Portnoy's Complaint (edit title)

Shelfari edited the description of Portnoy's Complaint Saturday, August 1 2009.

• Portnoy's Complaint n. <after Alexander Portnoy (1933-)> A disorder in which strongly-felt ethical and altruistic impulses are perpetually warring with extreme sexual longings, often of a perverse nature. Spievogel says: "Acts of exhibitionism, voyeurism, fetishism, auto-eroticism and oral coitus are plentiful; as a consequence of the patient's "morality," however, neither fantasy nor act issues in genuine sexual gratification, but rather in overriding feelings of shame and the dread of retribution, particularly in the form of castration." (Spielvogel, O. "The Puzzled Penis," Internationale Zeitschrift fur Psychoanalyse , Vol. XXIV p. 909.) It is believed by Spielvogel that many of the symptoms can be traced to the bonds obtaining in the mother-child relationship.

Shelfari edited the contributors of Portnoy's Complaint Wednesday, July 22 2009.

• Added a contributor: Philip Roth: (Primary Author)

Shelfari edited the first sentence of Portnoy's Complaint Friday, July 17 2009.

• She was so deeply imbedded in my consciousness that for the first year of school I seem to have believed that each of my teachers was my mother in disguise.