Method
Abstinence
Overview
Abstinence is the practice of self-enforced restraint from indulging in bodily activities that are widely experienced as giving pleasure. Most frequently, the term refers to sexual abstinence, but it can also mean abstinence from alcohol, drugs, food, or other comforts.
Because the regimen is intended to be a conscious act, freely chosen to enhance life, abstinence is sometimes distinguished from the psychological mechanism of repression. The latter is an unconscious state, having unhealthy consequences.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
Found by search and not yet checked by a person; they may only mention the idea in passing.
Where the libido does not become diminished, or the somatic excitement is expended in pollutions, or where it really becomes exhausted in consequence of repulsion, everything else except anxiety neurosis is formed. In this manner abstinence leads to anxiety neurosis. But abstinence is also the active process in the second etiological group of frustrated excitement. The third case, that of the considerate coitus…
Sigmund Freud, Selected papers on hysteria and other psychoneuroses
Names Abstinence several times; states what Abstinence is.
Yet this is not the case, for its pathological power is unimpaired. The remedies are generally not sufficient. The measure of unsatisfied libido which the average human being can stand is limited. The plasticity and freedom of movement of libido is by no means retained to the same extent by all individuals; sublimation can, moreover, never account for more than a certain small fraction of the libido, and finally…
Sigmund Freud, A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis
Names Abstinence several times; opens on Abstinence.
To abstain from pleasure too, to curb and restrain our natural passions for enjoyment, which was the office of temperance, could never be desirable for its own sake. The whole value of this virtue arose from its utility, from its enabling us to postpone the present enjoyment for the sake of a greater to come, or to avoid a greater pain that might ensue from it.
Adam Smith, The Essays of Adam Smith
Close in meaning to Abstinence; the term itself is not named.
Philosophers who discussed Abstinence
Related ideas
- Family
- Ahimsa in Jainism
- Hinduism
- Philosophy
- India
- Jainism
- Pleasure
- Muslims
- Methodism
- Religion
- Protestantism
- Seventh-day Adventist Church
- Sikhs
- Theravada
- Society
- Unconscious mind
- Western Christianity
- Buddhists
- Catholic Church
- Health
- Asceticism
- Drug
Place in the tradition
Part of Lebensphilosophie.