With choppy rhythm plus an aversion to run-on thought, the following sentence begins a paragraph in mine and Joe Farley’s book, Getting Real About Sex Addiction (I shall blame Joe for the choppy rhythm): “Undercurrents filter down into therapists’ offices, lurking as assumptions that inflect counsel”. This teasing opinion, one of many offhand expressions in our text, signals a critique of what lies in the cuts of sex addiction treatment. Via jargon, popular or theoretical, and often derivative of older, more esoteric theory, sex addiction specialists (and others, to be fair) impart a repertoire of ideas reflecting biases, and psychological theory, like scientific data, is a tool of manipulation; a means to an end.
In this blog, I’ve made numerous allusions to psychoanalytic theory or psychodynamic technique without giving many examples of either. Partly, the reason is that theory and especially interventions are hard to represent out of context, meaning case illustrations, and case illustrations are lengthy and, I suppose, not blog-worthy, though I’m not quite sure what I mean by that. I guess I mean something similar to my use of the word “teasing”: I’m introducing a book, not delivering it in serial form. Anyway, it seems apt to give illustrations of theoretical ideas, especially ones that can be represented economically. I’ve decided as much as I begin my latest and likely final perusal of copyedits and notice a certain pause upon the concept of reaction formation. It is a pause of sustained interest, not doubt.
Reaction formation is one of several fraught concepts in the Sigmund Freud lexicon: meaning, it is controversial, but that only depends upon its application. That in turn means that reaction formation is subject to bullying; it is a kicked around idea, used to represent standard thought, establishment thought, ill-advised thought…taken for granted thought. If you’re not an avid reader of psychoanalytic literature, you won’t know the term, but you’ll know its meaning. You’ll have observed its application, even employed it yourself, on countless occasions. Basically, the concept refers to a reversal of feeling based upon a defensive position that counters an uncomfortable thought and feeling. Wait, what does that mean? Well, it means something derived from a famous line in a Shakespeare play: “the lady doth protest too much”. When you take a position of opposition to something—a position of moral offense or disgust—a psychoanalyst will suspect that your offended position conveys the opposite of your desire, as a defense against a wish that is incompatible with ego, Superego, etc.
In our text, I make reference to reaction formation numerous times. The reason, as you might imagine, is that sex addiction, porn addiction, sexual deviancy, or just plain sex, is subject to moral objection, of course. In (fact?), what incurs moral objection or disgust more than sex, or that which falls under the general heading of sex? Anything? Notice I’m adding the word disgust to the term moral objection. This cues an example I noted in the manuscript: a man prone to sexually addictive habits, including certain “perversions”, elicits disgust from his wife, which he in turn finds arousing. This is an example of a paradoxical reaction—a reaction formation—to an adverse stimuli: to counter the unpleasant with a pleasure reaction, thus defending against anxiety and revulsion. More commonly, we tend to understand reaction formation as something like the wife’s reaction: a reaction of moral disgust to the sexual demands of her husband. Moral indignation: men only want one thing, etc.
What we suspect of her isn’t nice. It isn’t politically correct, to cue the secondary purpose of this entry: to indicate the selective application of this commonly known phenomenon with an obscure name. In the current zeitgeist, it is likely deemed sexist to interpret arousal from revulsion…at least as it pertains to what heterosexual men perceive in women. And don’t get me wrong. It is politically incorrect for some sensible reasons. Perceiving arousal within rejection has rationalized innumerous episodes of sexual harassment and assault, no doubt. Therefore, to rebuke an interpretation of reaction formation within a sexual rejection is to prevent danger. But that is about censoring thought due to fear of its behavioral corollary—not so much to cement a counter-truth that would govern the thought itself.
When reaction formations are deemed less dangerous, or else when they seem to represent worthy retributions, they are given a pass. In the realm of sex, we might therefore consider the issue of homosexuality. Within the history of psychoanalysis, and likely beyond amid a dominant heteronormative culture, homosexuality has been deemed a reaction formation, or again, as something like it. Freud offered that a same-sex sexual orientation results from a failure to properly identify with the opposite-sex parent; in the case of boys (Freud’s focus), it represents an excessive identification with a mother such that a boy would mirror her sexuality and thus aim libidinal interest at men. Mainstream society more or less agreed with this idea and at some point (possibly before Freud, for all I know) coined a derisive shorthand for this phenomenon: “mama’s boy”. To be gay is to fail at acquiring a Superego, which in a dominant heteronormative culture means adopting the conscience and moral repertoire of the traditionalist, largely patriarchal system.
However, Superegos change because culture changes, and in the 21st century, within the largely diversified as well as secularized world of psychotherapy, Freud is often chastised for his sexism while his anti-religious positions are for the most part forgotten or ignored. As for homosexuality and the perception of that trait, another kind of reversal has taken effect, possibly a reaction formation of another kind. So, think of the following example: a man exhibits moral objection, even disgust, at the advances of another man towards him, and issues a rebuke to the offending figure. A commonly held opinion is to cast the man exhibiting the disgust as a homophobe. He is exhibiting a reaction formation: a reversal of idea to counter feelings within himself about which he is uncomfortable. He does not have a phobia in a medicalized sense (he doesn’t have panic attacks, necessarily), so the use of the term phobe or phobic is figurative and offhand. However, the assignment of reversed affect is in earnest.
And so, these examples illustrate the infiltration of social mores into psychological theory. Indeed, they illustrate how theory is subordinate to culture and historical change, whether that change is institutionally imposed, or else populist. Science has its data, its facts, and sometimes those facts define phenomena. In psychology, data is thin and is often spun to designate truth. Instead, it defines a surface layer of truth while an interior truth is left to speculation, theory, interpretation and bias. Speculation and theory represent what we want them to represent, only the “we” is variable. Some think the we is more inclusive than it once was. Probably. Or maybe. More substitutive, I’d suggest.
Graeme Daniels Psychewriter 