Aphanisis

In psychoanalytic theory, aphanisis (/əˈfænɪsɪs/; from the Greek ἀφάνισις aphanisis, "disappearance") is the disappearance of sexual desire.

The term was later applied to the disappearance of the subject.

According to the theories of Ernest Jones, who coined the term in 1927, aphanisis is the foundation of all neuroses. Jones suggested that fear of aphanisis was in both sexes more fundamental than castration anxiety, an argument he used against Sigmund Freud in their debate over female sexuality. Jones considered that the Oedipus complex confronted each sex with the threat of aphanisis, and the choice of giving up "either their sex or their incest".

Jones subsequently linked aphanisis to Freud's concept of the trauma of separation, a point taken up by John Bowlby in the context of his own theory of separation anxiety.

Lacan adapted Jones's term to a new meaning: "aphanisis is to be situated in a more radical way at the level at which the subject manifests himself in this movement of disappearance...the fading of the subject".

In Lacanian theory, aphanisis describes the process through which a subject is partially eclipsed behind any signifier used to conceive of him/her: "when the subject appears somewhere as meaning, he is manifested elsewhere as 'fading', as disappearance...aphanisis". The subject as such is, accordingly, barred and riven by the Other (of language), a subject has no choice but to conceive of themself vis-a-vis something other than their self, something 'outside' or radically separated from them.

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