Blank Space- Volar stage

Sometimes contemporary pop culture reaches me in my lonely tower. I was impressed when I found out this was a Taylor Swift song and especially by the acting (?) she does in the video.

I think that the "blank space" also nicely ties to the volar deutero stage and Odysseus calling himself 'Nobody' in his encounter with Polyphemus.

The feeling that one is a nothing and the other is everything (i.e. both man and woman) is something I've been posting about and trying to conceptualize in my patients.

In this song it seems like the subject altruist isn't the only "nothing" but that the object egoist too can feel a "blank space" in herself that must be filled with the "everything" romantic object. The difference seems to be, of course, that aggressive impulses are directed at the object in the OE but directed against the self in the SA.

More precisely, the aggression is towards the object's things (his car, his clothing, his pictures).

In the volar stage I've also discussed 'the home' as the first form of transitional object. This seems to go along with Klein's notion of the inside of the mother's body being important and the phantasy that there are other babies inside of there. In The Lost Boys there is a scene I didn't comment on in which the boys/vampires are all sleeping outside down in a cave when Sam et al go into the cave to kill them.

As important as these phantasies may be in Kleinian technique, what interests me theoretically is their 'depersonalized' aspect in both ego drive and object drive relations. I've had a patient who found her boyfriend with another woman soon after their breakup and who went to his next party (so he wouldn't know it was her) and clogged his toilets, put salt in his washing machine to rust it out, stained his carpets, etc.

So, following the structure of the phallic trito father complex in which love of the parent becomes subject to the incest taboo and is reconfigured as love for a sibling, I've had the idea that attachment to the house, as a transitional object for the father-substitute, would become reconfigured as attachment to things or possessions.

In the trito stage of the phallic father complex the incestuous feelings for siblings has to be renounced in order to traverse the father complex and form 'genital' character. Similarly, the attachment to, or relations with things or possessions, which seem to be exchangeable for imago relations (i.e. both ego and object drive) in general, have to be renounced. (In Kleinian terminology, this if a full internalization of the object).

So, the woman in the video hasn't defused from the volar Elektra complex to attack the object's house, but still has an overly intense relationship with a sibling substitute because she hasn't renounced her desires to form volar trito drives/ideals.

Additionally, the volar deutero, as with every psychosexual stage, means a low ego ideal in which emphasis on drive related striving is diminished and feelings of entitlement to have the authority of the father-substitute, or be important to him/her, is central.

The proto-drives of the volar stage are intense. They represent the need to have others feel awe and wonder at you and for the person to feel the pressure to be something greater than human, or a singularity/name in history, to be immortal...

The deutero-dimension, in which the hand is the part-object for the masculine, means that sleight of hand/magic tricks in which you get the brief sense that you caused awe or wonder in people is a form of the low ego ideal and sense of entitlement to the authority of the volar/immortal fathers. (This is for subject egoists, where object altruists might also just want to cause delight or mystery for others)

In the second verse we find:

Cherry lips
Crystal skies
I could show you incredible things
Stolen kisses, pretty lies
You're the king baby I'm your queen
Find out what you want
Be that girl for a month
But the worst is yet to come
Oh no
Screaming, crying, perfect storms
I could make all the tables turn
Rose garden filled with thorns
 
The emphasis is on the man being 'the king' and the woman making herself over into who she thinks he wants to be incredible to him. However, no one can live up to the volar stage idealization in the object drives and so, after feeling close to "the king" for a month, the object will invariably not give you the perfect mirroring you need or not seem as socially important as you thought they did, and the relationship falls apart.

I've identified kings before as anal stage rulers at the tops of social hierarchies, but they often have been seen as more than human or had their names recorded in history and seem immortal for certain periods of time so they can also clearly be volar father-substitutes. I say certain periods of time, because I wonder how many people study the history of their cultures and have to memorize all the kings there were? In contrast, Plato and Shakespeare will always be immortal as well as Napoleon for what they have done, not just because they happened to be born to a person in power.

... one last thought is that the status of language itself as a transitional object. I'm still with the hypothesis that the auto-erotic stage is the prime determinant on whether one becomes a true intellectual or not. It determines whether one is at home in the body or in the mind. This also seems like it would be the difference between a person loving possessions or things or loving words, maybe music, or something in the arts.

Blank Space

Nice to meet you
Where you been?
I could show you incredible things
Magic, madness, heaven, sin
Saw you there and I thought oh my god
Look at that face, you look like my next mistake
Love's a game, wanna play
New money, suit and tie
I can read you like a magazine
Ain't it funny rumors fly
And I know you heard about me
So hey, let's be friends
I'm dying to see how this one ends
Grab your passport and my hand
I could make the bad guys good for a weekend

[Pre-Chorus]
So it's gonna be forever
Or it's gonna go down in flames
You can tell me when it's over
If the high was worth the pain
Got a long list of ex-lovers
They'll tell you I'm insane
Cause you know I love the players
And you love the game

[Chorus]
Cause we're young and we're reckless
We'll take this way too far
It'll leave you breathless
Or with a nasty scar
Got a long list of ex-lovers
They'll tell you I'm insane
But I got a blank space baby
And I'll write your name

[Verse 2]
Cherry lips
Crystal skies
I could show you incredible things
Stolen kisses, pretty lies
You're the king baby I'm your queen
Find out what you want
Be that girl for a month
But the worst is yet to come
Oh no
Screaming, crying, perfect storms
I could make all the tables turn
Rose garden filled with thorns
Keep you second guessing like oh my god
Who is she? I get drunk on jealousy
But you'll come back each time you leave
Cause darling I'm a nightmare dressed like a daydream

[Pre-Chorus]
So it's gonna be forever
Or it's gonna go down in flames
You can tell me when it's over
If the high was worth the pain
Got a long list of ex-lovers
They'll tell you I'm insane
Cause you know I love the players
And you love the game

[Chorus]
Cause we're young and we're reckless
We'll take this way too far and leave you breathless
Or with a nasty scar
Got a long list of ex-lovers
They'll tell you I'm insane
But I got a blank space baby
And I'll write your name

[Bridge]
Boys only want love if it's torture
Don't say I didn't say I didn't warn you
Boys only want love if it's torture
Don't say I didn't say I didn't warn you

[Pre-Chorus]
So it's gonna be forever
Or it's gonna go down in flames
You can tell me when it's over
If the high was worth the pain
Got a long list of ex-lovers
They'll tell you I'm insane
Cause you know I love the players
And you love the game

[Chorus]
Cause we're young and we're reckless
We'll take this way too far and leave you breathless
Or with a nasty scar
Got a long list of ex-lovers
They'll tell you I'm insane
But I got a blank space baby
And I'll write your name