echoistic injury- the need for punishment

I've indicated that there is a step between the oedipus complex and the castration complex.

In fusion with the father imago the individual has good relations with father-substitute. The subject egoist, for example, is able to respect his boss or superior and have friendly relations with others in the group. In defusion, he enters the castration complex and has problems accepting the father-substitute and competition with others in the group may break out.

In defusion, the ego ideal has the imperative for the SE to "be his own father" and he experiences more tensions between his ego and ego ideal. This leaves him open to narcissistic injuries in relation to his image-ego in the social (ego drives) or sexual (object drives) relations. The narcissistic injury will bring about a second defusion and require defensive management of the anxiety.

In the object altruist I've begun to note that the echoistic injury comes from not being accepted by a group of friends. In one patient there is the unmistakable longing for an earlier period when she was included in a group that other's would talk about and seemed special. Another patient had a dream that she was a boy included in a group of 'wild boys' and before she became an outsider she delighted in the irreverence and bawdiness of the group.

The echoistic injury, like the narcissistic, ties the centrality of the castration complex of the phallic stage with the castration complex of an earlier stage. The second defusion of the need for punishment deals with the 'social anxiety' of people in the community confronting one about the shame of one's social humiliation. Rather than expecting punishment or enforcement of the humiliation from others one punishes oneself first. Since the earlier anal, volar, part-object nuclear complexes are open and functioning simultaneously with the phallic, the need for punishment might align with repetitions from these stages.