Psychology of obsession

The definition of obsession is: the inability of a person to stop thinking about a particular topic or feeling a certain emotion without a high amount of anxiety. When obsessed, an individual continues the obsession in order to avoid the consequent anxiety. (1). There are different types of obsessions. It is categorized into two subtypes: autogenous obsessions and reactive obsessions. Differences between these two subtypes are different in terms of identifiability of their evoking stimuli, subjective experiences, contents, and subsequent cognitive processes. I will talk about fixation, obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD) and obsessive love.

Fixation - Fixation refers to a persistent focus of the id’s pleasure-seeking energies on an earlier stage of psychosexual development. A fixation occurs when an issue or conflict in a psychosexual stage remains unresolved, leaving the individual focused on this stage and unable to move to the next. (2) For example if the child fixed in phallus stage, in his grown-up life he can have a big lack of self esteem. Why does fixation classified as obsession? Because it is the state in which an individual becomes obsessed with an attachment to another person, being or object. And of course it might lead to OCD.

OCD - Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, OCD, is an anxiety disorder and is characterized by recurrent, unwanted thoughts (obsessions) and/or repetitive behaviors (compulsions). Repetitive behaviors such as hand washing, counting, checking, or cleaning are often performed with the hope of preventing obsessive thoughts or making them go away. Performing these so-called "rituals," however, provides only temporary relief, and not performing them markedly increases anxiety (3). For example there is a woman in America which is obsessed with thoughts that her home will burn for a fault in the electrical system. So her ritual is to check all electronic gadgets before she is going from home. After locking the door she doubts if they are all turned off. Then she is coming back. So going out from home lingers about 3 hours, because she is coming back all the time. Effective treatments for obsessive-compulsive disorder are already available, and research is yielding new, improved therapies that can help most people with OCD, but in hard cases OCD can be just mitigated and but not treated absolutely.

Obsessive love - is a form of love where one person is emotionally obsessed with another (4). Obsessive lovers believe that only the person they fixate on can make them feel happy and fulfilled. Also obsessed person doesn’t accept if their partners are happy then they aren’t. it affects not only patient, but also all people around them, especially the loved ones. Obsessed people become very emotional and physical related to their love object. It is possible that other person even don’t know about other side love. Obsessive love can lead to dangerous consequences, so Extreme like stalking, rape, and murder, among other things. There was an example in United States that man killed the president, because he decided that it is the way to be noticed by his love. There are 4 phases in this disorder: the first one is attraction phase. 2^nd – anxious phase. Then leads to the obsessive phase and the last one – destructive phase. It is very hard to cure and it’s almost impossible to do without psychotherapist.

In conclusion I could say, that there are much more obsessions. Most of them are parts of OCD. They can be episodic or lifelong, funny or disastrous, the most important thing to notice them and try to find the cure

(1) - http://www.alleydog.com/glossary/definition.php?term=Obsession

(2) - http://psychology.about.com/od/findex/g/def_fixation.htm

(3) - http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/topics/obsessive-compulsive-disorder-ocd/index.shtml

(4) - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obsessive_love

Psychology of laughter

If you try to ask www.google.com what is laughter, it might say that it is an audible expression or the appearance of happiness, or an inward feeling of joy (laughing on the inside) and that in most cases it is a very pleasant sensation. It is related with joy and jokes, but that is just a small part of what you can find about that, so I will try to introduce you with further facts about psychology of laughter.

What is the nature of laughter? Analyses have shown that babies as early as 17 days old have vocal laughing sounds or laughter. Robert R. Provine has spent decades studying laughter. He indicated that laughter is a mechanism everyone has. “Laughter is part of universal human vocabulary. There are thousands of languages, hundreds of thousands of dialects, but everyone speaks laughter in pretty much the same way.” Everyone can laugh. Babies have the ability to laugh before they ever speak. Children who are born blind and deaf still retain the ability to laugh”. Strong laughter can bring an onset of tears or even moderate muscular pain.

Everybody knows that laughter prolongs life, endorphins make us happier and that’s the best way to spend our days, but not everybody can enjoy it. A very rare neurological condition has been observed recently. It is known as aphonogelia. Person with this disorder is unable to laugh out loud. But just very few people think about different types of laughter. Though there are many ways to laugh, “From giggles to guffaws and from chuckles to cackles”, it turns out that we laugh at the strangest things (2). A person can laugh in the end of a nervous day, or sarcastically, or because of happiness etc. One more type of laughter is abnormal laughter. People with certain types of brain damage produce abnormal laughter. it is considered symptomatic of psychological disorders including such disorders like dementia and hysteria, but can also be the result of cerebellar lesions curable by antidepressants. Some negative medical effects of laughter have been reported as well, including laughter syncope, where laughter causes a person to lose consciousness.

Most psychologists concentrate on what does laughter mean. It is absolutely true that in most cases it means amusement, but sometimes it can show person's negative intentions. Freud said that laughter is an "economical phenomenon" whose function is to release "physic energy" that had been wrongly mobilized by incorrect expectations. Other psychologists claim that it is a release of tension or even self-defense. For example if a person is in uncomfortable situation he or she might start laughing or making jokes. And of course, there are many other various theories. In accordance to these theories, laughter is used in therapies. You can find different kind of them: humor therapy, clown therapy, laughter therapy, laughter meditation, Laughter Yoga & Laughter Clubs, etc. Humor and laughter is used to help patients cope or treat a variety of physical, mental, and spiritual issues. The various therapies are not specific to health care professionals or clinicians. Some of the therapies can be practiced individually or in a group setting to aid in a person's well-being. (1).

Finally, I can say that there is not much information about psychological benefit of laughter, but every day we can find more and more information about that in the internet, magazines and books, so we can guess that in the future laughter will be used to cure more and more illnesses. Like someone said: laughter is the best cure for long and happy life.

used literature:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laughter

http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/200011/the-science-laughter

http://psychology.wikia.com/wiki/Laughter