Is the compulsive, as "living machine", part of the volar stage?

I have an egoistic patient who definitely has subject egoistic and object egoistic trends. She can externalize her own feelings so that "an enemy" else is represented as "dirty, uncultured, and lazy" while she can affirm that she is clean and cultured. However, she does recognize the self-reproach of laziness and it seems to be shared between a reproach that she should be reading more books to perfect her cultural refinement and also in relation to do more comprehensive work at her job and in relation to career and academic ambitions.

Analyzing her "laziness," it shows up in the normal way. There is procrastination that involves the phantasy that if she had more time to work she could have made something perfect.

The reproach for laziness also involves a machine-like existence of making an optimal use of her time and dividing up the day in a way in which there is no time for relaxation, "fun", or personal life in general. The only thing left is the impersonal machine.

The relation to time that features heavily in this, the absence of reference to social hierarchy to locate the perfection points, and her discomfort to be around people in general point to the volar stage.

In the volar stage the castration complex is a rebellion against time in wishes to fly, control things with one's mind, etc. that don't submit to being measured against time. This makes the likely candidate the volar trito in which time is internalized. The garden of Eden myth in which being banished amounts to a life of toil seems related here.

Also there has been associations to the tin man from Wizard of Oz which references chopping down trees which I related to the volar trito in an earlier post. There is also an association to a Charlie Chaplin movie in which Chaplin's boss is "trapped, miserable, and hungry" and being "consumed" by the gears inside the factory.

There are many other things going on, and these associations also reference a personal relationship and the altruistic pole of her personality.

symptom reading reflections on Clerks 2

I saw Clerks II recently. I remember seeing the first Clerks in the early 90s and appreciating the randomness that underlay some of its humor. However, what was vulgar or an echoistic attempt to cause delight in the first hasn't matured by finding more subtle versions in a new strata of society. There is stagnation of these impulses to which are added compensatory movements, such as having a Jackson 5 song turn into a choreographed dance, that feel misplaced. 

The phallic deutero phase that provides a rival phallic image for the child and therefore introduces a split in the ego and low ego ideal is something that only deepens as time goes on. The same irreverence that carried some charm in the first movie comes to a depressing climax in the second movie in which the characters are 30 year olds working at a fast food restaurant.

The symptom reading produces two interesting insights.

The female manager that Dante is cheating on his fiancé with provides the object relation expression of the ego relation of his idealizing his friend Randall.

Randall is in some ways fearless and object altruistically thumbs his nose at civilization which is an attractive quality for the subject altruist Dante who cares about not hurting the feelings of others. Dante’s fiancé is depicted as a former popular, hot girl who is tired of being with “assholes” and wants a loser whose life she can dictate. This is often part of the female castration complex for object egoists and was the fate of Freud’s Dora.  

If Dante isn’t going to choose submission and devotion to the perfection that his fiancé dictates he requires ‘a twin’ or mother-substitute friend to remain independent. Through this twin he can vicariously experience himself as strong and independent.

The young male employee that Randall mercilessly attacks is a relation of the character to both the naïve goodness of Dante and the fanboy aspects of himself in Dante.

In the pivotal moment in the movie Randall lets out his feelings:

I thought you were
the only guy in the world
who got me and had my back...
the only person
who'd take a bullet for me,
'cause I assumed
you felt about me
the same way I feel about you.
Then, all of a sudden, one day,
you're like, "I'm moving. Bye."
Do you know
what that's been like for me?
I'm looking at a future
that just sucks,
because you're
not gonna be in it anymore.
And you're not
even throwing me over
for a life
that means something to you.
It's just a stupid,
hollow existence
you think you should embrace
because you're getting old
or something,
because it's the kind of life
everyone else goes after.
You're a fucking drone, dude.
DANTE:
Fine.
Then the next friend
whose life you ruin
can be a totally free spirit.
How's that?
You think I want to start
making friends at my age?
Christ.
Who would want me
as their friend?
I hate everyone, and everything
seems stupid to me...
...but you were always
the counterbalance to that...
the guy who was the yin
to my yang.
But now what the fuck am I gonna
do for the rest of my life?
I mean, shit, I really wish
you would've told me this
when I first met you
that one day,
you were gonna bail
on our friendship,
because if I had known
you were just gonna flake on me
a few decades later...
I wouldn't have even bothered
with your ass
in the first place.

Randall’s appeal to him covers up his use of Dante as a punching bag as much as it may have an altruistic sense of devotion to him. Dante is the castrated mother who Randall gets to feel superior to but also provides the sense of awe and reverence that is given more power than the “drone” life of adults and which Randall can only uncreatively negate. The young employee loves Transformers and Randall puts them down as Go-bots. He provides the content of the conversation an Randall gets to negate them. And although you might take Randall's criticism of him to mean that he is dislikes him, he tells that he will be his new best friend when Dante leaves. 

There’s a moment when Jay (of Jay and silent Bob) stands with his trench coat open and his penis tucked in between his legs. This symbol of confusing and mixing the sexes points to the phallic deutero desire to be more powerful than the castrated mother and the father by obtaining the mother’s phallic image and being greater than both…

(Being superior to the combined parents is one form, the fixation of the primal scene trauma also references the combined parents. However, it still seems like defusion to the proto or polyphallic stage with the high ego ideal is the imperative to be one’s own father and not the attempt to be more than both parents).  

In The Piano the anxiety concerning rape from a father-substitute was seen as converted into jouissance. The exhibitionistic attempts to cause desire that were displaced onto Baines were related to causing desire in Stewart and his subsequent attempts to rape Ada.

In Clerks II, as with Inside Llewyn Davis, the anxiety of getting beaten by the father-substitute turns into the jouissance of bringing this about by antagonizing others. Davis gets beaten, while Randall is threatened by several people in the movie.

In The Piano Ada’s masturbation was a very prominent finding. It seems common sense to place it in relation to her repression of the object drives. If an object egoist endures disappointments in love she can hate men and transfer more energy and inflate her ego so that she feels she is superior to them and none, save anal fathers, are worthy of her. The object drive not satisfied in life would no doubt clamor for satisfaction in masturbation. However, as masturbation shows up here when the young employee is drunk and too aroused by the ‘donkey show’ I wonder if it has more to do with the phallic deutero stage in general… As with many of these questions, much more data is needed.

It is clear that the “inter-species erotica” or bestiality in the donkey show is a perversion. I’ve taken the framework that this arises from the repression of the ego drives from the object drives. (The ego over the object drives leads to narcissism in egoists and echoism in altruists, while the repression of the ego drives leads to sado-masochism in egoists and through channels of affection and fear in altruists. Although this is by no means clear-cut and each libidinal type should have his own expression of these things. The centrality of the OEdipus complex is that it is the point at which the poles of egoism and altruism become near to balanced). However, perversion is more than just a stage or the idealization of an instinct as Chasseguet-Smirgel’s work has shown. The deutero stage of both the phallic and anal stages are needed and potentially more. 

defensive operations don't necessarily follow one's libidinal position.

In speaking to someone about my work I encountered the misunderstanding that I was claiming that only a subject egoist would have paranoia.

This is very mistaken.

Someone who has emphasis on their altruistic pole can still have a defusion on their egoistic pole and defend against anxiety through paranoia.

the re-personalized imago

As opposed to the sublimation of earlier forms of the ego ideal that are illustrated in the artist making his own world, or the ambitious person devising a long plan or enduring a long study or training to aim at taking a superlative place in the field, the imagos that form the superego have a personalized dimension.   

The personal memories and attributes of one’s caregivers can come to prominence in neurosis and replace the drives to interact with the ‘parental substitutes’. I’ve encountered several patients who after being in abusive relationships have come to manage their severe anxiety and panic by living with or close to their parents. The parents repeat the roles they took in the patient’s childhood and interact with them constantly and become a powerful authority figure who must be obeyed or controlled, completely responsible for one or requiring help. If the person isn’t narcissistic and still has social ties or object constancy in work, marriage, and friendships then this often appears as the child becoming an adult who now becomes the friend of one of, or both, parents. 

The 40 year old virgin who lives at home with his mother has an unconscious personalized imago relationship with his mother, while another man might be on his 3^rd or 4^th marriage with his mother-substitute who he has conscious sexual feelings for.      

Perfection and Death/ Egoism and Altruism/ Hate and Aloneness/Aggression and Affection/ active-affection and passive-aggression

I haven't been posting very much because my energy has been going to meeting the deadlines I have in other projects. Yesterday, I had a glorious glimpse of throwing off one of the yokes very soon and was able to feel like a bird once again- able to see the whole scene and all the players from above.

I've written about negativity in psychoanalysis providing the foundation for Perfection and Death as two things that we can't subjectively experience but posit in the other and react to. Please forgive my repetition but it's helpful for me to build the symmetry needed for my rationalist approach.

The egoist reacts the the other's perfection by striving for it himself.

The altruist reacts to the other's death by trying to restore him.

The egoist in his attempt to possess or control his good reputation or his sexual object reacts with hate to resistances.

The altruist in her attempt to merge or resonate with her sexual object or the reputation of others reacts with aloneness to resistances.

The principle of competition in the egoist is on top/on bottom.

The principle of restoration in the altruist is inside/outside. The altruist tries to restore those outside back to the inside and on the inside there is a feeling of belonging that is separate from being on top/on bottom.

The egoist hates the other for a loss in love and hates himself when he isn't on top.
The altruist feels the other's aloneness when he is outside, and feels her own aloneness in a loss of love.

The hate of the egoist manifests as aggression.

The aloneness of altruist manifests as affection. She needs to be outside of herself and have the radio on and her voices, be cuddled and touched by intimates, have little baubles or figurines to gaze upon, to talk in a baby voice and play before the other, to sleep, etc. This reaction has as many fixations as the aggression of the egoist.

As the poles intermingle the altruist too has aggressive feelings and passive-aggression is the form of that occurs at the oedipal stage. This is in relation to the self and aggression and standing up for others is developed. The egoist gains active-affection at the oedipal too.  Active-affection notes the generosity that the egoist can have for those who are in his family, or who are extension of his power, but generosity doesn't extend beyond this sphere.

It is also clear that aggression in panic attacks and general anxiety/fears of the outside world is related to aggression in the altruist. However, aloneness and being on the outside probably plays a role too. I'm not sure at this point about aloneness in the egoist and my bird's eye view grows foggy at this point so it's best to leave off for now.


 



  

a clinical thought, a theoretical thought

It's amazing how in both subject and object altruists I have found a state in several low-functioning individuals in which the person doesn't shower and has hygiene problems and they feel that to take care of themselves in such a way is part of a larger imperative to work and be responsible. They feel that if they do this then they will have to be responsible in all the other ways and this overwhelms them.

The phenomenological or subjective feeling of the drives and their sphere of action can become very comprehensive.

I've referenced defusion/the castration complex as making a name for oneself for the egoist as beginning at the phallic oedipal. However, the sphere of making it can progress all the way into the volar stage so that one wants to have an immortal name. This name stands alone even though in some sense it may be mentioned along with the names of other eternal names. If it isn't true sublimation then the person is narcissistic about their skills, knowledge, or beauty without any measure of their action or any social reference to how their power has an effect on others. There is something ineffably special in them.  

neurotic pride- altruist

 In a moment of pride someone extracts herself from those she loves as a punishment. She will no longer give them her goodwill and her energy and will be alone. However, she goes to this place and finds out that no one is coming after her and that they accept her in this new hollowness or friends move on and leave instead of rescuing her.

Now she has to eat her aloneness.

Clinical Techniques: process feelings through the parents

A very low-functioning schizophrenic patient with diabetes and other problems that have seen him hospitalized for "cheating' on his diet recently reports another incident of doubling up on dessert.

I tell him that the doctor has been very clear about what is at stake and that it sounds like it doesn't matter to him if he lives or he dies. He is silent.

I decide that his affect block, which sees him talk mechanically about things he should do, local sports teams or video games, won't let me go very far with him as the subject.

I ask him what his parents will feel like if he is dead.

He replies that he doesn't know.

I ask him if they think it'll be good or bad.

He says bad.

I ask him to say more.

He says bad.

I say "bad as sad you are gone, or bad as guilty or responsible for your death"

He says that they would feel responsible.

I say "you are living on your own in a big scary world and they don't take care of you"

He corrects me and says that it's his mom, and she doesn't make time for him.

I add that he is angry and he is punishing her, and that she will see what happens to him.

silence

I ask what she would say if he told her how alone he felt and tell her he needs her.

He says that she'll probably just ignore him like she's always done.

I ask him if he thinks I can help him find new words so that she will hear him and know its serious.

He says he doesn't know.

I ask if it will hurt if he reaches out and she ignores him.

He confirms and says it'll hurt a lot.

...