Fixation and Murder of Passion

Maria-Theresia Müllner

“… that each stage in the development of psychosexuality affords a possibility of 'fixation’ and thus of a dispositional point. People who have not freed themselves completely from the stage of narcissism–who, that is to say, have at that point a fixation which may operate as a disposition to a later illness–are exposed to the danger that some unusually intense wave of libido, finding no other outlet, may lead to a sexualization of their social instincts and so undo the sublimations which they had achieved in the course of their development. This result may be produced by anything that causes the libido to flow backwards (i.e. that causes a ‘regression’): whether, on the one hand, the libido becomes collaterally reinforced […] on the other hand, there is a general intensification of the libido, so that it becomes too powerful to find an outlet along the channels which are already open to it, and consequently burst through its banks at the weakest spot.”1

In 1911, Freud was already thinking about what would remain a clinical and current phenomenon. Freud’s text could offer a way of interpreting this phenomenon.

In recent years, there have been many media reports about murders of women, carried out by their life or ex life-partners.

These murders of women have been called femicide for a number of years those, that is, that pertain to the killing of women and girls solely because of their gender. It is a term related to the word genocide, which means a planned, uniform murder of people of a national, ethnic, racial, religious or social group.

This universal term femicide obscures the view of the essential, that is the individual murder and its singular cause. The rise in the occurrence of femicide has had as a consequence a call for educational programmes for men in general and for violent men in particular, that becomes loud and the demands for them vehement. However, these (educational) programmes will not achieve much.

The fixation that Freud writes about in the above quote is a very specific one. It is fully occupied with or by libido, without the possibility of a discharge in a socially acceptable way. It is the "place" that prevents a discharge of libido and it is precisely the "place" where this excess of libido breaks through. This fixation is specific and cannot be separated from the drive. The defence against the drive can break through exactly at this point, “[...] and consequently burst through its banks [Dammbruch] at the weakest spot”.2 If the drive breaks through without inhibition, there could be a connection here with such escalation of violence.

In every act there is something drive-specific that does not obey the logic of the universal. It is not a learned behaviour, which is why learning programmes will be unsuccessful. Drive is beyond education and learning. Instead of telling someone what he has to do and learn, he should be invited to speak. Only through speech, can a singular knowledge emerge and be experienced, in the best case a knowledge of how to deal with the uninhibited drive.

References

1 Freud, S. (1911). Psycho-Analytic Notes on an Autobiographical Account of a Case of Paranoia, III The Mechanism of Paranoia, in: Volume XII, The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, J. Strachey (ed.), Hogarth Press: London, pp.61-62.

2 Ibid.