economics of the libido pt 3

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[1] 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[2]. 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[3]. 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[4]. 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[5].  

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)[6]. 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[7]. 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)[8].          

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[9]. 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[10]. 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)[11]. 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[12]. 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)[13]. 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[14]. 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[15].

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[16]. 

 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[17]. 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[18]. 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[19]. 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[20]. 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[21]. 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)[22]. 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[23].

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[24]. 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[25] (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)[26].

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[27]. 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[28]. 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[29]. 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[30]. 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[31]. 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[32].

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’[33]:

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.

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[1] 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).

[2] 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).

[3] People speak of ‘active’ and ‘passive’ instincts, but it would be more correct to speak of instincts with active and passive aims: for an expenditure of activity is needed to achieve a passive aim as well (Freud, NIL, p.96)

[4] Freud draws our attention to  ‘homosexual libido’ in the social ideal in On Narcissism (p. 101), and is explicit about the father being an id object choice: “If a boy identifies himself with his father, he wants to be like his father; if he makes him the object of his choice, he wants to have him, to possess him (Freud, NIL, p. 63).

[5] Self-assertion similarly enters late in the passive-feminine pole. In section IV I’ll discuss this further, but it’s important here to understand the quoted passage above that there is a difference between possession of the sexual object and aim inhibited love. The latter enter for the active-masculine in the Oedipus complex and the following ‘father complex’ in latency in which the superego is established and the desire to be ‘grown up’ creates an ego ideal of love with the sister as the model (Freud, The Ego and The Id, p.37, Wilhelm Reich, Sex-pol, p. 223).

[6] To widen the sense of this pole, in other places Freud also pairs devotion, with such words as gratitude and enthusiasm (IL, p. 55, 425). At the end of the section I will propose to widen the two poles into 4 positions by following some suggestive remarks of Freud. In addition Jules Nydes writes:

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).

[7] 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.

[8] “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)

[9] For example, Lawerence Josephs shows how the anti-social character is defending against dependency in Character and Self-Experience (chap 14).

[10] Freud often criticized Adler for only seeing egoism or power in every neurosis:

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). 

[11] One Kohutian writes:

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. 

[12] Blatt also lists numerous non-analysts who similarly talk of the two poles (ibid. p. 726).  

[13] Interestingly, Klein seems to exclusively focus on the phallus not as a symbol of power, as most others do, but as a symbol of reparation:

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)

[14] 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)

“the female's wish for a penis… is the source of outbreaks of severe depression in her, owing to an internal conviction that the analysis will be of no use and that nothing can be done to help her (Analysis Terminable and Interminable, p.252)

[15] “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’.

[16] 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)

[17] 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).

[18] 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.

[19] Fairbairn writes:

 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)

[20] 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)

[21] “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)

[22] Stephen Johnson also finds that early passive-affection fixations interfere with sexuality:

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)

Furthermore, Marylou Lionells paints a picture of the hysteric that is directly relatable to what I’m calling the object altruism. She uses the terms self-as-agent and self-in-relation for what I’ve identified as egoism and altruism trends in the personality and places the hysteric in the latter category (Lionells, ‘A Reevaluation of Hysterical Relatedness, p. 577). She even quotes Freud’s position that “being loved, is the most important thing in life” for someone of this libidinal type (ibid, p. 571). She does a literature review in which she supports a view of “emotionality as an interpersonal tool designed to elicit approval” and her findings are as follows:

the hysteric seeks sustained interest, excitement, and especially approval… while all interacting persons manipulate others to fulfil personal needs, the hysteric achieves his particular goal by seeming relatively helpless and dependent… To the extent that I’m hysterical I care more that you like me than that you agree with me or even understand me… hysterical approval seeking is a search for emotional holding, though phrased as if help is what is needed. The hysteric can behave quite independently as long as a fantasy is maintained that another presides over that activity as a parent, authority, seat of power, and fount of love (ibid, p. 571-3).

[23] These economically significant fixations will be discussed further in section IV.  

[24] It was as representing this aspect of the subject that the ‘ego-instincts’ and the ‘sexual instincts’ were introduced into psycho-analysis. We included in the former everything that had to do with the preservation, assertion and magnification of the individual. To the latter we had to attribute the copiousness called for by infantile and perverse sexual life (NIL, p. 96).

[25] It is more precise to say id-ego since the ego qua mirror stage or self-representation isn’t there from the beginning although love and hate are. It is also possible to call the id-ego ‘the subject’ or something else as others are wont to do. 

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).

[26] Love, desires (both aggressive and libidinal) and anxieties are transferred from the first and unique object, the mother, to other objects; and new interests develop which become substitutes fro the relation to the primary object (Klein, The Emotional Life of the Infant, p. 83).

[27] 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)

[28] 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).

[29] In Klein this is made more subtle by wanting to have not just the body but the inside of the mother’s body but I don’t have the space to explore this.

[30] 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).

[31] 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.

[32] The story is told in Book III of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, and along with Narcissus features a "talkative nymph" who "yet a chatterbox, had no other use of speech than she has now, that she could repeat only the last words out of many." She falls in love with Narcissus, whom she catches sight of when he is "chasing frightened deer into his nets." Eventually, after "burning with a closer flame," Echo's presence is revealed to Narcissus, who, after a comic, yet tragic scene, rejects her love. Echo wastes away, until she "remains a voice" and "is heard by all" (Ovid, Metamorphoses).

[33] 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).