Dictionary

cathectic en · ADJ

Pronunciation

• /kəˈθɛktɪk/

Etymology

Borrowing from Ancient Greek καθεκτικός (kathektikós, “capable of retaining”)

Meanings

1. Of or pertaining to a connection that is charged with emotional energy.
   • What we are dealing with here is more cathectic energy than the quota of affect as such, but the second is included in the first, as the following quotation shows: 1999, André Green, translated by Alan Sheridan, The Fabric of Affect in the Psychoanalytic Discourse, Psychology Press, page 14:
   • Viewing animals inside an enclosure bounded by barriers agitates many people simply because the perspective seems wrong. This remnant of modernism is perhaps the most cathectic concern and source of the sometimes intense criticism of zoos. 2006, Stephen Spotte, Zoos in Postmodernism, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, page 143:
   • Nowhere is this contestation between purity, pleasure, and danger more clearly expressed than in gnotobiology's most cathectic public image: the boy in the bubble. 2010, Matthew Weinstein, Bodies Out of Control: Rethinking Science Texts, Peter Lang, page 25:

Forms

Deriveds

anticathectic · countercathectic