Fixation

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Fixation may refer to the following:

• In human psychology, fixation refers to the state where an individual becomes obsessed with an attachment to another human, animal or inanimate object. A Freudian belief that, if during one of the psychosexual stages of development, a person did not receive appropriate gratification during a specific stage, or that a specific stage left a particularly strong impression, that person's personality would reflect that particular stage throughout their adult life. Fixation to intangibles (i.e., ideas, ideologies etc.) can also occur (see Zealotry and Fanaticism).

• Eye fixation refers to maintaining the gaze in a constant direction. See also fixational eye movement.

• Fixation in alchemy refers to changing a chemically volatile substance into a "fixed" state that is not affected by fire. It is one of the 12 vital alchemical processes required for transformation.

• Fixation in biology and ecology refers to a process by which a chemical element is converted from an inorganic form to a compound which is more readily available and useful to a living organism. See nitrogen fixation, carbon fixation.

• Fixation in business refers to when a company is reluctant to change to suit current market conditions. Can lead to an escalation of poor decisions.

• Fixation in biochemistry, histology, cell biology and pathology refers to the technique of preserving a specimen for microscopic study, making it intact and stable, but dead.

• Fixation in law refers to works entitled to copyright protection (e.g. music, literature, paintings, etc.) Only works fixed in a medium can be copyrighted, not the ideas behind those works.

• Fixation in population genetics refers to when every individual within a population has the same allele at a particular locus.