An attachment of strong,
intense emotional energies to an issue, person, concept, etc., in such a way that one pays special attention to issues surrounding it and one reacts strongly to discussions and changes affecting it. Includes, but is not limited to,
sexual and sublimated
sexual attachments.
The term is psychoanalytic in origin and is widely used in cultural studies.
Right-wingers often have a strong libidinal investment in the idea of authority, so that they experience threats to authority
almost as if they are threatened personally. This
may be due to an Oedipal fixation in which their sense of personal identity fuses with that of the
father, as threatening authority-figure, so as to enable the repression of castration-threat anxiety.