2. What are the economics of the libido
(pt. 2)? Ontological development.
What is narcissism (pt 1.)? regression or
introversion.
In the last section I showed that Freud
conceived of multiple ego ideals, forms of conscience, and superego punishments
that formed from the instinctual renunciation of id object cathexes. However,
as a good empiricist, Freud only gave a few examples and didn’t attempt to find
the inter-relations between them. In this section I’ll attempt to outline three
forms of the ego ideal based upon Freud’s use of the cultural example of the
different type of world views and their relation to narcissism. I’ll show that
they correspond to three different senses of perfection that can be understood
in relation to three different social ontologies in which the individual is
able to cognize himself in relation to ‘all people’, in relation to having
those of good (strong) and bad (weak) reputation, and in relation of his group
identity to other groups. These
ontologies provide the basis for negative (i.e. formed by negation) perfection
object. This is simply an anti-metaphysical position taken by Freud that the
finite mind can’t grasp the infinite or perfection and, therefore, perfection
has meaning by being the not-finite (ex. power above all people). This view
regards people as experiencing a ‘Faustian restlessness’ in which satisfaction
of ideals, by their nature, can’t last long before they require new objects to
strive after[1].
In addition, narcissism in its regressive or introverted character of
functioning at a lower level ego ideal/ social ontology is laid out because of
its relevancy to the economics of the libido.
Along with the negative perfection objects
the ego ideal emulates are affect transferences and ego transferences. Although
all transferences include putting a primitive parental imago on another person
and attributing the other person with its powers, what I’m terming ego
transferences are structural parts of the ego where the transferences in
repetition-compulsion and ambivalence are based upon fixations and
‘narcissistic scars’. Freud’s example of this, as we saw in the first section,
is the ego ideal being projected onto the group leader that allows for the
egoistic and aggressive trends in the individual to be limited by social
feeling to others who belong to his group. I must stress that there are more
ego ideals than I cover in this section. I have chosen the ones I have for the
sake of their simplicity and universality in development. I hope that by
providing a framework to understand the three that the others will be more
easily ascertained in later work. Lastly, a parallel between the findings of
Klein and the early forms of ego ideal is constructed, although, it fits better
with her earlier time-line laid out in The Psychoanalysis
of Children than with her later time-line that begins at the first few
months of life.
In Totem
and Taboo Freud famously uses the history of worldviews (Weltanschauung) to give
a picture of the development of narcissism in individuals:
At the animistic stage men ascribe
omnipotence to themselves. At the religious stage they transfer it to the gods
but do not seriously abandon it themselves, for they reserve the power of
influencing the gods in a variety of ways according to their wishes. The
scientific view of the universe no longer affords any room for human
omnipotence; men have acknowledged their smallness and submitted resignedly to
death (Freud, Totem and Taboo, p.88)
Freud simply examines these worldviews by
the decreasing amount of narcissism they represent. In primary narcissism, in
which the child is its own ideal there is omnipotence (animistic stage). In
secondary narcissism ego ideals emerge as magical connections with an outside
power that is greater that the individual (religious stage). Lastly, in science
one appeals to one’s peers in the reproducibility of the experiment and individual
narcissism is reduced so that one takes into consideration the minds of others
in trying to establish the merit of one’s observations or the potency of one’s
point of view.
There are three important corrections to
make to these world-views. The first is that Freud wrongly attributes
omnipotence to the child in primary narcissism as if the ego was fully
developed and had a place for an ideal and it just happened to select itself
first. Later analysts like Lacan and Hartmann corrected this by introducing the
concepts of the mirror stage and self-representation that represent an
ontogenetic development in which the child is able to take itself as an object
in a new way. Commenting on this,
Edith Jacobson writes:
Freud describes the megalomanic attitudes
of children, primitives, and schizophrenics, their belief in the omnipotence of
thoughts and in the magic of words, as evidence of “primary narcissism”.
Actually, however these attitudes appear to be manifestations of beginning
“secondary narcissism” or, as we should rather say, of preoedipal stages of ego
formation and of a beginning establishment and cathexis of self and object
images… To these stages the psychotic ego appears to regress (Jacobson, ‘The
Self and the Object World’, p.102).
The second correction, after moving
infantile megalomania to secondary narcissism, is that it is a defensive
posture. Several early analysts after Freud have noted this including Glover,
Bak, Hendrick, and Klein (Freeman, Some Aspects of Pathological Narcissism, p.
553; Hendrick, Early Development of the Ego, p. 57; Klein, Envy and Gratitude, p. 76). However, it’s
important to note that although the subjective sense of omnipotence came to be
seen as defensive and arising later in development, there is a descriptive
sense of omnipotence in the child hallucinating according to wish fulfillment
that is correct. At the end of the section I’ll examine it in contrast to the
subjective sense of omnipotence that I’ll derive from a social ontology that
references subjective feelings of power in relation to other people.
The third correction to Freud’s analysis of
world-views is that individual narcissism doesn’t simply disappear after the
child renounces its bid to possess the mother and accepts that she is the
father’s property (i.e. the Oedipus complex). Although science appears historically after the great monotheistic
religions of good and evil have their day it is certainly still not fully
accepted within any culture. The president must be religious to get elected, psychoanalysis
(the science of the mind) is not accepted in universities, and the social
sciences suffer from post-modern fragmentation. Freud recognized that no
culture was ready to fully accept psychoanalysis and that its acceptance
represented the danger of it being watered down. He also recognized that after
individual narcissism (i.e. secondary narcissism) a social ideal was formed
that it was possible to derive narcissism from:
The satisfaction which the ideal offers to the participants in the culture
is thus of a narcissistic nature; it rests on their pride in what has already
been successfully achieved... On the strength of these differences every
culture claims the right to look down on the rest… The narcissistic
satisfaction provided by the cultural ideal… can be shared in not only by the
favoured classes, which enjoy the benefits of the culture, but also by the
suppressed ones, since the right to despise the people outside it compensates
them for the wrongs they suffer within their own unit. No doubt one is a
wretched plebian, harassed by debts and military service; but, to make up for
it, one is a Roman citizen, one has one’s share in the task of ruling other
nations and dictating their laws (Freud, ‘Future of an Illusion’, p.13).
In a more contemporary view, one can be a
piece of white trash with massive credit card debt and harassed by child
protective services but one is American! And, even though one doesn’t have a
passport and has never travelled anywhere else, one knows that America is the
best place in the world. Historically, science had its beginnings along with
the nationalism that marked the bourgeoisie’s replacement of medieval guilds,
and the church’s grip on intellectual life, with capitalism. As mentioned
above, the church has only let go of intellectual life so far as it concerns
the hard sciences whose subject doesn’t deal with language speaking beings.
And, even here, it often seems like people want to return to a fundamentalism
that ignores the light of science in these regions. Historically speaking, the
world-view of science will only come into existence once this social narcissism
has been overcome and neither corporate interests, national boundaries, nor
post-modern relativism interfere with it. But, I digress.
In broad outline, these different stages of
world-views would relate to the transference of the patient to the analyst and
possible defensive positions of narcissism that the patient would take. What
interests me, in this investigation of the ego ideal, is the different senses
of perfection that the parental images might entail and therefore, in the
child’s identification with the image, what the ideal might look like. In the
beginning, as Jacobson and others point out, there is no power in the
individual or in the other. I think it’s instructive here to follow other
analysts such as Grotstein who talk of a terrifying nothingness or black hole
psychotics experience[2]. Animism, as
the projection of human qualities onto the world would essentially cover up
this terrifying nothingness that exists when primitive humans wonder why the
world can be so hostile (i.e. famine, floods, scarcity of food). Similar to
this is the projection of individual traits onto the analyst in an early
narcissistic transference as outlined by Spotnitz and Kohut[3].
The patient, in order to overcome his basic anxiety due to the otherness
(non-ego status) of the analyst, takes the analyst to be a twin image of
himself. As I mentioned, there is a defensive strategy in megalomania in which
the person identifies with the object, the representation of God, and treats
others as pitiful (as he himself feels under the defence). In this twin
transference we would similarly see the person identify with the otherness
itself (the representation of the object) and the analyst becomes the
representation of the self (the ego)[4].
Although Freud simply had ‘the religious
stage’ follow animism I believe it is relatively straightforward to break it up
into an early and a later stage. I’m not trying to be exhaustive in developing
these stages- that would call for an in depth analysis of religious traditions.
However, even for the layman there is a general structure which Freud thought
was good for demonstrative purposes. Animism, for example, would have primitive
totemistic tribal forms and develop into Taoism and Buddhism. They can all be
lumped together in not having a representation of a God, Goddess, or Father god
that rules other gods, who is seen as all powerful and who has a personal
relation to the group of believers. They are concerned with energies and/or
human like relations with spirits. In the next stage there is an all powerful
Zeus or Jehova that enters into relationships with humans and can be jealous,
sympathetic, angry, but who also can be appeased. In parallel to this
development the analyst can receive a transference in which he is felt to be
god-like in his ability to read the patient’s thoughts or in his power to harm
or control the patient. Defensively, as Jacobson pointed out, the psychotic can
himself become this god in megalomania.
It seems to me that after the early
religious representations of an all powerful, but also jealous and angry,
divine ruler stage, another stage follows in which the all powerful God
retreats into abstraction. Issues of good and evil, personal sin, and pride
emerge and the relations that are important are not so much between God and
humans, as between humans themselves and how they treat one another, or the
‘children of God’. The formerly all-powerful and jealous God now becomes the
creator of nature and logic who isn’t directly involved in the world. Humans
more importantly have to deal with the devil, who was created by God, and
tempts others to turn away from goodness with worldly success and power. He
offers the ability to be a king, as rich as a king, or a special talent that
makes one famous. In the transference the analyst can belong to the elite class
and have ‘the perfect life’. He can be regarded as the most talented therapist
and the patient may brag about him or the patient may feel he looks on him as
inferior or pathetic. Like the megalomania of the previous stage a narcissism
of being famous, wealthy, or potent in way that we’d call grandiose can exist[5].
Freud next moved on to the scientific
stage. As I mentioned, in scientific development power resides in recreating
reproducible experiments that allow others to check and validate one’s work.
This shows that one has accepted ‘castration’ (‘men have accepted their
smallness’). This brings us to a subtle point in Freud’s theory on the Oedipus
complex. Before, the Oedipus complex occurs, the worldly perfection ego ideal
can be exchanged for a group leader or what I’ll call the subject supposed to
lead. Deference before, and love for, a leader allows for equality with one’s
competitors to be tolerated. “A primary group of this kind” Freud writes, “is a
number of individuals who have put one and the same object in the place of
their ego ideal and have
consequently identified themselves with one another in their ego” (Freud, Group Psychology, p.116, The Ego and the Id,
p.37). The group leader may act as a role model for secondary identifications
on what kind of success should be sought in life and it’s clear that the first
group leader the child has is the father[6].
It’s only after castration anxiety is experienced and the child internalizes
the actual father (i.e. accepts the father as his procreator and head of the
family) and forms the basis for a guilt superego that the further step of
forming social narcissism can occur[7].
In this further step, the individual’s ego ideal goes on to become a social
ideal in the latency period that, as Freud pointed out, conveys a sense of
power or triumph through the accomplishments of those within one’s group. Here
too, a corresponding defensive social narcissism in which the’ good name’ of
the group may mean being hostile to the truths of other groups is attained.
Events such as the Olympics for nation groups and hostility between
psychoanalytic schools readily display the loss of objective appraisal.
I’ve now outlined four stages of the
representation of power: no power or pure otherness, absolute power, worldly
power, and group power. In relation to the economics of the libido there is a
process of regression or introversion of the libido that can occur so that a
person gives up his “desire for power” or “ego interest”, as well as love or
sexual interest, at a certain stage and functions at a lower one[8].
Freud points to pathology like hypochondria or psychosis but also to states of
physical illness to illustrate this point[9].
Narcissism in this sense has nothing to do with self-love, but rather
represents that the ego is derived from the id and that later stages of
ontogenetic development can be relinquished (or foreclosed) so that the ego is
functioning in a less complex way[10].
In the first section I gave examples of how the group leader and hypnotist can
take over functions of the ego because these functions initially existed
outside the ego in a transference to the object before it was
(partially-)internalized. While defences like melancholia and paranoia protect
against defusion of the partially internalized father, regression or
introversion represents the loss of the partial internalization.
These four stages of power would correspond
to four stages of ontogenetic development that Freud deduces in a very simple
way. In order to account for the fact that we dream and see representations of
people and things not caused by outer sources of sense-data Freud created the
notion of the mnemic trace[11].
After the mnemic trace or thing-presentation Freud mentions a concept of
‘picture-thinking’ that occurs before word-presentations or thinking in words[12]. Where the mnemic trace requires that
the ego be a ‘skin ego’ that has differentiated inside and outside with some
continuity in time, the ‘picture-thought’ requires that one have a sense of
self beyond just feeling sensations or feelings[13].
Where the skin ego is just an envelope or
‘surface’ Freud writes that the “bodily ego… is not merely a surface
entity but is itself the projection of a surface’ (Freud, The Ego and
the Id, p. 26). Many analysts after Freud
have seen this awareness displayed in the child’s recognition of his own image
in the mirror[14]. The child
is able to recognize its own mirror image because of a mimetic sense in which
it feels that the mirror image moves like he feels that he is moving himself
(i.e. projection of surface on a surface). The next stage of development is
when a child becomes ‘self-conscious’ of the opinion others have about him. He
begins to ‘think in words’ to the extent that those words represent his desires
(‘ego interest’) in relation to having a good reputation.
He wants to be recognized as powerful and
certain activities have the reputation of being ‘manly’, ‘good’, etc. and he
seeks them out and shuns those which are associated with weakness so as to
control the ‘image’ others have of him.
Following the skin ego paired with mnemic traces, is the body ego paired
with a picture-thought, and then what I’ll call an image ego paired with words
or signifiers in reputation[15].
Lastly, the ability to cognize oneself as a group member and derive
narcissistic enjoyment from it could be called an identity ego and thinking in
words would develop further. However, it would require an investigation beyond
the scope of this paper to establish. I hope my reader can be satisfied with my
summarizing the earlier development that has already been established within
psychoanalytic thought and intuitively grasp the trajectory of the identity ego
by considering how latency children differ from those of the phallic stage.
While it is the task of developmental
psychology to find the specific mental operations these stages correspond to,
psychoanalytic investigation remains nearer to the realm of philosophy. As with
the theory of the mnemic trace derived from the existence of dreams,
psychoanalysis is based upon arguments for what our subjective experience of
something requires in order for it to be able to function[16].
What puts psychoanalysis into the realm of
science is that Freud doesn’t allow any explanations for our subjective
experience to appeal to the existence of God or something metaphysical.
Although Freud occasionally talked about the child as if it had a subjective
sense of omnipotence, as mentioned above, he also offered a later theory to
derive perfection from a negation. He writes:
It may be difficult, too, for many of us,
to abandon the belief that there is an instinct towards perfection at work in human
beings, which has brought them to their present high level of intellectual
achievement and ethical sublimation and which may be expected to watch over
their development into supermen. I have no faith, however, in the existence of
any such internal instinct and I cannot see how this benevolent illusion is to
be preserved. The present development of human beings requires, as it seems to
me, no different explanation from that of animals. What appears in a minority
of human individuals as an untiring impulsion towards further perfection can
easily be understood as a result of the instinctual repression upon which is
based all that is most precious in human civilization. The repressed instinct
never ceases to strive for complete satisfaction, which would consist in the
repetition of a primary experience of satisfaction. No substitutive or reactive
formations and no sublimations will suffice to remove the repressed instinct's
persisting tension; and it is the difference in amount between the pleasure of
satisfaction which is demanded and that which is actually achieved that
provides the driving factor which will permit of no halting at any position
attained, but, in the poet's words, [‘Presses ever forward unsubdued.’]. The
backward path that leads to complete satisfaction is as a rule obstructed by
the resistances which maintain the repressions. So there is no alternative but
to advance in the direction in which growth is still free—though with no
prospect of bringing the process to a conclusion or of being able to reach the
goal (Freud, BPP, p. 42).
Freud’s claim here is as simple one: the
finite mind couldn’t possibly grasp something infinite or perfect even though
philosophers have often claimed the opposite[17].
While Freud references the instinctual renunciation that leads to the creation
of perfection, we saw in the last section that it always follows from an id
object choice that is aimed at the object. So, to aim at perfection as a
negative quality is another way of saying that one had an id object-cathexis to
a finite object that then became negated to become the ‘not-finite’. Similarly,
before that the mnemic trace of the object could be negated to form a
representation of otherness itself. In this sense the nothingness of this
otherness is a negated form of somethingness[18].
This no doubt sounds very philosophical and abstract but yet we all use words
like perfect, nothing, etc. and therefore they must have meaning. The question
is whether we want to ignore meaning and talk about neuroscience, ignore
science and talk about God, or whether we can follow Freud and the more
difficult and subtle dialectical approach he takes to meaning.
Again, studying the cognitive capacities of
a child and what age they arise or which ones arise earlier or later is very important,
but psychoanalysis takes its starting place in various phantasies and mental
pathologies that point to lines along which the mind can split[19].
Furthermore, in recognizing the inter-subjective make-up of the mind (i.e.
Identification with archaic parental images that forms the ego ideal/superego
and ego) psychoanalysis also further offers a social ontology to explain its
negated objects. By social ontology I mean that the interaction between the
mother and the child represents not just a one on one relation between the two
but that the experience with the mother will also include expectations and
transferences the child will have with others. The range of who is included in
‘others’ and consequent differentiation is what the social ontology is based upon.
The first perfection object will have an ontology of representing power that is
above ‘all people’. Since perfection is a negation of the mother it eventually
comes to be symbolized by the father or by a part-object, the phallus. Annie
Reich writes:
In a number of cases I have found the
fantasy that only one grandiose phallus exists in the whole world. When the
patient is in possession of it or is identified with it, everyone else is
deprived of it and thus totally destroyed. In the negative phase, the tables
are turned: the grandiose phallus belongs to somebody else— perhaps to its
rightful, original owner— who, full of contempt, now destroys the patient.
Either way, the acquisition of this glorified organ is accomplished through
violent aggression… the still completely sexualized and glorified object is set
up as a primitive ego ideal, as something he longs to be… reverting to magical
identification, the patient who has regressed to this infantile level may feel
as though he were the magnificent phallus-father… But after a short time, as we
have seen, this wishful identification turns into the opposite; it is doomed to
break down, as the uncontrollably mounting aggression destroys the glorified
object. To relieve the ensuing intolerable feelings of annihilation, the
aggression must be counteracted by a renewed elevation of the object; hence the
grandiose phallus is restored to it and the entire process starts all over
again (Reich, Pathologic Forms of Self-Esteem Regulation, p.225-6).
The single phallus that exists for ‘all
people’ in the world is the fulcrum for defensive “megalomanic states [that]
will alternate with periods of intense self-devaluation [ego ideal tensions]”
(Reich, Early Identifications as
Archaic Elements in the Superego, p. 237). This
establishes the important subjective sense of omnipotence for the negated
object. It is above ‘all people’ and the person who possesses it, in defensive
narcissism, is above all people like he is a god. In cultural representations
the absolute perfection-object is comparable to the ring that controls all
rings (and therefore all people) in the Lord of the Rings or the ‘Force’ in
Star Wars that is more powerful than even the future technology in the film.
These things represent absolute power that translates into ultimate physical
strength just as Zeus, for example, could beat the titans and giants and is the
strongest of the gods and indestructible.
Hand in hand with omnipotence is
omniscience and an ideal for absolute power in a bodily or physical sense can
be contrasted to absolute power in a mental or intellectual sense[20]. I believe, the latter is disguised in
the mundane and reality oriented epistemophillic instinct of Freud’s
pre-structural work. He writes:
the instinct for knowledge can actually take the place of sadism in the mechanism of obsessional neurosis. Indeed it is at bottom a sublimated off-shoot of the instinct of mastery exalted into something intellectual, and
its repudiation in the form of doubt plays a large part in the picture of obsessional neurosis.
(The Disposition to
Obsessional Neurosis, p. 324)
After implementing the structural model
(id, superego, ego) Freud thought “instinctual defusion and the
marked emergence of the death instinct call for particular
consideration among the effects of some severe neuroses—for instance, the obsessional
neuroses” (Ego and the Id, p. 41-2). I left this form of defusion out of
discussion in the first section because it differs from the rest. Where the
others involved aggression in relation to the father(-substitute) Freud
considered this form in relation to love: A man who doubts his own love”
he writes “may, or rather must, doubt every lesser thing” (Freud, Notes
Upon a Case of Obsessional Neurosis, p. 241). Although I will treat it as a
defusion for the remainder of the paper, it is also possibly a defence against
a love ideal at the same stage of development. Regardless, the point is that
both aggression and affection play a part in an ideal and that the
epistemophillic instinct would be included in the ego ideal in the structural
system.
The picture-thought involved in the ideal
can be understood in relation to the ‘primary process’. Although ‘primary process’ thinking,
through which condensation and displacement take place in dreams, is associated
with irrationality, it is also a very profound part of reality-based functions
in the ego. For example, in displacement or metonymy (i.e. the crown stands for
the king, penis stands for boy) a thing can be understood as being made up of parts
(arms, legs, head). This ability reveals that the ego is capable of real acts
of perception, as well as appreciating something coming before or after in a
sequence, otherwise it couldn’t manipulate these objects in dreams[21].
Above, I noted how developmentally Freud
saw the ego ideal of worldly perfection was exchanged for externalizing the ego
ideal onto a leader or subject supposed to lead in relation to the beginning of
the Oedipus complex[22]. The
expression ‘subject supposed to’ I borrowed from Lacan who used it in the
formulation ‘subject supposed to know’ (Lacan, seminar XI, p. 137). In the
eleventh of his seminars he used this subject to illustrate Descartes’ need to
have his knowledge guaranteed. Without knowledge having a guarantor Descartes
believes it’s possible that one is being deceived by some malevolent force or
Demon. Although his appeal to God rests on the claim that his finite mind can
know the infinite, or more precisely that the mind is infinite like God’s,
Lacan still recognizes that there is an important function here even though God
doesn’t exist[23]. The
exchange for the absolute perfection ego ideal for the subject supposed to know
is of vital importance. This is
brought into relief by Adler’s recognition that this primitive ego ideal:
introduces into our life a hostile and fighting tendency,
robs us of the simplicity of our feeling and is always the cause of an
estrangement from reality since it puts near to our hearts the idea of
attempting to over-power reality.
Whoever takes this goal of godlikeness
seriously or literally, will soon be compelled to flee from real life and
compromise, by seeking a life within
life; if fortunate in art, but more generally in pietism, neurosis, or
crime (Adler, Individual Psychology. p. 8).
While Adler’s statement would fit a
perverse structure which, as Chasseguet-Smirgel notes, is trying to pass off
the magical anal ego ideal for a genital or paternal phallus, clinical
experience also shows regressed individuals who are also trying to be god-like
(Chasseguet-Smirgel, Perversion, Idealization, and Sublimation). For example, I
know one obsessional, in his 30s and on disability, who purchased 3 books on
how to perform a job interview for his interview for a entry level position at
Radio Shack. He felt unready for the interview even after doing a lot of
reading and in general could never finish a project because he was paralyzed by
a need for perfection[24].
The regressed obsessional who, like Atlas, must carry the whole world above his
shoulders and know everything before he can act, certainly illustrates one type
of what Adler called estrangement from reality due to striving for
god-likeness.
Some Lacanians have pointed out that Freud
needed Fliess as his subject supposed to know, no matter how undeserving of
that transference he was, before he could bring psychoanalysis into the world.
The transference to Fliess, as someone felt to be a “leader in the world of science,” shows how the
‘subject supposed to know’ is an ego transference in which the functioning of
the ideal is the important issue as opposed to affect (Freud,
The Origins of Psychoanalysis:
Letters to Wilhelm Fliess, p. 14).
To further corroborate
this ontology of ‘all people’ Freud gives us a clinical picture of one type of
paranoia that references the projection of one’s aggression onto any other
person. Freud writes:
sufferers from persecutory paranoia…
cannot regard anything in other people as indifferent, and they, too,
take up minute indications with which these other, unknown, people present
them, and use them in their delusions of reference. The meaning of
their delusion of reference is that they expect from all strangers
something like love. But these people show them nothing of the kind; they
laugh to themselves, flourish their sticks, even spit on the ground as they go
by—and one really does not do such things while a person in whom one takes a
friendly interest is near. One does them only when one feels quite indifferent
to the passer-by, when one can treat him like air; and, considering, too, the
fundamental kinship of the concepts of ‘stranger’ and ‘enemy’, the paranoic is
not so far wrong in regarding this indifference as hate, in
contrast to his claim for love…. they project outwards on to others what they do not
wish to recognize in themselves. Certainly they do this; but they do not
project it into the blue, so to speak, where there is nothing of the sort
already. They let themselves be guided by their knowledge of the unconscious, and displace to the unconscious minds of others the attention which
they have withdrawn from their own… we may infer that the enmity which the
persecuted paranoic sees in others is the reflection of his own hostile
impulses against them. (Freud, Some Neurotic Mechanisms in Jealousy, Paranoia
and Homosexuality, p.226)
As we’ll soon see,
this form of paranoia that references ‘all people’ can be differentiated from
paranoia that references the later cognitive development of jealousy. Jealousy
in relation to the id object choice of the mother and its social or public
form, in the feeling that one more rightly deserves a position or object of
higher status than another person, requires an image ego[25].
The image ego, and the word presentations that it traffics in, gives us an
explicit tie to the classic psycho-sexual system of referencing bodily zones in
the so called phallic stage. The stage of ‘all people’, omnipotence, and simple
paranoia is often referenced to the anal stage. Although these bodily objects
are certainly referenced, what is important is finally establishing
criteria for characterology and ego ideals that reference concrete behaviour.
To work from the bodily objects allows for the impressionistic attribution of
certain traits to interactions with the breast or feces or urine that can never
be validated. With a social ontology a person’s persecutory feelings, for
example, can be referenced to whether they include feeling attacked by ‘all
people’ or whether it’s in reference to the possession of a good reputation or
a sexual object. Additionally, there are many precocious children who possess
intellectual abilities before the usual landmarks of weaning, walking, or
toilet training, etc. and therefore reference to the object relationship
becomes more vital than the bodily zone[26].
In the phallic stage of development the
child’s more complex ego is ‘self-conscious’ of its relation to others in a
more differentiated way. It is no longer ‘all people’ but those who are viewed
as powerful or potent (i.e. those who said to have a good reputation in this
way) and those who are weak[27]. In a similar negation we are given the
worldly perfection object (in contrast to the absolute one) that is above all
reputation. The cultural hero, ancestor, king, or person who is a ‘legend’ or
‘idol’ and lives on in the minds of others is a manifestation of perfection at
this stage. Ontologically, this negated object rests on the cognitive ability
to understand one’s place in the realm of reputation and desire to belong with
the powerful class. Although the symbol of the absolute perfection phallus
(above ‘all people’) is less well known, the worldly perfection phallus is the
most appreciated of psychoanalytic symbols. Lacan states that the phallus is
the “signifier of power, or potency” (Desire and the interpretation
of desire in Hamlet, p. 51) and stresses that it is different from the
organ of the penis. This also seemed to be understood among early
analysts:
the symbol of
the phallus has simultaneously been accepted unconsciously, by both
men and women, as an outstanding mark of fertility, of potency, and
of superiority. Strictly speaking, the word “castration” refers to the
actual loss of those parts of the male genital organs which
contribute to sexual potency, and, as originally used, the term “castration
complex” referred to the unconscious fear in the male lest he should
lose his potency. The study of the various ramifications of this complex,
however, led to the finding that in many cases there has been no actual fear
of loss of potency, but a fear lest potency and superiority should
never be acquired. The fear lest potency should never be acquired implies at
least the wish to acquire potency and superiority, so that now the term
“castration complex” has come to mean, not merely the fear of losing
the phallus, but the desire to possess the phallus; and in this
latter form the castration complex is present almost universally
among civilized women… [and] amongst civilized men. (Bousfield, The Castration
Complex in Women, p. 121-2)[28].
The negated quality of the worldly perfection
object means that even if one possibly attains the status of being first in
one’s field or having the reputation of being the most potent in some way, he
or she will feel the triumph of possessing the phallus but will again grow
restless. This Faustian restlessness means that the achievements of dead
geniuses can weigh like a nightmare on the mind of the living. No matter how
great a writer one becomes, for example, could he ever be as great as
Shakespeare? The importance of exchanging this ego ideal for “the subject
supposed to lead” and the danger of regression from this exchange is brought
forward in Freud’s acknowledgement of Adler’s masculine protest. The ability to
love one’s work and appreciate the real contributions of others can be lost. The
masculine protest is a regression from the oedipal level back to the
worldly-perfection ego ideal.
Experiencing the tensions between the ego and ego ideal as a feeling of
inferiority is often defended against by defensive narcissism and a grandiosity
that doesn’t allow the patient to accept the interpretations of the analyst
(Freud, Analysis Terminable and Interminable, p. 250-2)[29].
Similarly, in paranoia, as I’ve already
discussed, persecutory fears of others seeking to ruin one’s reputation or of
losing possession of one’s sexual object show that one’s own sadism to ruin the
reputation of another or one’s own desires of infidelity are projected onto
those felt to belong to the ‘good reputation’ class (Freud, Some Neurotic Mechanisms in Jealousy, Paranoia
and Homosexuality, p.225-6). Both Wilhelm Reich and
Lawerence Josephs point to phallic paranoiac as “anticipat[ing] any impending
attack with an attack of his own” in regards to issues concerning their image
or vanity, in contrast to the more malevolent and powerful anal paranoia
(Reich, Character Analysis, p.218;
Josephs, Character and Self-Experience,
p. 217-8).
At the level of group perfection the symbol
of the phallus becomes manifested before us not in dreams or fantasies but in
our daily life. Flagpoles, obelisks, and other monuments to the perfection of
one’s country, nation, or group exist all around the world. In the family, the
first group one will belong to, it’s not uncommon to hear a boy argue with
another that his dad can beat up the other’s dad. There is a sense of pride
that can be obtained from mere belonging that represents a higher development
in cognition than that of a body or image ego.
However, classical Freudian analysis sees
the character formed at the end of the Oedipus complex and an investigation
into this development would take me too far away from my objectives. Instead,
I’d like to follow Lacan and point to Freud’s case of the Ratman in which the
payment of the debt that the Ratman’s father owed was repeated. This illustrates
his concern for the loss of status of the first group, the family, when its
leader endures a humiliation[30].
This trauma would point to the ongoing possibility of trauma after the Oedipus
complex that has psychogenic roots and isn’t mere ptsd from abuse or accidents.
The last thing to be addressed in this
section is the status of primary narcissism. As mentioned earlier, Freud sees
the pleasure involved with the ego ideal as the recovery of the infantile
feelings of omnipotence and since many later analyst agree that that
omnipotence is both defensive and arises later in development than Freud
thought, a new theory of motivation is required. I will address this after
introducing mental bisexuality in the next section. However, though Freud, Ferenczi,
and other analysts write about subjective feelings of omnipotence that isn’t
possible considering the lack of cognitive development (i.e. the lack of the
‘all people’ social ontology) there is a descriptive sense of omnipotence that
is correct here.
Above I mentioned the importance of the
mnemic trace in that the fact that we see people, places, and things in our
dreams requires that perception isn’t simply caused by outer sources. However,
before the matching of mnemic traces to things in the world becomes possible
there was first a state in the infant in which the mnemic traces of the infant
existed alongside perceptions of reality with no distinctions between the two.
In other words, Freud seeks a motivation for the mnemic traces to form and attaches
it to the wishes or desires of the infant and calls it the pure ‘pleasure ego’.
From this state, judgment comes into existence because a hallucinated breast
might initially satisfy the infant but soon the reality of hunger will set in.
Freud writes:
One comes to learn a procedure by which,
through a deliberate direction of one's sensory activities and through suitable
muscular action, one can differentiate between what is internal—what
belongs to the ego—and what is external—what emanates from the outer world. In
this way one makes the first step towards the introduction of the reality
principle which is to dominate future development. (Freud,
Civilization and Its Discontents, p.67)
The pure pleasure ego, that creates
hallucinations without regard for reality, can therefore, in a descriptive
sense, be called omnipotence. Thanks to the work of Victor Tausk we gain a
sense for how this process occurs in each ontogenetic advance of the ego[31].
In an article on the influencing machine in schizophrenia Tausk draws our
attention to how not only mnemic traces first appear in the outside world as
hallucinations, but the centerpiece of the article is how the mimetic sense of
the body first appears outside as well and whatever happens to the ‘machine’
that represents the body happens to the schizophrenic[32].
Although Freud and Tausk write of the reality principle as if it’s acquired by
the infant simply judging reality Freud in other places also directly pairs the
acquired cognitive capacity with the abandoned object-cathexis of the primary
caregiver[33].
This is important because, as we saw with the absolute perfection object, the
superego punishment (defusion of aggression) in obsessionalism meant that ego
functioning was also impaired. Furthermore, there are psychoanalysts, such as
David Shapiro, who investigate the ‘economics’ of the cognitive functions in
the rigidities of perception within pathologies (i.e. paranoid style,
obsessive-compulsive style, hysterical style etc.). Since people are always a
mixture of masculine and feminine trends and possess many different fixations
and developmental adaptations it is important to recognize every manifestation
of the economics of the libido. Otherwise, one ends up in the dubious position
of describing an oral character’s desire to ‘mother’ the hungry as explaining
someone’s altruistic impulses in social justice. To do so makes it as if the
child at the breast already possessed the phallic level of social ontology to
understand that some people unfairly lack the same starting point others have
in competing for reputation.
Having noted that absolute perfection is
tied to the anal stage and worldly perfection to the phallic stage, in which a
reference to social ontology gives a meaning to the ego ideal, there is still the
question of the oral stage superego. Although it can’t have a perfection
object, and indeed, other analysts have noted the terrifying representation of
otherness (Grotstein, Tustin, McDougall), it can still have a role in fueling
the ego ideal system. In the next section I’ll investigate the specifics of
this role, but for now it’s possible to make a simple deduction. Since the skin
ego provides a self-representation that extends over time the oral ego ideal,
that is the result of creating a negative ‘nothingness’ object (i.e. negated
mnemic trace of the mother), can simply contrast present continuity with a
future. In other words, there is a supply of libido (displaceable energy) or
hope for a future of regaining the lost connection to the mother before the
inside and outside of the ego boundaries were set up. Again, if we drop the
reference to primary narcissism as omnipotent in the subjective sense, in the
descriptive sense the pure pleasure ego makes a compromise formation in
identification with the nothingness object to become a nothingness itself, that
wishes towards the future[34].
Before I end this section it’s interesting
to point out that adjusting primary narcissism, as we have, and locating the
pleasure of fulfillment of the ego ideal in the oral ideal of anticipating
future fulfillment would find very strong parallels in the work of Melanie
Klein[35].
Klein stresses throughout her writings that it is the early relation to the mother
and breast that forms the core of the superego[36],
represents the general attitude of hope or love of fate in the ideal[37],
and leads the way for the ego ideals formed at later stages[38].
What’s important about Klein’s work is that the phantasies of destruction in
relation to the mother seem to precisely indicate the aggression that is at
work in the formation of the ego ideal and its defusion in superego punishment[39].
Klein also has a few important discoveries
that prepare the way for the next section. Firstly, she has found that the
phallus isn’t just a symbol of power but also of restoration and fertility[40].
Secondly, she holds that altruistic acts of helping or saving others “is far
more than a mere reaction-formation” as many classical analysts held it to be
(Klein, A Contribution to the Psychogenesis of Manic-Depressive States, p.
149). The only caution I feel about appealing to her findings it that she
continued to place her oedipal conflicts earlier and earlier. This is in
contradiction to evidence gained by the child’s reference to part-objects. For
example, Klein notes that feces is often attributed with omnipotence (“the omnipotence of
excrements”) and this means we should consider omnipotence to occur, on
average, when toilet training occurs and this object is salient for the child (The Psychoanalysis of Children, p. 280,
363)[41].
Even if she is in error in dating the genesis of the early triangulations, her
work is invaluable and in the next section I hope to place it in a framework of
Freud’s mental bisexuality.
[1] Lacan gives the suggestive formula that “suicide is the only
successful act” because upon achieving it the individual will not get used to
it and desire a new object.
[2] Grotstein, J.S.
(1990). The “Black Hole” as the Basic Psychotic Experience.
[3] “’Do we want a narcissistic
transference to develop?’ We do because in a negative, regressed state, the
patient may experience the analyst as being like him or part of him. Or the
analyst may not exist for him. The syntonic feeling of oneness is a curative
one, while the feeling of aloneness, the withdrawn state, is merely protective.
Because traces of narcissism remain in everyone, we seek, when beginning
treatment, to create an environment that will facilitate a narcissistic
transference so that, first we can work through the patient’s narcissistic
aggression.” (Spotnitz, 1976b, p. 58).
Twinship or alter ego transference is a
form of narcissistic transference defined by Heinz Kohut as expressing the
analysand's need to rely on the analyst as a narcissistic function possessing
characteristics like herself. Kohut first defined the concept in The
Analysis of the Self (1971) as one of the possible forms of mirror
transference. In How Does Analysis Cure? (1984) he made alter ego
transference a type of transference unto itself, corresponding to the existence
of an autonomous narcissistic need, the alter ego (Psychoanalytic Dictionary
Entry, enotes.com)
[4] Hypothetically, this “oral” defence can be taken up in certain
types of homosexuality in which someone is looking for a sexual partner who is
identical to himself.
[5] I’m only covering power and narcissism here but I feel like I
should mention that next to the devil the other child of God is Jesus who
represents the passive trends I’ll discuss in the fourth section. Altruism in
caring for the meek/weak or the underdogs is seen in the figure of Jesus. Just
as the devil’s power can seduce one away from friendship, love, and family, so
too can the way of Christ bring about a solitary existence as monasteries and
the lives of saints often show.
Also, I’m aware that a psychotic
person can have a delusion about being a millionaire, but be much more
regressed in terms of ability to work or love. What I have in mind in talking
about grandiosity here is not a psychotic with a delusion but a narcissistic or
perverse personality with an illusion about themselves. The illusion is that he
is special: stronger or more intelligent than many but not all people.
[6]
In this way the Oedipus
complex… leads to an ever-increasing detachment from parents, and their
personal significance for the super-ego recedes
into the background. To the imagos they
leave behind there are then linked the influences of teachers and authorities, self-chosen models and publicly recognized
heroes, whose figures need no longer be introjected by an ego which has
become more resistant. The last figure in the series that began with the
parents is the dark power of Destiny which only the fewest of us are able to look upon as impersonal (Economic Problem of Masochism, p.167-8).
This role model is a model that
will actually impact the behaviour of the child and is oriented to how the
child will consider his relations to groups or people at large. This can be
contrasted to the child having an ‘idol’ who epitomizes potency in the worldly
perfection sense and arises earlier. In the sense that the individual can view
themselves as equal to other members in a group and under a leader this is a
progressive development. However, ‘Group Psychology’ is also about the
regressive aspect of mobs in which the later developed conscience is
circumvented.
[7]
Thus, to be clear, this role model relation to the father is
before he is actually internalized after the castration threat. As mentioned in
the previous section, Freud holds that a child may not internalize the mother
or father in the Oedipus complex and thus never develop a full conscience.
Edith Jacobson echoes this: “Clinically we know
that persons whose superego has
not developed under the influence of loving, kindly, guiding parents have castration and other infantile fears, but may be unable to experience real guilt feelings” (Jacobson, Self and Object World [book,] p
128).
[8] Freud clearly equates the ego drives not with just hunger but
power: “In acknowledging this obvious division, we distinguish
in Psycho-Analysis also between instincts of
self-preservation or Ego-tendencies on the one hand, and sexual impulses
on the other. We call the mental aspect of the sexual instinct Libido (sexual
hunger), this being analogous to hunger, desire for power, etc., in the sphere of the Ego-tendencies”
(Freud, One of the Difficulties of Psychoanalysis, p. 17)
Thus, when the superego of the
structural model replaces the ego vs. object instincts of the middle period the
ego ideal would take over this striving for power in identification with the
perfection of the parental images.
[9] Closer observation teaches us that he
also withdraws libidinal interest from his love-objects: so long as he suffers,
he ceases to love. The commonplace nature of this fact is no reason why we
should be deterred from translating it into terms of the libido theory. We
should then say: the sick man withdraws his libidinal cathexes back upon his
own ego, and sends them out again when he recovers. ‘Concentrated is his soul’,
says Wilhelm Busch of the poet suffering from toothache, ‘in his molar's narrow
hole.’ Here libido and ego-interest share the same fate and
are once more indistinguishable from each other. The
familiar egoism of the sick person covers both. We find it so natural because
we are certain that in the same situation we should behave in just the same way
(On Narcissism, p. 82-3, emphasis mine).
[10] Ontogenetic development is just a fancy way of saying the ego is
derived from the id in both animals and humans and that there are observable
levels of ego functioning as baby develops. For psychoanalysts, ontogeny
recapitulating phylogeny, is the study of how the human ego passes through
stages shared with the ego of animals.
[11] For Freud’s separation of thing presentations and word
presentations and their relation to the unconscious processes, as well as the
explanation of hallucinations and dreams it is a requirement that “[t]he first
and immediate aim, therefore, of reality-testing is, not to find an
object in real perception which corresponds to the one presented, but
to refind such an object, to convince oneself that it is still there
(Freud, Negation, p. 237). In this he has strong ties to Kant and German
idealism. Addtionally, the mnemic-trace actually corresponds to the part-object
stage before the oral stage in which there is a whole object + breasts. Freud
didn’t name this difference but developmentalists such Piaget show a difference
in cognition by way of object permanence that would be vital in the
distinction.
[12] We learn that what
becomes conscious in it is as a rule only the concrete subject-matter of
the thought, and that the relations between the various elements of this
subject-matter, which is what specially characterizes thoughts, cannot be given
visual expression. Thinking in
pictures is, therefore, only a very incomplete form of becoming conscious. In some way, too, it stands nearer to unconscious processes than does thinking in words, and it is unquestionably older than the latter
both ontogenetically and phylogenetically (The Ego and the Id, p.21).
[13] “By Skin Ego, I mean
a mental image of which the Ego of
the child makes use during the early phases of
its development to represent itself as an Ego containing psychical
contents, on the basis of its experience of the surface of the body. This
corresponds to the moment at which the psychical Ego differentiates
itself from the bodily Ego at the operative level while remaining confused with
it at the figurative level…. the Ego acquires its
sense of temporal continuity only in so far as the Skin Ego constitutes itself as an envelope that is sufficiently flexible
in its interactions with its environment and sufficiently
‘containing’ of what can then become its psychical contents” (Anzieu, The
Skin Ego, p. 40, 87).
[14] It was found that recognition of
the mirror image does not occur until two years and two
or three months. A few weeks
before this occurs the observers 'noticed a kind of disorganization, as if a
sudden state of awareness of self had caused an affective upset.'. Up to the
end of the third year the child displays
a certain fearfulness and at the same time a certain pleasure in looking at himself in the mirror.
At about two years and ten months the image has
become familiar and no longer causes uneasiness. It is at the same time, that
is, two years and ten months to three years of age, that the personal pronoun
'I' begins to be used without hesitation and grammatically.
(Mahler, Autism and Symbiosis, Two Extreme Disturbances of Identity, p. 79-80).
Animals too must develop their egos from
the id and ‘the mirror test’ shows what species of animals are capable of
recognizing their own image in a mirror and thus possess a body ego. Even
though they don’t speak, as a child would do at this stage, some of them can be
taught to use signs in a similar way (i.e. Koko).
[15] The ‘image’ here is the image of oneself that others have in their thoughts of you. Ideology often
seeks to justify capitalism by representing people as rational choosers who are
free to work or not, and free to break the law or not and are therefore
responsible for being rich or poor and innocent or guilty. The individual
capitalist, it is argued, must be given the chance to make as much money as he
can in the free-market because otherwise he might choose not to work as much
and therefore won’t “create” as many jobs for others. This naïve view of human
nature pretends as if such an individual cared nothing for his image and
ignores different political economies in which individuals still compete for
the smallest differences of status or wealth. Of course there are psychotics
who have regressed from their image ego and given up their ‘ego interest’ here,
as well as defensive (worldly power) grandiosity and forms of social perversion
in which the individual avoids work. However, these forms of mental pathology
aren’t cured by offering more money for work and seldom seduce the psychopath
to an honest day’s work.
[16] In philosophy this is called a transcendental argument and begins
with the work of Kant who Freud often referred to in his work.
[17] One could say the whole history of philosophy from Plato onwards is
trying to deal with this error in epistemology until Wittgenstein (and arguably
Hegel before him) establishes that we “blindly obey” a practice when we do such
things as count. In other words, just because I can count (1,2,3,4…) doesn’t
mean that I can grasp infinity when I say this practice could go on
indefinitely. This puts mathematics, the foundation of rationalist philosophy,
on a psychological foundation based upon the inter-subjective construction of
the mind. An individual can count using the same ability that psychoanalysis
has found in identification that forms the superego.
[18] The arrival of the mnemic trace at the part-object stage doesn’t
have to mean that no object relations occurred earlier than this. Rather what
is important at the oral stage is that the skin ego and therefore a
self-representation is in effect which can contain the ego ideal. As analyses
of autistic and psychotic patients have shown there are fixations to 2-d
perception and pre-geometrical shapes (autistic shapes) that show the existence
of earlier object relations. The ‘somethingness’ referred to here must
therefore be qualified as a 3-dimensional somethingness that is commensurate
with the cognitive capabilities of the mnemic trace that shows some object
permanence.
[19] If we throw a crystal to the floor, it breaks; but not into
haphazard pieces. It comes apart along the line of its cleavage into fragments
whose boundaries, though they were invisible, were predetermined by the
crystal’s structure. Mental patients are split and broken structures of the
same kind ... They have turned away from external reality, but for that very
reason they know more about internal, psychical reality and can reveal a number
of things to us that would otherwise be inaccessible to us (Freud, New
Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis, p.93).
[20] This difference is established by whether one has a schizoid
character from earlier development (see footnote 80).
[21] Abelin, in work on early triangulation, coordinates the work of
Mahler and Paiget to make a similar point: “there is a striking isomorphism
between these two basic mechanisms of identity formation on one hand, and on
the other the development of the two logical operations according to Piaget:
seriation (or rank-ordering) and classification (or ordering by attributes).
(Abelin, Some Further Observations and Comments on the Earliest Role of the Father,
p. 294).
[22] Again I must stress that ‘the subject supposed to’ is a
partial-internalization relationship to the father and is coupled with signal
anxiety that after full internalization becomes ‘depersonalized’ as mentioned
in the first section.
[23] Lacan’s position is not “God is dead” but “God is unconscious”
(Lacan, Seminar XI, p. 27). Lacan isn’t alone, other analysts such as
Grotstein, have linked understanding typified by primary process relations to
things as being linked to a representation of God:
I have now come to believe that the
human being undergoes a series or a sequence of caesuras in which he
experiences a sense of separation from the object from whom he
emerges, i.e. the Background Object of Primary Identification. This Object
ultimately becomes God… The Background Object helps to coordinate the…
focus on all objects of scrutiny so that the sense organs can individually and
collectively categorize and conceptualize strange and separate objects so as to
make them familiar. We may also see an aspect of the Background Object as
ourselves when we stand behind our expressed creations and thoughts.
The Background Object is the creator and guarantor of our sense
of containment and constitutes the counterpart to the Object of
Destiny (Grotstein, Who is the Dreamer who Dreams the Dream and who is the
Dreamer who Understands It, p. 122).
[24] Although I’m focusing on omniscience and its tie to obsessionality
because more writers have supporting data for this omnipotence would have a
similar relation. As much as a perfectionism can paralyze an individual because
he feels he needs to know everything before acting a person striving for
omnipotence can similarly paint himself into a corner as he leaves every
relationship he can’t control and can only rely on himself to do things the
‘right way’. See Josephs Character and
Self-Experience for discussion on the ideal of omnipotent self-control in
obsessive-compulsive characters. Additionally, consider movies or novels with
post-apocalyptic fantasies of being the sole human survivor or of a man
retreating into nature to test his metal. The preoccupation with survival in
the world created by God becomes an expression of one’s equality to God.
[25] Although there is desire to control the sexual object and jealousy
present in the anal stage and absolute perfection ego ideal I understand Freud
in ‘Some Neurotic Mechanisms’ to be talking about a more complex jealousy. This
will be differentiated further in section III.
[26] Freud was open to the idea of the ego or object relation being
parallel to sexual organization and even taking the lead before the structural
theory was introduced:
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 (Freud, p.351-2
–Introductory Lecture XXII).
[27] ”the second or deutero-phallic phase [in which] there is a dawning
suspicion that the world is dividied into two classes… penis possessing and
castrated” (Jones, The Phallic Phase, p. 2-3).
[28] Unfortunately, the castration complex in this sense seems to have
been lost to many analysts (no doubt because of confusion with castration as
signal anxiety in the Oedipus complex). Fortunately, its revival in Lacanian
thought has kept alive the insights of Alfred Adler in psychoanalysis where
their dynamic and genetic relations can be explored.
[29] More will be said about this defensive narcissism in the next
section and its dynamic relation to suppressing the passive-feminine pole of
the personality.
[30]Lacan calls this “a kind of castration of the father” and explores
the Ratman’s repetition in detail (The Neurotic’s Individual Myth, p. 415).
[31] This isn’t to say that Freud didn’t have this in mind, but only
that Tausk gives clinical examples:
While the ego goes through
its transformation from a pleasure-ego into
a reality-ego, the sexual instincts undergo the changes that
lead them from their original auto-erotism through various intermediate phases
to object-love in the service of procreation. If we are right
in thinking that each step in these two courses of development may
become the site of a disposition to later neurotic illness, it is
plausible to suppose that the form taken by the
subsequent illness (the choice of neurosis) will depend on
the particular phase of the development of the ego and of
the libido in which the
dispositional inhibition of development has occurred. Thus
unexpected significance attaches to the chronological features of the two
developments (which have not yet been studied), and to possible variations in
their synchronization (Formulations on the Two, p. 224-5)
[32] Let us suppose that the projection of one's
own body is a pathological repetition of that
psychical stage when the individual was endeavoring to discover his body by
means of projection (Tausk, The Influencing Machine, p.544)
[33] Freud gives an example of this mental functioning in his chance
viewing of a child playing a game of throwing a wooden reel exclaiming ‘gone’,
collecting it, and saying ‘here’ with pleasure (fort-da). He writes
The interpretation of the game then became
obvious. It was related to the child's great cultural achievement—the
instinctual renunciation (that is, the renunciation of instinctual
satisfaction) which he had made in allowing his mother to go away without
protesting. He compensated himself for this, as it were, by himself staging the
disappearance and return of the objects within his reach (Freud, Beyond the
Pleasure Principle, p.15).
The id object cathexis to the mother has
been renounced and the child has both set up the mother inside him as an ideal
(a cultural achievement) and realizes this ideal through the cognitive ability
to form opposites or binaries in language. Winnicott, and Kleinians, locate the
acquisition of cognitive abilities in projective identification so that the
mother allows the child to control her. Winnicott, for example, writes “The mother places
the actual breast just there where the infant is ready to create, and
at the right moment” (Winnicott, Transitional Objects and Transitional
Phenomena, p. 95). Again, I have not strongly differentiated the mnemic trace
from the part-object stage Winnicott is writing about and the oral stage in
which otherness is formed but I recognize the difference.
[34] “What he [the child] projects
before him as his ideal” Freud writes “is the substitute for the
lost narcissism of his childhood in which he
was his own ideal” (Freud, On Narcissism, p. 94, emphasis mine).
[35] Klein isn’t alone in noting the importance of oral libido in all
higher functioning of the mind. Otto Rank discusses the importance of the oral
libido and ‘displacement downwards from above’ in the Genesis of Genitality.
Both writers show the interesting link or orality to common phrases i.e. the altruistic person is being sweet, the
sweet taste of success, etc. and when the ideals fail and the superego starts
up we have ‘the bite of conscience’. Also symbols like the vagina dentata
clearly relate later phallic sexuality to orality. As mentioned above, there is
a part-object stage relation to the breast and later a whole object + breasts
at the oral stage. Because of the oral symbolism in both it is difficult to use
symbols alone to say when the ego ideal is set up. However, the skin-ego development
at the later oral stage with the object representation of otherness/nothingness
seems like the proper stage.
[36] … both an ideal breast and a dangerous breast are introjected and
form the core the core of the super-ego (Klein, The emotional life of the
infant, p 70).
[37] The breast in its good aspect is the prototype of maternal
goodness, inexhaustible patience and generosity, as well as creativeness… it
remains the foundation for hope, trust, and belief in goodness (Klein, Envy and
Gratitude, p. 180).
[38] However, while the oral libido still has the lead,
libidinal and aggressive impulses and phantasies from other sources
come to the fore and bring about a confluence of oral, urethral
and anal libidinal and aggressive desires (Klein, The Emotional life
of the Infant, p. 102).
[39] Klein seemed to only focus on superego punishment and used ego
ideal as if there was but a single instance of it instead of seeing the ego
ideal and superego dynamically related. Her epistemophillic instinct arising at
the anal stage would be equivalent to what I pointed to as the ego ideal of
absolute perfection above:
The early connection between the
epistemophillic impulse and sadism is very important for the whole of mental
development. This instinct, roused by the striving of the Oedipus tendencies,
as first mainly concerns itself with the mother’s womb, which is assumed to be
the scene of all sexual processes and developments. The child is still
dominated by the anal-sadistic libido-position which impels him to wish to appropriate
the contents of the womb. He thus begins to be curious about what it contains,
what it is like, etc. So the epistemophilic instinct and the desire to take
possession come quite early to be most intimately connected with one another
and at the same time with the sense of guilt aroused by the incipient Oedipus
conflict (Klein, Early Stages of The Oedipus Complex, p.169-70)
“Thus what had brought symbol-formation to a standstill was the dread of what would be done to him (particularly by the father’s penis) after he had penetrated into the mother’s body. Moreover, his defences against his destructive impulses proves to be a fundamental impediment to his development. He was absolutely incapable of any act of aggression, and the basis of this incapacity was clearly indicated at a very early period in his refusal to bite up food… the defense against the sadistic impulses directed against the mother’s body and its contents— impulses connected with phantasies of coitus— had resulted in the cessation of fantasies and the stand-still of symbol formation. Dick’s further development had come to grief because he could not bring into phantasy the sadistic relation to the mother’s body (Klein, The Importance of Symbol Formation, p. 29-30)
…the deeper insight was the result of an advance in the development of his ego which followed from this particular piece of analysis of his threatening super-ego. For, as we know from our experience with children and with very early cases, analysis of the early stages of super-ego formation promotes the development of the ego by lessening the sadism of the superego and the id (Klein, A Contribution to the Theory of Intellectual Inhibition, p. 213).
“Thus what had brought symbol-formation to a standstill was the dread of what would be done to him (particularly by the father’s penis) after he had penetrated into the mother’s body. Moreover, his defences against his destructive impulses proves to be a fundamental impediment to his development. He was absolutely incapable of any act of aggression, and the basis of this incapacity was clearly indicated at a very early period in his refusal to bite up food… the defense against the sadistic impulses directed against the mother’s body and its contents— impulses connected with phantasies of coitus— had resulted in the cessation of fantasies and the stand-still of symbol formation. Dick’s further development had come to grief because he could not bring into phantasy the sadistic relation to the mother’s body (Klein, The Importance of Symbol Formation, p. 29-30)
…the deeper insight was the result of an advance in the development of his ego which followed from this particular piece of analysis of his threatening super-ego. For, as we know from our experience with children and with very early cases, analysis of the early stages of super-ego formation promotes the development of the ego by lessening the sadism of the superego and the id (Klein, A Contribution to the Theory of Intellectual Inhibition, p. 213).
[40] Genital sublimations in the feminine position are linked with
fertility- the power to give life- and thus also with the re-creation of lost
or injured objects. In the male position, the element of life-giving is
reinforced by the phantasies of fertilization and thus restoring or reviving
the injured or destroyed mother. The genital, therefore, represents not only
the organ of procreation but also the means of repairing and creating anew
(Klein, Envy and Gratitude, p. 82)
[41] This phase is characterized by a
sense of omnipotence on the part of the child in regard to
the functions of its bladder and bowels and a consequent belief in
the omnipotence of its thoughts. As the result of this it feels guilty on
account of the manifold assaults on its parents which it carries out in
its imagination. But this excess of guilt which results from a
belief in the omnipotence of their excrements and thoughts is, I think,
one of the very factors which cause neurotics and primitive peoples
to retain or regress to their original feeling of omnipotence (Klein,
Psychoanalysis of Children, p. 239).
Other analysts, such as Jacobson,
also link omnipotence to the anal stage. She observes that the modifications in
the concept of value “announce themselves during
the preoedipal, anal-sadistic period in the predominance of magical
ideas and feelings… [and] are centered around the high value
of omnipotence' (Jacobson, Self and Object World [book], p. 101).
