Disgust, Delight, and In-Between

ABSTRACT

Muriel Dimen showed us how disgust and delight live around the corner from each other. Disgust is a central affect that powerfully determines human behavior, often unconsciously. Politicians have evoked the power of disgust to unite people irrationally against a purported common enemy. Disgust for bitter and sour taste is inborn. Disgust with excreta is acquired by acculturation. Many forms of disgust are overcome and transformed by sexual desire during puberty. Psychotherapists need to monitor their own disgust reactions and differentiate between their reactions of disgust and erotic fascination as well as those of their patients.

Notes

¹ I loved the perversely impossible grammar of Muriel’s phrase.

² Martha Nussbaum (2004) argued strongly against Kass’s (1997) position from a moral-legal standpoint. Modern neuroscience research has demonstrated that there is a common, often unconscious, disgust reaction to old people. Should we therefore condemn people for being old?

³ I was delighted when, as editor of the journal Contemporary Psychoanalysis, Muriel Dimen (2011) sent me a magnum opus for publication: “Lapsus Linguae, or a Slip of the Tongue? A Sexual violation in an Analytic Treatment and Its Personal and Theoretical Aftermath” in which she challenged us with a personal story about the disgust/delight continuum, peppered with rage and disappointment.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Mark J. Blechner

Mark J. Blechner, Ph.D., is the author of the books Sex Changes: Transformations in Society and Psychoanalysis (Routledge, 2009) and The Dream Frontier (Routledge, 2001).