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Article: Aphanisis
- Article from:
- International Dictionary of Psychoanalysis
- Author:
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APHANISIS
The term "aphanisis" merits an entry in Laplanche and Pontalis's
The Language of Psychoanalysis
, where its principal definition is as follows: "Term introduced by Ernest Jones: the disappearance of sexual desire. According to Jones aphanisis is the object, in both sexes, of a fear more profound than the fear of castration."
It was in 1927 that Ernest Jones called upon this concept in his work on the precocious development of feminine sexuality. Etymologically the term comes from the Greek
aphanisis
, which refers to an absence of brilliance in the astronomical sense, to disappearance or becoming invisible (of a star for example).
Jones applied this concept in a psychoanalytic ...