The Symptom Reading

The Symptom Reading                                                                          Trevor Pederson

Introduction  

In this book I’m going to offer a methodology that allows for the production of latent content or hidden meaning in the narratives found in films and books. This methodology is intended to fill the request of film critics for a deeper analysis:

[p]sychoanalytic readings purport to show the meaning behind the text that is concealed by its manifest content, but it is not clear that this is what psychoanalytic readings of Hollywood cinema achieve... [A]rguably, far from providing an objective code to unlock the real (hidden) meaning of the text, psychoanalytic criticism quite frequently describes what is going on at the surface of it... However, if this is the case, the psychoanalytic critic posing as theorist erroneously claims for himself the insight that rightly belongs to the text itself (Allen, 1999, p. 142)

Where Richard Allen says the insight belongs to the text itself, others are not so kind. If they don’t dispute the status of psychoanalysis as a coherent model of understanding, many dismiss the applications of it as boring. One sees a character attach a lot of importance to a non-human object and calls it a transitional object, one sees a woman seductively portrayed and calls it the masculine gaze, or one finds a triangle with two men and a woman and labels it oedipal. Others search for images or references to penises or feces, and still others do word-play with the names and places of the text, and one gets the impression that psychoanalysis is a silly game for the vulgar or overly erudite. 

Let me begin with a few disclaimers about the approach that I will introduce. First, the latent meaning the symptom reading produces is in no way exhaustive, nor does it claim exclusivity. Just as there are several ways to interpret or utilize dreams, a narrative can be interpreted in several ways. In the second chapter I briefly mention an alternate way to interpret The Piano (1993), in a genetic reading from the point of view of the protagonist’s daughter. Second, I’ve chosen to analyze films, but that does not mean the method only works with cinema. It can also be applied to literature or any medium that possesses a narrative. Third, I’ve tried to adopt a two (or more) part reading in which the layperson could perform the first part of the symptom reading. My confidence for this comes from the concept of literary doubling in literary theory. There is a history of appreciating that unsavory aspects of a protagonist may be represented in a double of the character. For example, a split personality such as Jekyll and Hyde doubles a character and has obviously been a subject for literary critics. In addition, a physically separate character in a text has been called the “avatar” of the protagonist, as Gilbert and Gubar (1979) call Bertha, the titular Madwoman in the Attic, who they see as representing Jane Eyre’s desires (p. 359).

Although the intuition of doubling has long been present in literary studies, the account I offer gives it both a metapsychological foundation and goes beyond a mere analytical study of the two characters, to a dialectical formulation. The dialectical formulation involves a further synthetic step, which resembles what Freud (1900) divined in his concept of a symptom (p.569-70). A symptom both allows the expression of an unconscious desire and, at the same time, only reveals this desire in hidden form. In one of Freud’s examples, a woman has hysterical vomiting in which the wish to have children is expressed by the association of the vomiting to the morning sickness of pregnancy but, manifestly, this desire is masked in the conscious mind. A symptom is also an expression of the need for punishment, in which castration anxiety is avoided by the impulses that are tied to anxiety-producing interactions being turned against the self. “Castration” in psychoanalysis is a general way of referring to anxiety situations at different psychosexual stages (i.e. phallic, anal, narcissistic, and auto-erotic stages) that may concern the loss or damage to genitalia but also death, fear of disapproval from authority figures, fear for life (i.e death), fear of abandonment, etc. (Freud, 1926a)[1]. In Freud’s example, the hysterical morning sickness also threatens the woman with the loss of her good looks and her figure. This aspect is important and concerns the economics of punishment that I will define and discuss in the second chapter.

The avatar, or what I call the symptom character(s), not only express the desires of the ego character(s), but also rationalize the expression of those desires in the relationship between the ego character and others in the ego plot. In the first film, The Lost Boys (1987), there is a symptom plot that involves Michael, David, and Star. They have a classic triangle in which Michael has fallen in love with Star only to find that she belongs to David (i.e. part of his gang). I argue that this is the expression of the feelings of Michael’s younger brother Sam and the latent triangle with his mother, Lucy, and her suitor, Max. Sam’s plot, the ego plot, is relatively separate from Michael’s symptom plot. The important synthetic step is to consider the ego plot as if the symptom plot didn’t exist or is excised from the narrative. When this occurs we look for the instances in which the symptom plot comes to bear upon the ego plot. Sam, for example, interrupts his mother’s dates with Max by telling her to come home because his brother has become a vampire and is attacking him. With the excision of the fantastic aspect of the movie (i.e. his older brother becoming a vampire) we are left with the story of a boy whose parents’ divorced, and who is inventing stories to ruin his mom’s dates. Why would a kid do this? The symptom reading proposes that Sam’s use of the excuse that his brother is becoming a vampire, in order to ruin the date, is both the expression of the same oedipal desires that his brother expresses explicitly and a rationalization of this very desire. Sam doesn’t want another man to become his father, he wants his mother to remain single so he can be “the man of the house”.    

This unity of expression and rationalization of the impulse creates a research methodology that is based upon psychoanalytic thought (Freud’s dialectical approach), but which non-analysts could apply. With the dialectical formulation we go beyond mere hermeneutics. The dialectical element enshrines that the impulse, triangle, or inter-relation that is explicit in the symptom character(s). Thus, as something that can become repressed, it therefore generates data about what can in fact be repressed.

Ego and Object drive parallelism (psycho-social and psycho-sexual)

The ego drives in Freud were grossly under-theorized. However, Freud's genius is such that he traces the edges of things so that this work can be done later. In previous posts I've attempted to show the edge of the phallic-oedipal in which the ego ideal takes a father-substitute who is perceived as representing someone of more status or prestige and, how in the castration complex, the ego ideal no longer possesses the 'double tie' to a father-substitute and becomes an individual ego ideal that demands one deceptively appear as having (or about to have) status or prestige (phallic deutero) or that one is driven to achievements of success. The other edge that Freud establishes and that I have been attempting to explicate is the first ego ideal. In the first ideal the ego is measured by some external criteria, which I've attached to a social ontology, and is differentiated from earlier stages in which drives are satisfied in phantasy or in bodily sensations and not measured against others. 

Freud mentions the auto-erotic and the object-love 'edges' to the ego and object drives in several works. In his paper on Schreber for example:

"Recent investigations have directed our attention to a stage in the development of the libido which it passes through on the way from auto-erotism to object-love. This stage has been given the name of narcissism. What happens is this. There comes a time in the development of the individual at which he unifies his sexual instincts (which have hitherto been engaged in auto-erotic activities) in order to obtain a love-object; and he begins by taking himself, his own body, as his love-object, and only subsequently proceeds from this to the choice of some person other than himself as his object. This half-way phase between auto-erotism and object-love may perhaps be indispensable normally; but it appears that many people linger unusually long in this condition, and that many of its features are carried over by them into the later stages of their development" (Schreber, p. 60-1).

In previous posts I have shown that the phallic-oedipal is related to an aim-inhibition of sexuality towards the mother that becomes directed towards the opposite sex. It's not an issue that the boy gets to keep the mother as an object and the girl changes objects. Instead, both have sexual desire cathect the mother and father's exclusive sexual relationship as a model and see on what side they fall. This is based upon the representation of the mother as the imago of the finite and the father as the imago of the not-finite being synthesized into the 'social body' and the actual sex of the parents isn't important. However, the phallic-oedipal stage of the difference between the sexes isn't the first stage of object drives in the individual. Narcissism is halfway between the anal stage and the auto-erotic. “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). He writes:
  
Preliminary stages of love emerge as provisional sexual aims while the sexual instincts are passing through their complicated development. As the first of these aims we recognize the phase of incorporating or devouring—a type of love which is consistent with abolishing the object's separate existence and which may therefore be described as ambivalent. At the higher stage of the pregenital sadistic-anal organization, the striving for the object appears in the form of an urge for mastery, to which injury or annihilation of the object is a matter of indifference (Instincts and Their Vicissitudes, p. 138-9).

Thus the stage of Narcissism is identified with the phase of incorporating of devouring in which the object isn't separate. The object exists but actual possession of it isn't necessary, or isn't demanded from the ego by the ego ideal. In an analogous way, in other posts, I have shown that Freud attaches this stage of narcissism to the omnipotence of thoughts:

What I have tried to indicate by the foregoing is the Libido Theory of the neuroses, on which are founded all our conceptions of the nature of these morbid states, together with our therapeutic methods of dealing with them. We naturally regard the premises of the Libido Theory as valid also for the normal. We speak of the Narcissism of the infant, and it is to the excessive Narcissism of primitive man that we ascribe his belief in the omnipotence of his thoughts and therefore his attempts to influence the course of events in the outer world by the apparatus of magic (One of the Difficulties, p.19).

In the 'omnipotence of thoughts' one's wishes towards the object are enough to satisfy the ego drives. One can wish harm to the object or wish its safety as seen in magical concepts like the evil eye, energy healing, (etc.). This is also attached to Freud's idea of a 'pleasure ego', but I will save this for another post. Freud for the most part sticks to the object drives because they are what show up in the clinic in the transference to the analyst. He never found an organizing principle for theorizing how the ego drives worked although he admired Ferenczi's attempt and recognized that the psycho-social development of the ego instincts no doubt played an important role in dispositions to certain pathologies:

The stages of development of the ego-instincts are at present very little known to us; I know of only one attempt—the highly promising one made by Ferenczi (1913)—to approach these questions. I cannot tell if it may seem too rash if, on the basis of such indications as we possess, I suggest the possibility that a chronological outstripping of libidinal development by ego development should be included in the disposition to obsessional neurosis. A precocity of this kind would necessitate the choice of an object under the influence of the ego-instincts, at a time at which the sexual instincts had not yet assumed their final shape, and a fixation at the stage of the pregenital sexual organization would thus be left. If we consider that obsessional neurotics have to develop a super-morality in order to protect their object-love from the hostility lurking behind it, we shall be inclined to regard some degree of this precocity of ego development as typical of human nature and to derive the capacity for the origin of morality from the fact that in the order of development hate is the precursor of love (Freud, The Disposition to Obsessional Neurosis, p. 325).

Moreover, the object drives are actually seen as derivatives of the ego drives:

We learn in this way that the sexual instincts find their first objects by attaching themselves to the valuations made by the ego-instincts, precisely in the way in which the first sexual satisfactions are experienced in attachment to the bodily functions necessary for the preservation of life. The ‘affection’ shown by the child's parents and those who look after him, which seldom fails to betray its erotic nature (‘the child is an erotic plaything’), does a very great deal to raise the contributions made by erotism to the cathexes of his ego-instincts, and to increase them to an amount which is bound to play a part in his later development, especially when certain other circumstances lend their support (On the Universal Tendency to Debasement in the Sphere of Love, p. 180-1, emphasis mine).

These ideas provide the ground for the 'parallelism' between the ego and object drives: 

It is not our belief that a person's libidinal interests are from the first in opposition to his self-preservative interests; on the contrary, the ego endeavours at every stage to remain in harmony with its sexual organization as it is at the time and to fit itself into it. The succession of the different phases of libidinal development probably follows a prescribed programme. But the possibility cannot be rejected that this course of events can be influenced by the ego, and we may expect equally to find a certain parallelism, a certain correspondence, between the developmental phases of the ego and the libido; indeed a disturbance of that correspondence might provide a pathogenic factor. We are now faced by the important consideration of how the ego behaves if its libido leaves a strong fixation behind at some point in its (the libido’s) development. The ego may accept this and consequently become to that extent perverse or, what is the same thing, infantile. It may, however, adopt a non-compliant attitude to the libido's settling down in this position, in which case the ego experiences a repression where the libido has experienced a fixation (Introductory Lectures, p. 351-2).

The parallelism of the ego and object drives is important. I've mentioned it in several posts. One can be jealous of someone who one's sexual object seems to admire and one can be jealous of someone who has something that bestows status or prestige (which one feels should be one's own). A man's work often has the symbolic status of a woman. This can be seen in how some men name their car, boat, or some aspect of their business after a woman. Thus in the phallic primal scene one can either experience humiliation in regards to one's work or in regards to one's love object. In the latter one finds one's sexual object with another man and in the former one finds one's work has been taken by another or the other ridicules one's work in public and makes it seem inadequate (as one's sexual object looking for sex with another makes one's love-making look inadequate). 

I also need to mention here, following Chasseguet-Smirgel and Lacan, that Freud recognizes that psycho-sexual fixations don't automatically become perversions. Freud writes:

THE MENTAL FACTOR IN THE PERVERSIONS It is perhaps in connection precisely with the most repulsive perversions that the mental factor must be regarded as playing its largest part in the transformation of the sexual instinct. It is impossible to deny that in their case a piece of mental work has been performed which, in spite of its horrifying result, is the equivalent of an idealization of the instinct (Three Essays, p. 161).

Chasseguet-Smirgel convincingly shows that the phallic-oedipal is the establishment of the difference between the sexes and the generations and that pervert turns away from this to idealize his pre-genital instincts. I also must remind my reader that Freud saw kissing, oral sex, and other acts as perversionS. However, perversion or the pervert is a different category. In perversions the sex drive 'leans on' pre-genital stages of development and these things become foreplay that is subsumed under the desire for sex in a monogamous love relationship (i.e. the genital stage/father complex drive to marriage). In perversion love doesn't play a role and pre-genital sexual impulses are idealized in and for themselves.     

Freud usually uses idealization with the ego ideal or the ego or object drives and not a specific aggressive or affectionate instinct. Usually he talks of the sublimation of these.

Therefore, just as the pre-oedipal aggressive or affectionate drive is idealized I'd like to say that the early (and in some cases unmeasured) ego ideal becomes sublimated. One forces later ego and object drives and ideals into earlier forms of mental functioning. As with the idealization of instinct there is a perverse type and an anaclitic ('leaning on') type. I would like to suggest that within certain artwork that is generally acknowledged as 'campy' and which goes very far into a genre (ie. horror, sci-fi, etc.) we can say that sublimation is perversion and "loves" pre-genital childhood themes (ontologies of powerful beings fighting for perfection) without "love"  for recognition amongst peers in the community or adult reality. However, good artists can employ genre conventions and deal with magical and fantasy themes in an anaclitic way. It becomes a matter, as Nietzsche says, of "how much 'truth' [one] could take, more clearly, to what degree [one] needed it attenuated, veiled, sweetened, blunted, falsified". 

He who has seen deeply into the world knows what wisdom there is in the fact that men are superficial It is their instinct for preservation which teaches them to be fickle, light and false. Here and there, among philosophers as well as artists, one finds a passionate and exaggerated worship of "pure forms": let no one doubt that he who needs the cult of surfaces to that extent has at some time or other made a calamitous attempt to get beneath them. Perhaps there might even exist an order of rank in regard to these burnt children, these born artists who can find pleasure in life only in the intention of falsifying its image (as it were in a long-drawn-out revenge on life—): one could determine the degree to which life has been spoiled for them by the extent to which they want to see its image falsified, attenuated and made otherworldly and divine. — (Beyond Good and Evil- 59)

To the artist we can generally add 'dreamer', 'magician', 'healer', solitary survivalist, etc. with attention to how capable a person is of friendship and how engaged their work is with reality.   

I have to make another point about the stage of narcissism. I believe Freud's narcissistic object choice insofar as it is a literal love of someone else who reminds you of yourself or your sex is, like the omnipotence of wishes, a defused state (i.e. castration) or defense and not the fused state in which the ego ideal has a father-substitute. 

Following ego and object parallelism an individual can either search for his "self" in the realm of love (object drives) and be attracted to someone who is just like him or he can have a "twinship transference" with the analyst in the ego drives in which the analyst is regarded as the same to him. In both cases there seems to be a projective identification in which 'the self' is put into the object which implies that the individual is identifying with the father imago. 

I have to wait on more clinical evidence but I'd like to say that this projective identification of putting the self into the other without a sense of sadism and criticism of the other is altruistic and not egoistic. Projective identification in which one is grandiose (assumes the place of the father imago), in my limited experience, is tied to putting one's inferiority/castration anxiety into others. In altruism one identifies not with perfection but with the father as dead, injured, unreachable, etc. and puts pity/castration anxiety into others. Again, in altruism the father is seen as being down and one must raise him up through devotion (SA) to him or in delighting (OA) him. To become the dead father is to make others have that feeling about oneself.    

To be clear, projective identification as a defense at the narcissistic (volar) stage concerns the entire self representation that will be elaborated by the phallic-oedipal level cognition. So the analysand will deal with the analyst as if he or she was just like him in his age, appearance, motivations, (etc.). However, projective identification at later stages will be more specific. Narcissistic object choice at the phallic-oedipal will see someone become the father imago at this stage and anxiety will concern the social ontology of prestige and status and not include transferring age, appearance, and other basic traits of self into the analyst. 

Freud sees the importance of the phallic-oedipal in causing the narcissistic injury or disappointment in love that causes regression, but points to a Kleinian like reading that the stage of regression (i.e. defusion at the phallic-oedipal leads to defusion at the anal, volar, or auto-erotic oedipal) is going to define the particular neurosis taken:

People who have not freed themselves completely from the stage of narcissism—who, that is to say, have at that point a fixation which may operate as a disposition to a later illness—are exposed to the danger that some unusually intense wave of libido, finding no other outlet, may lead to a sexualization of their social instincts and so undo the sublimations which they had achieved in the course of their development. This result may be produced by anything that causes the libido to flow backwards (i.e. that causes a ‘regression’): whether, on the one hand, the libido becomes collaterally reinforced owing to some disappointment over a woman, or is directly dammed up owing to a mishap in social relations with other men—both of these being instances of ‘frustration’; or whether, on the other hand, there is a general intensification of the libido, so that it becomes too powerful to find an outlet along the channels which are already open to it, and consequently bursts through its banks at the weakest spot (Schreber, p. 62).

   

    

depersonlization and social ontology.

1. depersonalization

The superego is composed of imagos. On one hand the imagos will be inputs for others that will act as parental substitutes and on the other hand there is the general domain that the parental substitute emerges from. I’ve called this domain an ontology and have stressed that it emerges from the social nature or species-being of humans in Freud’s work.

The central example for Freud is the phallic-oedipal: 

[w]e have already traced the change of that content from loss of the mother as an object to castration. The next change is caused by the power of the super-ego. With the depersonalization of the parental agency from which castration was feared, the danger becomes less defined. Castration anxiety develops into moral anxiety—social anxiety—and it is not so easy now to know what the anxiety is about. The formula, ‘separation and expulsion from the horde’ [in the father complex], only applies to that later portion of the super-ego which has been formed on the basis of social prototypes, not to the nucleus of the super-ego, which corresponds to the introjected parental agency (Freud, ‘ISA’, p. 139, emphasis mine)

[t]his state of mind is called a ‘bad conscience’; but actually it does not deserve this name, for at this stage the sense of guilt is clearly only a fear of loss of love, ‘social’ anxiety. In small children it can never be anything else, but in many adults, too, it has only changed to the extent that the place of the father or the two parents is taken by the larger human community. Consequently, such people habitually allow themselves to do any bad thing which promises them enjoyment, so long as they are sure that the authority will not know anything about it or cannot blame them for it; they are afraid only of being found out  (ibid., p.124-5).

Freud writes that in “the Oedipus complex… [the parent’s] personal significance for the superego recedes into the background” and “the imagos they leave behind… link [to] the influences of teachers and authorities… (Economic Problem, p. 167-8). These people are put into the ego ideal/imago and one works towards taking on their knowledge, skill, or wisdom and traverses the symbolic network of status and prestige. As mentioned, the domain of these father-substitutes is “the larger human community”, the place where they care about their image and reputation and “are afraid of being found” both bad in a moral sense and bad in a sense of weak, pathetic, or impotent.

I’ve been working on earlier social ontologies and before there is differentiation between the ego and object in what I call the part-object form of the oral trito, Freud gives an example of depersonalization concerning oceanic oneness. Freud defines it as

“a feeling of an indissoluble bond, of being one with the external world as a whole…. originally the ego includes everything, later it separates off an external world from itself. Our present ego-feeling is, therefore, only a shrunken residue of a much more inclusive—indeed, an all-embracing—feeling which corresponded to a more intimate bond between the ego and the world about it. If we may assume that there are many people in whose mental life this primary ego-feeling has persisted to a greater or less degree, it would exist in them side by side with the narrower and more sharply demarcated ego-feeling of maturity, like a kind of counterpart to it. In that case, the ideational contents appropriate to it would be precisely those of limitlessness and of a bond with the universe—the same ideas with which my friend elucidated the ‘oceanic’ feeling….  the oceanic feeling, which might seek something like the restoration of limitless narcissism” (Civilization, p. 65,68,72).

Just as someone is connected to their image, their reputation, their ‘good name’ at the phallic-oedipal level and will take father-substitutes there, Freud’s oceanic oneness is a similar domain or ontology. Mythologically, there are nymphs and spirits of trees, lakes, and elemental forces that intimate the double sided figure and ground of the imago. Many people’s dreams take up the defusion to the father-figure by expressing problems with the ground in natural disasters or other dangerous forces in nature.

The limitless narcissism that is enjoyed here is because the differentiation between ego and object isn’t complete. The ego and object become fully differentiated at the phallic-oedipal (although I can understand someone might argue that the phallic trito or genital stage is the stage of full differentiation). Between the appearance of ego and object and the full differentiation at the phallic-oedipal the important post is the emergence of the ego ideal as measuring- ‘demanding perfection’- by some objective criteria. I’ve written that this is provided by observing one’s social relationships: how people react in one’s presence, the power dynamics that occur in groups and whether one has a leadership role, whether or not other people are thinking positively about one, (etc.).

In Civilization Freud gives another example of the social ontology of ‘all people’ in his example of the saint:

A small minority are enabled by their constitution to find happiness, in spite of everything, along the path of love. But far-reaching mental changes in the function of love are necessary before this can happen. These people make themselves independent of their object's acquiescence by displacing what they mainly value from being loved on to loving; they protect themselves against the loss of the object by directing their love, not to single objects but to all men alike; and they avoid the uncertainties and disappointments of genital love by turning away from its sexual aims and transforming the instinct into an impulse with an inhibited aim. What they bring about in themselves in this way is a state of evenly suspended, steadfast, affectionate feeling, which has little external resemblance any more to the stormy agitations of genital love, from which it is nevertheless derived. Perhaps St. Francis of Assisi went furthest in thus exploiting love for the benefit of an inner feeling of happiness. Moreover, what we have recognized as one of the techniques for fulfilling the pleasure principle has often been brought into connection with religion; this connection may lie in the remote regions where the distinction between the ego and objects or between objects themselves is neglected (Civilization, p. 101-2, emphasis mine).

The phallic level with its image or interest ego, which allows the individual to appear based upon his reputation or the esteem that others hold or don’t hold him, in is also the place of individual love. Freud notes that love can also be a problem for the social body in that it can two lovers find enough satisfaction with each other that they might not care about their reputation. Additionally, where the altruistic Saint returns from individual love to anal love of ‘all people’ Freud points out that the egoistic and sensual current could mean a shameless sexuality that forgets about individual love and is concerned only about sensuality in relation to ‘all people’.

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).

This regression to the anal onlology of ‘all people’ is important in the hysteroid personality disorder and is not just a problem with men. I’ve worked with several women in substance abuse who are in competition with all other women in regards to being the most beautiful and who equate being beautiful with being sexually desired. Overtop of that, in the egoism of being the cause of sexual desire in a man there is a competition with him in which he gets “played” because the hysteroid is ‘fucking’ someone else behind his back. He represents the anal-oedipal father who is wants to jealously possess and control the sexual object in a way that isn’t love, and she both feels the most beautiful by being with him and defeats him by having sex with other men.

Anyway, we see that Freud has depersonalization into different social ontologies in his work but not yet formalized.

He notes the importance of the phallic-oedipal in relation to conscience and reputation and he has the earlier stage of narcissism in which the ‘omnipotence of wishes’ occurs and there is no social measure of one’s power.

In the next post I want to point out that Freud isn’t basing depersonalization purely upon the psycho-sexual relations but also sees the psycho-social (ego drives) as parallel to and sometimes taking the lead in relation to the sexual relationships (object drives).

Volar, manual, or dextrous stage?

I've pointed out that the deutero stages generally seem to be the phase from which the psychosexual stage takes its name. The anal deutero is the anal phase proper while the anal trito concerns the urethral. The phallic deutero is also the properly phallic phase in which admiration is accorded to the penis in boys.

If this is the case then maybe it is better to refer to the pre-anal stage as something that references the hands...

some of the choices are

volar which is latin for sole or palm

manual which refers to something done that is related to the hands

or dexterous which refers to neat skill especially with the hands.

From my somatic psychology experience I believe that the hand and foot are both selected in this stage. With some people it's possible to note healthy skin all along the arms and legs and then the hand and foot becomes very wrinkled, veiny, pale, and set off from the arm or leg. Additionally, volar sounds much nicer than manual or dexterous.

Certain analysts mention an early mimetic stage and Erikson has the oral-mimetic psychosocial stages together, but it seems like the oral trito is a better candidate for this since "shapeshifting" or taking on the skin of others was one of the approaches to the skin ego or cutaneous ("of the skin") phase.

Thus the deutero-trito pairs so far would be

volar-cutaneous

anal-urethral

phallic-genital

Another problem is that the trito stages should refer to the full identification and not the transgression of the difference between the generations...

genital describes the father complex stage of the drive to marry, social feeling, and full guilt conscience. It is based upon homosexual impulses, in the boy, that are instinctually renounced. The actual problem with conscience, as I've mentioned, shows up in the act of being stabbed. The anal trito conscience also shows up in being 'pissed on'. So, in this sense, the economy of bad conscience should provide the description and a reference should be made to a a knife, dagger, or state of carrying small arms.

I'm hoping to get to the earlier auto-erotic stage and classify things along the face, respiratory, and other psychosexual components there.

The Oral Phallus

So long as the father substitute is taken as one's ego ideal energy is directed in a straight line towards maturation or learning the skill or knowledge or wisdom he has to teach.

An anal and oral transference might be included with this phallic transference, especially with children and adolescents who don't have much understanding of the social order.

Often times with patients I've come to see that the anal father is represented by the grandfather or mother seemingly from the natural logic that one's parents (of the phallic level) have less power than their parents.

Whoever appears as the father substitute occupies a meta-position that is more than what they stand for. When one is a grad student one's professor (qua father substitute) is not just simply the person who represents passage to the next level of accreditation but is somehow greater than this symbolic arrangement. Similarly the anal father as one of the head functionaries in the state, educational, or entertainment industries is felt to be "great", "superlative" or perfect so far as human life goes. The oral father is more than this, he or she is magical and has powers that defy normal conventions.

When the castration complex/masculine protest occurs then the father substitute is no longer taken into the ego ideal. Insofar as someone who would be a father substitute is encountered than rivalries occur that follow the deutero (narcissistic) or proto regression (or also a specific primal scene repetition could occur if a fixation occurred there).

The castration complex captures that one is attempting to obtain the mother's phallus (symbolically). The phallic image given to the child from the deutero (narcissistic) stage or the earlier, primitive, and greater power that she represents at the proto stage. As I've mentioned in previous posts, this power comes from the negation of the finite to form some sense of an infinite of which we can have no positive grasp of. The symbols, derived from the parents, fill this negativity with something positive but it is mere image or picture and not a "thought". Without the father substitute in the ego ideal one is chasing negativity and the faustian restlessness of feeling one approximates this perfection or possesses the phallus may give a momentary triumph or exaltation but it soon disappears. One now has to make way to the next achievement, to the next lover (since the one you've just had must be inferior if she loves you and your inferiority), or find other people to seduce into holding you in high regard (from a situation similar to the problem with the lover).

These things become deepened and more consuming at the anal and oral stages. Anyone who has worked in hospital wards is familiar with the religious discussions of God, Devil, and people who are powerful and famous often show up in the communications as well. Because of earlier defusions these "madmen" are honest in communicating how they see themselves in relation to the anal fathers and the anal phallus projects of overthrowing rulers or having the "key" to the most important knowledge or understanding (upon which one's culture is built). Those without earlier defusions who regress to the anal stage may be professors or intellectuals who begin to work on interminable projects that will create something important and new and change the existing paradigm of thought. However, these people will still often cover up this motivation.

I called this post the oral phallus because I wanted to say more about the ego ideal of the oral phallus from an altruistic position. I overheard some Christians talking today about 'God's plan' and how one of them lost her keys and when she found them she also found something else she had been looking for. I realized the altruistic compliment to the egoistic castration complex of the oral ego ideal. The egoistic protest results in the omnipotence of wishes in which one tries to appear 'magical' like the oral father substitute or in a proto defusion seeks to live away from others (maybe in nature like an old sage, or maybe without personal relations in a crowded city). There are Reiki energy healers who advertise that they can also send their healing energy to people at any distance and thus have a magic that isn't directed to show their power but is to help others. Additionally, just as the oral phallus can represent a point where someone strives for an omnipotent self-control in which they can remove themselves from the phallic and anal levels of having recognized social power and end up as survivalists or ascetics who are all alone, I think there are altruists who wonder around without any plans and are beholden to the will of God, fate, karma, energy, (etc.). The focus here isn't on one's will being magical but being in a magical world.

I've also come across an example of the oral object drives in a relationship in which a man keeps a woman and undermines her connections to other people by telling her that bad energy or curses will stick to her if she goes out of the house alone and he isn't there to protect her. This is more powerful than that anal object relation in which a man wants to jealously possess a woman and can't abide her being around men. She has been told that even if she spends time with an animal that some bad energy might go into it from her and it is so small it might get sick and die. He is the powerful magician and she cannot be separated from her protector lest she is harmed by the bad energy in the world.

As one last note, the Oral deutero psycho-sexual stage of the hand seems to be very important in energy healing.

The magician who is exhibitionistically employing his power (as opposed to healing) often employs sleight of hand and the traditional costume emphasizes the hands with white gloves.

          

Altruism and Death: towards the Antigone complex

I've come across the work of Leon Wurmser who seems to be both a proponent of the preoedipal superego and to have enough good clinical sense to judge altruistic impulses in his patients. I've mentioned the Antigone complex in previous posts and he notes some ideas that suggest a complex without formally naming it.

There exists a deep ambivalence, above all toward the mother, whereby separation is being equated with crime, murder, and death. Modell (1984) speaks in a similar context about separation guilt: “The right to a separate life is perhaps invariably [with narcissistic patients] accompanied by an unconscious fantasy that separation will lead to the death or damage of the other…. They were possessed of a basic belief that they had no right to a better life” (pp. 56-57). Above all, every success may represent a symbolic separation, hence destruction of the other, and has to be prohibited or undone.

Loyalty is more than an ordinary bond, more than an “object relationship”: It sets up the other as a beloved authority over oneself toward whom one has to keep faith. It is a kind of superego relationship and superego bond. Contradictory loyalties tear apart one's innermost self as probably no other conflict does.

Wurmser, L. (1988). “The Sleeping Giant”: A Dissenting Comment About “Borderline Pathology”. Psychoanal. Inq., 8:373-397