Deprivation

Psychoanalytically, deprivation is the reduced fulfillment of a desire or need that is felt to be essential. Sigmund Freud (1927c) considered deprivation the result of the frustration of a drive that could not be satisfied because of a prohibition, and he was particularly interested in sexual deprivation. Later, psychoanalysis focused on the maternal deprivation caused either by the final or temporary absence of the mother or by her difficulty in providing primary care for the infant—a deprivation likely to have irreversible effects on the...