The Seba library treats Cathexis in 9 passages, across 3 authors (including Freud, Sigmund, Lacan, Jacques, Giménez-Meseguer, Jorge).
precipitate of abandoned object-cathexes and that it contains the history of those object-choices… vestiges of their object-cathexes in the traits of their character
Freud argues that the ego is constituted by the residues of relinquished libidinal investments in objects, making cathexis the very substance of character formation.
, The Ego and the Id, 1923thesis
The ego withdraws its (preconscious) cathexis from the instinctual representative that is to be repressed and uses that cathexis for the purpose of releasing unpleasure (anxiety)
Lacan cites Freud’s German text directly to demonstrate how the ego’s withdrawal of preconscious cathexis from a drive-representative is the economic mechanism underlying the generation of signal anxiety.
, The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book VIII: Transference, 2015thesis
we follow a particular path in our application of attention… we come upon an idea which will not bear criticism: we drop the cathexis of attention
Freud establishes that the withdrawal of attentional cathexis from a rejected train of thought enables its unconscious continuation, linking cathexis directly to the mechanism of repression.
, The Interpretation of Dreams, 1900thesis
a reactive displacement of cathexis, energy being with-drawn from the erotic impulse and added to the hostile one
Freud employs cathexis as an economic concept to explain how in paranoia the transformation of love into hostility is achieved not by qualitative conversion but by quantitative displacement of invested energy.
, The Ego and the Id, 1923thesis
the second system, by means of the cathexis emanating from it, succeeds in inhibiting this discharge and in transforming the cathexis into a quiescent one
Freud contrasts free and bound cathexis across the two psychical systems, arguing that the secondary process converts mobile excitation into a stable, inhibited investment.
, The Interpretation of Dreams, 1900thesis
an identical cathexis of the same memory which is to attain once more through an intermediate stage of motor expenditure
Freud describes thinking as a circuitous path toward re-cathecting a memory of satisfaction, positioning cathexis as the telos of all secondary-process mental activity.
, The Interpretation of Dreams, 1900supporting
the cathexes of those residues can readily extend from within on to the elements of the system Pcpt.-Cs.
Freud explains preconscious accessibility and the route to consciousness through the capacity of mnemic residue cathexes to extend toward the perceptual-conscious system.
, The Ego and the Id, 1923supporting
the release of the affect attaching to those memories cannot be inhibited… the unpleasure principle takes control and causes the Pcs. to turn away from the transference thought
Freud links the non-inhibition of affect-cathexis attached to unconscious memories to the mechanism of repression, showing how unpleasure governs the withdrawal of preconscious attention.
, The Interpretation of Dreams, 1900supporting
Jourard Body-Cathexis Scale Self-Cathexis Scale
A meta-analysis of exercise interventions for addiction employs the Body-Cathexis Scale and Self-Cathexis Scale as outcome measures, reflecting a peripheral empirical operationalization of the concept remote from its psychoanalytic origins.