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TYPES OF BOREDOM AND THEIR DYNAMICS. Emanuel Windholz, M.D.
Otto Fenichel described boredom as a state of tension in which the individual is unable to find a substitute satisfaction for a repressed impulse. To clarify the psychology of boredom we should investigate whether 1, there are specific instinctual drives which are responsible, or 2, there are specific types of repression—superego reactions which create tensions of the type observed in the state of boredom. Psychoanalytic investigation suggests that the oral-sadistic and the genital drives are more related to boredom. The combination of the following attitudes of parents or their substitutes seems to favor later development of boredom: (a) seductive attitudes as a reward for the child's willingness to wait and remain in suspense; (b) helplessness in response to the child's aggression. In the cases observed, these attitudes were responsible for either a temporary or a permanent structure of the superego which deprived the ego of its initiative (right) to find substitute satisfactions for repressed impulses (and objects) and yet protected the ego against depression.
We may distinguish at least three types of boredom: 1, the transient or 'normal' boredom, a reaction to external frustration; 2, boredom as a reaction to specific situations which represent temptation for certain repressed (genital) impulses (boredom, for example, which accompanies such phobias as fear of the dark, of being alone, etc.); 3, the habitual boredom of a character neurosis which seems to be based on oral-sadistic conflicts. It represents in a sense the negative of an acting out.