Exhibitionism

Ideas in Psychoanalysis is a series of essays which explain psychoanalytical concepts, their relevance to everyday life and their ability to illuminate the nature of human society and culture.

Everybody wants to be famous for 15 minutes. From Tracey Emin's Bed to Big Brother, exhibiting oneself in public is a mass-market phenomenon.

For Freud exhibitionism is a legacy of infantile sexuality, an essential act in the constitution of (male) self-recognition: look at me - I'm real!

But it is a symptom of neurosis too - a panic attack in the face of identity crisis.