A special kind of choice made by middle aged men: Erotology of noonday demon

Regular Section “Clinical Explorations”
By Yorgos Dimitriadis
English

The French term “noonday demon” demonstrate, among others, the tendency of some middle-aged men to seek a love mate among much younger women than themselves, occasionally abandoning their family life. This tendency has to do not only with the agony for the remaining living time but also with the castration anxiety - that the corporal decay while aging symbolises for them. Above all, though, this encounter of a mature man with the love passion for the youth of a woman (or women) is usually indicative of a narcissistic type object choice as well as man’s fetishistic predisposition regarding their choice of love object. This “nympholepsy” also often constitutes a renegotiation with the “repressed”, the outcome of which varies depending on the case.

Keywords

  • noonday demon
  • women in the bloom of their youth
  • castration anxiety
  • Oedipus
  • narcissistic object-choice
  • fetishism
Go to the article on Cairn-int.info