Ego vs. Object Drives: repression

I want to clarify something.

I initially took Freud's ego vs. object drives to constitute psychic bisexuality. I thought Freud wrongly ascribed the man with the true anaclitic idealization and that the object drives were properly feminine. Then I found Freud's remarks on egoism and altruism and began to realize that the ego drives could have both egoistic and altruistic expression and that the object drives could express sensual love that wanted to possess, control, and would lead to hate and spiritual love that wanted to merge and resonate with the beloved, and would lead to aloneness when the object was away.

However, it is clear that these subject egoist and altruist expressions are still subject to repression and that Freud, contra Jung, wanted a conflict to explain this process.

I've mentioned in other posts that the high ego ideal (phallic deutero) in the object egoist can lead to the repression of object drives. A 'vain' woman doesn't find male admirers who match her own high estimation of her attractiveness and so she represses her object drives for interest in cultural matters (usually morality but aesthetics and other pursuits are possible). A subject egoist can similarly endure a disappointment in love and afterwards begin to resent women for not admiring his skill or pursuit that makes him exceptional.

I haven't written much about the altruist in this regard. Deutsch writes:

There is a group of women who constitute the main body figuring in the statistics which give the large percentage of frigidity. The women in question are psychically healthy, and their relation to the world and to their libidinal object is positive and friendly. If questioned about the nature of their experience in coitus, they give answers which show that the conception of orgasm as something to be experienced by themselves is really and truly foreign to them. During intercourse what they feel is a happy and tender sense that they are giving keen pleasure and, if they do not come of a social environment where they have acquired full sexual enlightenment, they are convinced that coitus as a sexual act is of importance only for the man. In it, as in other relations, the woman finds happiness in tender, maternal giving (Deutsch, The Significance of Masochism in the Mental Life of Women, p. 59).

This type of woman has chosen to stay in a love relationship out of altruistic impulses for the other person and has repressed her object drives of being able to idealize the other. Her object drives find expression in 'crushes' on different celebrities but she is eminently loyal to her family. Instead of her high self-regard causing repression, it is her inability to hurt the other person's feelings and the feeling that breaking up with them would do so. With the Object altruist the repression of object drives comes from a similar principle of finding someone who strategically helps one display one's individuality to the world. This 'front' is chosen over love which, as with all the other types, followed a narcissistic injury or disappointment in love, so that phobos came to dominate over eros. The fear of putting oneself out on a limb meets the ego ideal (either egoistic or altruistic) and represses the object drives.

This does raise the question of whether the object drives can repress the ego drives...

Character Types: upturned nose

Body-psychotherapy or somatic psychology can no longer be dismissed. Any person of decent judgment will recognize that the patients he sees have tight and stiffened bodies and faces. He will also recognize that after his own narcissistic injuries or disappointments in love that muscle constrictions have shown up. You're grinding your teeth at night, your legs are tight now when you wake up, your neck is stiff... And any theoretically minded person who has really examined the problem at the heart of Cartesian dualism knows that the body has to play a significant role in our mental life.

In body-psychotherapy all the aggressive and affectionate id impulses (to bite, to suck, to push away, to reach out for, to dismember... etc.) show up in the muscular constrictions that hold them back from expression. A character type isn't identified by his muscular 'armor' being in a certain place because one area can be armored for several different expressions. Rather, it is the way the body grew or failed to grow around the armor during psychosexual development that gives us the indication of character type. In my psychoanalytic work, the non-universal deutero and possible lack of full internalization at the trito stages are eventually going to be paired with the body types already identified in somatic psychology. This is a long term project but I hope to be able to document connections I have made.

Although the nose isn't a 'body type', I'm beginning to have the sense that certain kinds of noses correspond to certain types. I have been able to see that in several of my patients with an 'upturned nose' (as shown in the picture above) demonstrate the anal deutero ego ideal along the feminine- subject altruist and object egoist line of development (i.e. they have increased regard in the transference to god-like figures in society: kings, presidents, geniuses, etc. and increased self-regard to be desirable to these anal fathers in object egoism).

Clinical Technique: 'I statements' and 'you statements'

In Freud's essay on negation he mentions how an unconscious thought can be seen in the patient's denial of it. This is one of the points that critics of Freud like to latch on to because it shows that the psychoanalyst is always right. It's sad to think that such people have never cared for others enough to be struck by negations.

I was working with a patient's dream and there was a plane in it but no particular type came to her mind. I asked her 'What the first type of plane that comes to your mind?' She said a passenger plane. I asked her what her first association to a passenger plane was and she mentioned that her brother and his girlfriend when on a trip last summer. Then she began 'It's not like I wanted to go...'. It seemed very strange to me that she would begin like that- as if I would be thinking that and she needed to set me straight. I waited for her to finish off her thought and then I asked her, 'How does it feel if you say 'I wanted to go on the trip'?  She repeated it, and said it felt right and then proceeded to tell me more about how she used to be her brother's mentor and how they had reversed roles and now he's doing better than her.

Suffice it to say that we entered into important information and that we worked closer to some of the issues at work in her melancholia.

This patient had a classic melancholia. Even though she had been to university and was young she soon began to self-revile in the session. She was 'lazy', she was 'stupid', she couldn't 'get her shit together', etc. At the same time, her father began to appear from links in her dreams and slips. In classic form her reproaches didn't really fit her but did fit her father very well. I waited for a few sessions for the attacks to build and for any other info about the father to appear. Then I asked her to relax and take a few breaths, and then say all the self-reproaches as 'you statements' and see how it feels. I read her the words she had used in her self-reproaches and she said them: 'you are lazy, you are stupid...' and after cycling through it twice I asked if anyone came to mind. She had a strange look on her face and said 'my father'.

The self-reproaches didn't come up again after that.

Trito Anal- Urethral Stage

I've mentioned before that instead of following the 'private language' of analysts who describe people's behaviour as anal or oral based upon their anthropomorphized (or better, adultomorphized) impressions of the child-mother relationship or their impressionistic interpretation of negative behaviours or induced feelings with a patient, I think it is better to look at common language. In this I linked the anal stage and feces to superlative representations of power, ugliness, servility, and death. 

To this end, I'd like to submit 'pissing contest', 'taking the piss out of', and 'get pissed' (drunk) and, as I'll say more about later, the representation of the abdomen as the 'inner genital'. 

Pissing contest relates to two people competing with one another just for the sake of being right. It's never just one topic. Another and then another is brought up so that a person is either shown to do things the best or most efficient way or know more than the other person not just in one area but in general. 

Taking the piss out of someone relates to mocking or insulting someone so that he or she is brought down to size. Horney and many others note that penis envy arises at the urethral stage in envy of the male's ability to urinate standing up (Horney, On the Genesis of the Castration Complex in Women, p. 51-2).  

Using 'pissed' for drunk I believe to be important in regards to 'dissolving the superego' at this earlier stage. If this stage represents the drive to do everything the best way, then it's easy to see how much pressure could be on a person. One writer mentions a reaction formation that might resemble the use of alcohol here:

The pervasiveness and supremacy of shame in the dynamics of enuresis is to be seen in the assertion by many analysts that children who claim “they couldn't care less” and are defiant are in fact denying and compensating for overwhelming feelings of shame. This implies that shame is ever-present in enuretics, although it is often distorted by reaction formation in its overt expression (Juni, Reaction Formation and Over-control in Enuresis, p. 250).

Some analysts have noted that what has traditionally been described as an anal character is in fact a urethral character. This type of [urethral] character, which has hitherto been very briefly described” Cariot writes, “has many features allied to, in fact, almost identical with, the anal-erotic character as first pointed out by Freud” (Cariot, ‘The Character Traits of Urethral Erotism’, p. 430). 

I've mentioned before that Stoller and Reich both see the anal stage as forming sexual identity in relation to embodiment. Reich's passive feminine character is based upon an anal identification with the mother. Following the trito-phallic consolidation of the phallic-oedipus complex it seems like something similar would go on in the trito-anal or urethral stage and Kestenberg notes this as well:

I have found it useful to subsume the behavior of the child after the anal phase under the heading of urethrality. A girl with an innate phallic predisposition may now exhibit penis envy of a urethral type. Her rapproachement may be tinged with urethral-genital advances. An innately maternal girl will play with dolls and show little interest in boys' genitals. Each of the pregenital phases tends to bring out different feminine characteristics, but a very pronounced preference for a special form of femininity makes us think very early that a special little girl is destined for motherliness, tomboyishness, or sex-appeal (Kestenberg, The Three Faces of Femininity, p. 321-2)

She goes on to note the importance of the abdomen as the outer representative of the 'inner genital' or insides:

If ever there was a prototype of a battering mother, the near-four-year-old can qualify for it in her bouts of frustrated anger with her doll-child. This illusory child represents the now insufferable inner-genital that cannot be assuaged and hides from the girl's wrath. Such an intense excitement may be due to a vulvo-vaginitis, but it also occurs when the child is overstimulated or seduced. The girl wishes she had no inside at all. In analysis we find out that without this excitement there is a feeling of “deadness” equated with the absence of the inner-genital. It is also equated with the “death of the baby” whose previous liveliness attested that there had been something precious and alive inside. While the little girl yearns for the peaceful deadness, called aphanisis by Jones, she also worries that she has been emptied and eviscerated. She may say: “Everything fell out.” She may retain urine or feces to hold on to what she has. She may re-excite herself when she has no genital feelings to make sure that she is not “dead” after all. Having “deadened” her illusory baby she may re-animate and hug it. The conflict between maternality and infanticide is resurrected repeatedly in the girl's life, especially in premenstrual periods. It recurs in various phases of motherhood, when the unruly child taxes the patience of the parent. To avoid conflict mother may at that time want to leave the child and find satisfaction in work. She may vent her anger on her husband as she renews her conflict with her mother (ibid, p.323).

The integrative task of the girl in the inner-genital phase is to establish a primacy of the generative feminine inside over the alimentary and excretory organs and functions. Inner-genital impulses give rise to fantasies. In a primary-process type of thinking, the girl creates a baby out of food, feces, urine, and all that can be used as raw material for generation and regeneration. Excited, full, feeling an elastic, expandable, enlarging, and contractile tissue within her, the girl feels the baby inside. When the feeling becomes more than she can cope with, she nags her mother. Regressively, she combines the nagging with an irritable demandingness, with vying for power, and with simultaneous refusal of and impatient asking for help. When the nagging feeling inside goes away, she feels nothing and becomes concerned with the fear that she had lost her baby. By externalizing inner-genital impulses, the three to four-year-old girl learns to sublimate sexual wishes into maternal fulfillment. Phallic wishes may appear in this still preoedipal period, but they are not dominant. Identification with the mother helps to establish the little girl as an intuitive and understanding "play-mother." The baby within her is created in the image of herself and the mother. Her mother and the mother's accessory — the father — shrink in fantasy whle the girl expands and grows on the inside and on the outside. When she can no longer maintain the dual role of child and mother and has to acknowledge her childlessness, the little girl becomes angry and depressed. Her imaginary baby seems to die. The related conflicts and fears anticipate the feelings of pregnant women who doubt the reality of the baby and at the same time are afraid that the fetus was lost or died. Angry at the baby-hoarding mother and full of murderous impulses against the unreal baby inside of her, the little girl erects reaction formations which give rise to generous wishes to give mother a real baby (Kestenberg, Regression and Reintegration in Pregnancy, p.224).

The nagging of the mother Kestenberg notes no doubt has a relation to the nagging and complaining of Reich's masochistic character, that he links to an unconscious attempt to be loved.

The deadness of the abdomen or inner genital should be contrasted to the feelings of power there. The expression full of 'piss and vinegar' relates to this power as well as the images of the abdomen as powerfully alluring. Both belly dancers as well as object egoist males who want to 'ripped' in their abdomens or have '6 packs' show that the urethral stage has an expression in one causing desire in the other.  

So the egoistic positions seem straightforward when the social ontology and cognitive capacities at each stage are worked out (see the post on forms of perfection).

SE- and doing everything perfectly or knowing everything perfectly

OE- and causing desire through the abdomen/being the most seductive 

The altruistic positions are less so.

On the one hand we have the connection of giving the mother a baby. On the other, we know that self-assertion for the altruist only manifests at the phallic-oedipal, and that the trito-anal, like the trito-phallic, would be the enshrinement of the difference between the generations. So, it seems like the relationship to the baby, as the difference between the generations, means that the altruist isn't self-assertive here but assertive in regards to 'babies' or those of the younger generation. Cariot mentions narcissistic omnipotent mothering in one urethral character:

It could be shown in the analysis that the evacuation of urine during sleep was an auto-erotic act, a masturbatory substitute, as many dreams associated with the enuresis were of a definite symbolic sexual nature, an overflowing of repressed erotism…. In the relationship to her family, she manifested a strong sense of narcissistic omnipotence… (Cariot, The Character Traits of Urethral Erotism p.428-9)  

It's important to realize that 'narcissistic' is not always related to egoistic but rather to self-absorption. The altruist doesn't only act this way towards 'babies' but can act this way towards her grown up children or to friends. When he or she has a urethral relation to others and 'mothers' them this doesn't mean they possess the pre-conscious motivation that they are superior to these friends, but only that he or she has a drive to help, assist, or support people and the feeling that he or she has something that is generative, nurturing, (etc.). You can point out to the person that this indirectly means that they have a high estimation of their powers but to interpret this as a manifestation of will to power misses the phenomenology.

Annie Reich gives an interesting example of this:

Already in adolescence there were fantasies about having a house of his own, furnished in the most exquisite taste, in which he as a bachelor received guests for elaborate meals cooked by himself. He wished to surpass the mother's more simple tastes in her own field. To be the one who gives and feeds in the most refined way became most desirable. From the direct oral field, this fantasy expanded to many others. He wanted to be the one who guided and advised everybody else. He succeeded in creating a large circle of friends. His efforts in their behalf grew into a twenty-four-hour job. He tried to become their "therapist, " to give them money, to advise them inlove affairs, to provide jobs, find apartments, arrange trips, procure unobtainable theater tickets, to offer the most important ideas for their creative work, and so on. Here again, as in his work as a ghost writer unknown to the world, he was the creator of other people's fame and happiness. With this behavior he lived up to an ideal of an omniscient, all-powerful, all-giving mother (A, Reich, Early Identifications, p. 229). 

The object altruist is even harder to grasp here. There are two leads. One is 'pissing or spitting in the wind' in which the person wants to do something that is next to impossible. The other is the notion, once again, that the phallic drives represent 'doing something' and that the object altruist there is a musician, a humorist, or generally gives style within a domain of work (fashion, art, psychology). This means that as the SE wants to do everything perfectly, the OA would want to give himself style in everything and not in a certain domain. This seems like it could lend itself to grandiose goals that aren't attached to efficiency or small acts that can be done. I remember an OA I knew in high-school who wanted to drive a hearse and live in a graveyard and generally live out his 'gothic' aesthetics as much as possible without much thought about the practical aspects. I've also met some yoga teachers who also have managed to turn the practice of yoga, trips to India, retreats to other parts of the world, and a lot of scarves, big necklaces and earrings, slogans etc. into an aesthetic life.

So, the altruistic positions:

SA- mother, help, and 'grow' others,  the aim is not those who aren't helpless or damaged or deserving of pity but those who simply have some growing to do.

OA- those who make their lives stylish or those who recognize the 'character styles' of others in their 'energies' or 'vibes'  

The last thing I want to point to is the naive psychoanalytic formulation that makes these ego drives appear as a consequence of the anatomy as opposed to the identifications and ego ideals with the parents at different stages:

Many years ago Freud and Jones drew attention to the ambition of enuretics: they have to prove that they are able to do everything else particularly well, because they are unable to master something as simple as bladder control (Katan, Expereinces with Enuretics, p. 245).

Psychoanalysis, by attaching itself to idiosyncratic forms of aggression, affection, and bodily functions, allows for the most sophisticated type of phenomenology to have coordinates and checks. Myth, art, and idiom now become available for research and the pairings of motivations with the idiosyncratic impulses and functions can be checked against one another. The above quotation is surely deserving of the critique made by the relationist schools that classical psychoanalysis is a one person system. However, I have yet to see the 'relationists' make use of the ego ideal or of the bodily symbols of the intersubjective relations in any systematic way. 

The Primal Horde Myth

The work I've been doing undermines the primal father myth in a few ways.

I've tried to show that the relation to the 'horde' or group is at the anal level and the father imago there is omniscient or omnipotent. I've also tried to show that the difference between the generations concerns the egoistic phallic drive to do 'something' better than others in reputation, and that the horde doesn't describe both the language and tool use that would already be going on at the phallic level. We can already see a glimmer of this in Chimpanzee groups. They use tools and chimps form alliances with others to take down another chimp and display conscience in some way.

At the phallic level the knowledge of the father's role in procreation isn't known in archaic cultures. Freud, Jones, Roheim, and others show that the are 'Oedipal' symbols and myths but, as I've tried to show, the Oedipus complex in its clinical manifestation (the castration complex) involves the phallic mother. The phallic mother denigrates the father imago qua procreator/head of the family/group leader/elder with more skill... after it is transferred onto the biological father. Her disappointment in her love relationship with him leads to her denigrating his status as procreator but previously, when power/head of family/elder with more skill... was located in the maternal uncle or the procreator deity (totem animal) the mother's disappointment in love wouldn't affect the father imago.

This means that a reversal needs to happen. The primal father qua procreator isn't the template for the procreator deity who is responsible for the creation of the tribe, but instead the procreator deity is the prototype for the biological father's role in procreation.

The procreator deity arises, as I've said in previous posts, as a negation of the mother. The child needs to escape from the power of the mother and creates the father as the not-mother in order to have a transitional space.

The totem animal as an example of the procreator deity illustrates the relation of the difference between the generations in that as an animal it has skills or "understanding" that the tribesmen want to possess. Even if it is just magic or some fantasy power the elders that must exist in every culture will be treated with respect so that the younger generation can be taught their skills and learn their 'magic'. The procreator deity provides the initial ego ideal that draws people to love their work in relation to being a group under the tutelage of the procreator who gave them life (rescued them from the passionate relation to the mother that would result in either her death of theirs).

I'll have to post a little more about the 'guilt' that both Nietzsche and Freud find at the beginning of culture to the procreator. As I've also tried to point out, the following father-complex of trito-phallic stage has an important relation to guilt and more needs to be said about the connection between the two.
 

Clinical Technique: I statements and rebus

A few years ago I read a Gestalt Therapy Verbatim. Perls analyzed some dreams by having the person talk as if they were one of the things in the dream. I think one was an old license plate in a lake and one was a woman's dress, or something. Anyway, I thought that some of the communications felt like they could be profound, but I felt like a lot of people would feel that it's ridiculous to talk as if were a license plate. So, I modified this by asking for a person to give me a few adjectives to describe a thing or person in the dream. For example, one patient noted the ledge of a building outside her window and when I asked her to describe it she said it was slippery, dangerous, ... and then I asked her to turn it into I statements and see how it felt. She said the words and said they felt right and then went on to tell me about some of her sexual relationships.

It's often surprising how anthropomorphic the descriptions of inanimate objects can be. Very rarely do I have to leave out an adjective when I ask the person to turn them into I statements.

Of course, this also works with people who appear in dreams (she's "petty, a bitch, lazy..."). It seems important to use the words as he or she says them and to not let the patient defend by arguing that one doesn't really apply. This doesn't mean to argue with them but to re-direct them to the words they feel connected with and go from there.  

There is a strong divide between egoistic and altruistic patients. Those who seem to be more egoistic it's often better to look for a rebus in the dream and break down some of the words they use into smaller words or ask the patient about the word in a new context.

For example, one patient had a dream of an anaconda snake and I asked her what came to mind when I said an-a-con-da. She said an a con dad and began to tell me about how her step-dad tricked her and her mom. He was nice when he began dating her mother but when he moved in he was mean. Another patient turned Mississippi into 'Mrs. sleepy' a nickname she received and which reinforced her self-reproaches for not working hard enough. Another egoist told me of a dream in which she opened the door for her mom and said 'after you'. I asked her how she felt about the idea of her mom being out of the picture or gone and it strongly resonated with her.

I like to approach therapy as experiments that the patient and I try out. If you follow emotions or get a sense for the patient talking about new things that he or she hasn't brought up before then you can't go wrong. However, if the patient is too regressed then he or she won't be able to make these spontaneous connections or asking them to do so is too intrusive. The horizontal split of psychic bisexuality and the vertical line of development must be considered with each patient you are working with.

The Ego Ideal: forms of perfection

In my work on the superego I’ve come to appreciate that Freud holds that it is a structural relation in development through multiple stages:

Nor must it be forgotten that a child has a different estimate of its parents at different periods of its life. At the time at which the Oedipus complex gives place to the super-ego they are something quite magnificent; but later they lose much of this. Identifications then come about with these later parents as well, and indeed they regularly make important contributions to the formation of character; but in that case they only affect the ego, they no longer influence the super-ego, which has been determined by the earliest parental imagos. (NIL, p. 64, emphasis mine).

The relevant form of the superego for this post is the ego ideal. On one hand it represents measuring oneself in relation to ‘father-substitutes’ or ‘leaders’ and interferes with the transference to them in pathology (i.e. the castration complex/masculine protest). On the other hand, it represents striving for perfection in relation to ego drives:

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

Perfection is a very abstract term and I believe Freud both chose it because it is abstract and would allow future analysts to provide specific forms of perfection, and because it represents a negative quality. By negative quality I mean that perfection cannot be grasped by the finite mind and that the objects (people) or things (possessions) that are deemed to be perfect are different for different individuals and change over an individual’s own lifetime.

In regards to (subject) egoistic development I’ve mentioned different types of perfection.

In the father complex/boy’s negative Oedipus complex/trito-phallic stage perfection is determined by the “injunctions and prohibitions” of father-substitutes. One wants to be ‘grown up’, gain recognition from others as an adult, and this involves three different forms for Freud: compulsive labour, marriage, and social feeling. The latter has been best elaborated by queer theorists as the ‘homo-social’ and the tendency of males to enter into groups and fraternities around different types of labour and sports. An adult goes to work even though he doesn’t like it, he takes care of his wife and kids even though he may not feel any love for them (i.e. its his duty), and he gets involved with community groups or sits on boards or councils to maintain integrity in a field, talk shop, ‘pay his respects’, and derive some self-esteem from the status of the groups.

The understanding of this drive come from individuals who have suppressed their altruistic side and are a variety of the obsessive-compulsive character. In other individuals this drive works in confluence with altruistic drives and belonging to groups is over-determined.

The earlier forms of perfection are individualistic.

At the phallic deutero/phallic-narcissistic stage perfection takes the form of the phallic image of the (phallic) mother.  The mother’s father, her brother, an old lover, etc. or their occupations, interests, etc. are the form which perfection takes.

At the proto-phallic/poly-phallic stage perfection takes the form of competing with others to belong to the ‘good class’ in understanding or skill. One wants recognition for what one can do and reputation and public opinion provide the grade for whether one is deemed as talented or intelligent.

At the trito-anal/urethral stage perfection takes the form of doing tasks perfectly. At the proto-phallic/poly-phallic stage there are many different phalli or skills or fields that one can strive for. In the anal stages competition revolves around a single phallus everyone competes for. Specifically at the trito-phallic/urethral stage cognition has advanced to the point of simple teleology. This is shown in another variety of obsessive-compulsive character sometimes called just compulsive character or urethral character. These individuals do everything the ‘right way’ and are prone to ‘micro-manage’ others. Whether it’s putting dishes in the dishwasher the right way, being compulsive about being on time and taking the quickest route, or making sure every action is part of ‘multi-tasking’ these individuals are generally concerned with efficiency. However, the focus is on ‘tasks’ and not the outcome in regards to one’s phallic skill or field of knowledge. In schizoid intellectuals in which the mind is more important than the body, efficiency is stressed in ‘stream-lining’ ideas and developing better techniques

At the anal-deutero/anal-narcissistic stage perfection takes the form of systematizing in general. Deduction as a process of putting things in binaries and having symmetry is the intellectual/schizoid form. The non-intellectual form is best understood in relation to the control of crowds and groups. The social ontology in the anal stages is pre-signifier (i.e. it arises at the proto-phallic stage) and the relation to others is mediated by picture-thinking. Picture-thinking can already break things into parts (i.e. see the body as arms, legs, torso, head) and in ‘imagination’ these parts can construct imaginary creatures like unicorns or centaurs. As mentioned in an earlier post, Freud believed that the examination of wolf packs and other higher mammals would show the importance of the leader but the deutero/narcissistic stages require parental seduction or parental rejection and thus we can’t examine what such ‘adapatations’ would look like among animals. Instead we must again look at pathological cases. In an earlier post I’ve shown a form of the compulsive character sometimes called the autistic character that shows the intellectual form at this level, and for the non-schizoid form Fenichel directs our attention to Mussolini and other military men as well as performers who want to control crowds. The (subject) egoist drive to conquer or dominate is what we are discussing and I think that a magician, for example, who wants to awe and delight the crowd would better be understood as an object altruist, but again, over-determination is the norm and I’ve been looking at varieties of compulsives who have suppressed their altruistic side.

At the proto-anal stage perfection would take the form of the picture thought on its own without the greater systematizing impulse to bring many things together. I can't give a definite statement here until I  investigate more developmental empirical psychology and animal psychology to differentiate the proto from the deutero stage. However, as opposed to the control of groups or crowds the proto-anal stage would represent the simpler impulse of rivalry to rise to the top of the group. At the anal Oedipus complex a place for this leader becomes established in transference to a father substitute, just as the rivalry for being first in one's field becomes a place for a father substitute who is more skilled or knowledgeable at the phallic Oedipus complex. 

Lastly, the trito stages represent the development of the dominant ego function of the following stage. At the trito anal or urethral stage teleology and will or self-control appear and in the phallic stage these are elaborated beyond compulsive efficiency and performance of tasks. The trito-phallic stage with its relation to the family/marriage as an impulse to join in fraternities is elaborated in the latency stage as the social ideals of race, nation, class, etc. that are more abstract and require further development of cognition. And, to be clear, cognition develops through instinctual renunciation and identification just as the ego ideal does. Both are based upon inner objects.

This bring me to the trito oral stage. At this stage the picture-thought would appear in its simplest form, however, it is still enough that it could leave an imprint on character so that the obsessive-compulsive character is more interested in noting the things in a room than the people in it. Additionally, it seems like this is the place for Hegel's simple master/slave conflict of one self-consciousness viewing another self-consciousness and needing to dominate it. In other posts I've shared that the oral stage is connected to primary narcissism for Freud, which means that one can satisfy one's desire to conquer or dominate in fantasy. The ego ideal that demands that one lives up to perfection as measured by the recognition that one receives from others- mediated through words and reputation, mediated through the body and gestures of deference, etc.- must follow this unhindered fantasy. 

I'm unsatisfied with simply noting Hegel's master and slave. I also think that the oral Oedipus complex must take into account the encounter with otherness. Along with the structural relation the other trito stages to the following stages there is also the different fantasies of being swallowed and being eaten as well as being oppressed by the presence of things (possessions) that provide place markers for these stages. I've mention in a previous post that Winnicott's transitional object as a thing and not an object would be this elaboration of the father at this stage. As Freud says, this pre-history in the individual is hard to navigate and I will have to wait for more definitive statements on the trito oral.