Morbidity: what is it, why does it occur and when should limits be set?

The word morbid is used very frequently without much thought about its precise meaning. Generally, the morbid is associated with the sexual. Hence the morbid looks and insinuations are mentioned.

However, it is also common for other types of behaviors to be classified as morbid. For example, when someone wants to know in detail about someone’s personal or intimate life. Or when people take too much pleasure in seeing bloody or excessively violent images.

Likewise, this term is also used in the area of ​​medicine. We speak of “morbid” states. By extension, we define morbidity as everything that refers us to mental illness. It is commonly identified with perversion. Now, we must be clear: this is not always the case. The question then is: what is morbidity?

Morbidity, a human reality

Morbidity is one of our basic impulses. It has to do with our instinctive package, the one in which all the fundamental needs such as eating, sleeping, socializing and having sex are also found.

What’s more, studies such as the one carried out at Wake Forest University tell us that interest in the morbid, in that darker side of human behavior, has always been present in our brain.

Morbidity can be defined as the need to see, feel, hear, smell or interact in some way with what is socially classified as prohibited or proscribed. It is, in essence, a force that drives us to come into contact with it and experience pleasure in doing so. The pleasure of transgressing norms or entering the world of taboo.

The ways in which it is expressed are many. Pornography, for example, satisfies curiosity, but also allows us to go “beyond” an ordinary sexual relationship. It attracts because it transgresses the usual limits and that gives it extra pleasure. The key to morbidity is transgression as a source of pleasure.

The characteristics of the morbidity

The dictionary says that morbidity is an obsessive tendency toward what is forbidden.. In principle it is associated with something unhealthy, but also with pleasure, almost always of a sexual nature. However, this must be qualified. Not every morbid impulse is harmful. Sometimes it is simply playful and part of new ways of exploring pleasure.

On the other hand, Psychologists like Carl Jung himself point out that one of our obligations as human beings is to accept our Shadow.. We must accept and bring to light those areas that we keep in the shadows of our personality in order to know ourselves better. Morbidity is part of our Shadow.

What awakens morbidity in people?

What usually arouses morbidity is everything that contains a mystery or projects the idea of ​​the inscrutable.. Under normal conditions, this corresponds to everything that is not normally experienced or that implies a break with what is called “normal.”

In pathological cases, it means attraction to objects prohibited by the norms of kinship, mental health or social order.. These are cases of attraction to family members or children, etc. In these cases the morbidity is located in the realm of perversion.

The forbidden and the desired

Imagination, as we well know, plays a very important role in sexuality. Many times sexual attraction depends not so much on what is seen, but on what is imagined.. What cannot be seen with the naked eye ends up becoming a source of desire.

There are cultures in which women are bare-chested. Seeing them like this does not generate morbidity among those who are part of those communities. However, for someone who belongs to a society where the chest is always covered, the possibility of looking at a breast can be highly arousing.

Much of the world of eroticism is ignited by what is hinted at and not so much by what is offered. Also A good part of the passions increase when they involve crossing some limit. This is how morbidity works.

Healthy morbidity and unhealthy morbidity

In the field of morbidity as in the field of sexuality, in general, Anything that involves agreements between conscious people is valid.. Even if it is something that may be classified as dirty, cruel or bizarre by others. The only condition is that those involved are able to freely accept these practices.

Mario Vargas Llosa says that in the world of eroticism, what challenges prejudices is valid. However, It is not acceptable when it impoverishes the sexual act and those involved in it.. That is, when it transforms into a purely physical reality, devoid of emotions and feelings.

It will also not be permissible when the morbidity is only present in one of those involved. In that case, it is an attempt to reduce the other to the condition of a thing, a medium, an instrument. It’s not appropriate. In such circumstances, the morbidity is located in the range of perversion and becomes highly destructive for those involved.

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