fixation

n.

1. The act or process of fixing or fixating.
2. An obsessive preoccupation.
3. Psychology. A strong attachment to a person or thing, especially such an attachment formed in childhood or infancy and manifested in immature or neurotic behavior that persists throughout life.

Setting of a present or future price of a commodity, such as the twice-daily London Gold Fixing. In other commodities, prices are fixed further into the future for the benefit of both buyers and sellers of that commodity.

noun

An irrational preoccupation: fetish, mania, obsession. Informal thing. See concern/unconcern.

n

The act or result of fixing, such as being bound or limited in position or relationship.

This is the part of photographic processing that makes the image permanent. The lack of a good fixing medium hampered early photography. Talbot, the father of silver halide photography, used a concentrated solution of common salt. Herschel discovered that sodium thiosulphate (‘hypo’) formed soluble complexes with silver halides. In the early days of wet collodion it was customary to use potassium cyanide for fixation, sometimes with unfortunate results for the photographer. Since the 1950s the use of ammonium thiosulphate has become universal, as it works quickly and is fairly easily washed out of paper fibres.

— Graham Saxby

1. A firm, stable, flexible aspect of behaviour. In childhood fixation may result from traumatic events preventing the child from progressing to the next stage of mental development.

2. Surgically fixing bones together with threads, pins, or screws. Fixation is used to stabilize a joint that has been repeatedly dislocated or to fix a fracture.

The notion of fixation involves a certain mode of connection that a drive has with its ideational representatives (its objects) as a function of a primitive phase of the subject's sexual organization. This mode of connection is characterized, at the economic level, by the withdrawal from general circulation of more or less significant quantities of libido. On the dynamic level it is marked by the absence of mobility of the drive in question. On the topographical level, the connection is inscribed in the unconscious.

In Freud's work, the idea of fixation is theoretically associated with four other notions: traumatism, regression, repression, and predisposition. These form the successive stages of Freud's elaboration of the concept of fixation.

The notion of fixation first appeared in a context, which would later turn up again, that is associated with Freud's first work on the psychoneuroses of defense around the time of the Studies on Hysteria (1895d): "The traumatic neuroses give a clear indication that a fixation to the moment of the traumatic accident lies at their root" (1916-17a, p. 274). The fixation to the trauma accounts for the neurotic disorder and for the patient's inability to master the affect contained in the traumatic events. Thus the first version of fixation is dominated by the economic dimension.

The notion of fixation next appeared in the Three Essays (1905d): "[W]e propose to describe the lagging behind of a part trend at an earlier stage as a fixation—a fixation, that is, of the [drive]. . . . [T]he portions which have proceeded further may also easily return retrogressively to one of these earlier stages—what we describe as regression" (p. 340).

In the Freudian conception of infantile sexuality, the sexual function develops according to a graduated rhythm. A partial drive may either pursue a development that achieves the ability to organize freely circulating energy under the aegis of the oedipal genital structures, or stop at some point along the way, lagging behind by fixing upon an earlier stage of sexual development or a primitive object of satisfaction. In clinical work, perversions, just like neurotic symptoms, are evidence of libidinal vestiges from the past.

Fixation appeared in a third context in regard to the case of Daniel Paul Schreber: "The libidinal current in question then behaves in relation to later psychological structures like one belonging to the system of the unconscious, like one that is repressed" (1911c, p. 66). For Freud, in fact, the psychical representatives of component drives are made the object of a fixation that then falls under repression. Similarly, in the formation of symptoms the return of the repressed goes back to the very point of fixation to which the libido has regressed.

Finally, the notion of fixation is associated, in Freud's teaching, with that of sexual constitution insofar as it brings together the various ways in which the different components of the libido are inscribed in the early stages of its development. Fixation thus represents predisposition as a factor in the etiology of neuroses.

The notion of fixation can be found in other currents of psychoanalytic thought, particularly in that of Pierre Marty, whose work represents an original contribution to the concept. For him, the fixation-regression system forms the basis of any functional organization and has a field of influence that stretches from mental to somatic functions. In the course of any psychosomatic disturbance, the presence of fixations, whether psychical or somatic, constitute the stopping points of a counter-developmental current, points from which a psychosomatic reorganization can take place. According to this point of view, the fixation-regression system represents the set of defensive capacities in the development of each individual.

Bibliography

Freud, Sigmund. (1905d). Three essays on the theory of sexuality. SE, 7: 123-243.

——. (1911c). Psycho-analytic notes on an autobiographical account of a Case of paranoia (dementia paranoides). SE, 12: 1-82.

——. (1916-17a). Introductory lectures on psychoanalysis. SE, 15-16.

Freud, Sigmund, and Breuer, Josef. (1895d) Studies in hysteria. SE,2.

Further Reading

Greenacre, Phyllis. (1960). Regression and fixation. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 8, 703-723.

Nagera, Humberto. (1964). On arrest in development, fixation, and regression. Psychoanalytic Study of the Child, 19, 222-239.

—CLAUDE SMADJA

1. the act or operation of holding, suturing or fastening in a fixed position, e.g. in orthopedic surgery.
2. the condition of being held in a fixed position.
3. in microscopy, the treatment of material so that its structure can be examined in detail with minimal alteration from the normal state, and also to provide information concerning the chemical properties (as of cell constituents) by interpretation of fixation reactions.
4. in chemistry, the process whereby a substance is removed from the gaseous or solution phase and localized.
5. in film processing, the chemical removal of all undeveloped salts of the film emulsion, as on x-ray films.
6. in genetic terms means the attainment, by selection, of homozygosity in a population with respect to one or more favorable genes.

• bilateral-bipolar f. (Type III) — a combination of Type II and Type I with three connecting bars on three planes.
• bilateral-unipolar f. (Type II) — full pins are applied to fracture fragments and connected on both sides so it can only be used on the radius or tibia.
• circular external skeletal f. — see ilizarov external ring skeletal fixation.
• complement f., f. of complement — see complement fixation tests.
• external skeletal f. — a method of immobilizing fracture fragments using percutaneous pins that penetrate the bone and are stabilized, one to the other, by one or more external connecting rods.

  External fixation. By permission from Slatter D, Textbook of Small Animal Surgery, Saunders, 2002

• unilateral-bipolar f. (Type 1b) — usually applied to the radius or tibia; half pins and connectors are placed in two planes.
• unilateral-unipolar f. (Type 1a) — half pins and external connector are placed usually on the medial radius and tibia and the lateral femur or humerus.

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Dansk (Danish)
n. - fiksering, binding, præparering

Nederlands (Dutch)
het staren naar, fixatie (psychologie), obsessie, onveranderlijk gedrag, het tot vaste stof omvormen, het mengen van gas met een vaste stof

Français (French)
n. - (gén, Psych) fixation

Deutsch (German)
n. - Fixierung

Ελληνική (Greek)
n. - έμμονη ιδέα, μονομανία, στερέωση, (ψυχολ.) (αρνητική) καθήλωση, συναισθηματική προσκόλληση

Italiano (Italian)
fissazione

Português (Portuguese)
n. - obsessão (f)

Русский (Russian)
фиксирование, комплекс, мания, нездоровый интерес

Español (Spanish)
n. - idea fija, obsesión

Svenska (Swedish)
n. - fästande, fastställande, fixation (kem.), stadighet, fixering (psykol.)

中文（简体）(Chinese (Simplified))
定置, 定色, 固定

中文（繁體）(Chinese (Traditional))
n. - 定置, 定色, 固定

한국어 (Korean)
n. - 고정 , 정착

日本語 (Japanese)
n. - 固定, 定着, 固着, 執着

العربيه (Arabic)
‏(الاسم) تثبيت , ترسيخ , تعلق أو ولع مرضي‏

עברית (Hebrew)
n. - ‮קיבוע, קיבעון, מקבע, ייצוב, היצמדות, נעיצת מבט, הפיכה למוצק‬

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