Z's Complex

's Complex : personality disorder in which fetishist aspirations for ambient normality are increasingly warring with strongly-felt, self-destructive, de-socialising impulses used by the patient to create his/her new sphere of singularity. Hübermayer says: "the patient first accumulates as many symbols of social conformity as his/her financial status allow it. A western male with a 's complex will be married to a 'discreet and loving wife', who will give him 'beautiful children'. They will live 'in the countryside, far from the polluted cities'. Both of them will have 'honest jobs with a comfortable income'. They will go on holidays to 'nice and interesting places', will 'invite their friends for lunch or dinner' and so on. Of course, definitions of normality vary according to the place and time and the above examples do not have any general meaning. As the 'objects of normality' become socially conspicuous, the patient starts a slow, gradual refutation process against them. He indulges in public in acts characteristically transgressive. These transgressions are gently ironic at first, then become more and more derisive and aggressive, until violent, destructive outbursts, where the 'objects of normality' are sometimes annihilated, climax the whole process. Fortunately, the most brutal transgressions are often sublimated (particularly into artistic creation). They may also be self-repressed and resorbed through the daily constraints of the normality." According to Hübermayer, 's complex is the main cause for art and crime. He eventually tested his own theory on himself, and after having savagely murdered several members of his family, he was made a permanent guest at a high-security lunatic asylum, where he foot-paints large "lettrist" compositions, all of them devoted to the letter. His psychiatrist colleagues never succeeded in obtaining from him the precise identity of the patient 0, the one who gave his name to the complex described by Hübermeyer.