In a previous essay I posted here I contrasted the histrionic to the hysteroid as narcissistic neuroses in contrast to the genital (i.e. neurotic) compulsive (OE) and genital hysteric (OA). Having done more work in film analysis and having some new patients I realize that the compulsive-hysteric is a narcissistic neurosis and is a better contrast to the histrionic than the hysteroid.
Part of it also has to do with more research on the influence of Adler on Freud:
When Freud first introduced the ego ideal
he actually used conscience as analogy for “a special
psychical agency which performs the task of seeing that narcissistic
satisfaction from the ego ideal is ensured and which, with this
end in view, constantly watches the actual ego and measures it by
that ideal” (On Narcissism, p. 95). However, when Freud, for example,
writes that the “ego ideal has imposed severe conditions upon
the satisfaction of libido through objects; for it causes
some of them to be rejected by means of its
censor, as being incompatible” he isn’t talking about a moral
conscience or some personally ascribed to aesthetic/ascetic ideal that the child
chooses (ibid. p.100). Rather the ego ideal is related to ‘self-respect’, ‘self-regard’, and
idealization of the self or the object, and the achievement of ‘excellence’ in
the self or object. Freud is in dialogue with Adler when he creates the ego
ideal, as he is with and Jung when he creates narcissism, and what defines
Adler’s work is superiority and the will to power. So, in the above example, a
woman with a high ego ideal may limit her potential lovers to only belong to
the most successful, ‘excellent’, or powerful men because being with such men
will show the glory of her superior beauty or taste. For Adler it isn’t
conscience but pride that effects repression and Freud agreed in ‘Analysis
Terminable and Interminable’ that the castration complex is the bedrock of
character and that it aligns with Adler’s masculine protest. Thus, a woman out
of a narcissistic injury and defensive self-idealization may also repress her
sexuality because she feels that no man is worthy of her, and a man who strives
for perfection or excellence in his work may remove himself from competition
with others because of having his pride injured, like Achilles.
The ego ideal is Freud’s way of recognizing that “repression… proceeds from the
self-respect of the ego” and that “we can say that one man has set up an ideal
in himself by which he measures his actual ego, while the other has formed no
such ideal” and finally that “the formation of an ideal would be the
conditioning factor of repression” (ibid. 93-4).
Here's the contrast between compulsive-hysteria (OE) and histrionic-hysteria (OA) that I included in a paper on the analysis of Jane Campion's The Piano:
Since Freud relates egoism to not just
preservation but the ‘magnification’ of the individual it seems to me that the
egoist must go beyond his equal share and conquer
what belongs to others or to nature. While food may not always be scarce having
the status of being the first in one’s field or being considered a success is
always scarce. Thus, the active-passive poles can better be defined in relation
to the impulses to conquer and the
impulses to love. However, I also
think there is much reason to double these impulses into be conquered and be loved.
In regards to the former, the idealization of self or locating power in the
self finds its extreme and defensive position in narcissism in which object
libido is retracted to cathect the self (Introductory Lectures, p.417-8). It
seems clear to me that as much as a person can be narcissistic about his
physical and/or intellectual potency he can also be narcissistic about his
‘looks’ or attractiveness. In order to avoid confusion or doubling up of the
terms active-passive we could differentiate a subject egoist (to conquer),
while the latter could be termed an object egoist (to be conquered). The object
egoist tries to make herself the object of the subject (the cause of his
desire) whose conquering or achievements reflect the potency of her beauty.
However, the object egoist still impresses
one as having a sense of self-respect or pride that comes from feeling that her
physical beauty and/or aesthetic or spiritual refinements are special or
superior to those of others. Observing this from the pathological extreme
Wilhelm Reich writes:
the woman suffering from hysteria, for example, will be
apprehensively silent and behave timidly; the woman having a compulsive
neurosis will be obstinately silent or behave in a cold, haughty way towards
the analyst. The transference resistance employs various means in warding off
the positive transference… the woman suffering from hysteria will always defend
herself in a way expressive of anxiety, while the woman suffering from a
compulsive neurosis will always defend herself aggressively, no matter what
unconscious content is on the verge of breaking through (Reich, Character
Analysis. p. 51).
It is only from this active-egoism vs.
passive-altruism split that I have been able to understand all the contradictory
things written about the hysteric[1].
Reich’s compulsive here is, in fact, the same as Freud and Lacan’s hysteric.
Freud’s Dora would be much better described as cold, haughty, aggressive, etc.
than as apprehensively silent, timid, self-effacing, or dramatizing emotions in
a histrionic sense. When Lacan describes the hysteric as not wanting the man to
get off on her and leaving him sexually unsatisfied it is similarly coming from
a place of pride and competition between subject and object egoist (A Clinical Introduction to Lacanian
Psychoanalysis, p. 127). While many writers notice the tendency of the
altruist to idealize the sexual object they leave the relation between the
egoist and the sexual object unformulated. Following Freud’s remarks on sensual
love that is satisfied after sexual contact and hate being earlier than love
(Group Psychology, p. 111, Beyond Pleasure Principle, p. 53). It seems more
salient to say that the egoists want to possess or control the sexual object
and feel jealousy in regards to the idea of the sexual object regarding another
as more powerful or desirable and this is followed by hate/sadism. In contrast,
with the altruist, the sexual object is idealized and showing the wish to merge
or resonate with it and loss of the beloved is followed by mourning and
aloneness. 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 (On Narcissism, p. 88-90). Additionally, it conserves his
remarks about finding vestiges of the beloved in the character of the lover
that in extreme form could become multiple personality disorder (Freud, The Ego
and The Id, p.29). In a person who seeks to be the ‘possessor’ of the sexual
object and experiences jealousy one doesn’t find that they had become
interested in entirely different kinds of music, hobbies, etc. as they dated
different people- as one would find with the altruist who loves the sexual
object.
The complement to narcissism in the
altruistic pole of the personality is a retraction of ego libido to cathect the
object. While Freud brings this up in several places in regards to masochism
involved in hypnotism and love turning into fascination or bondage I want to
stick to the social or public aspect of this in which we say someone is
self-effacing, a people pleaser, servile, (etc.). This also goes by the heading
of ‘feminine masochism’ but when it isn’t pathological it can simply be called
being ‘nice’ to others and getting vicarious pleasure from doing things to give
others pleasure. Anyway, it seems clear to me that just as we can talk about
someone masochistically being meek or putting the desires of others before
one’s own, it’s also possible to talk about someone masochistically needing to
have the approval of others. Instead of going out of one’s way to not be
regarded as selfish or ‘taking a hit for the team’ one can want to be liked by
other people not for one’s power, achievement, beauty or refinement but for
one’s humour, cuteness, charm, spontaneity, one’s good energy, one’s ability to
understand and express feelings and make the world magical, dynamic, or
interesting. Whether one masochistically sacrifices for others or one needs to
be liked, in either case the power is in the other and not in the self. Thus we
have a subject altruist who risks emotional investment in love and an object
altruist who desires to ‘be loved’ by the subject- to be the cause of delight
in him or her[2].
In an
article entitled ‘A Reevaluation of Hysterical Relatedness’ Marylou Lionells
paints a picture of the histrionic-hysteric that provides a foil to the
compulsive-hysteric. She uses the terms self-as-agent and self-in-relation for
what I’ve identified as egoistic vs. altruistic trends in the personality and places
the hysteric in the latter category (Lionells, ‘A Reevaluation of Hysterical
Relatedness, p. 577). She quotes Freud’s position that “being loved, is the
most important thing in life” for this character 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).
Instead of the distance we find with the
compulsive-hysteric whose pride can remove her from relationships, the
histrionic-hysteric attempts to form relationships by making herself
vulnerable, attempting to be interesting, or being sexual. While the
compulsive-hysteric wants to be beautiful or have superior inner beauty
(religion, art, ideas) and is resentful towards men for her power not causing
desire in them, the histrionic-hysteric may have overlap but the emphasis is
very different. “Being cute (not necessarily beautiful), alert, responsive, and
cheerful are common attributes”, Lionell writes, “[b]udding hysterics often
seem to have an innate sense of humour. They spontaneously clown and entertain.
They show a quick wit, making use of analogy and metaphor…” (Lionells, ‘A
Reevaluation of Hysterical Relatedness, p.583). What can be endearing or
charming in health can become dramatic and sloppy in pathology. Similarly the
desire to find oneself, establish one’s uniqueness, or inspire others can turn
to desperately conforming to fashion, changing one’s identity after every
relationship, or cultivating eccentricity.
Although Abraham sticks to the classical
formulation that sexual relation of the child to the parent causes neurosis
instead of recognizing the parallelism of the ego drive/ideal and sexuality he
is still honest and perceptive enough to notice these two characterlogical
positions in the castration complex[3].
He sees the two trends of being the most beautiful (OE) as well as wanting
approval for one’s uniqueness (OA):
In some of our patients we come across
phantasies which refer to the possibility of a recognition of the man
and to the formulation of conditions under which the patient, after their
fulfilment, would be prepared to reconcile herself to her femininity. I
mention first of all a condition I have met with many times; it runs: 'I could
be content with my femininity if I were absolutely the most beautiful
of all women'. All men would lie at the feet of the most beautiful woman,
and the female narcissism would consider this power not a bad
compensation for the defect so painfully perceived… I have previously mentioned
an example of a phantastic form of this idea from one of my
psycho-analyses. I was able to follow the development of a
similar phantasy through different stages in
the psycho-analysis of another patient. The
original desire ran: 'I should like to be a man'. When this was given
up, the patient wished to be 'the only woman' (at first 'the
only woman of the father' was meant). When also this wish had to
give way to reality the idea appeared: 'As a woman I should like to be
unique' (Abraham, Manifestations of the Female Castration Complex, p.25-6)[4].
[1] The compulsive-hysteric and histrionic-hysteric don’t exhaust all
forms of hysteria either but they do represent the two most prominent forms to
my eye. For example, Easser and Lesser discuss another pre-oedipal form called
the ‘hysterioid’ and also give the post-oedipal hysteric with more secure
relationships (Easser & Lesser, Hysterical Personality, p.398-9).
[2] Freud mentions ‘being loved’ in (Instincts and Their Vicissitudes,
p.133, Libidinal Types). 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). Additionally, Theodor Reik claimed that many authors,
notably Goethe, could be best understood by their need to ‘be loved’ (Reik, The
Need to be Loved).
[3] It is not our belief
that a person's libidinal interests are from the first in opposition to his
self-preservative interests; on the contrary, the ego endeavours at every stage
to remain in harmony with its sexual organization as it is at the time and to
fit itself into it. The succession of the different phases of libidinal
development probably follows a prescribed programme. But the possibility cannot
be rejected that this course of events can be influenced by the ego, and we may
expect equally to find a certain parallelism, a certain correspondence, between
the developmental phases of the ego and the libido; indeed a disturbance of
that correspondence might provide a pathogenic factor (Freud, p.351-2
–Introductory Lecture XXII).
[4] Abraham doesn’t flesh out this position of uniqueness very well but
Hans Sachs does:
The women of whom I am thinking
are almost always remarkably charming in appearance and exceptionally
attractive socially—at least, to men; they do not usually form any satisfactory
relations with other women. A woman
of this sort has the power of entering into the idiosyncrasies and interests
and ideas of the particular man with whom she happens to be talking, so that he
feels she thoroughly understands him and is accordingly greatly attracted to
her. We are astonished to see how such women, although they have never followed
out any course of mental training or pursued any
serious studies, know quite a lot about a number of, often very difficult,
subjects. But a finer ear soon detects that what they say is not original, but
simply an echo of some man or other whose knowledge and views they have borrowed. All the subjects
on which they talk—science or art, sport or religion—can be assigned to
particular periods in their lives and to particular men, from whom they have
derived their views. They do not even try to reflect upon and reconcile the
various points of view: they simply treasure up the individual utterances of
different men and actually do not hesitate calmly to advance quite opposite
opinions, taken from different sources. (Sachs, ‘One of the Motive Factors in
the Formation of the Superego in Women’p.42-3).
Firstly, this is an OA portrait since
the women is seen to only have absorbed the opinions of former lovers. The OE
follows the control-possess-be jealous of model of the sexual relationship and
doesn’t merge with the love object like the altruist. In the next section
Deutsch mentions that the women she is concerned with follow the ‘masculine’
model of sublimation. Secondly, although these portraits of women are not
flattering it must be remembered that they are women suffering from
narcissistic neuroses and that the
same forms can exist in men- they can be OE and OA hysterics too- and have
forms of mental illness that are predominate in males and are just as ugly.
Moreover, all the great female analysts have backed up Freud on the importance
of castration and the repudiation of femininity to be found in women. What they
add, however, and what continues to be ignored, is that men can have aggression
towards women after disappointments in relationships, and can want to ‘fuck’
women aggressively as revenge as much as a woman may reject men sexually out of
revenge in the pole of active-egoism. Additionally, they add that
passive-altruistic men can have womb envy just as much as women can have penis
envy (Horney, Fear of the Feminine). What’s important is that a psychically
bisexual being has to face sexual difference and deal with has his or her
self-respect attached to being regarded as a man or woman by others. An OE or
OA biological male can envy that women for their children, that socially they
aren’t expected to work like men, (etc.). Sexual difference or an ego ideal
concerning gender will be discussed in the next section.
[5] However, it is also obvious that there are some people who have
never formed the phallic drives/ego ideals on both the egoistic or altruistic
side. They would be altruists who haven’t established the willpower to see
through any goals or promises they have made or egoists who lack any sense for
vulnerable or delicate feelings in people and art and the typology I’m doing.
One can always know the academic version of such an egoist by his
interpretation that the will to power, or selfishness, and rational game theory
can explain everything (if he even deigns to recognize subjective motivation).
There are analysts who talk about this stunted development (Reich, Character
Analysis, p. 251-3; Klein, Early
Stages of the Oedipus Conflict, p. 174).
[6] Observation teaches us that
individual human beings realize the general picture of
humanity in an almost infinite variety of ways. If we yield to the legitimate
need to distinguish particular types in this multiplicity, we shall at the
start have the choice as to what characteristics and what points of view we
shall take as the basis of our differentiation. For that purpose physical qualities will doubtless
serve no less well than mental ones; the most valuable distinctions will be those which promise to present
a regular combination of physical and mental characteristic (Libidinal Types,
p. 217).
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