Sexuality and its object in Freud's 1905 edition of Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality

Earlier Age at Menarche Is Associated with Body Fat and Negative Body Image in Adult Life

Earlier age at menarche is one of the well-documented antecedents of a range of adverse health effects in adulthood including obesity and psychopathological effects. Yet, few researchers have examined the potential association of menarcheal age with body fat distribution, self-perception, and body image. We retrospectively tested a sample (N = 392) of adult women (18-80 years) to examine the associations of age at menarche with body composition and body image indices. Analyses of covariance and multivariable logistic and linear regression were fitted adjusting for age, physical activity level, smoking, and alcohol consumption. Further adjustment was made for body mass index (BMI) and percentage of fat mass. Earlier age at menarche was associated with slightly increased odds of higher BMI and abdominal fat percentage; of note is the positive correlation with lower body composition indices including hip and calf circumferences/skinfolds. Additionally, earlier age at menarche was associated with higher scores in the negative body image scales, namely overweight preoccupation and self-classified weight, whereas lower risks were found for higher scores in the positive body image scales, namely appearance evaluation and body area satisfaction scales. These findings remained significant after correcting for body fat percentage. The present results showed positive associations for earlier age at menarche with gross indices of obesity with the associations mainly confined to distribution of body fat in the lower part of the body, whereas an increased risk of negative body image was also found. Future research could refine our understanding of the biological and psychological mechanisms underlying these associations.

The Draw to Overwhelm: Consent, Risk, and the Retranslation of Enigma

The concept of affirmative consent presumes a subject who is fully transparent to herself and who can anticipate the precise effects of her assent. This essay proposes limit consent, a concept that offers us different ways to think about the sexual-and about the analytic encounter. Limit consent involves a more nuanced negotiation of limits and becomes possible when the subject makes herself passible (Lyotard 1988) to an other-a condition that is neither active nor passive. Processes described in depth here suggest that passibility has ties to the rousing of infantile sexuality (Freud) and to the subject's normative perversity (Laplanche). When the psychic economy of the infantile sexual is followed to its apex, a particular kind of state is produced that I call overwhelm-a word that is used here as a noun. Overwhelm is a state of dysregulation that can be confused with, but is not the same as, repetition compulsion. Overwhelm entails risk, and under some circumstances it may open up space toward significant psychic transformations. A detailed clinical example illustrates how overwhelm may make itself known in the clinical encounter, and how it can infiltrate the transference/countertransference. Specific technical suggestions are made regarding analytic work with overwhelm.