Thou shalt to you shalt: returning internal conflict to its external origin.

Thou Shalt to You Shalt: Returning Internal Conflict to Its External Origins

In The Economics of Libido: Psychic Bisexuality, the Superego, and the Centrality of the Oedipus Complex (Pederson, 2015) I re-examine Freud’s writings to approach psychoanalytic characterology and narcissism from a new angle. At the two ends of narcissism, the auto-erotic stage and the phallic Oedipus complex, Freud was quite clear what was at stake. The latter concerns what we call the person’s image or his or her reputation in the community. Freud points out that the relations to the parents become depersonalized into social anxiety, in which an individual only fears having his reputation ruined and doesn’t have a full conscience (Freud, 1930, p. 125; 1926, p. 139). Passionate love, or anaclitic object-choice, is in full bloom in the Oedipus complex (1917, p. 417). Freud also discusses how a person may be “loved by fate,” or feel that he might be regarded as a success by others, and that so long as he has this feeling, he ignores his misdeeds and doesn’t show any bad conscience (Freud, 1930, pp. 126–127; 1933, p. 64). The oedipal ego ideal represents the youthful idealism that a person will find success, and be regarded well in his community, or find “true” love.     

Success, is a very abstract concept and means very different things to different people. I’ll get into how Freud’s model might express different levels of ambition or success, but at the oedipal level, his examples point to relations in work groups. Freud (1921) discusses how a work group can have a “father-substitute” in a teacher or boss and that this shared “ego ideal” can allow friendship and soften competition (p. 116, 127). In “The Economic Problem of Masochism” Freud (1924) refers to this process of taking a parental substitute into the ego ideal with the term imago. He writes that in “the Oedipus complex… [the parent’s] personal significance for the superego recedes into the background’ and ‘the imagos they leave behind… link [to] the influences of teachers and authorities…” (Freud, pp. 167–168). Thus, a desire for success or honors in one’s field of work or study is the oedipal level drive goes along with desire for passionate love, and to have a reputation as a good moral person. Lastly, sexual difference, such that a man might be ridiculed to be like a woman for backing down from a fight, being bashful around sexual topics, etc. might “lose face” in front of other men, is another possible injury to his image-ego.

What a moral person does in the community, what a man and woman might be expected to be like, and the possible professions a person might be able to have, are obviously contingent on the sophistication of the political-economy one lives in and the values of the culture. However, so long as the difference between elder, with socially acknowledged Prestige in some skill or knowledge, and neophyte, who is going to be directed, taught, or mentored, exists in given political-economy, then it registers oedipal level interactions. Although this isn’t Freud’s use of the term, the non-ambivalent relationships to father-substitutes who represent maturation in one’s work life is most logically termed the Oedipus complex. Something can happen with a parental-substitute, or one can have a disappointment in love, and this will lead to the ambivalent relation. In the ambivalent relation, in which one tries to be one’s own father, and rivals the parental-substitute in triangulated moments punctuated with anxiety, the term “castration complex” or “masculine protest” seems more applicable (Freud 1937, p. 250).       

At the other end of narcissism, in regression to the auto-erotic, one can be satisfied with love and success in fantasy alone. Instead of dismissing schizophrenia as something wrong with the brain, or something organic, Freud (1914) instead sees it “as giv[ing] us an insight into the psychology of the ego” (p. 82). The ego and object drives that push us to find love and success return to a state in which they aren’t measured against our efficacy of securing these ends in the real world. Many people misunderstand Freud’s designation of the auto-erotic and primitive narcissism as saying that this is an atomistic, or one-person psychology, in which the infant doesn’t have an object. Freud wouldn’t deny the infant’s impulse for the mother or her breast, but these id instinctual relations in the child aren’t his focus. Rather, the ego drive that is created from the renunciation of the infant’s id instincts, describes a functional relation. In the act of masturbation, for example, a person can fantasize about an object and satisfy himself without the object there. An author can similarly fantasize about imaginary characters and make a whole series of novels about them and spend more time thinking about his characters and their actions than really living a dynamic life himself. There is an analogy here to the psychotic person who doesn’t set himself goals and is preoccupied with his delusion.

Now, this isn’t to say that people suffering from psychosis are merely inveterate daydreamers; there’s a lot more going on in their illness than this. However, the economic emphasis of their phantasy life, in their delusion and psychotic certainty, in contrast to the economic emphasis on their drives for work and love, is very clear. I’d also like to add here that there are earlier stages than the auto-erotic. Freud (1923) sees epileptic seizures as a defusion of aggression in an earlier form of the body-ego and I’ve worked with many patients whose dreams and descriptions of their feeling states don’t involve the imagination of objects (people) in their fantasies (p. 41). Abstract qualities like light and darkness and the sense of being alone with nature are what have emotional significance for them.

Freud also indicates that there are stages that follow the phallic-oedipal stage. While “castration anxiety develops into… social anxiety,” he writes, there is a “later portion of the superego which has been formed on the basis of social prototypes” (Freud, 1926, p. 139). An individual can go on to form post-ambivalent ties to culture that anchor him to others in the form of linguistically mediated group identities. Thus, when a man, for example, encounters “disappointment over a woman” (object drives) or “a mishap in social relations with other men” (ego drives) he may regress from the phallic to an earlier stage, but doesn’t have the same withdrawal or self-absorption of those without post-ambivalent ties to culture (Freud, 1911, p. 62). However, my interest in this article isn’t to theorize the stages preceding the auto-erotic, or those that follow the phallic-oedipal.

In this article I will review the stages between the auto-erotic and phallic that I discuss in (work, year) and show their clinical value in the form of a technique I use with patients. First, however, I will remind my reader that Freud (1933) explicitly holds that the superego exists throughout development:

nor must it be forgotten that a child has a different estimate of its parents at different periods of its life. At the time at which the Oedipus complex gives place to the super-ego they are something quite magnificent; but later they lose much of this. Identifications then come about with these later parents as well, and indeed they regularly make important contributions to the formation of character; but in that case they only affect the ego, they no longer influence the super-ego, which has been determined by the earliest parental imagos. (p. 64, emphasis mine)

Second, the ego ideal is part of the superego which deals with self-directed criticism or the “dictatorial thou shalts,” in relation to a “demand for ever greater perfection” (Freud, 1923, pp. 54–55; 1933, pp. 64-5). In Economics (Pederson, 2015) I consider how the demand for perfection deepens past the phallic image-ego desire for a good reputation in the community, to increasingly deeper levels. These deeper levels are linked to increasing estimations of the power of parental-substitutes. Although I don’t have space to go into detail, Kardiner (1939) draws attention to how sociological processes may be required to anchor the earlier superego transferences to parental-substitutes of higher estimated perfection. This idea also reminds me of Nietzsche (2000) and his view that “[e]very smallest step on earth has been paid for by spiritual and physical torture” (p. 550). In other words, humans were first in small social groups and it took many generations in different eras of slavery to break down their natural sociality, have them sublimate some of their impulses, and accept leaders and rulers they have never met as figures of great power whom they shouldn’t challenge.    

Although there are idiosyncratic inputs from one’s particular political-economy, a deeper notion of perfection is easy enough to understand. At the anal stage, the representations of the parental-substitutes are people who have much more wealth, a much higher class, and traffic with, or are, those at the top of power hierarchies. As opposed to just having more Prestige, these individuals receive a transference in which they are seen as Superlative in their skill, knowledge, and general power. The individual relates to these people and to the institutions that make up his or her political-economy, of which they are representatives or commanders. Some criminals, for example, fall away from caring about their reputations at the phallic level, and can regress to an anal level of Being in which breaking laws and being part of society, or being removed from it in prison, is enacted. As someone who works with the chemically dependent and many criminal offenders, I can often see an intense preoccupation with the police as parental-substitutes.

Organized crime challenges the laws of civilization and seeks to be a power hierarchy behind the official or legal power hierarchies.

In the preceding narcissistic stage, the parental-substitutes are represented as people who are partly divine, magical, and above humanity in general. A king is a good historical example of this transference. However, his partly-divine status can also be combined with the anal transference as well because of the political power which he has. The magical transference of the narcissistic stage involves the ego ideal of Time. This is based upon recognizing the development and importance of a subjective sense of Time in the child, and Freud’s link of this to the omnipotence of wishes to the stage of narcissism (Freud 1909, p.235; Freud 1913, p. 88). In magical thinking a person shows a rivalry with Time and testing the efficacy of what he or she can do. One brings others good luck or somehow affected the outcome of events with one’s willpower alone. In relation to ambition and seeking admiration from others for one’s potency, a person can go past wanting to being recognized as the best in their field, to being the best there has ever been. There are people who are immortal in the sense that they will be remembered forever for their achievements. Thus, a person can be a genius but that doesn’t mean that they’ll be an Einstein or Nietzsche and be remembered forever.

If a certain type of criminal is concerned with the anal level of being a part of law-abiding society or not, then the narcissistic stage concerns being part of society at all. As opposed to the criminal who can still be part of organized crime at the anal level, this individual usually can’t accept any boss or master and can end up a drifter or homeless if he isn’t able to be self-employed or find the right person to work for. For example, one patient on government disability got comfortable with me to the point of boasting about not paying taxes for most of his life, not having a boss, and his “complete freedom” in doing what he wanted. Of course this didn’t last long before his unhappiness and fears began to surface, but the ideal remained so, nonetheless.         

  

These increasing levels of reputation: in the community; the top of social hierarchies; and in relation to society in general, often show up in the fantasies of patients. One patient talks about the president in a way that goes beyond criticism of policies and betrays a transference to an anal parental imago. Another patient talks about a hobby of collecting rocks and spins a fantasy of how he thinks about being the only human being to walk out in the fields and touch a given rock there. Another is preoccupied with his poor upbringing and how there are good families from his community who look down on him. Moreover, there are some individuals who can openly avow that they want to be the best, the toughest, that they have unlimited potential, or that they’ve figured out the secrets of God. With the last, I’m again reminded that there are earlier levels to be theorized, but it’s outside of the scope of this article.

In order to introduce these levels of Being, I’ve stuck to a straightforward power-based and competitive part of subjectivity. Along with this vertical axis, in Economics (Pederson, 2015) I also introduce a horizontal axis that considers different motivations than this under the auspices of psychic bisexuality, but I won’t examine this here. A schematic presentation of ambition seems like the best way to show the relation to community, civilization, and society at large that can illustrate how the pre-phallic superego can be understood. With this reference to deepening levels of perfection, and the ego ideal providing different demands for perfection and self-criticism (i.e. inferiority, self-hate, etc.), a new vista opens for psychoanalytic characterology and understanding how pathology can manifest.

At the different levels of Being, loss of the non-ambivalent ties to the father see the individual feeling compulsive “thou shalts” of the ego ideal. Additionally, these levels of ego ideals also link to certain ego functions. Conflict with parental-substitutes, and in some cases sibling-substitutes, can trigger primitive id aggression or affection that has to be defended against and sometimes brings about the loss of certain ego functions. Again, I’m not claiming that egoistic motivations for admiration or respect for one’s skill or knowledge are the only ones, nor the only ones at play in the examples that follow. They were only used to sketch how the levels of Being can be seen to function.

CLINICAL EXAMPLES      

A patient suffers from an auto-immune problem and has been sick regularly for months. I was impressed with the way she had some splitting with her husband's mother who was seen as a horrible figure whom she hated, while her husband was idealized. He would "fight off" her mother and her mother's partner for her, but he was also the reason that they were involved in my patient’s life. I asked her to associate to “fighter” and she said boxer. I asked her to imagine her body was a boxer fighting another boxer representing the viruses from which she was getting sick and to tell me how she'd describe her body. She said her body was "a sissy, a scared little girl". I asked her to use these as self-statements: “I am a sissy, a scared little girl” and whether that described how she interacted with anyone. She said it felt true and it was with her mother-in-law and we went on to talk about the situations this arose in and new issues with desires to depend on her came to the fore.

Another patient complained about having a horrible memory. I said that this was a bad thing and that it's very important and precious to be able to remember things. He agreed. I asked him to think of something precious and important to him. He said his cat. I asked him to imagine that he was reaching out for the cat, but that he couldn't reach her and she wasn't coming closer. I asked him how he’d describe the cat and he said "gone" and "irritated by me". I asked him to say these as you-statements (“you are gone and you are irritated by me”) and whether any person came to mind. He said his ex-girlfriend and discussed how he'd call all the time and she'd never answer or make up an excuse to get off the phone right away and this led him to feelings of being angry with her.

Another patient brought up self-criticism and procrastination regarding feelings that he should live as efficiently as possible. He felt like he should get up early in the morning and be prepared for work, he should not eat out and shop so much and save money, he should go fishing because he likes it, etc.  However, he often pushed the snooze button and told himself "5 minutes" (which usually turned into an hour), he also talked himself into buying new things, and convinced himself that he should stay in town to do things at home and then ended up watching youtube videos. I asked him to talk about the procrastinating part of himself, the cleverness of this part of himself, and then how this part might think of the dictatorial part of himself. He said that the clever part saw the tyrannical part as “weak and irritating”. I asked him to put these into you-statements and he said that the person that came to mind was his father who he thinks is weak for “lacking conviction” and irritating because he said he cares about him and his brother and would be around more but he never was. His anger is palpable and the complaints of procrastination don’t show up in future sessions.

In a different instance a patient complains about obsessing about some of his creative ideas. The complaint isn’t strong, but he expresses that he can sometimes feel like he can’t be in the moment because he’s turning some thought over in his head or want to work out how he could represent it as a picture or painting. Moreover, he carries around a journal because he worries that he’ll forget his inspiration or its thought out formulation. These complaints aren’t part of his presenting problems and in some ways they strike me as ones that may be exaggerated to showcase his identity as an artist. Still, I ask him to anthropomorphize the journal and think about it as if it was a person who he was telling his ideas to and what that person might think of his mind. He comes up with the adjectives “dependent, intimate, weak, and trustworthy” and gets into the relational aspect even more than I anticipated. I ask him to turn these into you-statements and whether anyone comes to mind. He says that his male roommate is the first one who comes to mind. We explore this relationship in a new way so that elements of dependency feelings, which were previously unspoken, give way to power dynamics. My patient believes that although they complement each other and learn from each other, that his roommate/friend couldn’t live his creative life whereas he could live his life as a salesman if he wanted to. The roommate is also seen as “overly charming” and “trying to hard.” This exploration goes on to both the study of my patient’s relationship with his grandmother (who had raised him) and then bringing his judgmental eye onto me by asking him for his thoughts about me as a person.   

In the last example, a female patient complains of being “institutionalized” and believing that she does best when she is told what to do. She has brought up a few times the idea that she is “missing part of her brain” and “doesn’t know how to do anything on her own.” I ask her what other words she would use to describe the missing part. She says, in an almost exasperated way, “not there, dead, empty.” I ask her to say these as you-statements and who comes to mind. She responds that her father does. She goes on to say that if he would have been around when she was younger that she would “know how to handle herself and how to behave” and begins crying as she talks about it. I ask her what he would have done and she uses general expressions like “give me structure”. She opposes this to her mother who she says would ground her and then later give her money to go to the store to get something for her and give her money to get something for herself too. With the lack of authority spelled out, and her internal sense for what she needs, I ask her what her father would tell her if he was alive today. She says that he would tell her to think positively, encourage her to do something, and be harsh with her when she needs it. This becomes something I use in the transference. I ask her if I should be harsher with her when she misses a session and I ask her if I should be encouraging her to do more as she waits for a call back from her job applications.      

CONCLUSION

If these internal conflicts or losses are returned to their external origins with parents or parental-substitutes, then the overwhelming feelings can be re-experienced and worked through. This saves a lot of time in comparison to a historical search for what happened between the time the individual felt like they had the precious part of themselves, or weren’t in conflict, and when the problem arose. This technique is also extra-transferential and doesn’t require waiting until the analyst begins to be put into the patient’s ego ideal, re-enactments are made with him, or aggressive or affectionate id drives show up. However, in maturational matters, it also supplies the analyst with the patient’s own desired needs and the proper words to use when the patient brings goal oriented work into the analysis on his or her own.  

These problems also reference what can appear as abstract instantiations of the superego as Time and Space. The third patient was dealing with ego ideal demands for the perfect use of Time and fits classical descriptions of the compulsive patient being a “living machine” (Reich, 1933). However, another form of the obsessional concerns the person paying excessive attention to details in his environment or ideas. He may talk about his self-critical tensions in relation to paying attention to people or events around him instead of being caught up with the details or with the subject matter he obsesses about. This points to an ego ideal conflict with Space, although, it may be that we must go beyond Freud’s four stages to do this justice. It seems to me, that the necessity of differentiating the interest in details or an idea that come into conflict with being attentive to others is probably different than paying attention to external Space in general vs. getting caught up in one’s fantasy life. However, this is a topic for another paper.

Some schizoid patients can be impressively candid about their ambition. Others bring up interests that indirectly point to primitive ego ideals and require some work to develop, like the rock collector I mentioned above. Exploration of these ego ideals and how they cause the individual to compete or relate to the social body provide some needed containment for the individual. This containment can result in some of the transferences that Kohut (1971) has outlined but, by keeping Freud’s metapsychological framework, the self-criticisms of the ego ideal can be used extra-transferentially and more quickly for short-term treatment.   

Lastly, when trying some of the self and you-statements with patients, it is important to sometimes explain to them that people are made up of many parts. I explain to them that people can be ambivalent and love someone and hate him or her at the same time. I explain that the healthy and good parts of them don’t need to be explored and that we have to get into their dark side or the pockets of bad feelings. I assure them that for the self-statements to feel true in regards to some part of them, doesn’t mean that can’t feel other ways about things in other parts. Many have admitted afterwards that something came up for them and they didn’t say it. Of course, it may sometimes go nowhere, in which case it is good to cultivate the sense that in analysis we set up experiments and if they don’t work, then we move on. I also believe that it goes without saying that some patients are inhibited in letting themselves even think in this way, and one must meet them where they are at.          

Bibliography

Freud, S. (1909). Notes upon a case of obsessional neurosis. S. E., 10: 151–318. London: Hogarth.

Freud, S. (1911). Psycho-analytic notes on an autobiographical account of a case of paranoia (Dementia paranoides). S. E., 12: 1–82. London: Hogarth.

Freud, S. (1913). Totem and taboo. S. E., 13: vii–162. London: Hogarth.

Freud, S. (1914). On narcissism. S. E., 14: 67–102. London: Hogarth.

Freud, S. (1917). Introductory lectures on psycho-analysis. S. E., 16: 241–463. London: Hogarth.

Freud, S. (1920). Beyond the pleasure principle. S. E., 18: 1–64. London: Hogarth.

Freud, S. (1921). Group psychology and the analysis of the ego. S. E., 18: 65–144. London: Hogarth.

Freud, S. (1923). The ego and the id. S. E., 19: 1–66. London: Hogarth.

Freud, S. (1924). The economic problem of masochism. : S. E., 19. 155–170.

Freud, S. (1926). Inhibitions, symptoms and anxiety. S. E., 20: 75–176. London: Hogarth.

Freud, S. (1930). Civilization and its discontents. S. E., 21: 57–146. London: Hogarth.

Freud, S. (1933). New introductory lectures on psycho-analysis. S. E., 22: 1–182. London: Hogarth.

Freud, S. (1937). Analysis terminable and interminable. S. E., 23: 209–254. London: Hogarth.

Kardiner, A. (1939). The Individual and His Society: The Psychodynamics of Primitive Social Organization, NY, USA: Columbia University Press.

Kohut, H. (1971). The Analysis of the Self: A Systematic Approach to the Psychoanalytic Treatment of Narcissistic Personality Disorders, Madison, USA: International Universities Press, 1989.

Nietzsche, F. (2000). On the genealogy of morals. In: W. Kaufmann (Ed. and Trans.) Basic Writings of Nietzsche (pp. 437-600). USA: Modern Library (Originally published in 1887).

Pederson, T. (2015) The Economics of Libido: Psychic Bisexuality, the Superego, and the Centrality of the Oedipus Complex. London: Karnac

Reich, W. (1933). Character Analysis. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1990.

primitive belonging

I was criticized by someone for only elucidating my social ontology through ambition and subject egoism.

I use subject egoism because I thought that it was the most obvious, but there are so many examples of primitive belonging.

People might use words like savior-complex, for example, to denote subject altruism that goes deeper than just "fixing" someone in a relationship and seems to extend to a group. I had a patient who worked for a power company and identified strongly with being someone who brought people 'the light'.

There have also been a few schizophrenic altruists who have reminded me of the vampire myth in that they felt like they had to be invited in by a person or that their presence was intrusive. One of them had walked past the doorway several times before I figured out that he was looking for an invitation and he confirmed as much in conversation afterwards.

Additionally, as far as celebrity goes, there are many altruists who feel like their work should be a delight to others and who take criticism badly. It's not a question of their inadequate mastery of an instrument or mockery of their precision. It is that their being should be rejected or that they should be felt as "bad" in some way.  Thomas Hardy, for example, never wrote another novel after the reception of Jude the Obscure.


When there are so many examples of artists singing love songs, spiritual leaders like Ghandi, and people who need to be in the public eye but not for admiration of their beauty, their talent, or their virtue (ex. a talk show host), it's surprising to me that people have so little feeling for what I'm proposing.

Maybe it's not surprising that people in general don't have it, but that other psychoanalysts who have the personality as their object of study, don't have a feeling for it...

I don't mind the designation archetypal for my work either. The problem is that it usually works at the volar level where you have the semi-divine and a princess with an ogre or a wizard who shows up to help. There are other levels too, such as the anal, in which organized crime is a power structure that opposes normal institutions (the police and politics). On the side of altruists, you'll have subcultures that aren't so violent even though they might radically oppose the status quo or run against their values. Take John Waters as an example of a social pervert who gets off on alienating the average person's sensibilities rather than causing delight. Despite wanting to alienate them, he still has moments that are "cute" and silly and doesn't have egoistic interests in power, dominance, or control.

Anyway, here are some public thoughts from a private conversation.



  

a new variation on the use of I statements.

Having to do short-term therapy I don't have the luxury to wait for the "transference neurosis." I also don't have the temperament for that style in some ways.

Anyway, to follow certain words back to important moments of the past that have affect seems like it should be the epitome of the psychoanalytic process.

So, a patient begins to get into her disgust with the world and how people are rude, riddled with guilt for their obligations to help others, and how the air and trees would soon be used up so that people would starve. She outlined the mad max ontology of the part-ego (formerly the auto-erotic) in which everyone would suffer but a class of super-elite rich. As much as I wanted to question her so she would develop the phantasy and give me more insight, I knew I had to make use of the bridge.

I ask her to complete the sentence. "A time I felt obligated to help someone was..." She repeated the beginning and then added "... was when I stayed in Montana and didn't come back for my sister". Her younger sister was sexually abused while she was trying to reconnect with her father and she was really emotional as she recounted her "selfishness".

There are so many pieces of ourselves and others in all the idiosyncratic ideas and imaginative productions of people.

Once one starts to get the ears to hear it, there are so many places to leave the ego narrative and enter into something vital and pulsing.

Also, I realized that "I statements is already a term that exists for couples therapy. So maybe something like 'self statements' is better for this...        

passive-aggressiveness and thrill-seeking

I've written before about how jouissance, getting off, the libidinization of anxiety, etc. often shows up in a variety of ways in patients.

I've been trying to figure out ways to work with it and have found one that is relatively simple that ends with the getting off ultimately pointing to passive aggression.

1. You have a patient who describes reckless behavior.

2. You talk about what they think can happen as a consequence of this behavior.

3. You as the patient if it feels true or not when the say "I don't care if I live or die"

4. They say it and say it feels partly true. If you aren't practiced at using this method, you sometimes have to remind them that this is only for a part of themselves and everyone has different parts that feel in different ways.

5. You ask them to talk from the place (the part of them) for which it feels true.

6. If this doesn't go somewhere, or after it does, you ask them what their family or "loved ones" would feel if they died.

7. It's usually good to ask about the mother for borderline patients and the father for neurotics, if it doesn't go anywhere.

8. When they talk about how someone would be devastated or sad, then ask if he or she might also feel responsible, feel guilt, or feel like he or she failed the patient.

9. Then ask the patient if it feels true to say "You failed me mom" or whatever word the patient might have used to get this across.

10. This will usually be accompanied by some anger and bringing up stories about how the parent or person failed them.

This will usually provide some relief but has to be followed up with discussion about the relationship with the person. Does the patient want to have a closer relationship with them (if they are alive)? Often there are feelings that the parent (if this is the person in question) doesn't let the patient know what is going on with him or her and the patient stubbornly keeps his thoughts private.

The patient often doesn't feel like the parent wants to take him or her seriously (as an adult).

The patient is scared to ask the parent to do so because that could end up with a rejection or dismissal.

To try to set up a straight forward goal to talk to the parents will often not end well because it's too frighting for him or her.

One approach here is for the patient to tell the parent something along the lines of "I feel like there's things you never tell me about (such as x) and I know that I don't tell you a lot about what's going on with me. If you'd like me to tell you what's been making me unhappy and what's been going on with you then let me know".

growing up too fast.

I've wondered for a while about what it would take to not form the latency superego and post-ambivalent ties to culture (by this I mean that the person might regress from passionate love or personal success but not fall into criminality, neurosis, and shrink from work or family)

For many of my patients who have become addicts or criminals there is often a common childhood experience of growing up too fast and having to parent one's brothers or sisters.

The problem with becoming a parent too early is that when hardships are faced later in life, one's economy of libido is such that one only personal success, devotion, and love are important and there's not enough social narcissism from group identities. When ego ideal tensions are too high, the person might be able to consciously admit that he has "become a kid" and no longer cares about trying to pretend to be an adult. Often this requires drugs or alcohol to sustain.

Auto-erotic and "the idea"

People with eidetic memories can remember a whole page of a book. They don't remember every idea or sentence but have something of a "photographic" memory.

The idea of going beyond the particular and seeing "family resemblances" doesn't mean Platonism. There's not some internal epistemological object that one checks to see if things or people accord to in order to judge if they are part of a category. Rather, the negation of the particular means that sensuous qualities can be grouped together and that they just strike someone as similar. That function works without language, or rather language can be used to "mean" this operation.

Take, for example, when someone walks in a funny way that reminds you of someone else. The gait doesn't have a name but it's a sensuous quality that another person with a different body can have.

This negation of the particular is also where family resemblances will include such things as beauty, goodness, and other Platonic ideals. The point is that they are really of this world and based upon life.

The lovers of the negative, who want to make this function mean more and have its own subsistence in a metaphysical world and reify it into Being that has a non-social ontology are often woefully ignorant of doing so.

Much of the phenomenological movement in psychoanalysis does just this in their references to Heidegger and Husserl. They want to make atomistic individuals who are triangulated through Being and are guilty of the most fundamental reification. One has to strive hard in their work to actually find real discussion of motivations and ego ideal measurements of self and other.

This just goes to show that we have all fallen beneath the height of Nietzsche's, Marx's, and Freud's modernism, and often hate them for it.

    

The auto-erotic and the part-ego

I've been thinking about the designation of part-object.

It definitely has its own classic use as the breast or penis without reference to the object.

As I've shown in the phantasies of the earth having its contents sucked out by the machine, there isn't a reference to people and the earth seems to symbolize the breast.

There is an imago there or an "internal object" and a general transference to the world but as a depersonalization this means that a person would also be able to receive it too. The main thing is that the ego ideal associated with this stage of development doesn't exercise criticism in some palpable way because that would require more cognition and comparison with others. However, this doesn't mean conflict at later levels can't cause a defusion to take place at this level or that, as Klein write, bombing and destruction of the environment can't similarly affect the transference.

At the "auto-erotic" stage the representations of people could be called part-object, but as noted above, this isn't to say that they are regarded as walking breasts or penises. The designation of part-object here, I believe, is best explained as the idea that other people have "good stuff" such as money, sex, comfort, etc. that the individual wants. He isn't concerned with egoism/competition or altruism/restoration of them, because this still requires more cognition so the ego ideal can measure. However, the focus on getting the 'good stuff' is how the simplistic mind works here.

This has a foil, however. In the previous post I brought up Aspergers. What characterizes this, in my experience with it, is how the sufferer reacts to every person, every other, in the same way. He also has what could be called a part-ego, by which I mean, that he has an important interest or important facts or important reference points that must be invoked with every exchange with others. For some people it is bringing up God or their religious beliefs, for some it is dinosaurs or what they think is powerful, for others it is repeating what a focal person says (becoming their echo), and for some it is bringing up 'factoids' (without any one reference point). This part-ego is an 'observing-ego' in some ways which probably references the child's lack of motor skills. This is also possibly a place to invoke Wilhelm Reich's ocular stage (although, I've drawn attention to the relevance of the eye in volar stage in feminine development too).  


So, in the dichotomy of Internal vs. External Space, the previous oral stage has internal and external autistic shapes/light darkness that can populate it.

Space in the sense of the revelation of things and people is still important for what I'll still call the auto-erotic stage. However, the dichotomy or ontological choice would be between relating to External Space, whilst still in this half-ego functioning, or relating to one's mnemic traces of external Space.....

Earlier posts that relate to the epistemophillic drive bear on this: Can a person be open to the external Space in ways that need to new info or do they only, nihilistically, want things to be the same? - nothing new, but everything should be as they remember it.

The question is other than being able to see people and things ing their particularity, what is the ability here, to join them together by their similarity or "family resemblances".

This something more that is common above the particular, seems like a good metaphor for the something more that objects that must be referenced by the part-ego.