The ring you gave me was made of glass and now it’s broken, the love you felt was so little now that it’s ended: When desire is degraded into necessity. Psychoanalytical reflections about obsessive neuroses.

Abstract

The present paper aims to make a theoretical reflection about a specific psychological mechanism observed within obsessive neuroses: the degradation of desire into necessity. Beginning with Freud’s proposition presented in his early and meta-psychological papers about the dynamics of obsessive neurosis in relation to libidinal distribution assumed by the obsessive neurotic facing the task of constructing his subjectivity. Lacan’s contribution is understood based on the position assumed by obsessive neurotics through-out the Oedipus drama from what some specific subjective responses characteristic of obsessive neurosis are given: guilty, doubt, indecision, isolation, affective impoverishment, ego mortification. Sustaining these arguments are three illustrative resources: the clinical path, the patient’s speech and a verse of a ring-a-rose song and a poetry, named “Almost”.

Keywords: obsessive neuroses; desire and necessity; Psychoanalysis.