathological), and other unconscious mental processes that occur in the minds of spectators gazing at a film.^[19]^[20]Yet voyeurism and the male gaze are psychological practices basic to the spectators' emotional experience of viewing mainstream, commercial cinema;^[21]notably, themale gazeis fully presented, described, and explained, and contrasted with thefemale gaze,in the essay "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema" (1975), byLaura Mulvey.^[22]Subsequent scholars have challenged Mulvey's influential reading of scopophilia as a "gross reduction of the erotic and the aesthetic to the politics of representation."^[23]

References

^Webster's Third New International Dictionary of the English Language (Unabridged)(1976), p. 2036
^Lacan, Jacques.The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psycho-Analysis(1994) p. 194.
^Freud, Sigmund FreudOn Sexuality(PFL 7) pp. 109–110.
^Freud, Sigmund.Case Histories II(PFL 9) pp. 41–42.
^Freud, Sigmund.On Psychopathology(PFL 10) pp. 112–113.
^Fenichel, Otto.The Psychoanalytic Theory of Neurosis(1946) p. 177.
^Otto Fenichel,The Scoptophilic Instinct and Identification(1953)ISBN 0-393-33741-3
^Fenichel, Otto.Theory,p. 71.
^Fenichel, Otto.Theory,p. 348.
^Lacan, Jaxques, p. 183.
^Lacan, Jacques.Television(1990) p. 86.
^Schneiderman, Stuart (1980).Returning to Freud: Clinical Psychoanalysis in the School of Lacan.Yale University Press. p. 224.ISBN 9780300039320.
^Petronius,The Satyricon(Penguin 1986) pp. 50; 188.
^McCormick, Ian.Secret Sexualities: A Sourcebook of 17th and 18th Century Writing.Routledge, 1997. pp. 1-11; p. 158. See also George E. Haggerty. "Keyhole Testimony: Witnessing Sodomy in the Eighteenth Centur.",The Eighteenth Century44, no. 2/3 (2003): pp. 167–182.
^Bell Hooks,"Eating the Other",2006ISBN 1-4288-1629-1
^Shannon Winnubst,"Is the Mirror Racist?: Interrogating the Space of Whiteness",(2006)ISBN 0-253-21830-6
^David Marriott, "Bordering On: The Black Penis", (1996),Textual Practice10(1), pp. 9–28.
^Todd W. Reeser,Masculinities in Theory(2011) pp. 164–5
^Jane Mills,"The Money Shot"(2001)ISBN 1-86403-142-5,p. 223
^John Thornton Caldwell,Televisuality: Style, Crisis, and Authority in American Television(1995)ISBN 0-8135-2164-5,p. 343
^J. Childers, G. Hentzi.The Columbia Dictionary of Modern Literary and Cultural Criticism(1995) pp. 316–17.
^Mulvey, Laura (2009).Visual and Other Pleasures.England: Palgrave MacMillan. pp. 14–27.ISBN 978-1-4039-9246-8.
^Miklitsch, Robert (2006).Roll over Adorno: Critical Theory, Popular Culture, Audiovisual Media.State University of New York Press.p. 94.ISBN 978-0791467336.

External links

[1] Webster's Third New International Dictionary of the English Language (Unabridged)(1976), p. 2036

[2] Lacan, Jacques.The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psycho-Analysis(1994) p. 194.

[3] Freud, Sigmund FreudOn Sexuality(PFL 7) pp. 109–110.

[4] Freud, Sigmund.Case Histories II(PFL 9) pp. 41–42.

[5] Freud, Sigmund.On Psychopathology(PFL 10) pp. 112–113.

[6] Fenichel, Otto.The Psychoanalytic Theory of Neurosis(1946) p. 177.

[7] Otto Fenichel,The Scoptophilic Instinct and Identification(1953)ISBN 0-393-33741-3

[8] Fenichel, Otto.Theory,p. 71.

[9] Fenichel, Otto.Theory,p. 348.

[10] Lacan, Jaxques, p. 183.

[11] Lacan, Jacques.Television(1990) p. 86.

[12] Schneiderman, Stuart (1980).Returning to Freud: Clinical Psychoanalysis in the School of Lacan.Yale University Press. p. 224.ISBN 9780300039320.

[13] Petronius,The Satyricon(Penguin 1986) pp. 50; 188.

[14] McCormick, Ian.Secret Sexualities: A Sourcebook of 17th and 18th Century Writing.Routledge, 1997. pp. 1-11; p. 158. See also George E. Haggerty. "Keyhole Testimony: Witnessing Sodomy in the Eighteenth Centur.",The Eighteenth Century44, no. 2/3 (2003): pp. 167–182.

[15] Bell Hooks,"Eating the Other",2006ISBN 1-4288-1629-1

[16] Shannon Winnubst,"Is the Mirror Racist?: Interrogating the Space of Whiteness",(2006)ISBN 0-253-21830-6

[17] David Marriott, "Bordering On: The Black Penis", (1996),Textual Practice10(1), pp. 9–28.

[18] Todd W. Reeser,Masculinities in Theory(2011) pp. 164–5

[19] Jane Mills,"The Money Shot"(2001)ISBN 1-86403-142-5,p. 223

[20] John Thornton Caldwell,Televisuality: Style, Crisis, and Authority in American Television(1995)ISBN 0-8135-2164-5,p. 343

[21] J. Childers, G. Hentzi.The Columbia Dictionary of Modern Literary and Cultural Criticism(1995) pp. 316–17.

[22] Mulvey, Laura (2009).Visual and Other Pleasures.England: Palgrave MacMillan. pp. 14–27.ISBN 978-1-4039-9246-8.

[23] Miklitsch, Robert (2006).Roll over Adorno: Critical Theory, Popular Culture, Audiovisual Media.State University of New York Press.p. 94.ISBN 978-0791467336.

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