ABSTRACT
Starting from the differentiation of clinical dimensions of the act, conceptualizing with Freud the symptomatic act, the acting out, the faulty act and the passage to the act, and the discussion of the idea of symptom, the present work tries to understand what is involved in compulsion to eat present in so-called obese patients. This differentiation aims to instruct a new way of understanding compulsion to eat with in the psychoanalytic field by following the Freudian developments in the second topic. In view of the advent of the concept of death drive in 1920, the lato sensu compulsion can no longer be considered only as a compromise formation, because in the case of so-called obese patients, the compulsion carries a satisfaction that goes beyond the pleasure principle. The differentiation between Neurosis and Psychosis is discussed using the idea of Ordinary Psychosis, which allows us to point out a possibility of ‘failure’ in the effect of barring the jouissance that is evidenced in the insistence of these symptoms that takes a secondary gain to which the subjects remain bounded. Compulsion to eat is therefore a way of avoiding the anxiety that paradoxically produces suffering, or an act that merges with the ego and charges its price with anxiety. It is suggested to advance the understanding of the last Freudian anxiety theory to distinguish the different ways of clinical approach of the act in its different declinations.
Keywords:
Compulsion; obesity; jouissance