What comes is better than what came before.

Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground were an important part of adolescence (which some may argue I'm still going through).

I was always impressed that he could have a song as epic as Heroin and as delicate as Sunday Morning on the same album.

I've never much cared for his arty/experimental side which is how many people like to talk about him. I don't think I have ever put a song from White Light/ White Heat on a mix and I've always thought he would leave real gems off of albums because he was too self-conscious of having heart.

I thought I'd include one of them:

Object Egoist- Hysteria pt. 2- the Electra complex

In a previous post I pointed to the portrayal of the hysteric in the work of Charles Dickens.

http://psychoanalysis-tcp.blogspot.com/2013/01/object-egoist-hysteria.html

I compared the portrayal to Freud's character sketch of Dora but I now want to put some more distance between the two.

Firstly, Pip's sister "mother Gargery" is married and the hysterical passions she gives herself over to regarding her "humiliation" at not having a husband who stands up for her good name is about an equality in marriage.

I have mentioned before that the repression of the id object-choice (as opposed to its instinctual renunciation) means that the individual moves to rigidly toward the ego ideal. The man who represses his homosexual feelings for his brother becomes rigidly heteronormative and against gay men. In this case Pip's sister moves to easily towards "femininity" and towards the ideal of marriage and her sacrifices as "the woman".

In contrast, hysteria in the object egoist at the phallic narcissistic has to do with the experience/injury of complete disregard for her as an agent because she is a woman. This results in her seeking to revenge herself upon men.

I have previously posted on how at the phallic stage the egoist becomes masochistic about his image, and that he can become generous and perform "altruistic" acts, but that these acts are for his image. His generosity to intimates keeps them in his power, and his reputation is increased by generosity to strangers. The same thing comes to light for the object egoist.

Kohut gives a good description:

Such women may later develop into responsible, socially concerned, intellectually and culturally ambitious persons who struggle valiantly to overcome their resentment against younger men and to transform it into attitudes of protection and guidance toward them. To the work of an analyst such women often bring significant assets in the realm of moral firmness and intellectual ability… [but] they tend toward the substitution of what seems to them the all-too-passive attitude of the analyst (who is content to assist the patient in removing obstacles that stand in the way of liberating his own personality, his own potentialities, and his own initiative) by the more active stance of the educator, admonisher, and guide (Analysis of the Self, p.113-4). 

 Kohut sees this character being formed in latency,  this has to do with his stance against the drives and ego psychological commitments to the value choosing that goes on post-oedipus.

While at the phallic level the Electra complex will center around the OE giving the impression that she is more moral or of better taste or judgment than the "mother-substitutes" who have the good reputation for such things (or, like the Don Juan of Achievement, be driven to do many things in the public to show this).

Regression to the anal level becomes a criticism of one's culture and a put down of those who have reputation in it. The only people of importance are the anal fathers who are the pillars of the society. Only an anal father is a potential love object for the OE and no one else is worthy of her. Similarly, she holds an ideal of judgment that puts her into competition with "first ladies", famous historical figures, or celebrities that align with her form of judgment.

In the Electra complex the object drive form will result in sadistic feelings both the beloved and the object he loves or has betrayed one for. Ruining their reputations will be the response. If this is coupled with the anal form then references to the physical body appear. The sadism becomes physically destructive and the actual murder of the two is a possibility. Additionally, instead of the "castration anxiety" of desiring castration in which a lover will establish himself as 'the authority' the regression to the anal stage also adds the physical component of rape.

How often do such women become the wretched victims of a passion for men who ill-treat them, thus fulfilling the women's unconscious desires for castration or rape. I have also observed how frequently—indeed, almost invariably—women whose whole life is modeled on the lines of masculine sublimation-tendencies [i.e. egoism, not altruism] are markedly masochistic in their sexual experiences (Deutsch, The Significance of Masochism in the Mental Life of Women, p. 55).

The Electra complex the ego drive form is described above. It will result in sadistic feelings towards a mother-substitute who one is in competition with and the father as the depersonalized form of reputation in the community and can similarly regress to the anal stage. I have two further points I want to make. This triangulation is represented in Arachne and Athena with the reputation of Arachne for her weaving showing the depersonalized father. Also, the regression to the urethral or anal trito stage is possible. The bad conscience at the anal trito could show up in the masochistic sexual desires Deutsch speaks of and be contrasted to the anal Oedipal rape. Also, in a former post on the anal trito I have shown that several analysts have pointed out that the urethral stage is in fact the one for so called anal traits. I believe that there is also a case for excessive cleanliness and washing to be related to urethral impulses. Just as criminality vs. wanting to catch criminals is an anal trito issue for the subject egoist so too would the object egoist have a double possibility of expression at this stage. However, I'll have to wait a while longer before I attempt the formulation.
  

Physiognomy is not destiny!

Conversation with someone who was very self-critical has prompted me to point out that a person may possess some deficits in development (lack of aim-inhibition to form the trito stage) or some adaptations that respond to seduction or rejection (deutero stages) but, he or she may have overcome their limitations.

Psychoanalysts, or other 'therapists' for that matter, don't have a monopoly on wisdom. Having a relationship with a wise friend or teacher who can point out one's unrealistic expectation or one's fear or one's rigid way of responding in a certain circumstance in an empathic way could allow one to go beyond one's character.

However, when it comes to defenses (paranoia, melancholia, etc.) against defusions ("castration" anxiety in different stages or trito defusions of conscience) pointing out the lack of reality is not helpful at all. Even the wise encounter the "narcissistic barrier" here and unintuitive understanding of psycho-dynamics is required.      

Odyssey- The Lotus-Eaters- auto-erotic trito pt 1.

The Lotus-Eaters in the Odyssey is a very short piece but it does contain an important reference to the body.

I sent forth some of my comrades to go and learn who the men were, who here ate bread upon the earth; two men I chose, sending with them a third as a herald. So they went straightway and mingled with the Lotus-eaters, and the Lotus-eaters did not plan death for my comrades, but gave them of the lotus to taste. And whosoever of them ate of the honey-sweet fruit of the lotus, had no longer any wish to bring back word or to return, but there they were fain to abide among the Lotus-eaters, feeding on the lotus, and forgetful of their homeward way. These men, therefore, I brought back perforce to the ships, weeping, and dragged them beneath the benches and bound them fast in the hollow ships; and I bade the rest of my trusty comrades to embark with speed on the swift ships, lest perchance anyone should eat of the lotus and forget his homeward way. So they went on board straightway and sat down upon the benches, and sitting well in order smote the grey sea with their oars.

The men who ate of the lotus and became 'forgetful' are 'bound fast'.

I've made the parallel between the cyclops Polyphemus eating men and the figure of Cronos who is generally the father figure of the Volar stage (which I was previously referring to as the oral stage, but which is also called the stage of [primary] narcissism). I've linked Cronos, whose name literally stands for time, to the omnipotence of wishes in which defusion from the ego ideal means that the child rivals the perception of the efficacy of its acts as they would appear 'after time'. I've mentioned before that I understand Uranus as representing the space and the world in general and that rivalry with the father substitute at the auto-erotic means to create one's own possible worlds or to contain the world inside of oneself. I've linked this to art and how the artist can create some fantasy world and satisfy his drives through what takes place in it. I've also linked Freud's conception of 'oceanic oneness' to this stage.

In an old post I brought up the myths of Eos and Endymion which follows Uranus' reign chronologically and which deals with abstract nature entities that place it in the auto-erotic ontology. Being bound within a space is also conspicuous here:   

Hyperion, brother of Cronus, ‘he who goes above’ is a sun god. He is father to Helius (a better known sun god) Selene (the moon) and Eos (the dawn)

Selene fell in love with  handsome shepherd Endymion. He was seduced while he slept in his cave and Selene had 50 daughters with him. At Selene’s request Zeus allowed Endymion to pick his fate and he chose to sleep forever and never grow old.

Eos loved Trojan prince Tithonus “Eos, poor foolish lady, neglected to ask that her lover might never be subject to aging… no more could he lift his bones to totter, decrepit and feeble. At last the goddess agreed on this as the plan she must follow: she closed him up in his room, and locked up the glorious portal. Inside, his piping old voice droned endlessly. Gone is the vigor he used to enjoy, and the use of his limbs once handsome and supple” Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite (218-238).

The auto-erotic takes its name from Freud's observation that the primitive ego would take its own body as its first object. Again, the infant is connected to its mother's breast and face, and Uranus would relate to the formation of mnemic traces of the outside world but the interactions the infant has are still instinct (as opposed to ego drive). The pre-Uranus world I understand to be the study of Frances Tustin's amodel autistic sensations. 

A Jungian writes about the 'separation of the world parents' as the birth of ego consciousness which is only consciousness of instinct:

Besides disentangling itself from its fusion with nature… the ego, having now opposed itself to the nonego as another datum of experience, begins simultaneously to constellate its independence of nature as independence of the body… Man’s will to dominate nature is but an extension and projection of that fundamental experience of the ego’s potential power over the body, discovered in the voluntariness of muscular movement… In the beginning, the realm of the ego consciousness and the spiritual and psychic realm are indissolubly united with the body. Instinct and volition are as little divided as instinct and consciousness…. Only with the separation of the World Parents was the world made dual… This separation is due to the fundamental cleavage into a conscious portion of the personality, whose center is the ego, and a far greater unconscious portion (Neumann, The Origins and History of Consciousness, p. 109-16).

This connection between ego consciousness and auto-erotic pleasure in the body and also being separate from the body is a dynamic that has appeared in one of my patients and I believe also gets played out in the phantasy shown in the Alien movie franchise. The alien is "bound" within a body and needs to get out. (There is also the relation to the face, in which the alien latches onto it, and at this point I have a hunch, but only a hunch that the face is the earlier deutero stage). 

The Alien movie also features a robot and has a strong theme of a profit motive without "feeling" that helped me connect the relation of the perceptual consciousness at this stage in opposition to the body to the primitive 'affect block' of the obsessional. (Sometimes it is referred to as alexithymia in contemporary discourses). In an older post I quoted Reich on the masochist:

Just as the complaining represents a disguised demand for love and the provocation, a desperate attempt to force love, the total formation of the masochistic character represents an abortive attempt to rid oneself of anxiety and unpleasure… the feeling of suffering corresponds to a concrete fact, namely the continually high-pitched inner excitement and predisposition to anxiety. We shall understand the situation better when we compare it with the affect-block of the compulsive neurotic character. Here the binding of anxiety has been carried out with complete success, with the forfeiture of psychic mobility. But the inner tension is completely consumed by a well-functioning character apparatus. There is no restlessness. 245-6  

The high-pitched inner excitement Reich is describing as accompanying the masochist's complaining need not be in confluence with that specific defusion. Just as the affect block of the active-masculine is wide-ranging because of the primitive level of development it comes from, I believe we should treat the inner excitement of the passive-feminine. Specifically, I think Ripley, the hero of the film, is a good example of the defusion here. There is too much intensity in how she approaches others and, for lack of a better word, she's annoying. In Star Wars as well, Luke has a similar quality of being too intense and the badly written dialogue of Star Wars greatly emphasizes what could be called the autistic quality to be captured with this early defusion.

Back to the clinic, in a couple patients who have this intensity I have noted a similarity in their lips, which seem to go straight across and don't have any dip on the top lip.

    

Miley Cyrus is also a good illustration of this underlying high-pitched, annoying baseline interaction with others. I remember seeing a clip of Hannah Montana and having a quick dislike to her in what I consider to be an objective counter-transference that other people would have naturally with her as well.

I'm going to try to enter into the auto-erotic deutero and castration anxiety soon. For the moment,  that the auto-erotic trito seems to occupy an interesting spot with Klein and the early epistemophillic drive that I'll also have to follow up on. Following the other paradigms in which the volar trito has the first measured ego ideal, and the anal trito has the first form of teleology in individual will, the auto-erotic trito would be the "part-" expression of the epistemological functions being expanded on in the volar stage.   

The affect-blocked obsessional often has a compensation in perception in which he has a penchant for detail observing as spelled out by Shapiro in Neurotic Styles. I think that this block and cognitive style represent someone who is capable of being alone and I think the passive-feminine manifestation would be in someone who is mystical and I think that this stage is a good place to talk about solipsistic philosopher and the mystic who lives in isolation and experiences oceanic oneness. The idea of the body being the prison of the soul is very strong in Plato as is the idea of contemplating objects in some kind of Form or essence they have. Additionally, the survivalist who will enter into nature alone is salient here...  

(as a note, I had previously included these types within the volar (oral, narcissism) stage defusions but have since recognized that 'the world' is the earlier auto-erotic stage ontology) 

I also wish I could add more clarity between the libidinal positions (SE OA & SA OE) but I need more data.