Fixation (psychology)

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Fixation refers, in human psychology, to the state in which an individual becomes obsessed with an attachment to another human, an animal, or an inanimate object.

It is a Freudian belief that a person could have:

1. lacked proper gratification during one of the psychosexual stages of development, or
2. received too strong an impression from one of these stages, in which case the person's personality would reflect that stage throughout adult life.

Whether a particularly obsessive attachment is a fixation or a defensible expression of love is at times debatable. Fixation to intangibles (i.e., ideas, ideologies, etc.) can also occur. The obsessive factor is also found in symptoms pertaining to obsessive compulsive disorder.

[edit] See also

• Psychosexual development
• Zealotry
• Fanaticism