III
What are the economics of the Libido (pt 3)
mental bisexuality
What is narcissism (pt. 2) narcissism and
echoism
In the first section I examined Freud’s
most general use of eros and the death drive as related to following different
ideals that provide different paths to happiness and ultimately the fears that
lead to destructive drives and superego self-punishments becoming activated. In
the second section, I investigated Freud’s developmental scheme based upon
different forms of power within religious and nationalistic world-views.
However, Freud’s analysis was clearly one-sided and examined power on an
egoistic basis that was most visible in narcissism (i.e. from megalomania, to
grandiosity, to social narcissism in belonging to the superior group). In this
section I’ll investigate an altruistic and feminine position to contrast to the
egoistic and masculine position that is located in Freud’s conception of
bisexuality. Ultimately, I’m building a groundwork to give a complimentary set
of ego ideals to those of perfection already established. Based upon the
active-egoistic- masculine and passive-altruistic-feminine poles of the
personality I’ll be able to give concrete examples of id object choices and
offer a solution to the gratification that fuels the ego ideal (since
subjective omnipotence isn’t primary).
Freud has always emphasized the importance
of bisexuality from the beginning of psychoanalysis
to his last writings. However, by his last writings he lost his confidence to
determine what mental masculinity and femininity consisted of, compared to his
earlier writings. Although he
maintained its importance it became a very generic formula:
We are accustomed to say that every
human being displays both male and female instinctual impulses, needs
and attributes; but though anatomy, it is true, can point out the characteristic
of maleness and femaleness, psychology cannot. For psychology the contrast
between the sexes fades away into one between activity and passivity… (Freud,
Civilization, p. 105).
Freud’s use of activity and passivity isn’t
simply one of expending a lot of energy vs. waiting for the other to do so.
Rather, a good example is found in his contrast of egoism and altruism,
because, one can expend a lot of energy in altruistic behaviour but in contrast
to egoism it isn’t for personal power or recognition. The section in The Introductory Lectures in which Freud
contrasts the activity of egoism with the passivity of altruism will be the
basis for a few corrections of his position so I will quote it in length:
This is the place for two remarks. First,
how do we differentiate between the concepts of narcissism and egoism? Well,
narcissism, I believe, is the libidinal
complement to egoism. When we speak of egoism, we have in view only the
individual's advantage; when we talk of narcissism we are also taking his libidinal
satisfaction into account. As practical motives the two can be traced
separately for quite a distance. It is possible to be absolutely egoistic and
yet maintain powerful object-cathexes, in so far as libidinal satisfaction in
relation to the object forms part of the ego's needs. In that case, egoism will
see to it that striving for the object involves no damage to the ego. It is
possible to be egoistic and at the same time to be excessively
narcissistic—that is to say, to have very
little need for an object, whether, once more, for the purpose of direct sexual satisfaction, or in connection with
the higher aspirations, derived from sexual need, which we are occasionally in
the habit of contrasting with ‘sensuality’ under the name of ‘love’. In all
these connections egoism is what is self-evident and constant, while narcissism
is the variable element. The opposite to egoism, altruism, does not, as a concept, coincide with libidinal
object-cathexis, but is distinguished from it by the absence of longings for
sexual satisfaction. When someone is completely in love, however, altruism
converges with libidinal object-cathexis. As a rule the sexual object attracts
a portion of the ego's narcissism to itself, and this becomes noticeable as
what is known as the ‘sexual overvaluation’ of the object. If in addition there
is an altruistic transposition of egoism
on to the sexual object, the object becomes supremely powerful; it has, as
it were, absorbed the ego. (Introductory Lectures, p.417-8, emphasis mine)
In this passage Freud contrasts egoism and
altruism as active and passive ego drives, that, in the structural system,
would be two forms of ego ideals. He also gives us two forms of relation to the
sexual object that reflect the active and passive stance. The passive altruist
is able to enter into a sexual relationship by having love for the object while
in contrast the active egoist has an interest in either ‘direct sexual
satisfaction’ with the object or love coming from ‘aim-inhibited’ sexuality.
In the last section I mentioned the subject
supposed to lead and the ego ideal projected on to the group leader. It’s
apparent that Freud saw love appear as ‘aim-inhibited’ sexual possession for
the father enter into the active egoistic position at this stage and that it is
ultimately responsible for conscience qua remorse.
Freud writes:
“This remorse was the result of the
primordial ambivalence of feeling towards the father. His sons
hated him, but they loved him, too. After their hatred had been satisfied by
their act of aggression, their love came to the fore in their
remorse for the deed. It set up
the super-ego by identification with the father; it
gave that agency the father's power, as though as
a punishment for the deed of aggression they had carried
out against him, and it created the restrictions which were intended to prevent
a repetition of the deed” (Freud, Civilization, p.132).
Sexuality and wanting to ‘possess’ the
sexual object has existed in the beginning but love (aim-inhibited sexuality) in
the active egoist enters late in development.
The public (ego ideal) and private (sexual
object) relationships ultimately form two poles in the personality that I will
argue are active-egoistic-masculine and passive-altruistic-feminine. The former
concerns: “preservation, assertion, and magnification of the individual” in ego
ideal and possession of the sexual object in the sexual relationship until the
Oedipus complex (Freud, NIL, p. 96). In the second pole the ego ideal and
sexual relationship is based upon “love for
parents and children, friendship and love for humanity in general,
and also devotion to concrete objects and to abstract ideas” (Freud,
Group Psychology, p. 90).
Freud derives narcissism from a suppression of the sexual drive (or its aim-inhibited
aspect) while deriving ‘fascination’ or ‘bondage’ in the love relationship by a
suppression or ‘transposition’ of egoism. I believe that there is a strong case
to be made that narcissism should be seen as a ‘transposition’ of altruism just
as the ‘supremely powerful’ object of bondage is derived from a transposition
of egoism. But, first I feel the need to more fully explicate the two poles and
explain why it is that Freud wouldn’t have done that himself.
Freud also expands on these active-masculine
vs. passive-feminine positions of competition with others (egoism) and pleasure
in the happiness of others (altruism) by relating the former to the instinct of
mastery and the latter to the instinct of mimicry. Freud relates mastery to the
active position in the Three Essays
(p. 198) and Ives Hendrick takes it up as the ‘work principle’ and “primary pleasure in effective integrated
performance” in several important articles
(Early
Development of the Ego: Identification in Infancy, Work and Pleasure Principle,
The Discussion of the Instinct to Master). Although the relation to the
caregiver is necessary for the ego to be derived from the id, the child also
interacts with the environment around the caregiver in a way that isn’t just
about self-preservation.
There must be a pleasure in this and if it is part of the masculine or active
development then it makes sense to follow Hendrick and talk of pleasure here
which isn’t from a sexual source (i.e. pleasure in power or control). I will
discuss this more later when I re-interpret the infantile omnipotence fueling
the ego ideal.
The link of the instinct of mimicry to the
object instincts comes from Freud’s linkage of hysteria to the production of
art in Totem and Taboo (p. 73). He
contrasts the representation of feelings in art with the philosopher’s
metaphysical system that is comparable to the delusional system of the
paranoiac and the working through of guilt in the compulsive character with
religious ‘ceremonials’. Hysteria is found predominately in women, although
there are male hysterics and so this should grant an insight into the
passive-feminine position. In a letter to Ferenczi Freud links production of
art to an instinct of mimicry and also goes into detail about its role in
humour, caricature, parody, and travesty in
Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious (Jokes, p. 200).
I believe it is important to point out that
many people make the error of considering
‘ego functions’ to be related to matters of IQ in spatial intelligence,
logic and arithmetic, and general systematizing. However, the ego is also
related to ‘inner perception’ and the quality of feeling our emotions, ideals,
pleasure, pain, (etc.). Along with IQ there is EQ and the ability, through
mimicry, to intuit the feelings of others by our bodies’ resonance with their
body (‘the look’ in their eyes and face or tone to their voice). This instinct
goes further than just intuiting the emotions of others and can be expanded to
intuit colours and forms found in nature and made in art, the humour Freud
pointed to, the management of knowing what types of people (i.e characters) can
and can’t work together, (etc). Early female analysts such as Helene Deutsch
defined the passive of the active-passive binary as “an activity directed
inward” and saw those of a predominately passive-feminine type as “absolutely
independent in such thinking and feeling as relates to their inner life[;]…
their capacity for identification [mimicry] is not an expression of inner
poverty but of inner wealth” (Deutsch, The
Psychology of Women, Vol 1. p.196). In contrast, she writes of the
“masculinized” or active woman who no longer “draws her wisdom from the deep
sources of intuition,” who has a “strictly objective approach,” and whose
“warm, intuitive knowledge has yielded to cold unproductive thinking (ibid., p.298).
It’s also important to note that someone
can have emotional intuition without being altruistic and that someone can
obsessionally systematize without being egoistic. Not only can someone have
early fixations on the passive-feminine side and later fixations on their
active-masculine side but passive feelings of devotion can be defended against
and have the appearance of egoism.
Seeing how dynamic the mind can be it’s easy to understand how many people give
up trying to sort out the active and passive poles and prefer to make
everything about power or aggression alone or simply claim that character
(personality disorder) is a useless concept. On the other hand, sometimes it
seems to me that it isn’t worth very much to say that people tend to be
egoistic and others tend to be altruistic, that some have more IQ or EQ, or a
mixture of the two. I feel like I’m stating something very obvious to a person
with good judgment.
However, it’s clear that even someone with
emotional intuition has blind spots. People tend to believe the rest of the world to be
like them. An egoist will say that women are only attracted to buff men, men
with money, or some form of power, while an altruist will imagine she can
change her ‘bad boy’ boyfriend and bring out the good in him. Leaving romantic
relationships aside, at heart, I believe these two basic positions can be seen
in the liberal and conservative political stances. They are based upon whether
a person believes others are fundamentally good, deserve social assistance, and
marginalized groups should be included or that others are fundamentally bad,
and that other people and outsider groups should help themselves, and shouldn’t
impinge on the individual’s (economic) freedom. In conversations with many
liberals they seem to think that ‘deep down’ others really care and many
conservatives believe that love and altruism can only exist in the family or,
if they exist outside of it, are too weak in individuals to trust their
influence on their motivations. This isn’t to say that everyone who is liberal
has a passive-feminine structure because there are later identifications with
the parents (in politics, religion, etc.) and various forms of reaction against
authority and even rationally self-interested reasons one can have to vote
liberal. Similarly, not every liberal politician is primarily a
passive-altruist. Rather, my point here is just an attempt to notice that
certain motivations in individuals can be seen in the behaviours of groups and
because of their size and relevance it might be easier to see these trends in
them than in individuals.
One would hope that those who study the
science of the mind would appreciate these two poles.
However, it often seems like those who explicitly recognize them and give them
central consideration have to leave the psychoanalytic community or are
marginalized in it. For example, Sydney Blatt gives a very impressive review of
the literature on these ideas that lists Karen Horney, Heinz Kohut, and Otto
Rank, all who wrote about self and other directedness or power being in the
self or other (Blatt, Contributions of
Psychoanalysis to the Understanding and Treatment of Depression, p. 725). Although these people certainly introduced other ideas that might
have caused them problems with they psychoanalytic orthodoxy, I think it’s
important to note that Blatt himself is numbered among a small group of
analysts who seem to emphasize the fundamental nature of self-definition vs.
relatedness, or self as agent vs. self in relation, which place egoism and love
in a broader framework.
Additionally, Melanie Klein goes very far in spelling out the passive-feminine
position in saying “the tendency to make reparation ultimately derives from the
life instinct”, (Envy and Gratitude, p. 75).
Even though her two positions of greed and envy vs. gratitude and reparation as
well as persecutory anxiety and depressive anxiety could very clearly align
with the competitive-egoism and loving-altruism Klein did little to link her
work to Freud’s mental bisexuality and the characterlogical implications have
been largely ignored.
Traditionally, the poles of ‘egoism and
altruism’ place men as logical, and competitive and women as empathic and
loving. Again, we can assume that this folk-wisdom is noting an emphasis or
tendency and this is by no means universal. There are many men who are
altruistic or have hysterical disorders and many women who are egoistic and
have compulsive or obsessional disorders. So the problem that Freud had with
mental bisexuality, as far as I can tell, stems from his claim that men are the
ones who usually love and idealize the beloved. For Freud, true women love
“only themselves,” although they want to feel like a man desires them, and if
they can be said to love a man it is because they love him as what they would
like to be- in a narcissistic way (Freud, On Narcissism, p. 88-90). It
shouldn’t be forgotten that along with this he said that women are the sex more
prone to polymorphic perversions, have a moral deficiency when compared with
men, and that while competitiveness with the analyst is the characterological
bedrock of the man, depression at the lack of a penis is woman’s deepest
character trait. However,
Freud, as he should, contradicts himself here by contrasting the man’s
castration anxiety with the woman’s fear of loss of love (ISA, p. 143) and in
comparing being in love with hypnotism he mentions the masochistic trend
involved (Three Essays, p. 150) and he clearly identifies masochism as a
feminine trait (The Economic Problem of Masochism, p. 162). Moreover, Freud
uses melancholia as an example of
‘a pure culture’ of the death instinct and this illness, which is
characterized by an excessively cruel superego, is predominately found in
women. Furthermore, the heights of morality in doctrines ‘to turn the other
cheek’ and ‘love one’s enemies’ is associated with moral masochism and again,
Freud clearly identifies masochism as feminine.
Before I go on to examine more of Freud’s
statement on mental bisexuality I’d like to both deal with my anxiety of saying
something trite in contrasting competitive and loving trends in people and give
Freud’s remark on narcissistic object choice its due. It seems clear to me that
as much as a person can be narcissistic about their physical and/or
intellectual potency he can also be narcissistic about his ‘looks’ or
attractiveness. Considering the activity that could go into the former we could
differentiate a subject egoist, while the latter could be termed an object
egoist. The object egoist tries to make herself the object of the subject whose
potency reflects the potency of her beauty. This conserves some of the insight
of Freud’s remarks on the narcissism of women but allows for a completely different
stance to emerge from the altruistic pole. In this pole, we can identify
feminine masochism in the fascination with the object that can turn into a
willingness to endure denigrating requests from the beloved and entail
self-sacrifice and servility. In addition, we can point to someone who
masochistically needs the approval of others and suffers when he’s not liked.
Thus we can have a subject altruist who risks emotional investment in love and
an object altruist who desires to ‘be loved’ by the subject.
If the two subject positions can be
captured by the two political stances, the two object positions can be captured
by the two major appeals of magazines and entertainment coverage in the media.
The object egoist is concerned with beauty and being the cause of desire to the
subject and entertainment has always been filled with people more known for
their beauty than for their talent. The object masochist is concerned with what
can be called personality and whether it’s through humour, charisma, or the
ability to inspire others there are many entertainers who similarly lack talent
in the diversity of their art (i.e. play the same role in acting or re-write
the same song in music). They succeed because they cause delight in others more
than their talent to really represent different feelings. These subject and
object differences will be explored more in the next section.
Now that I’ve widened the two poles by
giving them a subject and object position, I’d like to be thorough and look at
Freud’s statements about mental bisexuality in order support calling them
masculine and feminine. Firstly, Freud’s hesitation about employing the terms
masculine and feminine stem from two major sources. In the first, Freud makes
the salient point that it is sometimes females who are the more active in other
species and so penis and activity aren’t necessary a law of nature (NIL,
p.114). However, he also makes the point that it is the musculature which is
linked to the instinct for mastery and the destructive drive and in humans the
male, on average, has more developed musculature than women (Three Essays p.198-9,
The Ego and the Id. p.41). So,
while sex and the active position aren’t linked in all species, there is a link
in the human species that allows us to equate masculine and activity and is no
doubt responsible for the popular notions, folk and religious wisdom on the
subject (i.e. yin and yang in Taoism). To be clear, this doesn’t mean that a
muscular man necessarily has more active than passive traits. Although everyone
dynamically goes through stages of development in a bisexual way what is
important for the economics of the libido are the fixations one has. We have
all met tall and muscular men who are ‘teddy bears’ and thin, aggressive, and
mean women.
The next problem is
dual in nature. On one hand Freud mentions that we can’t underestimate the role
played by culture and, on the other, that he has been unable to link
bisexuality to the instincts
.
Regarding the former, it is not a problem for someone with good EQ to make the
distinction between whether a waitress is being ‘fake nice’ to get tips vs.
whether she seems genuinely nice and interested in other people
.
Those with good judgment will know that an action comes from genuine feeling in
the person and this feeling is difficult to fake. Moreover, social custom won’t
change someone’s basic character structure. A culture might emphasize learning
mathematics and logic and grant economic emphasis to the ideal through
secondary identifications with parents and teachers but the primary
identifications (‘instinctual renunciations’) that form the ego ideal are
decisive in feeling this ideal to be the fibre of one’s being. Schizoid and
autistic characters will generally be the people who are creative and innovative
in this field
.
Furthermore, some active-masculine woman who couldn’t work or go to school in
Freud’s day still self-educated or found opportunities to engage in competition
through their husbands even though this went against culturally constructed
identities for women. Culture is important for giving the ego ideals of
perfection their content but character is deep and foundational to what ego
ideals are important and what emotions and fears one has.
Regarding the linking
of instincts to bisexuality Freud seems to contradict himself. Either he is
troubled because his view on love (anaclitic object choice) being predominately
masculine means that men are more competitive, more able to sublimate, more
moral, and more loving than women, or he might be using instinct in a more
narrow way. By this I mean that when Freud introduced the structural model he
saw the superego as taking over the ego and object drives from the middle
period. He saw the superego as extending into the oral stage and attributed ego
ideals to higher animals
.
If we see the structural model as supplanting the ego and object instincts of
the middle period then the instincts to which Freud refers are the partial
instincts that are instantiations of either destruction or eros
.
Thus, fixations of a destructive reaction can occur at various levels of
ontogenetic development and would reference both the child’s bodily control and
his cognitive ability to take the other as an object at that level. Examples of
destructive drives, essentially the child’s hate, would be cannibalism,
swallowing, mutilation or dismemberment, killing, murderous thoughts, wanting
to ruin another’s reputation, social humiliation of another, (etc.). At an
early level of development the child wants to destroy the frustrating object
while at a higher level the child can be aware that another person has an image
ego, with an ego ideal to be seen by others as powerful, and he can want to
sadistically cause the other person to fail or ‘lose face’. The child would
have knowledge of the ideal because he has a similar one and knows the pain of
failing it himself. Regarding Eros, Freud talks of instincts
of both an “affectionate and of a hostile and aggressive nature”
(Nil, p. 120). In an earlier work
Freud differentiates between the sensual current, which would be the genital
sexuality that both the active-egoist and passive altruist experience later in
development and the affectionate current that would belong to the eros of the
altruist:
The affectionate current is the
older of the two. It springs from the earliest years of childhood; it is
formed on the basis of the interests of the self-preservative
instinct and is directed to the members of the family and those
who look after the child. From the very beginning it carries
along with it contributions from the sexual instincts—components of erotic
interest—which can already be seen more or less clearly even
in childhood and in any event are uncovered in neurotics
by psycho-analysis later on. It corresponds to the child's primary object-choice.
We learn in this way that the
sexual instincts find their first objects by attaching themselves to
the valuations made by the ego-instincts, precisely in the way in
which the first sexual satisfactions are experienced in attachment to
the bodily functions necessary for the preservation of life (Freud, On the
Universal Tendency, p.180-1).
Freud differentiates between sexual
instincts that attach to the valuations made by the ego instincts and are
manifested as affection, and sexual satisfactions in bodily zones. I’ll discuss
the later shortly, but for now it is apparent that the affectionate instincts
that eventually become linked to the sensual current in genitality are little
discussed in psychoanalysis compared to the body zones. I understand these
affectionate partial-drives to manifest in instincts of longing: longing to
suck something, to be held, for skin to be stroked, to be near someone else, to
bask in another’s presence, to have someone do something for you, to have a
baby, (etc). In Beyond the Pleasure
Principle Freud mentions the mixture of the destructive drive with
sexuality and writes that “[i]t
might indeed be said that the sadism which has been forced out of the
ego has pointed the way for the libidinal components of the sexual instinct,
and that these follow after it to the object. (BPP, p. 54). If we consider that
the affectionate current is part of a larger trend of eros to idealize the
object, and long for contact with it, then we could similarly say that
affection points the way for sexuality in the passive-feminine pole of the
personality. Therefore, just as sexuality may be mixed with sadism it may also
be mixed with affection. This is borne out in by more recent psychoanalytic
writings on hysterical character who use sexuality for “emotional holding” and
to get affection and closeness from the other (Lionells, Reevaluation of
Hysterical Relatedness, p. 574).
In terms of the economics of the libido destructive or hate reactions towards
the object along with affectionate or longing reaction towards the object be
potentially traumatic and therefore offer ‘fixations,’ or economic
significance, to ego ideals at certain stages.
It’s surprising to me
how much digging I had to do in order to uncover the feminine instincts. In most
cases Freud would prefer to talk about erogenous zones and polymorphus
pleasure, or sexual satisfactions of the body in the child
.
In a population of predominately male analysts the early literature of
psychoanalysis is rife with a ‘one-person model’ of the drives that reduces
eros to its manifestations in the individual’s body.
In
other passages Freud is clear that these impulses of both hate and love are
from the total ego of the individual and directed at the object
(Freud, Instincts, p. 137). Therefore, in this interpretation, when an impulse
for coprophilia (love of feces) or a similar desire for urine, etc. arises
rather than the claim that it is associated with an erogenous zone or is part
of the body we can talk of a displacement of the impulse of the total ego for
an object onto these ‘things’. This keeps with Klein’s findings that feces and
urine can be seen as explosives or poison which obviously must be a
displacement of destructive impulses (Klein, Psychoanalysis of Children, p.236,
337, The Emotional Life of the Infant, p. 63).
As mentioned in the second section, Freud
sees the pleasure involved with the ego ideal as the recovery of the infantile
feelings of omnipotence and since many later analyst agree that that
omnipotence is both defensive and arises later in development than Freud
thought, a new theory of motivation is required. I also believe this is a good
opportunity to set up this new hypothesis to replace Freud’s biological
conception of the death drive, the unity sought in eros, and clarify what he
means by id object choice from the last section. There is a passage in ‘An
Outline of Psychoanalysis’ that illustrates the problems I’ll address in eros
and the death drive:
The aim of the first of these
basic instincts is to establish ever greater unities and to preserve
them thus—in short, to bind together; the aim of the second is, on the
contrary, to undo connections and so to destroy things. In the case of
the destructive instinct we may suppose that its final aim is to lead
what is living into an inorganic state. For this reason we also call it
the death instinct. If we assume that living things came later than
inanimate ones and arose from them, then the death instinct fits in
with the formula we have proposed to the effect that instincts tend
towards a return to an earlier state. In the case of Eros (or
the love instinct) we cannot apply this formula. To do so would
presuppose that living substance was once a unity which had later been torn
apart and was now striving towards re-union [footnote: “Creative writers
have imagined something of the sort, but nothing like it is known to us from
the actual history of living substance”](Freud, An Outline, p. 148-9)
Firstly, Freud makes a basic error in
deriving the death drive from the inorganic origins of life. He conflates the
use conservation, in saying an instinct aims at the repetition of an earlier
state, with the idea that an instinct aims at an earlier state when it had not
in fact experienced the earlier state. Instincts like
cannibalism were actually experienced by a child in its psycho-sexual
development and its ‘primal repression’ (creating a fixation) isn’t so much an
aim to conserve the state so much as the instinct functioning as if the state
had never changed. At least this
is what Freud claims when he says that the unconscious is timeless (The
Unconscious, p. 187, Beyond the Pleasure Principle, p. 28). When inorganic or
inanimate matter becomes animate the previous inanimate state can’t be said to
have been experienced so Freud’s claim of seeking to return to an inorganic
state has no relation to the examples of other drives nor fish seeking spawn in
old waters nor birds migrations because these relate to states that had
previously been experienced (Freud, BPP, p.37). The next issue is that Freud
brings up but dismisses the idea of eros striving for a unity that had once
been experienced but was torn apart. However, this is very strange considering
that Freud stressed that the ego doesn’t exist from birth and ego vs. non-ego
is differentiated later. Since the ego arises later on every individual had to
experience a state in which pleasure was not felt to be bound inside the limits
of the body but that the universe, of which it was a part, was felt to be
pleasurable.
Taking mental bisexuality
into account, some analysts after Freud have linked the ego and object
instincts that were subsumed into the ego ideal/superego as having roots not in
infantile megalomania but rather
traced back the genetic origin of these opposing, active-aggressive and passive-submissive attitudes to different phases in the child's earliest experiences of oral gratification. The
desires either to make the mother part of himself or to become part of her appear, indeed, to be derived
from fantasies of either devouring the love object or being devoured by it (Jacobson, Self and Object World,
p.101)
In early infancy the
differentiation of the ego from the non-ego makes the organism conscious of a
self-representation in the skin-ego (ibid.
p.101). In this separation the child doesn’t let the unity with the mother go
but rather strives to regain the unity by possessing or controlling her or by
making her a part of the self through affection or resonance with her in
phantasy. Thus, the infant doesn’t enjoy subjective feelings of omnipotence but
rather subjective feelings of wholeness or unity and the ego ideal is driven by
future anticipation of re-gaining the mother. To fast-forward for a moment,
these two trends in the phantasy of id-object choice can be seen more clearly
in later development when eros is located in the genitals and ths should help
to consolidate the interpretation of love as passive-feminine.
I had brought up this
contrast in the beginning of the section in regards to the egoist desiring to
possess the sexual object and the altruist being able to take a sexual object
in the state of love. In common language people have always differentiated love
from wanting to possess one’s sexual object. The latter is a relationship of
jealousy in which one wants to be the sole possessor of the sexually desired
object and becomes jealous when the romantic partner might view another as more
potent or desirable. One seeks to control the mental attention of the object so
that he is regarded as the potent object (or ‘the man’) and jealousy can occur
even though the sexual object doesn’t cheat, but is merely seen to admire
another man (Some Neurotic Mechanisms in Jealousy,
Paranoia and Homosexuality). Love, on the other hand, is seeking to erase the
boundary between the beloved and oneself and, as mentioned, it is only in the
state of love that one has access to full sexuality in the passive-feminine
side (as per above quote: Introductory Lectures, p.417-8). The philosopher
Nietzsche articulates this passive love and the prospective comedy in it very
well:
love wants to spare the person to whom it
dedicates itself every feeling of being other, and consequently it is full of
dissimulation and pretense of similarity, it is constantly deceiving and
feigning a sameness which in reality does not exist. And this happens so
instinctively that women in love deny this dissimulation and continual tender
deceit and boldly assert that love makes the same (that is to say, that it
performs a miracle!). – This process is simple when one party lets himself be
loved and does not find it necessary to dissimulate but leave that to the
other, loving party; but there is no more confused or impenetrable spectacle
than that which arises when both parties are passionately in love with one
another and both consequently abandon themselves and want to be the same as one
another... (Nietzsche, Daybreak-211)
The difference between
these two relations between the sex objects is noted by Freud when he mentions
that, “[i]n
women who have had many experiences in love there seems to be no
difficulty in finding vestiges of their object-cathexes in the traits of
their character” (Freud, The Ego and The Id,
p.29). In a person who seeks to be the sole possessor of the sexual object and
experiences jealousy one doesn’t find that they became interested in different
kinds of music, hobbies, etc. as they dated different people- as one would with
the person who loves the sexual object. In this sense Freud is right to say
that love and hate belong to different instincts rather than hating coming from
love. The desire to possess and control is paired with envy and then hate and
the desire for sameness, through affection and resonance, is paired with
feelings of aloneness and then longing. Although, the desire to possess and
resonate with are two forms of eros the contrast between hate and longing is
also a contrast between the death drive and eros. To clear up the confusion it
might be better to use death instincts and life
instincts in regard to the latter.
Now that we’ve
recognized the two poles of mental bisexuality and the nature of the “primary
narcissistic” unity being sought, we can get a better picture of the id-object
choices that are abandoned to form the ego ideal identifications. The id object choice, which eventually becomes located in the
genital functions, and begins when the skin ego separates inside and outside,
has an obvious placement in the oral stage. This is where Freud claimed that
object-cathexis first arose.
The first relations are obvious in the sense that the child seeks the mother’s
physical presence in the desire to control or resonate with her.
However, as cognitive development increases it isn’t the body but the mother’s
attention that is sought.
The clearest examples Freud, along with
Abraham, give of these id object-choices are variations of exhibitionism and
scoptophilia. Exhibition
and scoptophilia represent an attempt to control or resonate with the attention
of the mother instead of her body. From different stages of ego complexity, as
well as the relation to pleasure eventually forming in the genitals, it is
possible to imagine several variations of these object choices. For example,
the child wanting its mothers attention might begin by shouting or exhibiting
his whole naked body. Later this would become more refined so that the child
wants its mothers attention while he is doing something so he can be admired or
have her attention on his genitals. Similarly, scoptophilia might begin with
wanting to hear the mother talk and then later be the desire to hear about the
joys or pleasure in her life so that vicarious pleasure can be attained.
Now that an alternative for primary
narcissism has been put forward and the id object-choices are more intelligible
I will end this section by offering another important consideration in the
economics of the libido. In the second section I introduced Freud’s use of
narcissism as regression or introversion of libido that worked in a vertical
sense of closing down functioning at higher levels of ontogeny to function at
more primitive levels. Here we have a horizontal model based on mental
bisexuality. In the beginning of this section I introduced the opposition of
egoism and altruism and narcissism and the transposition of egoism in fascination
or bondage. I’d like to propose that we consider narcissism as the
transposition of altruism. The symmetry between the two positions is
unmistakable once love is seen as feminine.
Furthermore, I’d like to propose the use of the name of echo from the myth of
narcissus to cover the fascination of the ego transposition since there is a
striking parallel in the myth between both echo and narcissus.
Since there are several stages of
ontogenetic/psycho-sexual development we can talk of narcissism and echoism at
different stages. In the second section I’ve already followed Freud in looking
at some of the forms of narcissism in relation to no power, absolute power,
worldly power, and social power. In relation to echoism the work of Karen
Horney and Jung would be salient. Horney conceives of masochism (echoism) not
as a natural fact but as a transposition that she calls ‘getting rid of the
self’:
There is scarcely any neurosis in which the
tendency to get rid of the self does not appear in a direct form. It may appear
in fantasies of leaving home and becoming a derelict or of losing one’s
identity; in an identification with a person one is reading about; in a
feeling, as one patient put it, of being forlorn amid the darkness and the
waves. The tendency is present in a wish to be hypnotized, in an inclination
toward mysticism, in feelings of unreality, in an inordinate need for sleep, in
the lure of sickness, insanity, death. And as I have mentioned before, in
masochistic fantasies the common denominator is a feeling of being putty in the
master’s hand, of being devoid of all will, of all power, of being absolutely
subjected to another’s domination (Horney, New
Ways in Psychoanalysis, p. 274).
In New
Ways in Psychoanalysis Horney extends the fascination that Freud saw in
relation to someone being part of a morbidly dependent relationship and turned
it into a principle that works through multiple stages of development. In this
way the reality principle and its application in the instinct of mastery and
mimicry are intact throughout all of development and narcissism and echoism are
always defensive maneuvers. Jung had a similar concept in his idea of symbolic
incest that occurred with different symbols that are produced at different
levels of ontogenetic development. In The
Origins and History of Consciousness Erich Neumann criticizes the Freudians
who talk of a natural autistic state and replaces it with the idea of uroboric
incest (the uroboros being the symbol of the serpent eating its own tail and
the ‘round’ shape which autistic children often produce). He goes on to write:
uroboric incest is a form of entry into the
mother, of union with her, and it stands in sharp contrast to other and later
forms of incest. In uroboric incest, the emphasis upon pleasure and love is in
no sense active, it is more a desire to be dissolved and absorbed; passively on
lets onself be taken, sinks into the pleroma, melts away in the ocean of
pleasure- a liebstod. The Great
mother takes the little child back into herself and always over uroboric incest
there stands the isignia of death, signifying final dissolution in union with
the Mother (Neumann, Origins and History
of Consciousness, p. 17).
Both Neumann and Horney see a tendency to
dissolve the ego or that the ego seeks its death not as an appeal to an
ill-conceived biological principle but in relation to separation from the
mother. I take this a further validation of the revised psychoanalytic position
that Jacobson and others have given. Furthermore, this horizontal position of
the economics of the libido is important because it represents that ego ideal
failure whether in success or love can be dealt with by bisexual repression
(repression of the active over the passive or vice versa) rather than
experiencing the tension between the ego and ego ideal in intense states of
active masculine self-hate or inferiority or intense states passive-feminine
aloneness or self-pity. With this groundwork in place I’ll move on to
contrasting the active-masculine ego ideal of perfection with the
passive-feminine ego ideal of love in both the public and private (sexual
object) forms, in the social ontology, and with considerations to the subject
and object positions.
In every normal male or female
individual, traces are found of the apparatus of the opposite sex. These either
persist without function as rudimentary organs or become modified and take on
other functions. These long-familiar facts of anatomy lead us to suppose that
an originally bisexual physical disposition has, in the course of evolution,
become modified into a unisexual one, leaving behind only a few traces of the
sex that has become atrophied (Freud, Three Essays, p. 141).
[I]n human beings pure masculinity or femininity
is not to be found either in a psychological or a biological sense. Every
individual on the contrary displays a mixture of the character-traits belonging
to his own and to the opposite sex; and he shows a combination of activity and
passivity whether or not these last character-traits tally with his biological
ones (ibid., p. 219 footnote).
It is clear that in Greece, where the most masculine men were
numbered among the[m], what excited a man's love was not the masculine
character of a boy, but his physical resemblance to a woman as well as his
feminine mental qualities—his shyness, his modesty and his need for instruction
and assistance (Freud, 3 essays, p. 144).
In such a formulation, the word love
is not defined in an ideal sense, but is equated rather with interest,
attention, sympathy, pity, concern, and endless variations and combinations of
what are generally construed to be the rights of one who is dependent. It
involves apparent submission to the love object. The word 'power', too, does
not reflect constructive mastery or achievement so much as it implies, in this
sense, power to enforce submission from others (Nydes, Schreber, Parricide, and
Paranoid-Masochism, p.210).
It must be remembered that if a child doesn’t have caregivers and
is merely fed by people or raised with animals that it will become a feral
child and won’t develop language and many other cognitive abilities on its own.
The Kleinian school uses the concept of projective identification to understand
this development as mentioned in the last section.
“the peculiar mimicry of the artist
in being able to make his ideas about things similar to them and
then being able to re-create these ideas—back to the outside
world—anew, in the form of words, materials, colors … In the
final analysis, the same roundabout way that is characteristic for the
wish fulfillment of the artist in general” (Freud, The Correspondence of Sigmund Freud
and Sandor Ferenczi Volume 2, 1914-1919, p. 101-2)
For example, Lawerence Josephs shows how the anti-social character
is defending against dependency in Character and Self-Experience (chap 14).
The picture which one derives
from Adler’s system is founded entirely upon
the impulse of aggression. It has no place at all for love.
One might wonder that such a cheerless aspect of life should have received any
notice whatever; but we must not forget that humanity, oppressed by its sexual
needs, is prepared to accept anything, if only the “overcoming
of sexuality” is held out as bait (The History of the Psychoanalytic
Movement, p. 446-7).
One pole consists of the person's most
basic ambitions, goals and self-esteem, which develop out of the
young child's grandiosity and exhibitionism being mirrored
and affirmed. The other pole consists of the person's core values and
guiding principles, which develop out of the young child's idealizing and
feeling merged with the “omnipotence” of the parent. A creative “tension arc”
develops between these two poles, motivating each person to fulfill the unique
potentialities established in the basic design of his or her nuclear self.
Hence, this model suggests an energic flow between two oppositely
charged poles, and underscores a relational matrix of psychic
energy which provides the most basic human motivation. Thus, “the needs
of the self, rather than the demands of the instincts, motivate
inner activity, growth and movement (Kill, Kohut's Psychology of the
Self as Model for Theological Dynamics, p. 20).
Horney talks of the passive-feminine,
compliant or self-effacing trends that "lie in the direction of goodness, sympathy, love, generosity,
unselfishness, humility; while egotism, ambition, callousness,
unscrupulousness, wielding of power are abhorred" (Horney, Neurosis and
Human Growth, p. 54). In contrast the active-masculine or expansive trends take
up those motivations and even when morality (superego qua guilt) limits them,
there is a sense of moral perfection in the individual.
Genital sublimations in the feminine
position are linked with fertility- the power to give life- and thus also with
the re-creation of lost or injured objects. In the male position, the element
of life-giving is reinforced by the phantasies of fertilization and thus
restoring or reviving the injured or destroyed mother. The genital, therefore,
represents not only the organ of procreation but also the means of repairing
and creating anew (Klein, Envy and
Gratitude, p. 82)
In this respect children behave in the same kind of way as an
average uncultivated woman in whom the same polymorphously perverse
disposition persists. Under ordinary conditions she may remain normal sexually,
but if she is led on by a clever seducer she will find every sort
of perversion to her taste, and will retain them as part of her own
sexual activities. Prostitutes exploit the same polymorphous, that is,
infantile, disposition for the purposes of their profession; and, considering
the immense number of women who are prostitutes or who must be
supposed to have an aptitude for prostitution without becoming engaged in it,
it becomes impossible not to recognize that this same disposition to perversions
of every kind is a general and fundamental human characteristic. (3 essays, p.
191)
“Thus masochism, as people say, is truly feminine. But if, as
happens so often, you meet with masochism in men, what is left to you but to
say that these men exhibit very plain feminine traits? (Freud, New Intro
lectures, p.116). Andre Green also contrasts the moral masochism with moral
perfectionism in his essay on Moral Narcissism in On Private Madness that speaks to the active and passive
differences here. Additionally, Hans Sachs contrasts the masculine and feminine
superego in ‘One of the Motive
Factors in the Formation on the Super-Ego in Women’.
Freud points to the object position of the altruist when he writes:
loving—being loved, corresponds exactly to the transformation from activity to
passivity.… according as the object or the subject is replaced by an extraneous
one, what results is the active aim of loving or the passive one of being
loved—the latter remaining near to narcissism. (Instincts and Their
Vicissitudes, p.133)
Freud says that being loved is “near to narcissism” but again one must pay
attention to the phenomenology. Just because a person talks a lot and seems to
draw a lot of attention it doesn’t mean that they are establishing their power
or dominance. Rather, as the object egoist wants to be the cause of desire in the subject, the object masochist wants to the cause of delight in the subject. Here
qualities like charm, endearment, exuberance, or spirituality and depth are in
order. Early analysts like Wilhelm Reich also clearly saw this position at work
in their patients: "his desire to be a child who is loved by everyone-- at the same
time realizing that he himself neither wanted to love nor was able to
love" (Reich,
Character Analysis,
p.113)
The theory of bisexuality is still surrounded by many
obscurities and we cannot but feel it as a serious impediment in psychoanalysis
that it has not yet found any link with the theory of
the instincts. (Civilization, p.105 fn)
But we must beware in this of
underestimating the influence of social customs, which similarly force women
into passive situations. All this is still far from being cleared up. There is
one particularly constant relation between femininity and instinctual life
which we do not want to overlook. The suppression of women's aggressiveness
which is prescribed for them constitutionally and imposed on them socially
favours the development of powerful masochistic impulses, which succeed, as we
know, in binding erotically the destructive trends which have been diverted
inwards. Thus masochism, as people say, is truly feminine. But if, as happens
so often, you meet with masochism in men, what is left to you but to say that
these men exhibit very plain feminine traits? (New Intro lectures, p.115-6).
On a similar note
there are a few people who stand up and sing the national anthem
with pride at sporting events, a majority who go through the motions, a few who
self-consciously don't want to disappoint someone there, and a few who don't
even care to keep up appearances. The same goes with kissing. There
are many people who kiss because it's what they think people should do. There
are some who don't bother to kiss and have no such drive to keep up
appearances. Then there are a few who really have eroticized kissing and get
off on it.
It is further to be noted that intellectual pursuits
as such, whether literary, artistic, scientific, or otherwise, appear to
exercise a special attraction for individuals possessing schizoid
characteristics to one degree or another. Where scientific pursuits are
concerned, the attraction would appear to depend upon the schizoid individual's
attitude of detachment no less than upon his overvaluation of the
thought-processes; for these are both characteristics which readily lend
themselves to capitalization within the field of science. The obsessional
appeal of science, based as this is upon the presence of a compulsive need for
orderly arrangement and meticulous accuracy, has, of course, long been
recognized; but the schizoid appeal is no less definite and demands at least
equal recognition. Finally the statement may be hazarded that a number of
outstanding historical figures lend themselves to the interpretation that they
were either schizoid personalities or schizoid characters; and indeed it would
appear as if it were often such who leave a mark upon the page of history. (Fairbairn,
Psychoanalytic Studies of the Personality, p.6)
This general schematic picture of the psychic apparatus may be
supposed to apply as well to the higher animals which resemble man mentally. A
superego must be presumed to be present wherever, as is the case with man,
there is a long period of dependence in childhood. (Outline, p. 147)
“It is thus possible to distinguish an indeterminate number of
instincts, and in common practice this is in fact done- For us, however, the
important question arises whether it may not be possible to trace all these
numerous instincts back to a few basic ones… after long hesitancies and
vacillations we have decided to assume the existence of only two basic
instincts, Eros and the destructive instinct” (Outline, p.148)
When Freud talks about
instincts in his later works he often puts them together as such collections.
For example, “Among these instinctual wishes are those
of incest, cannibalism and lust for killing” (Future of an
Illusion, p.10)
There is much greater need for touching,
snuggling, and contact than for genital sexuality. The symbiotic nature of the
relationship, which the oral craves and produces, dampens sexual passion… a
symbiotic relationship is a relationship without difference… [there is often]
diminished sexual urge or a sexual urge that disappears once the early
seductive phases of a relationship are passed… commitment equal symbiosis and
symbiosis kills sex (Johnson, Character
Styles, p. 112-3)
These economically significant fixations will be discussed further
in section IV.
We might at a pinch say of
an instinct that it ‘loves’ the objects towards which it strives for
purposes of satisfaction; but to say that an instinct ‘hates’ an
object strikes us as odd. Thus we become aware that the
attitudes of love and hate cannot be made use of for
the relations of instincts to their objects, but are reserved
for the relations of the total ego to objects. (Instincts, p.137)
“The object of the scopophillic
drive… is not the eye itself; and in sadism the organic source, which is
probably the muscular apparatus… points unequivocally at an object other than
itself “ (Instincts and their Vicissitudes, p.132).
Freud relates primal repression as “fixation[:]… one instinct or
instinctual component fails to accompany the rest along the anticipated normal
development path… then behaves in relation to the system of the unconscious,
like one that is repressed” (Freud, Psycho-Analytic
Notes on an Autobiographical Account of a Case of Paranoia
, p. 67)
Freud even seems to have a sense for two different relations to the
breast:
It [identification] behaves like a
derivative of the first, oral phase of the organization of the libido, in which the object that we long
for and prize is assimilated by
eating and is in that way annihilated as such. The cannibal, as we know, has
remained at this standpoint; he has a devouring affection for his enemies and only
devours people of whom he is fond (Group Psychology, p. 105).
Freud notes that these two instincts exist already at the anal
stage:
During this phase what stand in
the forefront are not the genital component instincts but the
sadistic and anal ones. The contrast between ‘masculine’ and
‘feminine’ plays no part here as yet. Its place is taken by the contrast
between ‘active’ and ‘passive’, which may be described as a precursor of the
sexual polarity and which later on is soldered to that polarity. What appears
to us as masculine in the activities of this phase, when we look at
it from the point of view of the genital phase, turns out to be an
expression of an instinct for mastery which easily passes over into
cruelty. Trends with a passive aim are attached to
the erotogenic zone of the anal orifice, which is very
important at this period. The instincts for looking and for gaining
knowledge [the scopophilic and epistemophilic instincts] are powerfully at
work; the genitals actually play a part in sexual life only as organs for the
excretion of urine. The component instincts of this phase are
not without objects, but those objects do not necessarily converge into a
single object (Introductory lectures, 327).
The most pronounced case was that of an
obsessional neurotic with very severe compulsive brooding.
The repression of scoptophilia had led to the most bizarre
obsessional symptoms: for instance, brooding about the appearance of
invisible things (what the conscious and the
unconscious looked like in the brain, what his neurosis looked
like, etc. etc.; he wanted to see everything. Might not the biblical
prohibition of worshipping God as an image be connected with the
repression of scoptophilia? Looking on God is in fact punished with death
or blindness (Letter from Karl Abraham
to Sigmund Freud, March 3, 1913, p. 179).
Again, there are some psychoanalysts who have held this view.
Notably, Edith Jacobson, has similar findings: “In fact, extreme
idealization of women, which Freud considers a characteristically masculine
attitude, can in my experience be observed more frequently in men who have
strong, unconscious female identifications”. (The Self and the Object World,
p.120).
Once again, love is feminine up to the
appearance of aim-inhibited love in the Oedipus complex appears in the
active-masculine pole. Formerly only possession or control of the object was
desired.
The problem with keeping the word masochism, just like using sadism
to talk about the destructive instinct, and, really, even egoism and altruism,
is that the words imply a self-consciousness not available at early stages of
development. Freud writes: 'Psychoanalysis
would appear to show that the infliction of pain plays no part among the
original purposive actions of the instinct. A sadistic child takes
no account of whether or not he inflicts pain, nor does he intend to do so
’ (Instincts, p. 128).
