Lolita

This novel describes the character Humbert like pubescent girls, the age during 9 to 14. He defined them are “Goblin” and he enjoys looking those maidens, think they are cute, sweet or even attractive. Because he had fall in love with Annabelle when she is 14. Unfortunately, the girl was dead from typhoid. It influenced Humbert, therefore he developed sexual obsession since then. Later on, the principle character comes, her name is Lolita. Humbert obsessed with this little girl, in order to close nymphet(a sexually attractive girl), he married Lolita’s mother. And later on, her mother was dead from accident and Lolita has to live this stepfather. Moreover, Humbert controlled Lolita, wretched Lolita has to satisfied his sexual favors in order to get something.

I have seen some movies, the plot like this. From the novel Lolita, Humbert full of evil and the power of obsessions, let a person lose their morality. That’s horrible! The young little girl and the whole family are destroyed by his obsession.

Obsessive Sex and Love

Sexual is a natural part of activities around in our life. But if a person who have an overwhelming desire for sex and so intensely preoccupied with this desire(need) that interrupted with normal job and relationships, it might be a problem called compulsive sexual behavior. From chapter six “Obsessive Sex and Love,” Davis talks about sexual obsessions. He draws a line to distinguish the normal and abnormal sexuality, which constructed a norm of sexual behavior based on the observations and on culturally reflect. Obsession as a matter of degree, frequency or kind is thus turned into a physical disease. The sexual behavior divide into various types of obsession, the reason why we focus on this topic is the high level of degree and frequency as a disease. Moreover, it have nymphomania, masturbation or hypersexuality, also we can use the other term, “sexual addiction.” 

Based on this chapter, it belongs one of the categories “lust” from Osborn’s theory. It is more common and high percentage of sexuality happen in male population than female. Male teenagers are more mature in early age, especially in sexual aspect. They are known more and better than female, probably man have their natural instincts rather than consulting science, but women desire is very slight until developed by repeated stimulations and experiences.

From researchers’ find that the average length of the erect penis was 5.9 inches and the average frequency of sexual intercourse of married couple was 2.5 times per week. (164). Is that the way how to determine person’s behavior normal or abnormal? If that so, every couples have to measure male’s penis and count their sexual activities’ times to make sure they are normal or abnormal. In the supermarket and some stores, they are selling sexual toys, bondage equipment and erotic clothing. Since these become available and easy to buy. Is that a reason the environment let sex becomes addictive?

The Psychology of Love

According to the triangular theory, there are three components of love: the intimacy component, a passion component and a decision/ commitment component.

Kinds of Loving: A Classification

The intimacy component alone: liking. The term liking is used in a nontrivial sense, not merely to describe feelings one has toward casual acquaintances and passers-by in one’s life.

The passion component alone: infatuated love. Tennov (1979) has referred to infatuation as “limerence,” In her book it guide on the nature and course of infatuations. The first is that based upon an idealization of an individual rather than upon the individual as he/she exists in reality. The second problem is that infatuations tend to be obsessive. The third problem is that infatuated love relationships are usually asymmetrical.

The decision/commitment component alone: empty love. The love tale from John and Mary. Empty love results from someone’s making a decision that he or she loves another when neither intimacy nor passion is present.

The intimacy + passion components: romantic love. Take example from Susan and Ralph’s love story. In essence, romantic love likes with an added element of physical or other attraction.

The intimacy + commitment component: companionate love

The passion + commitment components: fatuous love

The intimacy + passion+ commitment components: consummate love

The Myth of the Passions

The passions: emotions and the meaning of life by Robert C. Solomon. In the front of this chapter, author explained the meaning of passion, and also he state Freud canonized the myth named science. The term passion originally referred to suffering. It means a powerful emotion, such as love, joy, hatred, or anger. During our lifetime, there are variables passions effected our emotions, moods and desires. 

Later on, Solomon bring emotions to psychological field, a psychologist scholar David Rapaport concluded that psychologists had “lumped together many diverse phenomena…which should be kept carefully apart” and that the “physiological changes occurring in emotional states have been extremely dealt with in the literature but that the problem of ‘emotion felt’ had been somewhat neglected.” The puzzle of psychologist made argue that from objectively view, emotions does not require “tangibility” or exclude the curiously “mental.” But what author concerns is not the experimental of psychologist but rather to clear the field of the objective penetration of psychological theories.

Afterward, Solomon states out Freud and James’s theory, which are two different models of the emotions. James insisted the psychological concepts must ultimately have a neurological foundation. In the other side, Freud identified three concepts of the emotions in his writing, instinct, idea and affect.

       I picked Motivational Poster. As we discussed in class, human being is the top of creation. Like this image she made herself fun with strange action or obsession. “It is the complexity of humans, their god- likeness, that produces our ills, and so lunacy is seen as a result of the necessary and positive intricacy of being at the apex of creation” by davis.

The phenomenon of obsession is a wide range of people existence as modern consciousness. People upload their fun pictures and photos, tag it and create their own motivational poster. As a result, obsession becomes a diverse category of existence, it links to being an artist, a creator, a scientist and so on.

Animals should not mind dirty of ass or some unclean places. In this image, this animal is holding a lot of tissues and enjoys wiping its own ass, keep it clean. This is very often related to fears of contamination, cleanliness is the aims of the majority of compulsive activities. Checking which seeks to eliminate any doubt or anomaly the environment surrounding him or her. They disgusting with bacterial, anything has germ on it, their common action is cleaning. According to Osborn, this is filth of OCD’s category.     

Chapter 2: The Emergence of Obsession

 

      “In this chapter we have seen how monomania paved the way for obsessive disease, obsessive practices, and a general culture of attention, focus, specialization-all of these linked to the rise of professions and science. There was no necessity that these features would coalesce into a culture of obsession, but there seems to be a trend, a river made up converging streams, a zeitgeist within a culture, that leads to both the concept of scientific observation and its dark side, the disease of hyper attention and obsessive focus.” by davis.

 

OCD: Now and Forever

From the chapter 8, Lennard J. Davis states that obsessive-compulsive disorder from rare disease to common disorder, the number of this mental disorder in the general population has rising. From most estimates now says that 2 to 3 percent of the people will have OCD during their lifetime. This is one of the top four mental disorders in the world. Disease or disease entity? Davis shows the real and fantasy symptoms, also notes that 77 percent of OCD patients had diagnosis at least one other Axis I DSM-III-R. Lurid facts which the illness is identified. The author states “The basic types and frequencies of obsessive compulsive symptoms are consistent across cultures and time.” Is this claim of the global universality of OCD? There is a lot of media exposure theory, from researchers find there is a correlation between behavior structure and the drug treatment. It means the illness is “respond” for the treatment or drug. This is a good news because at least there have the possibility to heal. In the initial surge of studies 70 percent improvement rate was cited to treat OCD with Anafranil(the name of drug). 

Researchers also find there is a relation between having OCD and having a family member with it, a genetic basis for a predisposition to OCD and the neurobiology find a material basis for this disorder. Despite all the researches and the book self it is hard to find the specific location in the brain and how it work. Although we have our advanced medical  technology by using PET scans or MRIs, it is still a complicated to talk with what is the mean of “have” disorder.

Through all the researches, analysis the structure of disorder and giving the history about a disease. Science and technology has increased specialization we hope there will be higher statistics of patients completing the treatment program and being cured.