A case of trichotillomania and trichophagy

Fantasies of cannibalism

Bibliographic Data

ID8972787
AuthorsBritt-Marie Schiller (St. Louis Psychoanalytic Institute, Saint Louis, MO, USA), Britt‐Marie Schiller (corresponding author)
Year2021
Volume102
Issue5
Pages857-877
Publication date2021-08-17
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe International Journal of Psychoanalysis (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0020-7578 • E-ISSN: 1745-8315
PublisherTaylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/00207578.2021.1949723
PMID34402760
OpenAlexW3194871734
LanguageEN
References cited17

Cannibalistic fantasies underlie some core mechanisms in psychoanalysis: identification, incorporation, introjection, and internalization. Freud (1917) saw melancholia as an incorporation of the object by devouring it, and Julia Kristeva (1989) takes the melancholic cannibalistic imagination to be a repudiation of loss, a destruction in order to possess the object. The author argues that cannibalism is a useful concept for understanding the double dynamics of trichotillomania and trichophagy - as destructive disconnection followed by incorporation of the hair; both suggest a magical reconnection with what was disconnected in order to establish a bond with the mother/analyst. The paradoxical passion of consuming the object of desire, symbolized here by the hair (resembling an umbilical cord and connection to the maternal object) captures the cannibalistic fantasy of never losing the object by destroying it

Art · Cannibalism · Disconnection · Fantasy · Id, ego and super-ego · Literature · Object (grammar · Passion · Perversion · Psychoanalysis · Theology · Geographies of human-animal interactions · Gothic Literature and Media Analysis · Philosophy · Posthumanist Ethics and Activism · Psychology · Social Psychology

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