Month: September 2022 (Page 2 of 2)

A working definition
The act or an instance of treating a person as an object or thing.
To be treated as a means to an end or psychologically reduced to less than fully human.
To be given the status of an object.

I would like to define objectification as a behavioural construct supported by psychological process. I will I think need to return to psychoanalytic thought and more specifically, theory surrounding object relations, but for now lets look at the definition in more detail.

Nassbaum gave the following definition of objectification as 7 possible actions:
1. Instrumentality: treating the other as an object/tool in order to meet the objectifier’s purpose.
2. Denial of autonomy: treating others as lacking autonomy or self determination.
3. Inertness: treats others as lacking agency.
4. Fungibility: treats the other as interchangeable with another person or object.
5. Violability:  treats others as lacking in boundary integrity which makes others boundaries permissible to breech or break.
6. Ownership: treats others as property. Or something to be bought or sold.
7. Denial of subjectivity: others thoughts and feelings need not be taken into account, or can be denied.

Ray langton then added 3 more
8. Reduction to body: the reduction of a person to their body or a body part.
9. Reduction to appearance: to be seen only for one’s appearance.
10. Silencing: to not be allowed a voice, opinion or the capacity to speak.

These are the outward signs of objectification as we understand them today, though clearly there is overlap between the different aspects and possibility of two or more to be present concurrently. As such you will find many revisions of definitions if you take time to read about it. Although it is possible to see these in abundance around us, understanding the psychological process which runs underneath each of these behaviours is less well understood and less ob. It is the process I wish to begin discussing here. I am specifically interested in the psychology of objectification and art, This thread of art and objectification will remain central and the psychology essential to its understanding.

I will start with the concept of the Muse.

Following my last post a friend asked me what I mean by contact. I mean it here in the Perlsian sense, from the psychological perspective. As described by Perls, Hefferline and Goodman in “Gestalt Therapy, Excitement and Growth in the Human Personality.” The point at which two things touch describing the interaction of contact boundaries. When two people meet, that boundary can be quite some distance, the distance of a shout for example. Your voice makes contact with my ear drum and my brain recognises it to be yours, then I will react with excitement, either to run or to draw closer. The contact may be physical but there will always be a psychological response to contact. It is this response I am primarily interested in.

The I-thou I mentioned in my previous post describes a rarefied contact, where two beings meet and know each other utterly. It requires we accept the other as they are, no imposition of expectations, no need for the other to be like us or for us to be like them. No requirement to meet the others need or for them to meet ours.

We might also call contact a bright figure arising from the field of our experience. That figure might be internal, a rush of joy, a need to pee, a hunger. Or the figure may arise from outside. Whilst walking a butterfly bursts from a bush I pass, momentarily it takes my full attention, it has become the bright figure in my awareness and I am oblivious to all else. In short I make contact with otherness and I observe myself and other in the same moment.