Inauthentic love lets the beloved ratify one’s infantile fantasies instead of moving beyond them
Evidence
We shall see why love is beyond the reach of the Mayotte Capécias of all nations. For the beloved should not allow me to turn my infantile fantasies into reality: On the contrary, he should help me to go beyond them. The childhood of Mayotte Capécia shows us a certain number of characteristics that illustrate the line of orientation she follows as an adult. And each time there is a movement or a contact, it will have a direct relation to her goal. It would seem indeed that for her white and black represent the two poles of a world, two poles in perpetual conflict: a genuinely Manichean concept of the world; the word has been spoken, it must be remembered–white or black, that is the question. — Frantz Fanon, Constance Farrington, Black skin, white masks, 164 (
#contradicts, via linked claim)
Investigating the psychic structure of the phobic, he comes to this conclusion: “Before attacking the adult beliefs, all the elements of the infantile structure which produced them must be analyzed.” The choice of the phobic object is therefore overdetermined. This object does not come at random out of the void of nothingness; in some situation it has previously evoked an affect in the patient. His phobia is the latent presence of this affect at the root of his world; there is an organization that has been given a form. For the object, naturally, need not be there, it is enough that somewhere it exist: It is a possibility. This object is endowed with evil intentions and with all the attributes of a malefic power. In the phobic, affect has a priority that defies all rational thinking. As we can see, the phobic is a person who is governed by the laws of rational prelogic and affective prelogic: methods of thinking and feeling that go back to the age at which he experienced the event that impaired his security. — Frantz Fanon, Constance Farrington, Black skin, white masks, 589 (
#complicates, via linked claim)
Categorization
- XREF: connects to: Authentic love requires the beloved to help one go beyond infantile fantasies — Frantz Fanon, Constance Farrington, Black skin, white masks, 164; Phobic objects are overdetermined by infantile affect and resist rational correction — Frantz Fanon, Constance Farrington, Black skin, white masks, 589; Reciprocal modern love presupposes each ego having secured a definite boundary — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 583 (+8 more)
Related
Broader Connections
- Authentic love requires the beloved to help one go beyond infantile fantasies
#contradicts(0.75) — Frantz Fanon, Constance Farrington, Black skin, white masks, 164 - Phobic objects are overdetermined by infantile affect and resist rational correction
#complicates(0.40) — Frantz Fanon, Constance Farrington, Black skin, white masks, 589