economics of the libido pt 1.

I've made another update on this and the following post.

They are an attempt of mine to bring together several of my ideas around the focal point of the super ego/ego ideal and within the context of a general economy of the libido.

1. What are the economics of the libido? (pt. 1)

Eros, Phobos, and the death drive (Tartarus)

I’d like to begin from the most general and work to the particular theoretical formulations. In Freud’s late phase he offers us a view of the economy of the libido based upon different individuals who strive for happiness in different ways:

Happiness, in the reduced sense in which we recognize it as possible, is a problem of the economics of the individual's libido. There is no golden rule which applies to everyone: every man must find out for himself in what particular fashion he can be saved. All kinds of different factors will operate to direct his choice. It is a question of how much real satisfaction he can expect to get from the external world, how far he is led to make himself independent of it, and, finally, how much strength he feels he has for altering the world to suit his wishes. In this, his psychical constitution will play a decisive part, irrespectively of the external circumstances. The man who is predominantly erotic will give first preference to his emotional relationships to other people; the narcissistic man, who inclines to be self-sufficient, will seek his main satisfactions in his internal mental processes; the man of action will never give up the external world on which he can try out his strength. As regards the second of these types, the nature of his talents and the amount of instinctual sublimation open to him will decide where he shall locate his interests. Any choice that is pushed to an extreme will be penalized by exposing the individual to the dangers which arise if a technique of living that has been chosen as an exclusive one should prove inadequate. Just as a cautious business-man avoids tying up all his capital in one concern, so, perhaps, worldly wisdom will advise us not to look for the whole of our satisfaction from a single aspiration. Its success is never certain, for that depends on the convergence of many factors, perhaps on none more than on the capacity of the psychical constitution to adapt its function to the environment and then to exploit that environment for a yield of pleasure. A person who is born with a specially unfavourable instinctual constitution, and who has not properly undergone the transformation and rearrangement of his libidinal components which is indispensable for later achievements, will find it hard to obtain happiness from his external situation, especially if he is faced with tasks of some difficulty. As a last technique of living, which will at least bring him substitutive satisfactions, he is offered that of a flight into neurotic illness—a flight which he usually accomplishes when he is still young. The man who sees his pursuit of happiness come to nothing in later years can still find consolation in the yield of pleasure of chronic intoxication; or he can embark on the desperate attempt at rebellion seen in a psychosis. (Freud, Civilization, p.83-4).

In this quotation Freud is merely drawing our attention to the fact that people have characteristic ways of approaching the world and that a person can’t simply change his way. You can’t tell someone whose life is built around finding romantic love that he should stop wasting time and focus on advancing in his career and have some ambition. The nights of studying and working alone to accomplish this aren’t backed up by anticipatory feelings of power- in being able to imagine the admiration or envy others may have. Such a person doesn’t ‘get off’ on dominating others but, rather, might have a wish to find someone who he can idealize, find his happiness in making his significant other happy, and feel his self-worth by being loved in return. In psychoanalytic theory these ideals would be already established in early childhood, although, Freud certainly recognizes the influence culture can have on individuals as well. It is the fashion of the time to see cultural influence as the most important but clearly one can see families in which children are taught the same value system by the parents but have remarkably different ideals and characters[1]. 

By establishing different types of people with different types of ideals in life it is possible to understand Freud’s very general use of Eros. Whether one person is driven by love and sympathy or another by success and power, both, so long as they are working towards these ideals, or temporary feel that they have satisfied their ideals, are ‘drawn on by the eternal feminine’ or led by Eros[2]. This functional sense of the term can be seen when Freud writes that “[s]o long as the ego works in full harmony with the super-ego it is not easy to distinguish between their manifestations” (Freud, An Outline, p. 206). In contrast to this Freud identifies the death drive with the lack of harmony in superego self-punishment (guilt, need for punishment, etc.). I will get into the death drive shortly but for the moment I want to say more about Eros in this sense and how it’s comparable to what Freud in other places calls fate. Freud points out that so long as a person feels that great success or love are expected he can ignore his conscience:

As long as things go well with a man, his conscience is lenient and lets the ego do all sorts of things; but when misfortune befalls him, he searches his soul, acknowledges his sinfulness, heightens the demands of his conscience, imposes abstinences on himself and punishes himself with penances…If a man is unfortunate it means that he is no longer loved by this highest power; and, threatened by such a loss of love, he once more bows to the parental representative in his super-ego [conscience]—a representative whom, in his days of good fortune, he was ready to neglect (Freud, Civilization, p.126-7, emphasis mine)[3].

Freud here is pointing out a dynamic relation one’s ideals and one’s conscience. So long as a person is forward-looking and has hope that he will achieve a great success or love he is able to ‘digest’ his embarrassments, misdeeds, and trespasses against others. This idea can also be understood from another passage where Freud asks us to “[t]hink of the depressing contrast between the radiant intelligence of a healthy child and the feeble intellectual powers of the average adult” (Freud, Future of An Illusion, p.47). Children, adolescents, and adults who haven’t taken “flight” from their ideals have an openness to the world that those who have become neurotic lack. They are still seeking to acquire more knowledge, they are still drawn to mingle with others and find friendship or love, and they still have open eyes and a vibrant health that is not yet lost. Later analysts have gone through pains to spell this state out. For, example Wilhelm Reich has this contrast between what he calls the genital character, or state in which one is capable of a natural ‘self-regulation’ that grants this openness and health, and the neurotic character which has lost it[4]. Fairbairn came to a similar conclusion. He saw a primary object-relatedness in the individual and sought to give this perception prominence by saying that we should consider the reality principle and seeking good associations in work and love, as primary where the pleasure principle of satisfying id desires as a secondary phenomenon (Fairbairn, Psychoanalytic Studies of the Personality, p. 89). For Fairbairn, as well as for Reich, it’s when an ideal of success or love breaks down and movement towards its achievement are impaired that impulsive pleasures, narcissism, masochism, etc. become salient[5].

Recognizing the radiant intelligence and health of children that still seeks union with others gives this definition of eros meaning that might be difficult to swallow for some. It goes far to erase the differences between the mentally ill and the average adult and might invoke an awareness of the health of the body that some find uncomfortable. I will have to leave this matter to the intellectual conscience of my reader, but I’d like to clarify one potential misunderstanding. Children and adolescents can be extremely cruel to others. It would be a gross caricature of Reich and Fairbairn and would miss the point Freud is trying to make about fate and conscience to characterize children as only innocent. In clinging to their ideals of success and love they can have hate for their rivals, deal with loss of self-esteem by making fun of others, as well as experience deep mourning for their disappointments in love. However, it’s precisely these deep feelings that most adults lose and when the secondary drives (Reich)/pleasure principle (Fairbairn) comes into effect, it is seen not when a child, for example, occasionally shows cruelty but rather when cruelty is a constant factor in one’s life. When someone constantly feels irritated or ‘bitchy’ and you can see the lines of this expression etched in his or her face, or when someone is walking around with sad eyes, their posture hunched over, and craving affection- then eros is clearly lost.   

In this model the conflict isn’t between eros and the death drive but rather eros and phobos or fear. Eros is mythologically held to be the brother of phobos. Both are sons of Ares (war, glory, success) and Aprhodite (sex, seduction, love). When Freud contrasts the striving for happiness with the “flight” into neurosis he is in unison with Alfred Adler in seeing neurosis as resulting from a lack of courage. When a person endures too many blows to their pride or disappointments in love he no longer feels that ‘fate’ is on his side. It is this fear of life- to really put oneself out there or risk being hurt- that opposes eros. When phobos is ascendant the energy that would be channeled into one’s ideals becomes re-routed. The ideal is still striven for but the difference is between whole heartedly striving vs. doing it half-heartedly.

At this point the essay will now leave the realm of ‘common sense’ or simple observations of others and enter into the science of psychoanalysis. So far I have used the term ideal and linked it to striving for happiness in a very loose way. I hoped that by asking my reader to reflect on ideals and happiness in the people around her that she might be able to see the difference between eros and phobos than if I began with jargon. Now it’s time to lay out what Freud means by the ego ideal/superego to understand how eros moves to phobos and then onto defusion in the death drive. This is the second dynamic relation of one’s ideals to the superego, but before I get into specifics I will have to introduce some psychoanalytic jargon and get specific.

The first thing that must be understood is that the ego, or cognition, and the ideals are both derived from internalizations of the parents, or, that the mind is formed by the inter-subjective. This is a fact that can be approached through many angles. Freud gives us two examples of how we give up our conscience and self-determination in Group Psychology and Analysis of the Ego. He draws our attention to how in a mob one can commit heinous acts that one’s conscience would usually prohibit alone because the conscience is ‘transferred’ unto the leader. He also brings our attention to hypnotism and how suggestions can be planted in people so that they perform tasks and rationalize their actions as if it was their intention all along. In both cases, the fact that we can have part of our mind taken over by another person betrays that self-determination and conscience first existed as a model outside of oneself and were later internalized and are able to once again return to their primal external state. What is the alternative here? If self-determination or conscience are causa sui (self caused) then the hypnotist and group leader should rightfully be reckoned to possess magical powers (or mana) as different primitive tribes believe. How can they control our mental functions in the way that they can?

Lacan takes this reference to the internalization of an imago of the parents even further and draws our attention to how even simple logic or arithmetic arises from such an internalization. He gives the example of how a simpleton will make a mistake like, “I have three brothers Paul, Ernest, and Me”, as an illustration of how ability to count is a ‘praxis’— something we know how to do, as opposed to something we understand (Lacan, Seminar XI, p. 20). For if it was something we understood and arose from our rational nature or essence how could the simpleton make such a mistake? This understanding of  ‘blindly obeying’ logic or it existing as a praxis is found in the work of Wittgenstein and I’ll refer my reader to his Philosophical Investigations if he or she feels that the human essence is rational.

The inter-subjective view of the development of the mind now leads to the structural model in which we have the id, ego, and superego. Freud, in a brief and clear explanation, wants to separate the conscience and ideals of the superego from the perceptual system and reality-testing of the ego. “The super-ego is the representative for us of every moral restriction, the advocate of a striving towards perfection” he writes, “it is, in short, as much as we have been able to grasp psychologically of what is described as the higher side of human life” (Freud, New Introductory Lectures, p.66-7, emphasis mine). Freud initially called the super-ego the ego ideal when he introduced it in ‘On Narcissism’ before the structural theory was introduced in ‘The Ego and the Id’. However, in his later writings he used the ego ideal to represent the positive aspect of striving for perfection as opposed to the negative aspect of not acting in certain ways[6]. Freud writes:

One more important function remains to be mentioned which we attribute to this super-ego. It is also the vehicle of the ego ideal by which the ego measures itself, which it emulates, and whose demand for ever greater perfection it strives to fulfill. There is no doubt that this ego ideal is the precipitate of the old picture of the parents, the expression of admiration for the perfection which the child then attributed to them (Freud, New Introductory Lectures, p.64-5).

There are two important things that need to be understood in relation to the ego ideal. The first is that there isn’t simply one that corresponds to an identification with the father at the Oedipus complex. Freud frequently uses it as his example but in other places he is clear that there are multiple ego ideals and that they stretch back to childhood[7]. The second is that it is related to a recovery of what Freud calls primary narcissism, or an early feeling of omnipotence, and this contrasts it to the ego very clearly (Freud, On Narcissism, p. 94). The ego is the “seat of anxiety” from which different defences can be enacted and where different pains and fears are remembered and give us the reality principle that modifies the pleasure principle. It is also where identifications in an imitative sense occur[8]. Freud captures this nicely when he contrasts the happiness found in the pleasure principle of the ego to the happiness of ideals. He writes,

[happiness] aims, on one hand, at an absence of pain and unpleasure, and, on the other, at the experiencing of strong feelings of pleasure… [w]hat we call happiness in the strictest sense comes from the (preferably sudden) satisfaction of needs which have been dammed up to a high degree, and it is from its nature only possible as an episodic phenomenon” (Freud, Civilization, p.76).  

Freud introduced these two distinctions to deal with the problem that not every action is accompanied by pleasure even though the ‘pleasure principle’ is supposed to govern all life forms and all operations in them. Happiness, in the positive sense, is instead linked to the sense of the ego experiencing no separation from the ego ideal and resulting in a sense of ‘triumph’ based up regaining the feeling of infantile narcissism or having love returned from an idealized omnipotent object. The pleasure principle, modified by the reality principle, can require that one put up with the ‘unpleasure’ of being thirsty, for example, because of the knowledge that drinking ocean water will make one more dehydrated. The ego ideal, by striving to regain infantile omnipotence, and having a positive form of pleasure (i.e. triumph over others, sweet surrender in love) as its end, is a system that can come into conflict with basic needs and ignore reality principle fears and is thus beyond the pleasure principle.

The nature of this omnipotence and its relation to the death drive will be investigated further in the second and third sections but for now it’s important to understand that the negative and positive form of pleasure aren’t necessarily at odds with one another. A person can force himself to stay up for days working to meet a deadline and push down his needs for sleep, food, etc. but the pleasure principle would return, and some rest would be enjoyed so the body could repair itself. Eros, as I had introduced it earlier, covers the state of the ego ideal and pleasure principle working together. When eros is lost the individual can no longer ‘digest’ or ignore the distance between the ideal and the little he has achieved or how others regard him. This distance from the ideal of perfection is experienced as a tension that causes feelings of inferiority or self-hate or self-contempt. This is the state of phobos that sees that energy that was moving the individual out into the world begin to turn inward and leaves the individual open to narcissistic injuries and disappointments in love. It’s when the ego ideal strives hard to realize a goal only to find that there is little to no pay off- possibly with ridicule or open disinterest of these efforts- that (narcissistic) injuries to pride or disappointments in love can occur.  In contrast to eros and phobos, the superego involves what Freud calls a defusion of the drives when these occur.

Before I investigate this it should be appreciated that the normal conscience is based upon the ‘Talion rule’ (i.e. an eye for an eye) that is a relation to the internalizations of the parental images that constitute the mind. At late stages it will acquire moral content that is culturally specific but in earlier stages of development it is universal. The story here is that the child wants to be close to its caregivers and is utterly weak in comparison to the parents and dependant on them.  Aggression naturally arises as the child’s desire for closeness, attention, or sexuality is denied and Freud makes the point that the aggression

is introjected, internalized; it is, in point of fact, sent back to where it came from—that is, it is directed towards his own ego. There it is taken over by a portion of the ego, which sets itself over against the rest of the ego as super-ego, and which now, in the form of ‘conscience’, is ready to put into action against the ego the same harsh aggressiveness that the ego would have liked to satisfy upon other, extraneous individuals. (Freud, Civilization, p. 123).

Once the id object-choice is given up the child re-constitutes its relationship to the parent by forming an image of perfection that it can strive after[9]. Its primary narcissism is leveraged so that it can only be enjoyed by accomplishing perfection based upon the parental images, and is dependent on cognition at a particular stage of development for its model of perfection. As mentioned above, Freud describes many types of identification. An ego based or imitative identification results from specific instances of taking someone as one’s ego ideal in love, but here Freud is referring to the identification that forms the ego ideal/superego itself. It is formed by an abandoned object cathexis but one that comes from the id rather than from a role model or an object of love that is related to the ego ideal. Freud, also refers to superego identification as “instinctual renunciation” and, because it avoids confusion, it would be better if this term came into prominence [10].

I’ve set up an interpretation of eros in a general sense of hope or trust in fate regarding one’s ideals- it brings us into the world in both an egoistic and altruistic sense. Eros then gives way to phobos and the dynamic relation to the superego qua conscience is lost. In what could be called a dialectical movement the ‘death instinct’ is what is born of defusion of the ideals and takes us away from engagement with others in competition or love. Freud’s observation of this doesn’t require a biological hypothesis. He is examining engagement with ideals and then functionally how they are disengaged or, in his language, defused. Freud gives three types of examples that express the working of the death instincts in this functional sense. The first is expressed explicitly in the example of melancholia that goes beyond a “normal” conscience reaction. He writes:

If we turn to melancholia first, we find that the excessively strong super-ego which has obtained a hold upon consciousness rages against the ego with merciless violence, as if it had taken possession of the whole of the sadism available in the person concerned. Following our view of sadism, we should say that the destructive component had entrenched itself in the super-ego and turned against the ego. What is now holding sway in the super-ego is, as it were, a pure culture of the death instinct, and in fact it often enough succeeds in driving the ego into death…(Freud, The Ego and the Id, p. 53, emphasis mine).

Freud also relates suffering from excessive guilt as a ‘defusion of instinct’ that is also another problem with the superego (ISA, p. 114). Additionally, Freud generally considers the regression of libido to be part of a defusion. He writes:    

Making a swift generalization, we might conjecture that the essence of a regression of libido (e.g. from the genital to the sadistic-anal phase) lies in a defusion of instincts, just as, conversely, the advance from the earlier phase to the definitive genital one would be conditioned by an accession of erotic components. The question also arises whether ordinary ambivalence, which is so often unusually strong in the constitutional disposition to neurosis, should not be regarded as the product of a defusion; ambivalence, however, is such a fundamental phenomenon that it more probably represents an instinctual fusion that has not been completed (Freud, The Ego and The Id, p.42).

The key to understanding the commonality of these different instances of defusion lies in the Oedipus complex, though defusion isn’t limited to Oedipus alone.  In Inhibitions Symptom, and Anxiety the Oedipus complex becomes one of many stages of signal anxiety. There is castration signal anxiety for the boy and fear of loss of love signal anxiety for the girl at the Oedipus complex but signal anxiety also exists at the anal, oral, etc. stages back to birth anxiety. Of further significance, as mentioned in the quotation above, is that ambivalence represents that an instinctual fusion has not been completed.    

As mentioned earlier, in studying group dynamics Freud drew our attention to a group leader who the group member puts in the place of his ego ideal (Freud, Group Psychology, p.116, The Ego and the Id, p.37). Freud relates this leader to the ‘primal father’ and the Oedipal phase and fear of castration. The individual must first have a transference to the father, then conflict with him leads to castration signal anxiety, and castration signal anxiety is an important moment in which the individual is able to identify with the actual father to form the ‘nucleus’ (or beginning) of the superego qua guilt conscience. If full internalization isn’t made then the ambivalence to authority figures, or group leaders, exists because instinctual fusion is partial. 

Again, the individual ‘internalizes’ the father imago to make a transference to him but still needs to ‘identify’ with an actual father model and this will provide the basis of a proper superego. As Freud and various writers point out, identification with an actual father and a full superego may not happen[11]. The individual has a partial-internalization and the transference upon the father of father-substitute is more tenuous and in danger of defusion[12]. If defusion occurs here then a phenomenon like melancholia can occur in which the aggression towards the father-substitute must be introjected and turned upon the self beyond a normal conscience reaction[13].

However, as noted, suffering from excessive guilt is also a ‘defusion of instinct’ (ISA, p. 114). The existence of guilt shows that the actual father was indeed internalized but Freud says that it’s not castration anxiety from the parental image but danger from the superego itself (i.e. one’s own conscience qua guilt) that is at stake (ibid. p. 142). In ‘The Ego and the Id’ Freud relates this problem to the ‘father complex’ that marks the post-oedipal latency period (The Ego and The Id, p.37)[14]. While irrational guilt is a defusion from the full internalization of the father that has produced a genital or paternal superego and melancholia is a defusion from the partial internalization and failure to surmount the Oedipus complex, the last instance of defusion lies in between[15]. After full internalization occurs the nucleus of the superego exists but before it becomes a full superego it exists as ‘social anxiety’ and carries with it the obedience to certain commands and prohibitions that the father and father substitutes have made[16]. Bergler and Chasseguet-Smirgel both note that true sublimation requires this full internalization[17]. Conflict with the father carries both a regression from the genital to a pre-genital id impulse, and from the full internalization there is a defused ‘deferred obedience’ to the father that creates the defence of sublimation. In contrast, those without full internalization who face conflict with the father or father substitutes experience the same regression but without sublimation. Instead it shows up in what Reich calls ‘character armor’.

I will say more about character armor in a moment but first I have to say a little more about the id. The unconscious of psychoanalysis is not the romantic unconscious of foreseeing the future, messages from our inner self, or a connection with a metaphysical realm. Instead the unconscious of psychoanalysis is built from primary repressions that involve impressions and affects the individual actually experienced in childhood. Freud writes:

the genesis of a neurosis invariably goes back to very early impressions in childhood…. This therefore makes it nonsensical to say that one is practicing psycho-analysis if one excludes from examination and consideration precisely these earliest periods—as happens in some quarters (Freud, Moses and Monotheism, p. 73)

Theses different instincts (also affects and traumas) that the child had experienced were split off due to their over-stimulating nature. These activated id impulses (ie. cannibalistic aggression, the desire to mutilate, death wishes, etc.) form the ‘thing-presentations’ of the id-unconscious[18]. Reich shows that these impulses are dynamically linked to character armor when they haven’t been sublimated. The defused aggression towards the father is still a deferred obedience but one that suppresses the ego functioning. Reich holds that character armor, like the obsessional ‘affect block’, is formed by three main processes:

 The ego identifies itself with the reality which frustrates desire, in the person of the principal agent of frustration.

It directs against itself the aggression which it mobilized against the frustrating person and which itself produced anxiety.

It forms reactive attitudes against the genital impulses, by taking their energy from the id and employing it in its own interest.

The first process fills the defensive shell with significant contents. (The suppression of affect of an obsessional patient meant: 'I must control myself, as my father was always preaching'; but also, 'I must secure my pleasure, and indurate myself against my father'.)

The second process binds perhaps the most important portion of aggressive energy, walls up some of the motor-energy and thus creates the element of inhibition in the character.

The third withdraws certain quantities of libido from the repressed libidinal impulses, so that they are less able to force their way through. This change is later not only nullified but reversed by the increase of the remaining energy-cathexes consequent upon limitation of motor activity and of capacity for satisfaction.

The armouring of the ego is therefore induced by fear of punishment at the expense, in energy, of the id, and with a content constituted by the prohibitions and the model of the educator (Reich, The Characterological Mastery of the Oedipus Complex, p. 456)[19].

Thus all three forms of defusion stand in relation to the superego: full internalization and irrational guilt, partial internalization and the defence of melancholia, and partial identification and character armor. It is because the internalized objects form both the ego and superego that defusion can’t be escaped. 

“The super-ego”, Freud writes, “originating as it does from the id, cannot dissociate itself from the regression and defusion of instinct which have taken place there” (ISA, p. 115-6). Furthermore, in defusion the superego forms a new dynamic relation to the ego ideal in that the specific ideal that led to the conflict no longer functions. From the whole hearted pursuit of the ideal in eros, to the half-hearted pursuit in phobos, the ideal in this third position no longer leads to constructive or purposeful action. Lastly, it isn’t the phallic-oedipal alone, as some writers seem to suggest, from which all defusion arises. Partial internalization can also occur at the anal, oral, etc. stages and defusion can also occur from the father transference there, which I’ll take up in the next sections.

For the sake of clarity, I’d like to return to the example of melancholia. Initially the melancholic had an ideal of love that was tied up with father-transference to the object. So long as eros led, she was able to deny any problems with her lover even though they could have been manifest from the beginning. At some point, she begins to doubt her lover can live up to her idealization or she is jilted by him (i.e. finds out he is cheating or he leaves her). Her ambivalence towards the beloved or a normal aggressive response to her ill treatment occurs and this aggression, since it is directed at him as a transference object as well as ideal, causes a defusion of him as transference object. This defusion is experienced as an attack on her outer reality and corresponds to depressive anxiety. This depressive anxiety is dealt with by introjecting the blame and the melancholic now experiences her aggression coming back at herself from the internalized father imago. In this ‘pure culture of the death instinct’ the melancholic is no longer striving after love but rather is ‘getting off’ on self-reviling before others.

 

To stick with the symbols of Greek mythology, the conflict between eros and phobos that can lead to drive defusion and superego punishment has its clearest representative in Tartarus.  Tartarus is the place where punishments are dealt out (Prometheus, Ixion, Tantalus, Sisyphus, etc.) and it is also the place from which titans, giants, Cyclops and monsters emerge. The former group represents defusions at more advanced levels of development while the latter group represents a form of punishment more along the lines of the defusions Freud saw involved in epilepsy. I’ll have to leave my reader with the allusion to Tartarus because I don’t have the space to investigate any of the myths in detail. It is beyond the scope of this paper to be exhaustive in detailing each ego ideal, variety of inferiority or aloneness in the tension between the ideal and the ego, and the corresponding self-punishment. However, by focusing on three of the ideals of perfection and their relation I hope to lay out a groundwork that may eventually lead to this.

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[1] The absurdity of this view is fully seen when we think of the emotional make-up of others and consider how one person is shy, another envious, arrogant, etc. and the idea that these are somehow taught to children by their parents or passed down through social institutions.

[2] The contrast between the instincts of self-preservation and the preservation of the species, as well as the contrast between ego-love and object-love, fall within Eros. (Freud, An Outline, p.148).

One needn’t agree with Freud’s biological speculations in order to use eros or the death drive in this functional sense. In the next section I’ll address his biological theory when I investigate primary narcissism and show how reunion with the primary object (the eternal feminine) is a superior position.

[3] Freud also takes another track on this to say it’s not just bad conscience but once eros is lost a person then needs meaning in life or general depression enters. In this sense, following one’s ideals of success or love have no meaning-  they simply feel alluring to an individual’s sense of power or longing. He writes:

“the moment a man questions the meaning and value of life, he is sick, since objectively neither has any existence; by asking this question one is merely admitting to a store of unsatisfied libido to which something else must have happened, a kind of fermentation leading to sadness and depression” (Letter from Sigmund Freud to Marie Bonaparte, August 13, 1937, p. 436).

[4] The basically different attitude toward the world, toward people, toward one's own experiences which characterizes the genital character, is simple and matter-of-course. It is immediately self-evident, even to people who are structurally far different. It is a secret ideal of everyone, and is always the same even though given various names. Nobody would deny the desirability of the capacity to love, or of sexual potency... Nevertheless, no other part of my theory has endangered my work and existence as much as the contention that self-regulation is possible, that it does exist naturally, and that it might conceivably become universal (Reich, Function of the Orgasm, p.158-9). 

In Reich’s work, the genital character ultimately came to be contrasted to other types of characters  (the hysteric, the compulsive, the masochistic, etc) who had regressed from genitality or had never reached it. However, his concept of primary drives vs. secondary drives still captures this difference (Reich, Character Analysis, p. 161).

[5] To be precise, these activated impulses stand in contrast to certain repetition-compulsions and characterological problems that exist from when they were formed in early childhood.

[6] The super-ego is, however, not simply a residue of the earliest object-choices of the id; it also represents an energetic reaction-formation against those choices. Its relation to the ego is not exhausted by the precept: ‘You ought to be like this (like your father).’ It also comprises the prohibition: ‘You may not be like this (like your father)—that is, you may not do all that he does; some things are his prerogative.’ (The Ego and the Id, p. 34)  

[7] But the ego ideal comprises the sum of all the limitations in which the ego has to acquiesce, and for that reason the abrogation of the ideal would necessarily be a magnificent festival for the ego, which might then once again feel satisfied with itself… There is always a feeling of triumph when something in the ego coincides with the ego ideal. And the sense of guilt (as well as the sense of inferiority) can also be understood as an expression of tension between the ego and the ego ideal (Group Psychology, 130-1, emphasis mine).

But, whatever the character's later capacity for resisting the influences of abandoned object-cathexes may turn out to be, the effects of the first identifications made in earliest childhood will be general and lasting. This leads us back to the origin of the ego ideal; for behind it there lies hidden an individual's first and most important identification, his identification with the father in his own personal prehistory (Freud, The Ego and The Id, p. 31).

The super-ego arises, as we know, from an identification with the father taken as a model. Every such identification is in the nature of a desexualization or even of a sublimation. (The Ego and the Id, p. 54, emphasis mine).

Additionally, Freud explicitly mentions that guilt conscience which is internalized after the Oedipus complex is preceded by earlier forms of conscience:

A great change takes place only when the authority is internalized through the establishment of a super-ego. The phenomena of conscience then reach a higher stage. Actually, it is not until now that we should speak of conscience or a sense of guilt… Everyone of discernment will understand and take into account the fact that in this summary description we have sharply delimited events which in reality occur by gradual transitions, and that it is not merely a question of the existence of a super-ego but of its relative strength and sphere of influence (Civilization, p. 125)

 I’m not alone in interpreting Freud this way although there seem to be many analysts who believe that there is a single ego ideal. Annie Reich and others who write on the ego ideal see that there are several images of the parents and therefore several ideals:

There normally develops a faculty for self-evaluation and reality appreciation, which enables the child to recognize certain aspects of the parental images as something he has not yet reached but wishes to become. Here we see a type of ego ideal- we might call it the normal one- which will lead to attempts gradually to bring about a realization of these aims, as soon as the individual’s growing strength and capacities will permit it (Annie Reich, Early Identifications, p. 221)

Chassegeut-Smirgel similarly sees pre-Oedipal ego ideals that are formed even though they become subsumed under the genital ideal:

The child, therefore, creates for himself a series of short-term pregenital ego ideals that temporarily and only partially replace the genital Oedipal ego ideal, which implies the promise of narcissistic achievement. The genital, Oedipal ego ideal contains all of the pregenital ego ideals. What happens, it seems to me, is that the genital ego ideal is charged with the mission of promoting an ego that owes its formation to the successful integration of all of its components through those identifications arrived at during the different stages of development. The ego ideal imposes strictures on the building of the ego and does not tolerate any lapses in this process. (Illness of Ideality, p.351)

[8] In Group Psychology Freud gives us the example of symptomatic identification in Dora imitating her father’s cough, a boy who imitated a cat he lost, and more (p. 106-9). These are to be contrasted to his example of the boy identifying with the father before the Oedipus complex (ibid. p,105).

[9] The negation involved in creating this image of perfection will be discussed in the second section.

[10] Freud, in later work, goes into more detail on this id-object choice to say that in identification it is “instinctually renounced” and again draws attention to the yield of positive pleasure involved in it:

Instinctual renunciation can, however, also be imposed for other reasons, which we correctly describe as internal. In the course of an individual's development a portion of the inhibiting forces in the external world are internalized and an agency is constructed in the ego which confronts the rest of the ego in an observing, criticizing and prohibiting sense. We call this new agency the super-ego. Thenceforward the ego, before putting to work the instinctual satisfactions demanded by the id, has to take into account not merely the dangers of the external world but also the objections of the super-ego, and it will have all the more grounds for abstaining from satisfying the instinct. But whereas instinctual renunciation, when it is for external reasons, is only unpleasurable, when it is for internal reasons, in obedience
to the super-ego, it has a different economic effect. In addition to the inevitable unpleasurable consequences it also brings the ego a yield of pleasure—a substitutive satisfaction, as it were. The ego feels elevated; it is proud of the instinctual renunciation, as though it were a valuable achievement. (Moses and Monotheism, p.116-7)

[11] At the dissolution of the Oedipus complex the four trends of which it consists will group themselves in such a way as to produce a father-identification and a mother-identification. (Freud, The Ego and the Id, p.34)

Close investigation has shown us, too, that the super-ego is stunted in its strength and growth if the surmounting of the Oedipus complex is only incompletely successful (Freud, NIL, p. 64).

[12] Ives Hendrick and others explicitly state the importance of this partial internalization that occur in stages other than the oedipal:

The process which normally serves as the final solution of these successive anxiety situations is comprehensible to us through the phenomena by which we recognize identification [internalization]. Those identifications [internalizations] resulting from each successive type of aggression contribute functions to the ego which, on the one hand, are essential to the permanent mastery of the corresponding anxiety, and, on the other hand, to the full development of the functions which constitute the ego.

The failure to complete any of these identifications [internalizations] results in a defect in ego-organization which is manifest in adult life by one or another type of defect in the management of instinctual impulses in a mature way without an excess of inhibition (Hendrick, Ego Development and Certain Character Problems, p. 338).

Joyce McDougall also brings out this pre-internalization state. Working with homosexual women she writes that the genital father is internalized and identified with but not established as a full object: “the daughter appears to have abandoned him as an object of libidinal wishes at the height of the classical Oedipal period (McDougall, Homosexuality in Women, p.191). This partially internalized father is “zealously guarded” Joyce writes, because he “is a bulwark against psychotic dissolution” (ibid. p. 191).

Klein similarly holds that a partial or incomplete internalization, or in her language, failure to establish internal good objects, is the cause of problems both neurotic and normal, across many levels of development. For example, she writes:

The manic-depressive and the person who fails in the work of mourning, though their defences may differ widely from each other, have this in common, that they have been unable in early childhood to establish their internal 'good' objects and to feel secure in their inner world. They have never really overcome the infantile depressive position. In normal mourning, however, the early depressive position, which had become revived through the loss of the loved object, becomes modified again, and is overcome by methods similar to those used by the ego in childhood (Klein, Mourning and its Relation to Manic-Depressive States, p. 153).

   

[13] To understand this process Fairbairn spells out the logic in his statement “it is better to be a sinner in a world ruled by God than to live in a world ruled by the Devil” (Fairbairn, Psychoanalytic Studies of the Personality, p. 66-7). Since the transference to the father is an ego transference involving the functioning of the symbolic aspect of reality, the frustrations induced by the father–substitute would make part of reality seem hostile towards one. The melancholic, takes on the blame (perverts inner reality) and then attacks herself in order to save her outer reality. Paranoia is a parallel maneuver that sacrifices outside reality through projection as inside reality is sacrificed with the melancholic.  Katan, among others, has noted the structural similarity of paranoia and melancholia: “We observe that the pictures of paranoia and melancholia correspond with each other in many respects. In both, the ego is the scene of action. In both, various layers of the same content are overlapping… (Katan, A Psychoanalytic Approach to the Diagnosis of Paranoia, p. 339-40). This has caused me to reassess Melanie Klein’s persecutory anxiety and depressive anxiety to not be related to developmental stages but rather to see them as positions in the sense of mental bisexuality (active-masculine and passive-feminine) that will be discussed in section III.  

[14] Again, as Freud, Ives, Klein, etc. note signal anxiety goes back to the earliest point of infancy and a similar relation of partial or incomplete identification and full identification with defusion is possible. Thus, following the same pattern of the melancholic (partial internalization) vs. neurotic guilt (full internalization) a model of anal, oral, etc. defusions and their relation to more primitive orders can be constructed. Freud writes:

We perceive that for purposes of discharge the instinct of destruction is habitually brought into the service of Eros; we suspect that the epileptic fit is a product and indication of an instinctual defusion; and we come to understand that instinctual defusion and the marked emergence of the death instinct call for particular consideration among the effects of some severe neuroses—for instance, the obsessional neuroses (Freud, Ego and the Id, p. 41-2). 

[15] In the fourth section I argue that there are both phallic and anal versions of melancholia that are distinct and, I would surmise, earlier versions too. 

[16] Just as the father has become depersonalized in the shape of the super-ego, so has the fear of castration at his hands become transformed into an undefined social or moral anxiety. But this anxiety is concealed. The ego escapes it by obediently carrying out the commands, precautions and penances that have been enjoined on it. If it is impeded in doing so, it is at once overtaken by an extremely distressing feeling of discomfort which may be regarded as an equivalent of anxiety and which the patients themselves liken to anxiety (ISA, p.128).

[17] The following four examples of sublimation lead to the conclusion that a five-layer structure is involved in its mechanism. The starting point in sublimation is not an id wish per se, but the result of regression. In other words, it is in itself the result of a conflict. That conflict is presented (layer one), immediately counteracted by a superego reproach (layer two)… (Bergler, On a Five Layer Structure in Sublimation, p. 81-2)

In the cases with which I am concerned, the gap in the ego, constituted by the lack of introjection and assimilation of the father and his penis—unconscious processes that imply a relationship composed of love and admiration—is not replaced by an imitation of the father and his paternal attributes (narcissistically decathected) but by an attempt to completely disengage oneself from consanguineous connexions. Imitation concerns the genital phallus in its essence, as it is fantasied by the subject. The models, to the extent to which they exist, will be distant and abstract. Once they are incarnated, they will be people who do not represent idealized paternal substitutes but will be precisely those people who have themselves succeeded in avoiding introjection conflicts and in giving themselves an autonomous magical phallus, or who promise one to their emulators while sparing them the painful process of development (Chasseguet-Smirgel, Perversion, Idealization, and Sublimation, p. 354).

[18] Also, as I’ll show in section III, affectionate impulses in the forms of different longings exist in the id-unconscious. Additionally, though built from ‘primary repressions’ or ‘fixations’ from childhood the unconscious also contains ‘secondary repressions’ that correspond to recent repressions of aggression, sexuality, and affects and involve the ‘word-presentations’ that surround these events so that they show up in parapraxis and dreams as well. In contrast to the ‘id unconscious’ this would be the ‘ego unconscious’.

[19] It is seen again and again in analysis that the dynamic value of the same element of repressed material varies depending on the degree to which the ego defences have been loosened. If… the affects pertaining to the defensive formation of the character are liberated first, then a new cathexis of the infantile instinctual expression takes place automatically. (Reich, Character Analysis, p. 81-2). Another example of the relation of armor to the father imago is:

Finally a characteristic of his behaviour in analysis struck me. His movements were languid, his mouth drooped as if tired. His speech, scarcely describable in writing, was monotonous and gloomy. When I had guessed the significance of this note in his voice, all was at once clear to me: he speaks as if he were in torment, as if he were dying. I learned moreover that in certain other situations outside analysis he would also sink into this unconsciously posed lethargy. His speaking in this way also meant: 'See what my father has done to me, how he torments me, he has ruined me and made me unfit for life'. His attitude was a severe reproach… The effect of my interpretation of his 'dying', reproachful and complaining manner of speaking was astonishing… (Reich, ‘Character Formation and the Phobias of Childhood’, p. 229)