Concept
Leaning-on
Freud's term (Anlehnung) for the way the sexual drives at first lean on the self-preservative functions: the pleasure of sucking arises from feeding before it becomes independent of it. The term also names the choice of a love object modelled on the people who fed and protected the child. Laplanche and Pontalis restored the term, which the English 'anaclisis' had obscured, and Laplanche made it the centre of his account of how sexuality emerges from the vital functions. He later held that leaning-on alone cannot explain this emergence without the adult's seduction.
Read more- Broader concept
- Psychosexual development
- Introduced by
- Sigmund Freud
- Key works
- 4
- Related
- Anaclitic depression
introduced by
- Sigmund Freud 1905 In the second of the Three Essays, Freud describes infantile sexual activity as at first attaching itself to the functions that serve self-preservation. His example is the child's sucking, which begins with feeding at the breast and only later becomes independent of it.
developed by
- Jean Laplanche 1970 The Vocabulaire (1967) translated Freud's Anlehnung as étayage and brought the term back from obscurity. In the first chapter of Vie et mort en psychanalyse (1970), Laplanche makes it the model of how the sexual drive arises: it leans on a vital function such as feeding and then turns away from it. He later judged leaning-on insufficient without the adult's seduction.
gave rise to
- Anaclitic depression Spitz took the word 'anaclitic' from Freud's notion of Anlehnung, the leaning of the drives on the functions of self-preservation, rendered as anaclisis in the Standard Edition.