psychic bisexuality- exhibitionism and scopophilia/ the four humours

In formally separating the active-egoistic and passive-altruistic poles of the personality there has to be three 'mythical drives'. Eros and the destructive drive relates to fusion and defusion in the relation of the ego drive/ideal leading someone out into the world in competition or love (fusion) or someone who is engaging with others or isolating in sadism, masochism, and bad conscience (defusion).

This leaves the pair life drive and death drives or what I prefer to call the instinct for mimicry and the instinct for mastery (both from Freud's work) to represent the two poles and sexuality to be the third drive. Sexuality is expressed fundamentally differently in the egoist and altruist but exists in both. As Freud writes, in love the altruist is given access to sexuality.

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. (Introductory Lectures, p. 417-8).

The egoist, in who sexuality is mixed with aggression as opposed to affection as with the altruist, has sexual desires beyond the love relationship. This is of course a discussion of pure types where many people are mixed but it's necessary to follow pure types in order to construct a model.

I want to complicate this with the four libidinal positions I've introduced and bring up scopophilia in the object altruist.

I've come to understand that scopophilia is different than voyeurism. Scopophilia is about enjoying your partner's sexual enjoyment while voyeurism is about watching others have sex. I think it's of fundamental importance in understanding 'multiple orgasms' and forms of hysteria to understand that sexual pleasure is appearing through the other's sexual pleasure and not from one's own body which can, in fact, be frigid.

Since making this connection I have come to see that some versions of the four humours correspond to the four libidinal positions.

Sometimes the four humours resemble the Chinese elements in plotting problems in the vertical psychosexual development axis and give us oral, anal, phallic characters based upon deutero and trito stages. However sometimes the four humours gives us a clear picture of pathology in regards to the horizontal or bisexual axis.

The choleric temperament is ambitious and leader-like and tied to anger, hate, aggression (subject egoist).
The sanguine temperament is sociable and charismatic and tied to impulsivity and pleasure-seeking (object altruist).
The phlegmatic temperament is kind and affable and tied to laziness, self-effacement and stagnation (subject altruist).
The melancholic temperament is concerned with beauty and judgmental and tied to moodiness and isolation (object egoist).



 I still haven't been able to escape the idea of repression based upon bisexuality. Freud eschewed it many times in his texts but, as he taught us, the excessive rejection of something (negation) shows it acceptance on another level.

Analysts will talk about negative narcissism or negative exhibitionism but this is generally done in a reductive way to make the feminine the not-masculine and follows the binaries of strong vs. weak.

However, good clinicians show that some ideas are best understood as negatives.

For example, Reich writes: Masochistic characters cannot endure praise and tend toward self-depreciation and self-abasement. In spite of his great ambition, our patient could not endure it when he was considered a good student in school. "If I had continued to be a good student, I would have fancied myself as standing naked in front of a large crowd with an excited penis" (ibid. 253)

The opposite, to stand in front of a large crowd with an excited penis would be exhibitionism by every definition.

In an older post I wrote about how it often appears to me that there are negative forms of scopophilia.

In this way, the maiden who is rescued from the dragon becomes a treasure, the desire to marry becomes a desire to amass wealth, and the overwhelming separation from the object becomes the overwhelming collection of things in the hoarder. 

Externalization of aggression onto objects makes them into weapons, as Klein shows (feces as missiles, urine as poison), and following the same logic, externalization of libido onto things makes them greedily desired. Does the masculine always externalize on things? While the feminine projects onto objects [people]? 

If scopophilia is the passive form of exhibitionism in both the sexual sense of enjoying the arousal or pleasure of the other and the social sense of vicarious pleasure through another's joy, then do we have an anti-exhibitionism which is the foundation of the self-effacing conscience of the woman and an anti-scopophillic possessiveness or selfishness which inaugurates the phallic quality of the man? 

In myth I think we have a nice parallel between the dwarf and the elf. The dwarf becomes the obsessional digging in his mine for treasure and the elf becomes the hysteric in communication with nature around her and hidden away from people. The dwarf is away from people because his libido is towards objects while the elf is hidden because she doesn't want to be center of attention.

The anal superego

I've tried to establish the anal superego in many ways. I recently made another connection in Freud's remarks on the superego in animals and the importance of a leader in a wolf pack. The leader, as Freud outlines in Group Psychology, takes the place of the individual's ego ideal.

This general schematic picture of a psychical apparatus may be supposed to apply as well to the higher animals which resemble man mentally. A super-ego must be presumed to be present wherever, as is the case with man, there is a long period of dependence in childhood. A distinction between ego and id is an unavoidable assumption. Animal psychology has not yet taken in hand the interesting problem which is here presented (An Outline, p. 147)

I have cast a glance on his lines on leadership but I look forward to inquire whether he has found a way connecting the importance of a leader with the nature of a wolf-society

(Freud, S. (1922). Letter from Sigmund Freud to Ernest Jones, February 20, 1922. The Complete Correspondence of Sigmund Freud and Ernest Jones 1908-1939, 461).

Glory and Harmony- psychic bisexuality/sadism and masochism

In the Economics of the Libido I laid out the fundamental axis for the ego ideal in the negation of the finite. This negation goes in two directions. The not-finite can become the infinite or perfection and the not-finite can mean the not-living or death.

As a finite being the child can know neither perfection or death from anything internal or its own subjective experience. However it can form its internal imagos as negation of the finite and have transference to objects based upon seeing them as models of perfection to strive for, or as dead figures who must be helped or enlivened.

The mother as the primary object, biologically selected to have breasts is destined to represent the set of imagos which are tied to the finite and its negation in these two directions. Even if a child is raised by two fathers the earliest instincts that were attached to the breasts will take the being with the breasts as the imprint for the imagos and everything else will be settled in relation to the power dynamics between the parents.

The father is associated with the imagos that both eclipse the mother's imagos and attaches them to regulated social relations. I've discussed these in regards to their anal and phallic social ontologies.

At this point the striving for perfection becomes the ego ideal of glory and restoration after death becomes the ego ideal of harmony.

Although Freud wanted to derive masochism from sadism or sadism from masochism at different points, when he looked at the situation in relation to psychic bisexuality he wanted to keep the two distinct:

It is, moreover, a suggestive fact that the existence of the pair of opposites formed by sadism and masochism cannot be attributed merely to the element of aggressiveness. We should rather be inclined to connect the simultaneous presence of these opposites with the opposing masculinity and femininity which are combined in bisexuality— a contrast which often has to be replaced in psycho-analysis by that between activity and passivity (Three Essays, p.160).

In regards to sadism he clearly relates it to perfection:

It is in sadism, where the death instinct twists the erotic aim in its own sense and yet at the same time fully satisfies the erotic urge, that we succeed in obtaining the clearest insight into its nature and its relation to Eros. But even where it emerges without any sexual purpose, in the blindest fury of destructiveness, we cannot fail to recognize that the satisfaction of the instinct is accompanied by an extraordinarily high degree of narcissistic enjoyment, owing to its presenting the ego with a fulfilment of the latter's old wishes for omnipotence.

(Civilization, p. 121).

Reading McDougall today I thought her formulation "a body that suffers is also a body that is alive" was the clearest description of masochism's relation to death (Theaters of the Body, p. 152).

As the egoistic and altruistic poles of the personality become ever more integrated in development sadism and masochism will find expression in the opposite pole.

I've suggested that the Oedipus complex represents the beginnings of love in the egoist and competition in the altruist, who haven't formed the phallic ideals in both poles of their personality, and that this tenuous entrance will easily lead to regression.   

Reading the work of Michael Eigen who seems effortlessly at home in the mythical frame of mind has inspired me to aspire beyond technical language and find resonance with mythical language.

Glory and harmony are words so big that they feel out of place in my daily vocabulary but they belong very well to the mind-scapes that Eigen paints.

The anal social ontology vs. the phallic social ontology

I was going back through 'Group Psychology' and found that Freud himself make a differentiation between the anal social ontology of 'all people' vs. the phallic social ontology of the 'good class'.

I've discussed how the difference is seen in the four libidinal positions before and this post will require that my reader is familiar with these positions:  

http://psychoanalysis-tcp.blogspot.com/2011/11/narcissist-and-masochist-summary.html

My discussions of the second generation greek gods in this post will help.

The subject egoist at the anal stage is in competition with everyone to be the possessor of a single phallus that exists for all people. At the phallic stage he is in competition with those in the field or interest he has. He has to do 'something'- have some skill or knowledge- which places him in competition with others who share that skill or field of study.

Below Freud suggests that at the pre-phallic [anal] stage sexuality isn't attached to love. This would mean that the object egoist who strives to cause desire would seek to cause sexual desire in 'all others' at the anal stage and at the phallic stage causing desire would be to cause love in a person belonging to the 'good class' of people.  

Freud writes:

Two people coming together for the purpose of sexual satisfaction, in so far as they seek for solitude, are making a demonstration against the herd instinct, the group feeling. The more they are in love, the more completely they suffice for each other. Their rejection of the group's influence is expressed in the shape of a sense of shame. Feelings of jealousy of the most extreme violence are summoned up in order to protect the choice of a sexual object from being encroached upon by a group tie. It is only when the affectionate, that is, personal, factor of a love relation gives place entirely to the sensual one, that it is possible for two people to have sexual intercourse in the presence of others or for there to be simultaneous sexual acts in a group, as occurs at an orgy. But at that point a regression has taken place to an early stage in sexual relations, at which being in love as yet played no part, and all sexual objects were judged to be of equal value, somewhat in the sense of Bernard Shaw's malicious aphorism to the effect that being in love means greatly exaggerating the difference between one woman and another.

There are abundant indications that being in love only made its appearance late on in the sexual relations between men and women; so that the opposition between sexual love and group ties is also a late development. Now it may seem as though this assumption were incompatible with our myth of the primal family. For it was after all by their love for their mothers and sisters that the mob of brothers was, as we have supposed, driven to parricide; and it is difficult to imagine this love as being anything but undivided and primitive—that is, as an intimate union of the affectionate and sensual. But further consideration resolves this objection to our theory into a confirmation of it. One of the reactions to the parricide was after all the institution of totemic exogamy, the prohibition of any sexual relation with those women of the family who had been tenderly loved since childhood. In this way a wedge was driven in between a man's affectionate and sensual feelings, one still firmly fixed in his erotic life to-day. As a result of this exogamy the sensual needs of men had to be satisfied with strange and unloved women (Group Psychology, p. 140-1)

Similarly, the subject altruist would generally love, or try to be nice or helpful to 'all others' at the anal stage. Abraham observes:

Combined with a man's genital activity goes a positive attitude of feeling towards the love-object, and this attitude is also transferred to his behaviour towards other objects, and is expressed in his capacity for social adaptiveness, in his devotion to interests, ideas, etc. In all these respects the character-formation of the sadistic-anal stage is inferior to that of the genital phase… [the] too great yieldingness and gentleness, however, which is frequently observed [in anal stage object-love], must not be confused with a real love-transference. Those cases in which object-love and genital libido-organization are nevertheless attained to a great extent deserve a more favourable judgement. If the 'good-heartedness' mentioned previously is combined with incomplete object-love of this kind, a socially useful 'variety' is produced, which in essential respects is, nevertheless, inferior to full object-love (Abraham, Contributions to Anal Character, p. 408).

At the phallic stage, the subject egoist is capable of devotion to a person of the 'good class' or to to the idea of the 'good class'. 

Likewise the object altruist is generally 'cute' and 'exuberant' or humorous and spontaneous with 'all people' in the anal stage. At the phallic stage her or she seeks to 'be loved' in a more differentiated sphere related to the 'good class'. This can be a general 'giving style' to one's image based upon other individuals in the 'good class' or it can be based upon the ideas found amongst them.

I still feel like I'm not nailing the specific formulations...

... I'd like to say that the object altruist wants to be loved for his personality (concrete identifications with others) or be loved for his insights into personality (ideas )  

At the anal stage to cause delight has to do with spontaneity in general while at the phallic stage to cause delight has to do with cultivating style.

preoedipal, oedipal, and psycho-neurotic characters

This ‘nucleus’ of the guilt superego, that is formed from the identification with (full internalization of) the father as the result of the Oedipus complex, still requires the instinctual renunciation of homosexual impulses to develop into the father complex. McDougall is an example of a recent, brilliant analyst who has found that homosexual impulses exist towards the father not just from the feminine side of our bisexual constitution but from the masculine side for a masculine object. She writes

With the help of a clinical illustration, I hope to throw some light on certain fundamental factors that contribute to sexual identity formation and its inversions, in particular the importance of the different identifications with both parents that essentially structure the sense of sexual identity for all children. Here several psychic dramas intertwine: the one to receive most attention in our psychoanalytic literature is the heterosexual oedipal crisis which involves, among other important factors, the wish to possess in the most literal sense of the word the parent of the opposite sex while wishing death upon the same-sex parent. But there is also the homosexual oedipal drama which also implies a double aim, that of having  oexclusive possession of the same-sex parent and that of being the parent of the opposite sex. This twofold dilemma has been explored elsewhere (McDougall,  Eve's reflection: on the homosexual components of female sexuality). (McDougall, The Dead Father, p. 206)[1].

 In the Book Phallos: A Symbol and Its History in the Male World, author Thorkil Vangaard details the ‘homosexual radical’ that exists in men and has existed in various cultural practices of pederasty that pass on ‘manhood’ to boys. These practices usually lasted until puberty and Vangaard differentiates this homosexual impulse from one from a passive-feminine part of the personality.

I think the myths of Heracles and Theseus shows the important differences between someone who is functioning pre-oedipally and Oedipally but pre-father complex. Neither is psycho-neurotic which requires the instinctual renunciation to enter the father complex.

 While the preoedipal Heracles is half god and have mortal, Theseus is partly divine with both a mortal father and Poseidon lying with his mother in the same night. While Heracles fights and defeats great supernatural monsters in his labours, Theseus fights bandits and has 6 encounters to Heracles 12. Heracles performs his labours mostly on his own, with the occasional help of Iolaus who is his nephew and not a social peer, while Theseus had a social peer and ‘best friend’ Pirithous with whom he went on several adventures. Although there is no explicit homosexuality between the two they are part of an archetype of heroes who do everything with best friends (Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, etc.) and homoerotic undertones are often noted. Heracles, in contrast, had many lovers both male and female but no constancy in his relationships.

After the Oedipus complex the father is accepted as both head of the family (procreator) and represents someone who is both more skilled (difference between the generations) and the possessor of the mother (difference between the sexes). The Oedipal level neurotic accepts the procreator, or paternal phallus, and has reduced his narcissism as illustrated in Theseus. However, he has not identified as an 'adult' in the father complex and made the submission to the father into his own ideal. The procreator also represents 'the law' and Freud's group psychology is developed from the observation that conscience can be lost in groups because it first existed externally in the form of the father (i.e. 'social anxiety'). In the father complex both the law in the father as well as the incest taboo and the father's possession of the mother become ideals. These are seen in the institutions of marriage and the incest taboos against the sister or cousin that are found in every culture.

Understanding this, the rogue or picaresque hero represents the person who has the maximum amount of happiness and egoism without pathology having set in. The pre-oedipal Heracles is a regression to the proto-phallic or phallic deutero stage in contrast. Sherlock Holmes or other individuals who show an identification with the law but are still larger than life and failing to meet the father complex impulses to marriage and sociability are returning to an earlier anal stage of conscience. The difference between the anal and phallic rests upon the anal being concerned with injury to someone's person or property while the phallic is concerned with justice or fairness. Needless to say, Moriarty and the great criminals that these heros fight are striving to overcome their own repressed criminal impulses.  

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[1] There are also other analysts who continued to affirm Freud’s homosexual impulses and their relation to the ego ideal  (Hymer, ‘Narcissistic Friendships’; Lewes, K., ‘A Special Oedipal Mechanism in the Development of Male Homosexuality’).