oral trito (cont.)

In earlier posts I described the oral trito stage as being a giant among men that is based upon the fact of one's existence and not something one does (phallic) or one's body (anal).

Looking back I have oscillated between saying the oral trito is the encounter with 'otherness' and referencing it in relation to multiple others.

In order for one to be swallowed up by an oral father substitute, or to swallow him in introjection, there must be an encounter with otherness there. Moreover, the trito phase of the anal and phallic stages always move one into recognizing the difference between the generation and one's place among the lower generation and therefore the structure must remain the same at the trito. It must be a move to reduce one's self-absorption that conflicts with a father substitute to a drive of imitating the father in a drive function that gives one some respite. The phallic trito, for example, leaves competing with a father substitute for symbolic prestige for following ethical injunctions of 'being adult' and 'mature'.

I've also suggested in previous posts that the oral trito moves from dealing with people to "transitional objects". This would place the oral trito fixation between a drive that involves possessing 'things' or material objects in relation to others vs. appearing as special among men for the fact of one's existence.

One moves on from competing to possess a thing to competing to possess recognition or power as measured by one being the 'alpha' or leader of the group or not (compared to all others one is the exception or god-like).  

I also have to say that I've met people who displace love of objects/people onto the love of things and spend time alone tending to their possessions to 'recharge'.

I have also met people who seem to ruin or damage all their material possessions and therefore displace their hate for objects onto things.

The man eating giants in the Odyssey throwing stones and the stone that Cronos vomits back up to become Apollo's possession are indications of the importance of 'things' at this stage.

symbols in myth and physiognomy: the lion

As Reich points out in Function of the Orgasm, it is strange how often animal names suggest themselves when we judge a person's face or overall bodily expression. Lately, I've made a connection between a lion type face and the pre-genital object altruist. However, this doesn't mean that only lion-faced people have phallic deutero fixations in the object altruist libidinal position. The lack of conscience, excess sexuality, wanting to be interesting and feeling entitled for fame or to be with someone famous all mark this position.

The symbol of the lion that is found both in the myth of OEdipus and Bellerophon may be salient because of the individual's face.

As with the oral trito puffy cheeks I'm assuming a difference between the subject egoist and object altruist positions but have yet to work with a subject egoist with a lion face so I'll wait to confirm this.

oral trito (continued)

In a previous post I had made the connection between the oral trito stage, Zeus exchanging a stone for himself, Apollo (who is associated with the stone), and the myth of Marsyas:  

"Apollo 

The god of prophecy. Apollo exercised this power in his numerous oracles, and especially in that of Delphi. (Dict. of Ant. s. v. Oraculum) The source of all his prophetic powers was Zeus himself (Apollodorus states, that Apollo received the mantikê from Pan), and Apollo is accordingly called "the prophet of his father Zeus." (Aeschyl. Eum. 19).

Zeus was not swallowed by Cronos but exchanged for a stone put in swaddling clothes which was later spit out to become the stone at the oracle at Delphi. Apollo later defeated a serpent that guarded Delphi and took control of it. 

The swaddling of the stone is a clear reference to the skin of the child and in psychoanalysis we know of skin erotism and what would be important in ego development (ego in the sense of the subject in Lacanian terms) as the differentiation of inside and outside. 

This connection to the skin is also seen in the myth of Marsyas:

MARSYAS was a Phrygian Satyr who first composed tunes for the flute. He obtained his instrument from Athena, who had invented the device but discarded it in her displeasure over the bloating effect on the cheeks. Later, in hubristic pride over the new-found music, Marsyas dared challenge the god Apollon to a contest. The Satyr inevitably lost, when, in the second round, the god demanded they play their instruments upsidedown--a feat ill-suited to the flute. As punishment for his presumption, Apollon had Marsyas tied to a tree and flayed him alive. The rustic gods in their pity then transformed him into a mountain stream"

In these we find 3 important connections to the oral trito.

The first, of course, is Marsyas being flayed alive and the skin being the source of anxiety or pain.

The second is that the flute is a phallic symbol and provides a tie to the father imago that distinguishes the trito stage.

The third is that the reference to the bloating or perhaps puffy expression on the cheeks that the flute has is definitely something I've noticed about people of the oral trito stage. There are a few "loners" that I've worked with who were 'thin-skinned' but also very much projected the feeling that they stood apart from everyone else. They seem to be found along the masculine pole of subject egoist and object altruist and, strangely, the difference seems to be apparent in that the object altruists have dimples along with big cheeks while the subject egoists have puffed out cheeks that also continue lower into their jaws.

The Odyssey-oral trito- the skin ego-

I lit a thin green candle, to make you jealous of me.

But the room just filled up with mosquitos, 

they heard that my body was free. 

Leonard Cohen

Flee, my friend, into your solitude! I see you deafened with the noise of the great men, and stung all over with the stings of the little ones. Forest and rock know how to be silent with you. Be like the tree which you love, the broad-branched one -- silently and attentively it overhangs the sea. 

Nietzsche

In regards to imagos the trito stage is usually distinguished by the sole father imago with the triangular stage has both the mother and the father and the deutero has the combined parent and the proto stage has the mother imago alone. 

In regards to ego and object drives the trito phase has a rudimentary form of the drive that appears in the following stage.

The phallic trito phase has the drive to be regarded as an adult and be married that becomes elaborated as the social ideal in the latency stage to strive for the success of a certain class, religion, or nation.

The anal trito phase has the drive to be regarded as good at everything and this becomes elaborated in the phallic stage as focussing on being good at a particular skill or in a field of knowledge. 

The oral trito phase has the first instance of the will that opposes others. This is in contrast to the anal trito stage in which one competes in regards to having the best way to do things which becomes elaborated in being admired for doing 'something' (some skill or understanding in a field of knowledge) that puts one among the 'good class' or those with a good reputation in one's community. 

Additionally, after the triangular complex establishes the difference between the generations the trito stage is the establishment of this difference among one's lower generation.

In the phallic trito stage, for example, the phallic father and his incest taboo possession of the mother becomes internalized as a drive to marriage/monogamy in the phallic trito and the moral quality of the phallic father that exists as social anxiety becomes internalized as the guilt conscience. However if the differences between the generations is undermined by the parents then the child can become fixated at the trito stage. Freud writes:

We must also take into consideration cases of simultaneous object-cathexis and identification—cases, that is, in which the alteration in character  occurs before the object has been given up. In such cases the alteration in character has been able to survive the object-relation and in a certain sense to conserve it. (The Ego and The Id, p. 29-30).

I understand this to be that the trito drives are in place but at the same time there is a narcissistic pull to feel that one is part of the older generation, since a parent broke the taboo, and rebel against them. 

In the above quotations we have the phallic symbol of a candle and a tree to denote the trito father imago as well as a group of swarming insects that get at ones blood (the Nietzsche quotation goes on to reference this blood sucking). The inside has blood the outside has a swarm attacking the inside and the barrier is obviously the skin. As the Nietzsche quotation continues the sense of one being a giant who is attacked by little men grows:

Flee, my friend, into your solitude: I see you stung all over by the poisonous flies. Flee to where a rough, strong breeze blows! 

Flee into your solitude! you have lived too closely to the small and the pitiful. Flee from their invisible vengeance! For you they have nothing but vengeance. 

No longer raise your arm against them! They are innumerable, and it is not your lot to shoo flies. 

Innumerable are the small and pitiful ones; and rain-drops and weeds have been the ruin of many a proud structure. 

You are not stone; but already have you become hollow from many drops. You will yet break and burst from the many drops. 

I see you exhausted by poisonous flies; I see you bleeding and torn at a hundred spots; and your pride refuses even to be angry. 

They would have blood from you in all innocence; blood is what bloodless souls crave -- and therefore they sting in all innocence. 

But you, profound one, you suffer too profoundly even from small wounds; and before you have healed, the same poison-worm crawls over your hand. 

You are too proud to kill these gluttons. But take care lest it be your fate to suffer all their poisonous injustice! 

They buzz around you also with their praise: obtrusiveness is their praise. They want to be close to your skin and your blood. 

They flatter you, as one flatters a God or devil; they whimper before you, as before a God or devil; What does it come to! They are flatterers and whimperers, and nothing more. 

Often, also, do they show themselves to you as friendly ones. But that has always been the prudence of cowards. Yes! cowards are wise! 

They think much about you with their petty souls -- you are always suspect to them! Whatever is much thought about is at last thought suspicious. 

They punish you for all your virtues. They pardon you entirely -- for your errors. 

Because you are gentle and of honest character, you say: "Guiltless are they for their small existence." But their petty souls think: "Guilty is every great existence." 

Even when you are gentle towards them, they still feel themselves despised by you; and they repay your beneficence with secret maleficence. 

Your silent pride is always counter to their taste; they rejoice if once you are humble enough to be vain. 

What we recognize in a man, we also irritate in him. Therefore be on your guard against the small ones! 

In your presence they feel themselves small, and their baseness gleams and glows against you in invisible vengeance. 

You did not see how often they became silent when you approached them, and how their energy left them like the smoke of a waning fire? 

Yes, my friend, you are the bad conscience of your neighbors, for they are unworthy of you. Therefore they hate you, and would rather suck your blood. 

Your neighbors will always be poisonous flies; what is great in you -- that itself must make them more poisonous, and always more fly-like. 

Flee, my friend, into your solitude -- and there, where a rough strong breeze blows. It is not your lot to shoo flies.

  

The sense of being a giant among men yet being hurt by interactions with them- being 'thin skinned'- is very palpable in these lines. In regards to social ontology it is as if one should be special to every other and to not be regarded as such is felt as suffering.  

In the Odyssey, the run in with the cyclops leads to an encounter with Aeolus. Since it leads to Odysseus being sent back off course when he had almost made it home I have compared it structurally to his return from Hades to Circe's island and the return from Helios' island to Chardybdis as a site of defusion. However, technically, it doesn't force him to return to the island of Polyphemus. The next stop I have taken to represent the oral trito and it is the encounter with the Laestrygonians which is translated as skin reapers or skin harvesters. They are a race of giants who are cannibals. Homer writes: 

Just short of the town, they came on a girl drawing water; she was tall and powerful, the daughter of King Antiphates. She had come down to the clear stream of the spring Artakia (Artacia), from which the townsmen fetched up their water. They approached her and spoke to her, asking who was king of this land and who his subjects were; and she pointed at once to her father's lofty house. They entered the palace and found his wife there, but she stood mountain-high and they were aghast at the sight of her. She sent out forthwith to fetch King Antiphates her husband from the assembly-place, and his only thought was to kill them miserably.

 He clutched one of my men at once and made a meal of him, but the other two rushed away and ran till they reached the ships. The king raised a hue and cry through the town, and the other great Laistrygones heard him; they came throning up in multitudes, looking not like men but like the lawless Gigantes (Giants), and from the cliffs began to hurl down great rocks that were each of them one man's burden. A hideous din rose amid my fleet as men were killed and vessels shattered. The Laistrygones speared men like fish and then carried home their monstrous meal. But while they thus made havoc among my crews inside the deep harbour, I snatched the keen sword from my thigh, severed the hawsers of my ship and urgently called to my own crew to lean to their oars and escape destruction; and so, with the fear of death before them, they pulled together, one and all. What joy it was when our ship escaped from under the beetling cliffs into the open sea! But the other ships all perished there together.

The impression here of multitudes "throning up" is important here but also, hurling down great rocks gives a parallel to Rhea swaddling a stone and feeding it to Cronos instead of Zeus. Additionally, the loss of Odysseus' fleet save for a single ship seems like an important metaphor for a sense of the ego (or more correctly, the ego ideal having a demand of perfection that is measured in a social ontology by the experience of lack). 

It must be remembered that dreams and all other psychic acts are over-determined and sometimes you won't get the ideal image of the sky filled with mosquitos, flies, boulders, or swarms of something that are attacking. I had a patient who had a dream of Machu Picchu and who described it as beautiful, wonderous, etc. and being destroyed piece by piece by people. It didn't seem like the tourists were making bold attacks on it, but like Nietzsche's flies it was just little punctures of the skin adding up.
I asked him to turn it into an I statement and it resonated strongly with him. I had another patient who had a dream of being attacked by zombies and the zombies only bit at her skin.

Following the subject egoist and object altruist division of the masculine I've also done some work on the novel Angels and Insects in which the image of floating swarms of objects appear. At one moment the love interest appears surrounded by butterflies. Additionally, in celebrations confetti or rice is thrown to make an event 'magical'. 

I've been sticking to the subject egoistic trends in my analysis so far but I will widen them soon enough.

Oral social ontology.

I've stressed that it's only at the anal stage (although it has a rudimentary form in the oral trito stage) that a social ontology exists in which one measures oneself against others.

One measures one's reputation or good name at the phallic stage against the reputation or good name of others or, one measures the deference or awe with which one is treated in a group or the god-like reverence one's name is treated with at the anal stage.

At the oral stage one leaves this competition with others in some measurable way of referencing a social position of power. It isn't omnipotence because that implies measuring differences and there is still competition but it is in the world of phantasy.

As I've mentioned before, epic movies like Star Wars reference this. Darth Vader appears as the phallic father who is more skilled and in a position to teach his skills, the emperor appears as the anal father in control of the galaxy, and 'the force' appears as one's magical oral phallus. The oral father represents the world as it is and and competing for the oral phallus is to oppose the world as is with 'possible worlds'.

The schizophrenic may introvert libido and foreclose the phallic, and anal stages to function on the oral level of competing with others magically in phantasy. I have one patient who feels he has the ability to give others the 'evil eye' and hurt or destroy them with his gaze.

However,  I wanted to mention that where competition with others, as whole objects, exists in phantasy and  controlling-possessing and merging-resonating with the object in ego and object drive forms are both satisfied by phantasy this oral libido is what fuels the libido that is measured in the latter anal and phallic social ontologies.

The depression that arises at the oral stage is a defense that impedes the generation of the "narcissistic" oral libido and reduces the energy to go after anal or phallic goals.






     

The Odyssey- Polyphemus: proto-oral and oral deutero

In a previous post I drew attention to the hand as a psychosexual component in the literature and also placed it in the oral deutero stage with Chiron.

In the Odyssey the encounter with Polyphemus, the cyclops, illustrates the encounter with the hand in a sequence.

1. defusion from oral father substitute to proto -oral:  

He began to eat like a mountain lion, leaving nothing, devouring flesh and entrails and bones and marrow, while we in our tears and helplessness looked on at these monstrous doings and held up imploring hands to Zeus.

But when the Kyklops had filled his great belly with the human flesh that he had devoured and the raw milk he washed it down with he laid himself on the cavern floor with his limbs stretched out among his beasts. Then with courage rising I thought at first to go up to him, to draw the keen sword from my side and stab him in the chest, feeling with my hand for the spot where the midriff enfolds the liver; but second thoughts held me back, because we too should have perished irremediable; never could we with all our hands have pushed away from the lofty doorway the massy stone he had planted there. 


The stone blocking the door suggests an interesting connection to the phantasies Klein notes of being inside the mother's body. Phantasies of being swallowed which are linked to the oral-triangular conflict are paired with the proto oral stage phantasies of being trapped between the parents (i.e. Cronos separates Uranus and Gaia by severing the former's genitals).


2. Creation of the father imago: 

 Next to the sheep-pen the Kyklops had left a great cudgel of undried olive-wood, wrenched from the tree to carry with him when it was seasoned. As we looked at it, it seemed huge enough to be the mast of some great dark merchant-ship with its twenty oars . . . so long and so thick it loomed before us. I stood over this, and myself and cut off six feet of it; then I laid it in front of my companions and told them to make it smooth; smooth they made it, and again I stood over it and sharpened it to a point, then took it at once and put it in the fierce fire to harden.

‘Kyklops, you ask what name I boast of. I will tell you, and then you must grant me as your guest the favour that you have promised me. My name is Noman; Noman is what my mother and father call me; so likewise do all my friends.’


The phallus appears and marks the end of the proto stage and the creation of the oral father imago. What distinguishes the (pre-trito) oral ego ideal from the anal and the phallic is that it doesn't have a social ontology in which one is in competition with others. At the anal stage one competes with all others for the single anal phallus and at the phallic stage one competes for the polyphalli that represent different skills or fields of knowledge to conquer. At the oral stage, when a deutero non-universal adaptation is formed, one enshrines a part of ego ideal development in which a lack is experienced that has no competition with others to fill it.


3. The deutero defused interaction: 

To these words of mine the savage creature made quick response: ‘Noman that one shall come last among those I eat; his friends I will eat first; this is to be my favour to you.’

racked with anguish, lamenting loudly, the Kyklops groped for the great stone and pushed it from the door-way, then in the doorway he seated himself with outstretched hands, hoping to seize on some of us passing into the open among the sheep--so witless did he take me to be...
their master, consumed with hideous pains, felt along the backs of all the rams as they stood still in front of him. The witless giant never found out that men were tied under the fleecy creatures' bellies.

After the oral father imago is split and the deutero stage created, the significant interaction between the cyclops and Odysseus and his men involves the blinded Polyphemus groping with his hand, trying to seize, feeling for the men.


Summary

- there is fear of men being eaten in the proto-stage and it is coupled with being trapped in the cave

- after the father imago is encountered Odysseus creates a special (deutero) relationship with Polyphemus but is still threatened with being eaten and it is also coupled with the anxiety of being seized or handled  

The deutero stages- seduction vs. rejection (absence)

I've focused mainly on the seduction of the egoist by the mother at the phallic stage that splits the paternal imago and creates the phallic image of the mother. In one or two previous posts I've also mentioned how the deutero phase of the anal stage is brought about by the egoist feeling rejected by the mother (with in ego drive: not playing with him or object drive: ignoring if not restraining his attempts at romantic possession).

By contrast I have one patient who "runs" when she gets too close to men and the way she describes feeling overwhelmed points to the fear of losing her mind (total merger) if she continues to allow herself to stay close. This suggests that the altruist might experience something of a seduction at the anal stage to create the deutero phase.

Also, the rescue phantasy found in some altruists seems to suggest that the mother might be depressed and have a failed phallic image that the altruist has to "step up" to save her. The mother has to be cheered up, the mother's name is disgraced as someone who can't be loved (at least the lack of the father's love would cover 'public opinion'), etc.

However, the Bellerophon complex, that is based upon the relation to the mother and transcribed to the father, suggests that the mother ignoring or rejecting one's individuality or uniqueness means that the object altruist will initially treat her like a mentor but then try to usurp. This 'trope' of the apprentice who ends up making a grab for power is one I remember from many childhood movies.

I'm skeptical about whether this seduction vs. rejection symmetry between the egoistic and altruistic trends in the personality will bear out, but I've come to the idea several times and thought I'd share it. 

Greek myth: Anal stage

Strangely, no parallel has been made between the link of Atlas, Typhon, and Prometheus (the picture above) and the link of Demeter, Persephone, and Hecate. The former are called the three heads of insurgency and the latter often have the folk name of mother, maiden, crone.

In the picture above: Prometheus is tied to a column representing the Caucasus.
Atlas acts as the column at the opposite side of the hellenic world.
The two best friends were oppressed into face-to-face-opposition to each other.
Typhoëus is represented by the column propping up the floor upon which the two other titans are trying to stand, i.e. they are forced into a precarious 'kneeling' posture which is part of their cruel punishment for their insurgency against the tyrant Zeus.

In the picture below: Persephone returns from Hades escorted by Hermes. Hecate holds two torches in the middle and Demeter waits on the right.

The three insurgents are opposing the perfection of Zeus

The three women are all trafficking with death.

Freud has already connected Prometheus to the urethral (anal trito) stage. He gives fire, an invention, to the humans and provides a link of the anal stage representing the first generation gods but transitioning to the second generation/demi-gods/and humans as the locus of power in the phallic stage.

In the gigantomachy the gods need the son of a mortal woman to win and Heracles fights along with Dionysus as two half gods. Although Hecate fights in this battle too I wonder if Dionysus isn't meant to replace her in a sense as the representation of the altruist.

Being sensitive to the anal deutero involving a transcription of power from the mother to the father and thus being potentially doubled (as the myth of Heracles reaches the phallic deutero with the symbol of the horse/centaur and this being transcribed to the lion/sphinx in the Oedipus myth) I hope to compare these two triads to other related myths and the Island of Circe, Hades, and Sirens story in the Odyssey.

The three insurgents are obviously the bad projected aspects of the anal stage and have to be paired with the good gods.

The three women are the good aspect and have to be paired with the monstrous.