The symbol of the phallus and perfection as the 'not-mother'

I've posted about the phallus as perfection and perfection as a negative quality or the not-mother many times before. Someone has asked for more support in this claim after I told them about my interpretation of the primal horde myth. The interpretation is that the original procreator deity is formed after a negation of the mother at the proto-phallic stage in which language, jealousy, and reputation exists when the community recognizes the skills, strength, or "knowledge" of the totem animal in its survival in the wild. The creation of the procreator of the tribe is the prototype for the oedipal father and not the other way around and the creation of his imago (i.e. the not-mother = father) from the negation of the mother is internal. Here's what I shared with them.   

The phallus or perfection has to be understood as a negative quality. By this I mean that the most important relationship a child has is to its mother or primary caregiver and that a single mother can raise a child that isn’t psychotic or neurotic and this illustrates that the phallus exists for the child through the mother. Philosophically, Freud’s point about striving for perfection is simple here.  We are finite beings and can’t grasp the infinite or perfection and therefore it is best understood to be a negation of the finite. If we understand that the infant wants the mother’s breast, her hugs and caresses, and desires her finite material body in its sexuality, then perfection arises as the not-mother. The phallus, as a symbol of the not mother or not-finite, represents a transitional space where the child can escape from the strong emotional relationship it has to the mother. Freud writes:

“It may be difficult, too, for many of us, to abandon the belief that there is an instinct towards perfection at work in human beings, which has brought them to their present high level of intellectual achievement and ethical sublimation and which may be expected to watch over their development into supermen. I have no faith, however, in the existence of any such internal instinct and I cannot see how this benevolent illusion is to be preserved. The present development of human beings requires, as it seems to me, no different explanation from that of animals. What appears in a minority of human individuals as an untiring impulsion towards further perfection can easily be understood as a result of the instinctual repression upon which is based all that is most precious in human civilization. The repressed instinct never ceases to strive for complete satisfaction, which would consist in the repetition of a primary experience of satisfaction. No substitutive or reactive formations and no sublimations will suffice to remove the repressed instinct's persisting tension; and it is the difference in amount between the pleasure of satisfaction which is demanded and that which is actually achieved that provides the driving factor which will permit of no halting at any position attained, but, in the poet's words, [‘Presses ever forward unsubdued.’]. The backward path that leads to complete satisfaction is as a rule obstructed by the resistances which maintain the repressions. So there is no alternative but to advance in the direction in which growth is still free—though with no prospect of bringing the process to a conclusion or of being able to reach the goal” (Freud, BPP, p. 42).

Freud’s claim here is a simple one: the finite mind couldn’t possibly grasp something infinite or perfect even though philosophers have often claimed the opposite. He ‘naturalistically’ proposes that concepts like perfection have an existence as a negative quality. This no doubt sounds very philosophical and abstract but yet we all use the word perfect in common language and therefore it must have a meaning. The problem is that a thing or person one person describes as perfect may not be so to another. So instead of looking at these objects as if they possess objective perfection we can say that that a man describing a woman as perfect might have idealized her in an ego ideal. Similarly, a person might regard attaining a certain job or title as representing part of the perfect life and work very hard to become partner in his firm. However, the instincts ‘persisting tension’ means that even when he does attain it the feeling of triumph will only last for so long before the ideal will have to find a new object. The real question in all of this is whether we want to ignore meaning and talk about neuroscience, ignore science and talk about God, or whether we can follow Freud and the more difficult and subtle, dialectical approach he takes to meaning.   

An early analyst makes it clear that the phallus is symbolic of perfection: “the symbol of the phallus has simultaneously been accepted unconsciously, by both men and women, as an outstanding mark of fertility, of potency, and of superiority. (Bousfield, The Castration Complex in Women, p. 121-2)[1]. Freud is also clear in many places that perfection is identified with the father and an individual’s “helplessness remains and along with it his longing for his father” (Future of An Illusion, p. 18):

To begin with, we know that God is a father-substitute; or, more correctly, that he is an exalted father; or, yet again, that he is a copy of a father as he is seen and experienced in childhood—by individuals in their own childhood and by mankind in its prehistory as the father of the primitive and primal horde. Later on in life the individual sees his father as something different and lesser. But the ideational image belonging to his childhood is preserved and becomes merged with the inherited memory-traces of the primal father to form the individual's idea of God. (A Seventeenth-Century Demonological Neurosis, p. 85; Civilization, p. 82). 

Not for a moment are we in the dark as to why a great man ever becomes important. We know that in the mass of mankind there is a powerful need for an authority who can be admired, before whom one bows down, by whom one is ruled and perhaps even ill-treated. We have learnt from the psychology of individual men what the origin is of this need of the masses. It is a longing for the father felt by everyone from his childhood onwards, for the same father whom the hero of legend boasts he has overcome. And now it may begin to dawn on us that all the characteristics with which we equipped the great man are paternal characteristics, and that the essence of great men for which we vainly searched lies in this conformity. The decisiveness of thought, the strength of will, the energy of action tare part of the picture of a father—but above all the autonomy and independence of the great man, his divine unconcern which may grow into ruthlessness. One must admire him, one may trust him, but one cannot avoid being afraid of him too. We should have been led to realize this from the word itself: who but the father can have been the ‘great man’ in childhood? (Moses and Monotheism, p. 109-10).

Klein shows that father or his penis is a symbol of perfection, is the successor to the mother or her breast, and retains a ‘symbolic equation’ with her.

As we know, and as Abraham especially has pointed out, the nature of the child's object-relations and character-formation is very strongly determined by whether its predominant fixations are situated in the oral-sucking stage or in the oral-sadistic one. In my opinion this factor is decisive for the formation of the super-ego as well. The introjection of a kindly mother leads to the setting up of a friendly father-imago, owing to the equation of breast with penis. In the construction of the super-ego, too, fixations in the oral-sucking stage will counteract the terrifying identifications which are made under the supremacy of oral-sadistic impulses (Klein, The Psychoanalysis of Children, p. 213-4, emphasis mine)

When the girl turns to her father's penis as the wished-for object, several factors concur to make her desire for it very intense. The demands of her oral-sucking impulses, heightened by the frustration she has suffered from her mother's breast, create in her an imaginary picture of her father's penis as an organ which, unlike the breast, can provide her with a tremendous and never-ending oral gratification (ibid. p.271, emphasis mine).

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[1] The phallus is not just the symbol of perfection, a part-object symbol of the father-substitute- in the oral, anal, phallic, etc. stages. It is also the symbol of the father-substitute who is supposed to protect and foster in regards to the altruistic pole of the personality, or what Bousfield is pointing to as fertility and what Klein identifies as the life drives. The link of the not-finite to death instead of perfection is discussed in earlier posts.  

Hating the schizoid mind

The schizophrenic world mingles in one experience what is kept painstakingly separate in homo normalis. The “well-adjusted” homo normalis is composed of exactly the same types of experiences as the schizophrenic. Depth Psychiatry leaves no doubt about this…The fact is that the schizophrenic is, on the average, much more honest than homo normalis, if one accepts directness of expression as an indication of honesty. Every good psychiatrist knows that the schizophrenic is embarrassingly honest. He is also what is commonly called “deep,” i.e., in contact with happenings. The schizoid person sees through hypocrisy and does not hide the fact. He has an excellent grasp of emotional realities, in sharp contradistinction to homo normalis. I am stressing these schizophrenic characteristics in order to make comprehensible why homo normalis hates the schizoid mind so much.

The objective validity of this superiority of schizoid judgment manifests itself quite practically. When we wish to obtain truth about social facts, we study Ibsen or Nietzsche, both of whom went “crazy”, and not the writings of some well-adjusted diplomat or the resolutions of the communist Party congresses… This is because the schizophrenic tells us frankly what he thinks and how he feels, whereas homo normalis keeps us digging for years before he feels ready to show his inner structure… This appears to be a sad state of affairs. It should be the other way around. If homo normalis is actually as normal as he claims to be; if he claims that self-realization and truth are the greatest goals of good individual and social living, then he should be much more able and willing to reveal himself to himself and his doctor than the “crazy man”. There must be something basically wrong with the structure of homo normalis if truth is so hard to get out of him. To declare, as the well-adjusted psychoanalysts do, that this is as it should be, that homo normalis could not otherwise withstand the impact of all his emotions amounts to complete resignation regarding the improvement of the human lot. We cannot base improvement of conditions on broader knowledge of man’s soul and simultaneously defend his reluctance to reveal himself. Either we keep broadening the scope of our knowledge of man and condemn the general evasive attitude of homo normalis, or we defend this attitude and give up the task of understanding the mind of man. There is no other alternative (Character Analysis, p. 400-2).     

"The Artist" pt. 2

Here is Freud on the artist:

Before I let you go to-day, however, I should like to direct your attention a little longer to a side of the life of phantasy which deserves the most general interest. For there is a path that leads back from phantasy to reality—the path, that is, of art. An artist is once more in rudiments an introvert, not far removed from neurosis. He is oppressed by excessively powerful instinctual needs. He desires to win honour, power, wealth, fame and the love of women; but he lacks the means for achieving these satisfactions. Consequently, like any other unsatisfied man, he turns away from reality and transfers all his [ego] interest, and his [object] libido too, to the wishful constructions of his life of phantasy, whence the path might lead to neurosis. 

The introversion of the libido references the moves I have spelled out from seeking to become a person who holds a place of status in one's community, to being someone who seeks to be one of the pillars of society (ruler, genius, etc.), to phantasy life in which one creates possible worlds. With the second move to the anal fathers there seems to be much higher expectations but, because the grandiose position that is sought is usually outside of one's community, one can have this goal with less immediate competition with others. People, if they discover your goal, can mock your immodesty and your illusions of being special but you have removed your interest in competing at work or school and the need to appear as top of the class or successful. You heart is now invested in a much bigger goal and you work on things bigger than what you learn at school or what your job entails.

There must be, no doubt, a convergence of all kinds of things if this is not to be the complete outcome of his development; it is well known, indeed, how often artists in particular suffer from a partial inhibition of their efficiency owing to neurosis. Their constitution probably includes a strong capacity for sublimation and a certain degree of laxity in the repressions which are decisive for a conflict. An artist, however, finds a path back to reality in the following manner. To be sure, he is not the only one who leads a life of phantasy. Access to the half-way region of phantasy is permitted by the universal assent of mankind, and everyone suffering from privation expects to derive alleviation and consolation from it. But for those who are not artists the yield of pleasure to be derived from the sources of phantasy is very limited. The ruthlessness of their repressions forces them to be content with such meagre day-dreams as are allowed to become conscious. A man who is a true artist has more at his disposal. In the first place, he understands how to work over his day-dreams in such a way as to make them lose what is too personal about them and repels strangers, and to make it possible for others to share in the enjoyment of them. He understands, too, how to tone them down so that they do not easily betray their origin from proscribed sources. Furthermore, he possesses the mysterious power of shaping some particular material until it has become a faithful image of his phantasy; and he knows, moreover, how to link so large a yield of pleasure to this representation of his unconscious phantasy that, for the time being at least, repressions are outweighed and lifted by it. 

In the literature the concept of sublimation that isn't abstract and useless is attached to defense and isn't positive. The person who "sublimates" has their work of art marred by the phantasy or idiosyncratic feature. For example, Bergler writes of an architect who always has to put a fountain in all his design plans in order to satisfy his urethral erotism. Similarly, a writer like Poe is compelled to write of the macabre and it can make his writing become 'too much'. If we want to keep sublimation as a positive concept then it would be more useful to think of it as introverting the libido from higher stages to lower ones without the defusion or foreclosure of the ideals. In this way the true artist is still in touch with the ego ideals of later stages and it is this feeling for common ideals with others that counteracts the phantasies that appear from the defusion and activations of repetition-compulsions. However, I believe that a more nuanced and interesting version of sublimation will ultimately have to appeal to psychic bisexuality and the combination of the active-egoistic and passive-altruistic.    

If he is able to accomplish all this, he makes it possible for other people once more to derive consolation and alleviation from their own sources of pleasure in their unconscious which have become inaccessible to them; he earns their gratitude and admiration and he has thus achieved through his phantasy what originally he had achieved only in his phantasy—honour, power and the love of women. (Introductory Lectures, p. 375-7).

This last sentiment of Freud, as shown by his own honour, power, and love, isn't something that the 'true artist' can enjoy. A Goethe who is a true artist and a statesman is very, very rare. Nietzsche often calls those who are just statesmen actors and he often criticizes the artist or scholar as 'hunchback' or 'burnt children' who falsify the world with their grandiose ideals instead of finding a way to see their ideals in something that resembles everyday life a little more. Many of Freud's followers tried to love him and were turned away by his coldness. His ceaseless work in the light of his physical illness showed the compulsion to work at play in him instead of striking a balance between work and leisure that would allow for self-regulation. Moreover, his need for recognition forced him to lose some talented pupils and to always have to go a step beyond the defector's contributions. He couldn't just accept Adler's aggressive drive but had to make it a death drive in order to outdo Adler.

Phantasy is tied to primary narcissism in which striving for perfection/restoration from death isn't attached to any demands of reality. Freud doesn't explicitly say it is an ego ideal but links it to the introversion of the phallic ego ideals for honour, power, wealth, and fame.

In a much earlier post I referred to 'id ideals' under the rubric of appreciating that the ego as something that registers the demand for perfection as attached to social reality/ontology appears at the anal stage (or the trito oral). However, as a structural relation of development the superego and ego are already present from the beginning of development.

Freud writes of an 'id-ego' in his late work and the concepts made by other schools: the self-representation and the ideal ego don't account for the social ontology found in his work so I'd rather rehabilitate the ego ideal instead of adopting terminology that was made to obscure it.

"The Artist"

In intercourse with scholars and artists one readily makes mistakes of opposite kinds: in a remarkable scholar one not infrequently finds a mediocre man; and often, even in a mediocre artist, one finds a very remarkable man. Nietzsche Beyond Good and Evil-137

I've posted many times on the notion of the schizoid as artist, intellectual, and general contributor to culture. I can understand Lacanians who want to view art as mere semiotic not being able to understand this, but this idea encounters a lot of resistance with non-Lacanians too. Of course a person might want to be an artist because it's part of his mother's phallic image, because it's part of the ideal of adult masculinity in his culture, because a father-substitute groomed him in this direction, because he wants to express his uniqueness and doesn't have an affinity for numbers and doesn't have the strong will for dealing with others in business, because he wants to emphasize his good taste or increase his general attractiveness above others, because he wants to help a fallen father-substitute who has lost his ability.... etc.

There are so many motivations a person can have for being an artist. The non-schizoid artist might even become famous and wealthy. When I mention schizoid contributions it's not that they are the best artists in regards to public opinion. There are many authors or musicians that are appreciated now that in their time weren't popular. The idea that the people who really do appreciate aesthetics beyond the passions of their youth being associated with contemporary music and movies, and who will pass on the valuable old works while the new generation will only show interest in new aesthetics made during their time, has been around for a while. 

I think part of the problem is that transference to the artist/genius wants to make the person into a god-like being. I was impressed in Russia by how Lenin, and other intellectual or political heros were represented as being physically strong in their statutes- like supermen. As Nietzsche's aphorism points out, the talents artist or scholar can have a very drab and mediocre life and have none of the 'life' in his work in his interaction with others. The mediocre artist and scholar sometimes have their 'life' in their actual interactions with others; they are artists of life. Because many people can't see this the distinction is lost on them, and as Nietzsche points out with Goethe, sometimes there is a real artist who has 'overcome' himself and the shyness, timidity, greed, vanity, etc. that has limited his interactions with others and re-emerged to bring some 'life' back into his life and so he actually is "god-like", and this returns one to the notion real talent can belong to those who are artists of life.

I guess all this goes to show that clinicians still haven't been able to grasp how many of their patients are limited by very simple (oral, anal, etc.) superego prohibitions. They can't say no to others, they can't express simple anger, they can't break up with others they aren't interested in, they can't speak in public, they can't take compliments, (etc.) without feeling they are ungratefully taking the place of the idealized object. Conversely, they may have extreme pride that limits their satisfaction of sexual desire, their desire to be the one who contacts or reaches out to friends or their desire for company, they may limit their desire for admiration of their beauty because of pride in their inner values, they may limit all expression of competition from the pride they have in their very existence, etc.

The neurotics I see have the most mythical kind of life once you really try to fathom the motivations at work in the problems they talk about. 

These early forms of the superego can limit their life so much that it's really incredible that they were able to get by for sometime without sexual or social perversions. 

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Freud's Copernican Revolution pt. 3

V The rational chooser vs. the characterological economy of the libido

In the introduction I quoted a passage on the characterological economy of the libido from Civilization and Its Discontents. In it Freud emphasizes that someone’s approach to happiness is established by their “psychical constitution” which plays a “a decisive part, irrespectively of the external circumstances” (Civilization 83-4). Freud gives the example of the “narcissistic man” whose main satisfaction is found in “mental processes” vs. the “man of action” for who the status conferred by money, positions of prestige, and the “external world” grants happiness. At least I understand Freud here as noting that some people are intellectuals by “nature” (i.e. based upon their ego drive/ideal make-up produced in psycho-sexual development). They like to think about the big questions like human nature (i.e. psychology or philosophy) or how things work in an elementary way (i.e. physics or biology). Although an individual might come from a culture that has a “tradition” of valuing the intellectual over, for example, sports/combat, aesthetics/manners, etc. and therefore might work harder to understand intellectual pursuits, he is still different from the person with a “narcissistic” or “intellectual” economy of the libido. Similarly, there is another character types that might want to appear as an intellectual and would create the difference between the ‘true’ and ‘pseudo’ intellectual who’s happiness is found in “being seen as” one instead of his ego ideal demanding perfection of thought or god-like knowledge from him[1].

With the “man of action” I understand Freud to be writing about people for whom their “image” is very important. It is important that they go to “good universities” or have a “good job”, “good salary” and send their kids to a “good school”. We’d say that such a person is ambitious. While everyone would dynamically possess these interests, for some individuals they have an extra economic emphasis on one or more of these traits[2]. Moreover, character traits such as being an intellectual, ambitious, shy, endearing, vain, etc. are trans-historical. This means that we’d find them in different cultures (American, French, Russian) and in different times (Medieval, Ancient Greece, etc.) for as long as homo sapiens have existed in culture[3].

As I mentioned in the introduction, Freud’s model contrasts with the “rational chooser” model which doesn’t recognizes these characterological differences between people. The latter simply holds that the individual has a ‘will’ and chooses or doesn’t choose to pursue intellectual interests or ambitious goals. Freud holds that: 

Although thus humbled in his external relations, man feels himself to be supreme within his own mind. Somewhere in the nucleus of his ego he has developed an organ of observation to keep a watch on his impulses and actions and see whether they harmonize with its demands. If they do not, they are ruthlessly inhibited and withdrawn. His internal perception, consciousness, gives the ego news of all the important occurrences in the mind's working, and the will, directed by these reports, carries out what the ego orders and modifies anything that seeks to accomplish itself spontaneously. For this mind is not a simple thing; on the contrary, it is a hierarchy of superordinated and subordinated agencies, a labyrinth of impulses striving independently of one another towards action, corresponding with the multiplicity of instincts and of relations with the external world, many of which are antagonistic to one another and incompatible. For proper functioning it is necessary that the highest of these agencies should have knowledge of all that is going forward and that its will should penetrate everywhere, so as to exert its influence. And in fact the ego feels secure both as to the completeness and trustworthiness of the reports it receives and as to the openness of the channels through which it enforces its commands (A Difficulty in the Path, p. 141).

“The will” here is seen as informed by multiple reports of the interest of the drives and the ego is that which synthesized the interest of the drives (“ego interest” and “object libido”) into something which gives the most pleasure but without going against the agency that demands “perfection” (the ego ideal) and the inhibition of certain acts (conscience). The ego psychologists agree with this as Milrod states clearly that the ego ideal is formed after the Oedipus complex and has only ethical values as its contents. However, there are two major distinctions in pre-oedipal functioning. Ego psychologists want to claim that the ego observes itself in order to keep the ego ideal as a separate autonomous agency. This is, as I showed, is not Freud’s position. The “nucleus”, “grade in the ego”, or “superordinate agency” has always been referred to as the ego ideal[4]. The second is that Milrod’s view of the ego ideal fore-runner of the wished for self-image only allows for intellectualism to arise as a character trait in imitation of the admired trait of a parent[5]. Unless Milrod wants to claim that the sublimation of a love for feces will create intellectualism, or some similar erotogenic zone claim, then all ‘character’ regarding non-ethical life is formed at the phallic stage where the wished for self-image arises. Milrod claims the child will identify with certain “admired qualities” of its “idols”[6]. The view I understand Freud’s work to be suggesting is much more radical than this. Moreover, it recognizes the earlier psychoanalytic matching of character traits and erotogenic zones but it doesn’t derive the traits from ‘adultomorphic’ impressions of the infantile thought processes in the child’s relation to his own body. Instead, it links them to the primarily related, inter-subjective creation of the mind (the ego being derived from the id) that happens to be paralleled by bodily zones.    

The criticism arises of how the pre-oedipal child (and the pre-phallic/wished for self-image child) can somehow understand perfection or have some notion that it wants to be an intellectual or be interested in the “big questions”? If it can’t even formulate such questions in speech how can this interest be fixated in the child? The answer to this is that these people work from a metaphysical assumption that we are primarily separate as opposed to being social animals which means that they must over-value linguistic based consciousness. They fail to see the humans are primarily social animals and dependent upon their caregivers and that mind is formed inter-subjectively. Earlier parental images or imagos aren’t based upon the cognitive understanding of the parent being god-like (as if the child is a little theologian). Instead it is based upon the child’s feeling of connectedness to a parental imago (a libidinal tie). At the Oedipus complex the child ‘depersonalizes’ the parents into father-substitutes in the community that he seeks education from and tries to hide immoral acts from in social anxiety. In the castration complex he tries to present himself as a rival who possesses the knowledge, skill, or wisdom of the “class of fathers” in the community present the image to others that he should himself be a leader in his field of knowledge or work[7]. However, with more precision we can say that the relation to the parents already carries the social relations the child will have with others outside of the insular family setting. The child is already embedded in the social because it is primarily a social animal. In philosophical terms this creates a social ontology in which ego drives and ideals reference the individual’s connection/libidinal ties to others in individual relationships and others in terms of interacting with the social body in general. Again, the child doesn’t understand ‘reality’ in some cognitive way. Rather social reality, in terms of how he is or is not treated by others, is the standard. I’d like to recall that Freud posited the superego in higher animals and based this on their social organizations possessing a leader. The ability these animals display to pick up on the social reality of their leader must be part of our early cognition and anyone who has been around young pre-verbal children has seen the amount of ‘checking-in’ they do with their mothers before leaving her sight.  

The pre-oedipal ego ideals similarly have “depersonalized” relations that will determine whether an individual is connected (the double identification, or fusion) with the social body. These earlier parental images feel more powerful than the phallic-Oedipal relations, and correspondingly are depersonalized to represent more fundamental ties to the social body than the phallic-oedipal class of fathers who are the educators in one’s community. Instead of the phallic class of fathers in one’s community, there is the anal class of fathers who are the pillars of society itself. As the person suffering from the phallic-castration complex rivals the fathers in the community at the anal-castration complex he rivals the kings, presidents, popes, geniuses, etc. who provide the rules or ruling ideas to a culture[8]. The cult leader who splits off from society to start his own society, the intellectual who touts a new model of thought opposed to the classic paradigms taught in academia are examples of those who rival the anal fathers and whose ego ideal regresses from the demand for status or recognition among phallic fathers to the anal fathers. From this anal level a more fundamental interaction with the human world at large designates the oral libidinal tie or derpersonalization. The oral castration complex sees the individual in a rivalry with the human world for possible worlds in the forms of living alone in a monastery, alone in nature, creating alternative worlds in art (novels, paintings, etc.)[9]. The individual who has regressed to the oral ego ideal doesn’t feel the demand of competing with anal fathers and having his own group to control, adopt his idea, or treat him as god-like. Instead he is contented with his supremacy in imagination[10]. Along with the ego drives the object drives can similarly be plotted in this social ontology so that individual phallic love moves to anal orgies down to personal relationships that exist only in the imagination of the schizoid[11].

I am highlighting these levels of social ontology by directing attention to individuals who have clearly regressed (‘introversion of the libido) in regards to the demand of perfection that motivates them. In individuals who haven’t regressed these demands of perfection can still be an important factor in their character or economy of the libido[12]. For rational choosers, mental illness is only regarded as something wrong with the body (brain) while the mind as a unitary, rational thing exists apart from it. Freud instead made the Copernican revolution to say we aren’t rational choosers but instead we are driven to find happiness in certain ways. Reason exists but it is secondary and directed to the practical questions of how to realize our desires which are primary and based upon our libidinal ties qua social ontology. So instead of seeing psychosis as something bodily Freud courageously saw this as a necessity for seeing the mind in parts (even though it may subjectively feel whole). Thus he compares the normal person who has a physical illness to the psychotic in how they function. He writes:

Closer observation teaches us that he also withdraws libidinal interest from his love-objects: so long as he suffers, he ceases to love. The commonplace nature of this fact is no reason why we should be deterred from translating it into terms of the libido theory. We should then say: the sick man withdraws his libidinal cathexes back upon his own ego, and sends them out again when he recovers. ‘Concentrated is his soul’, says Wilhelm Busch of the poet suffering from toothache, ‘in his molar's narrow hole.’ Here libido and ego-interest share the same fate and are once more indistinguishable from each other. The familiar egoism of the sick person covers both. We find it so natural because we are certain that in the same situation we should behave in just the same way (Freud, ‘On Narcissism’, p. 82-3, emphasis mine).

Freud compares the bed-ridden person suffering from a toothache or the flu to some people suffering from a regressed psychosis in that both can be motivated to do no more than sit around all day and satisfy impulses to eat and drink  (and often with the latter, smoke). Both ego and object libido are expressed in fantasy or imagination while after the oral/primary narcissistic stage they are expressed separately at the anal stage: “Defaecation” Freud writes, “affords the first occasion on which the child must decide between a narcissistic [egoistic] and an object-loving attitude (Freud, ‘On Transformations of Instinct’, p.130; Abraham, ‘Contributions to Anal Character’). With both the person suffering from the flu and psychosis there has been a relinquishment of higher forms of the ego ideal that demand perfection that is observable in the outlined forms of prestige in community, the ruling people or ideas of culture, (etc.). The physically ill person will have his ideals emerge again but the psychotic has ‘foreclosed’ these ideals and can’t regain them without help from the outside[13].

I have offered a simple sketch of how we can conceive of pre-oedipal ego ideals in relation to primarily relatedness or a social ontology. The ‘intellectual’ discussed above has a connection to the ‘big ideas’ or being god-like in knowledge. Again, this isn’t in relation to the child understanding the concept of perfection or god or ‘big ideas’, but instead is a libidinal tie to the figures who represent the pillars of society. The content of this knowledge or power will be filled in retroactively by the more developed cognition of later stages. In addition, what counts as the ‘big ideas’ will develop in culture. In ancient Greece the brightest minds were producing such things as the Pythagorean theorem which a grade school student learns now. Those who strive for the anal phallus today are working on quantum physics or something else that represents learning the secrets of God. However, as Freud expresses in ‘On Narcissism’, having these ego ideals doesn’t mean that one has the capability of sublimating and thereby living up to them[14].

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[1]

The demand for an ideal for perfection in thought is described by one analyst as the plight of the autistic character: “One of the means used by some autistic characters to avoid rejection and loneliness is suggested by both the environment and by thinking through deduction: the achievement of perfection. For, he reasons, if he discharges with perfection what he is usually rejected for, then he will not be rejected. But the very essence of the autistic character's plight, that is, non-engagement, presents a seemingly insurmountable obstacle to learning how to achieve perfection: there is no one available to teach perfection, or there is no one whom he dares ask to teach it. The autistic character, however, does surmount this to an extent by becoming his own master teacher: by an enormous psychic feat (using incalculable energy) he stretches his thinking processes to their outermost reaches to derive knowledge of content and technique. And then he teaches himself—he is, for that matter, forever reminding himself, coaching himself, and even testing himself. But for all of this, he is never sure that he has done something perfectly or even well, for his master teacher—his thinking—alas has known of little but his own ivory tower (Bernstein, ‘The Autistic Character’. p.542). To the extent that being acknowledged as achieving perfection in thought is the goal then it is a demand of the ego ideal. To the extent that ‘thinking through deduction’ or certain cognitive style gives pleasure in itself and has an economic significance in an individual then the ego drive as opposed to the ideal is relevant in the character.

[2] Freud writes of such instincts “which cannot possibly be attributed to every human being. The dynamic conditions for its development are, indeed, universally present; but it is only in rare cases that the economic situation appears to favour the production of the phenomenon” (Freud, ‘Beyond the Pleasure Principle’, p.42).

[3] I think there is a case for saying that some new character traits have been created since culture has developed to the present day, but my point here is that literature from ancient Greece and ethnographies of primitive cultures shows that we have the same types of people. By the word primitive I mean the fact that the status of their political economy, mathematics, and technology is much more basic than ours. This doesn’t mean that their culture is somehow less healthy or inferior to ours. I think there are good cases to be made that some earlier cultures produce less mental illness and allow for more happiness. 

[4] But these melancholias also show us something else, which may be of importance for our later discussions. They show us the ego divided, fallen apart into two pieces, one of which rages against the second. This second piece is the one which has been altered by introjection and which contains the lost object. But the piece which behaves so cruelly is not unknown to us either. It comprises the conscience, a critical agency within the ego, which even in normal times takes up a critical attitude towards the ego, though never so relentlessly and so unjustifiably. On previous occasions we have been driven to the hypothesis that some such agency develops in our ego which may cut itself off from the rest of the ego and come into conflict with it. We have called it the ‘ego ideal’, and by way of functions we have ascribed to it self-observation, the moral conscience, the censorship of dreams, and the chief influence in repression. We have said that it is the heir to the original narcissism in which the childish ego enjoyed self-sufficiency; it gradually gathers up from the influences of the environment the demands which that environment makes upon the ego and which the ego cannot always rise to; so that a man, when he cannot be satisfied with his ego itself, may nevertheless be able to find satisfaction in the ego ideal which has been differentiated out of the ego. In delusions of observation, as we have further shown, the disintegration of this agency has become patent, and has thus revealed its origin in the influence of superior powers, and above all of parents. But we have not forgotten to add that the amount of distance between this ego ideal and the real ego is very variable from one individual to another, and that with many people this differentiation within the ego does not go further than with children (Group Psych, p. 109-10, emphasis mine).

[5] Just as the child strove to be “one with” an admired object representation in imitative identification, he now strives to become “one with” admired qualities in the wished-for self image (Milrod, The concept of the self, p. 15).

[6] Ironically, for the criticisms leveled against ego psychologists by Lacanians, their position is hardly different from this. They may focus more on the claim that the signifier implanted in the child determines the direction he may go in his life, more than the identification that produces it, but its effectively the same. 

[7] As I discussed, there are levels of father substitutes from primary school onward. The masculine protest/castration complex defusion from phallic-father substitutes sees the individual attempting to present an image of superiority. He no longer takes on more of the accumulated knowledge, skill, or wisdom in his historical civilization but feels that he is superior as is. ‘Maturation’ is blocked in the ‘libidinal tie’.     

[8] Abraham reminded us that the child on his pot, on his throne, as it is said, is sovereign” (102) “On the subject of sublimation, Freud [in Civilization and Its Discontents] said that all of human civilization could be considered as an attempt at the sublimation of anal erotism” (105). “ Anal object relation is therefore a social relationship par excellence. Considering that the anal person defines himself through others, we can ask ourselves how this relationship with that manifold other, i.e. society, evolves for him” (108). “He is identified with the other elements of the hierarchy including the principle of absolute domination, personified by a God or a 'charismatic chief'” (Grunberger, ‘Study of Anal Object Relations’, p. 109). Good cultural examples to disambiguate the phallic and the anal levels comes from Star Wars in which the phallic father is represented in his ‘bad aspect’ by Darth Vader (direct commander of the troops) and the Anal father is represented by the Emperor. Additionally, in Lord of the Rings there were rings made for all the different kings but one ring that controlled all of those rings. Also, in Highlander, there are many ‘immortals’ living among regular humans but secretly waging a battle against each other in which there can only be one.

[9] Some artists can also functionally live alone and force all their feelings to exist through the books they write, paintings, or music. In this sense the monastic religious adherent can be viewed as making his life a piece of art where the artist lives through his art. Early analysts have impressionistically cited the relationship to the oral mother as the prototype for this relation but this is ‘adultomorphic’ and attributes cognitive awareness to the child it can’t have. It’s only by seeing the human being as primarily related instead of primarily individual that this kind of relation can exist as a libidinal tie to the social body that can be filled in by content from one’s culture and later cognitive development. Edmund Bergler writes:  

“However, according to my conception, the writer's type of neurotic orality is not greediness and a wish to ‘get’ in the repetition of the child-mother situation, but rather a spiteful desire for oral  independence, whereby the artist identifies himself with the ‘giving’ mother out of aggression toward her, and thus eliminates her. He achieves oral pleasures for himself through ‘beautiful’ words and ideas. In its deepest sense, it is a desire to refute the ‘bad’ pre-cedipal mother and the disappointments experienced through her, by establishing an ‘autarchy’ (Bergler,  On a Clinical Approach to the Psychoanalysis of Writers, p. 46).  

[10] As a general arc that corresponds to the psychosexual stages, the auto-erotic stage would correspond to getting into a rivalry with “3-d reality” for autistic shapes and sensation as the work of Frances Tustin has outlined. While the oral individual in solitude is still experiencing others in imagination the autistic child has a reduced realm of sensations. It seems likely to me that this arc would continue to another stage where any sense of pre-conscious reality is rivaled by the sense of unconscious contents. This would be the important regression point for psychosis.        

[11] 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 (Group Psychology, p. 140-1).

[12] This is the position of ego psychologists Annie Reich and Edith Jacobson:

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

Forever close to magic imagery and yet indispensible to the ego, the ego ideal is eventually molded from such idealized object and self images. The separate though concomitant building up of an ego ideal composed of idealized parental and self images and of realistic ego goals as well as realistic self and object representations, appears to reflect the child’s simultaneous acceptance of the reality principle and his resistance to it…. The prominent, strange, and precious quality of the ego ideal is its unreality and its distance from the real self. Although we are ordinarily perfectly aware of this, the ego ideal exerts a tremendous influence on our realistic behaviour. The vicissitudes of the ego ideal reflect, of course, the development of infantile value measures. Its deep unconscious core harbors derivatives of early notions of value, such as the idea of eternal happiness, of glamour and wealth, or physical and mental power and strength; notions which do not yet have the quality of moral ideas but, partly surviving in our ego goals, may play a paramount role in patients whose superego has never matured (Jacobson, The Self and The Object World, p. 110-2).  

[13] This isn’t to say that the psychotic is untroubled and happy without ideals. Anyone who as worked with them will know they have immense suffering and the ideal have been relinquished but this is brought about by defenses and with the experience of supreme persecutory and depressive anxiety.    

[14] A man who has exchanged his narcissism for homage to a high ego ideal has not necessarily on that account succeeded in sublimating his libidinal instincts. It is true that the ego ideal demands such sublimation, but it cannot enforce it; sublimation remains a special process which may be prompted by the ideal but the execution of which is entirely independent of any such prompting. It is precisely in neurotics that we find the highest differences of potential between the development of their ego ideal and the amount of sublimation of their primitive libidinal instincts; and in general it is far harder to convince an idealist of the inexpedient location of his libido than a plain man whose pretensions have remained more moderate. Further, the formation of an ego ideal and sublimation are quite differently related to the causation of neurosis. As we have learnt, the formation of an ideal heightens the demands of the ego and is the most powerful factor favouring repression;  sublimation is a way out, a way by which those demands can be met without involving repression (On Narcissism, p. 94-5).

Freud's Copernican Revolution pt 2

I gave a conference paper today and realized that it's difficult for people to imagine what pre-discursive desire is.

Lacanians, as I've mentioned before, actually hold the very position of the ego psychologists that they criticize.

When ego psychologists talk about the conflict-free and autonomous zone created in the mind after the oedipus complex they only hold that it affects the ethical values that the child chooses. Lacanians criticize this and want to decenter the subject so that it is really societal discourses and not the individual's choice that established ego ideal values. However, where ego psychologists limit this to ethical values the Lacanians hold that discourse shapes more than ethical values and that varieties of egoism and altruism itself are implanted into the individual. They don't have room for the character and drive based economy of the libido that the individual forms in psycho-sexual development. 

I agree with the Lacanians, contra the ego psychologists, that the individual is inscribed by social traditions and does not choose among them himelf, but I agree with the ego psychologists that pre-oedipal development forms an individual character that is the foundation upon which social traditions are hoisted.    

In an earlier post I drew attention to Freud's copernican revolution in seeing the pre-discursive drives as based upon psychosexual development as opposed to the rational subject choosing. Towards understanding them I've begun to post work on how to understand the phallic phallus vs. the anal phallus in multiple phases. I'm hoping to get down to the oral phallus and the earlier ocular one sometime in the future. 

It's hard for people to understand how there can be these earlier phalluses considering that the child isn't yet speaking. People are even skeptical of the anal phallus, and I think it's because they think that the idea of god-like perfection that I've traced to this stage is too complicated for the child to grasp. Their error is in assuming that the child is grasping these complicated relations through something like ordinary adult cognition as opposed to seeing that the human mind develops through a social ontology and not an individual ontology. Annie Reich writes: 

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

What the ego drives/ideals enshrine is not a cognitive understanding of god-like perfection or an understanding of human society but of the child's relation to imagos that in their depersonalized forms stand for a relation to people in general. 

At the phallic Oedipal the child relates to a father imago that stands for interaction with those who have a good reputation or positions of symbolic prestige (ie educators, professionals, etc.). The narcissist here diminishes transference to these people and gives others the impression that he is more powerful than the fathers in his area of knowledge or skill set.

At the anal Oedipal the child relates to a father imago that stands for interaction with people who have absolute power in society (ie. presidents, popes, geniuses). The narcissist here diminishes transference to these people and gives others the impression that his knowledge or skills are the most important for anyone to have. 

At the oral Oedipal the child relates to a father imago that stands for  interaction with people in general. The narcissist here diminishes transference to human relationships and gives others the impression that he doesn't need interactions with others. 

I've created this sketch along the subject egoistic trend but it would apply to the 3 other libidinal positions as well. This is the horizontal axis.

Again the child isn't 'cognizing' these social relations as if it has adult consciousness but instead is interacting with imagos that represent these social relations 

There are many/ poly phalluses at the phallic stage

There is one phallus for all people at the anal stage

and, there is the phallus that represents otherness itself at the oral stage.

This is the vertical axis.

Based upon psychosexual development the child will have deutero or trito relations during these stages that others don't have and maybe even stop developing along a certain libidinal position. This forms his or her character and how he or she will strive for glory or harmony and where breakdowns (defusions) will occur.

As the child gets older and cognition develops further it will have more and more of a sense of how it is or is not occupying the relations of the phallus (both vertical and horizontal) in its relations to others and   culture will provide the content. For example, where those who wanted to have the greatest knowledge (anal phallus in systematizing) in ancient Greece were producing such things as the pythagorean theorem which a grade school student learns now, those who seek the anal phallus today are working on   quantum physics or something else that represents learning the secrets of God. 

There is no doubt that a culture can provide discursive desires that make such knowledge an ideal that the individual pursues. This pursuit is not part of his 'being', which, as I've drawn attention to, is really his 'not-being' that he is driven to pursue as part of his make-up as an ego drive (he has a systematizing mind that is economically selected) or because his self-respect (ego ideal) demands he be regarded by others as having this god-like knowledge.    

subject egoism and altruism at the phallic-narcissistic or phallic-deutero phase.

In previous posts I have drawn attention to the gradual intermixing between the active-egoistic and passive altruistic poles of the personality.

I mentioned that at the proto-phallic stage that the egoist is altruistic towards him image or reputation and that the altruist is egoistic in regards to defending the love object and his authority.

I cited Chasseguet-Smirgel and others who see the altruist's Oedipus (Antigone) complex as surrounding the issue of the altruist's self-assertion and independence in which he or she needs to feel like a just father-substitute is fostering her. However, I didn't offer the parallel of this birth of egoism in the altruist with altruism in the egoist.

It has become increasingly clear to me that the egoist begins to have impulses of charity. In the characterlogy of Hakomi they call this character type tough/generous. As self-assertion begins in the altruist the needs to possess an idealized figure and enshrine his authority is still there. The subject altruist isn't driven to become "the boss". Similarly, the charitable or generous impulses in the subject egoist are still attached to the idealization of self and have to be done with public knowledge or to contribute to his reputation.

Things get more complicated with the object egoist and altruist and I'll have to wait.