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The compulsive desire to purchase or acquire rises out of an intrapsychic need for nurturing from the external world. The compulsive female shopper exhibits a form of self-nurturing operative on the utilization of an external, nonparental, nonpartner-related object bought for internal gratification. Curiously, this object is extracted from the external world of civilization, and when viewed as an extension of nature, becomes the very domain that is precisely representative of the father figure. Freud (1928) has seen in human's fearing the external world of nature a continuation of an infantile prototype reminiscent of the state of helplessness the child feels in relation to his parents, particularly the father (pp. 27-29). The purchased object may in this way be viewed as a substitute for human stroking, especially fatherly stroking, or more importantly, gaining something from the father, a theme to which this paper will return.
Compulsive desire for the purchased object is a symptom well worth noting; it may fulfill or answer the demand for proof of love. The unconscious dialectic speaks the following assumption: I have given myself something; therefore, I must be a good person and worthy of love. In another perspective, the desire for the purchased object may be symptomatic and traceable to the substitution and manifestation of an original conflict that was trauma provoking. Desire for an object comes before the acquisition and must be established as something separate. The acquisition is symptomatically symbolic of filling a space or of giving the sense of fullness to an otherwise existent void within the individual; the desire is reflective of need. That which is purchased, however, usually affords only transient satisfactions that momentarily stimulate the pleasure principle and encourage the compulsivity to purchase again and again. Freud writes, “We are so made that we can derive intense enjoyment only from a contrast and very little from a state of things” (p