Cathexis

In psychoanalysis, cathexis is defined as the process of investment of mental or emotional energy in a person, object, or idea.

Origin of term

The Greek term cathexis (κάθεξις) was chosen by James Strachey to render the German term Besetzung in his translation of Sigmund Freud's complete works. Freud himself wrote of "interest (Besetzung)", in an early letter to Ernest Jones.

Peter Gay objected that Strachey's use of cathexis was an unnecessarily esoteric replacement for Freud's use of Besetzung – "a word from common German speech rich in suggestive meanings, among them 'occupation' (by troops) and 'charge' (of electricity)".

Usage

Freud defined cathexis as an investment of libido, pointing out for example how dream thoughts were cathected with different amounts of affect. A cathexis or emotional charge might be positive or negative, leading some of his followers to speak as well of a cathexis of mortido. Freud called a group of cathected ideas a complex.

Freud frequently described the functioning of psychosexual energies in quasi-physical terms, representing frustration of libidinal desires, for example, as a blockage of (cathected) energies which would eventually build up and require release in alternative ways. This release could occur, for example, by way of regression and the "re-cathecting" of former positions or fixations, or the autoerotic enjoyment (in phantasy) of former sexual objects: "object-cathexes".

Cathexis (comics)

The Cathexis are a race of sixth-dimensional beings from the DC Universe.

Fictional character biography

Originating from the sixth dimension of reality - as opposed to humanity's existence in the third dimension - the Cathexis are an advanced and powerful race, capable of creating sentient energy beings and wielding remarkable power in their own right. Wishing to expand their power, they created the sentenergy 'Id', an energy field capable of modifying reality based on the wishes of those it made contact with and subsequently modifying the vibrations of subatomic particles to grant wishes, and unleashed it upon Earth.

Upon arriving in this dimension, Id essentially began to act like the malevolent genie, granting any wishes that it sensed to give the wish-maker precisely what was asked for without giving them precisely what they wanted. As its first wish in this dimension, it latched on to the strongest superhuman mind it could find, Superman, just as he was wishing that those superhumans who had two lives sometimes did not have to cope with such pressures. As a result, he, Batman, the Flash, Green Lantern, Plastic Man and the Martian Manhunter were split into their human and superhuman identities; Wonder Woman and Aquaman alone remained the same because they had no secret identities in the first place.

Cathexis (disambiguation)

In psychoanalysis, cathexis is defined as the process of investment of mental or emotional energy in a person, object, or idea.

Cathexis may also refer to: