In process....July 4, 2012....dgb
As with any 'neurotic disorder', we all can usually recognize its 'essence' because we all, to some greater or lesser extent, have both experienced, and thus easily recognize, its central character traits.
If I say that we have all experienced the essence of an 'anal-schizoid' neurosis, you may, if you are not familiar with this terminology, scratch your head, and say, 'What's that? But if I say that an 'anal-schizoid' disorder or neurosis can also be called a 'distancing neurosis' -- a type of neurosis where we tend to put and keep all, or most, or many, people physically and/or emotionally at 'arm's length' -- at a 'distance' -- well, I think most of us can readily understand and recognize that particular human character trait. Because depending on the context of the situation, who we are with, and/or how we are feeling about ourselves inside, we have probably all gone through 'distancing' phases at various points in our lives.
The 'anal-schizoid' or 'distancing' personality is simply a person who is prone to behaving in this type of manner much more often, or extremely, than most.
The anal-schizoid personality can be distinguished from both the 'anal-righteous' personality and the 'oral-phobic' personality in the following manner:
The 'anal-righteous' person is simply someone who is very judgmental -- very often. If these judgments are expressed openly with the person being 'anally judged', well, at least we know where we stand with such a person. However, if the anal-righteous person takes his or her 'negative judgments 'underground' -- into a place of 'covert hiding' -- well, then we have the mark of the anal-schizoid (distancing) person and personality.
In contrast, the 'oral-phobic' person and personality is simply a much more 'scared' person -- a person who tends to be much more easily intimidated by others, and by social situations. The telltale characteristic here is 'shyness' and 'anxiousness', not 'aloofness', righteousness, and 'silent, negative judgments'. Now, to be sure, there are often times when the two different character-types meet and interact.
For example, we might have a righteous, dominating, intimidating parental figure/model as a child, learned to be scared, and/or to avoid the wrath, of such a dominating, righteous, intimidating parent -- indeed, 'internalized' or 'introjected' the essential character traits of this type of parent-figure, such that we can 'keep ourselves in line' before the above mentioned parent has to 'do it for us' -- and in such a fashion, we 'project' this 'parental character type' onto virtually anyone and everyone deemed 'authoritarian' 'like the above described parent' who we meet in our march through life.
At the same time, we have developed some of the same key character ingredients as the 'intimidating parental figure' who we are most afraid of, and thus, the 'oral phobic' and the 'anal-schizoid' personality can meet inside us in different 'ego-states' of our own personality, the first one based on fear, the second one based on anger and resentment.
Put another way, we introject our 'childhood righteous-rejecting object (or transference-figure) into that part of our personality that we will refer to as our 'Righteous-Rejecting Superego' which in turn can influence a number of other different ego-states in our 'Object Relations Ego': 1. Our 'Approval-Seeking or Disapproval-Avoiding (Oral-Phobic) Underego'; 2. Our 'Anal-Schizoid (Distancing) Underego'; 3. Our 'Dionysian-Pleasure-Seeking Underego'; 4. Our Angry-Rebellious Underego'; and 5. Our 'Central Ego'.
The essence of the anal-schizoid experience is 1. the feeling of lack of empathy, disharmony, and sense of self-social detachment or alienation from both our own Righteous-Rejecting Superego, and from our Social World in general, or at least significant parts of it.
Self-hate is often tied up to the experience. I don't like myself so why should others like me? Or I will reject others before they have time to reject me.
In this regard, the personality, and in particular, our Central Ego, needs to feel a sense of 'nurturing encouragement and empathy' from both inside and outside the personality. This nurturing and sense of 'attachment' both inside and outside the personality acts like 'the cartilage' that 'cushions' our kneecaps and other bone-muscle connections. Without this cartilage cushioning, the internal and external forces of 'stressers' against our kneecaps and other muscle-bone connections are going to be exceedingly painful and reduce effective functioning in the areas of 'the missing cartilage'. And so it is with our personality and Central Ego in a similar fashion.
When Our Central Ego feels like it is being assailed, whipped, and/or ridiculed from one, two, three, and/or all sides, particularly from our Harsh, Righteous Superego, all effective functioning in Our Central Ego, and in our mind and body as a whole, is likely to come to a grinding halt, or at least be exceedingly compromised.
Our optimal day-to-day functioning is predicated on positive self-esteem -- on our feeling good about ourselves -- and when this stops happening, negative self-esteem taking over the control of the personality, it is like 'bad guys taking over a ship' -- all 'deck hands' wonder who they are working for, and whether they should be working at all for the 'negative new leader(s)'.
The worst experience of all perhaps, is the feeling of being 'thrown' -- and/or 'throwing ourselves' -- into our own 'Existential Pit or Abyss of Darkness', a place of extreme negative emotions including melancholia/depression/grief/despair as well as other possible negative emotions such as elements of self and/or social rage, anxiety, guilt, panic... Not a pleasant place to be.....Call it also 'Our Heart of Human Darkness' based on acute and/or chronic negative stimulants/factors/stressors from our mind and/or our mind's perceived relationship (or lack of it) with reality.
Obviously, under normal circumstances, this is a place that we want to 'escape from' as quickly and as effectively as possible.
Our mind and body is constantly compensating for perceived negative situations that are deemed to bring our mind-body out of 'homeostatic (dialectic) balance'.
This 'Heart of Darkness' scenario described above is probably the most negative situation that we can possibly run into, and in compensatory fashion, the mind-body has all its combined forces out looking for the most immediate and effective possible perceived 'Self-Psychotherapy, Safety, and/or Womb Room' to help bring us out of our Heart of Darkness, our Existential Abyss.
Unfortunately, this can often take us to another negative place of 'Addiction' and/or 'Obsessive-Compulsion' (including 'Transference').
Let's go over this slowly. For a 'pre-born' child, under normal circumstances, where is the ultimate place of safety? The 'womb'. The womb is the ultimate place of both 'rootedness' and 'relatedness' to the mother, again, for a pre-born child.
Being born can be viewed as being like 'an eviction from the womb' -- and this 'eviction from the womb room' can be viewed as the 'primal template and predecessor of most, if not all, human neurosis'. At least this was Otto Rank's (one of the first psychoanalysts) basic thesis ('birth trauma') and I support it.
So what happens when we are born? Immediately, all the nurses and moms present in the birth room -- in healthy, nurturing fashion -- do their best to 'artificially re-create the womb room'.
They wrap the baby up tightly, like a 'papoose', and hold it in tight, nurturing fashion.
This is all good -- it is a part of the 'nurturing mother complex' that is essential to all our healthy developments. It is part of the healthy maternal complex that Winnicott called 'good enough mothering'.
At this point in time, we are talking about the earliest 'Oral Period of Development in a Healthy, Evolving Child' -- and where this type of 'maternal nurturing and loving' doesn't take place, you can look for the most 'severe, anal-schizoid neurotic complexes' to likely develop.
Now, some anal schizoid complexes can develop several years later in 'the Oedipal phase' of the developing, evolving child. Here the anal schizoid complex tends to be based on either 'relationship and/or one or more particular encounter (and memory) trauma'.
Thus, we can distinguish between the 'Early Oral Phase, Anal-Schizoid Personality' and the later 'Oedipal Phase, Anal-Schizoid Personality' as well as what might be called 'The Post-Oedipal Phase, Anal-Schizoid Personality'. The Early Oral Phase Schizoid Personality is likely to exemplify the most severe symptoms and characteristics of The Anal-Schizoid Personality because it lies deepest in the personality....but 'personality transferences' stemming from this period of development are likely also to be the hardest to access, so in this regard, in terms of my capabilities, I will spend the most time discussing and demonstrating the existence of 'Oedipal Phase, Anal-Schizoid Transferences' and their effect on adult anal-schizoid symptomology and character types.
However, before i do, let me emphasize the particular relationship between our 'Transference-Existential Abyss' and our 'Self-Psychotherapy, Safety, or Womb Room'.
A here-and-now 'existential stressor' triggers a 'transference memory' of perceived 'associative similarity'. The combination of the two sink us into a 'heart of darkness' that can also be described as our 'Transference-Existential Abyss' (TEA). Our mind-brain is immediately looking for some form of 'compensation' in order to get 'out of' our Transference-Existential-Abyss and our Heart of Darkness.
Our 'Transference-Existential Abyss' can also be called our 'Depression Room', our 'Grief Room', our 'Anxiety or Panic Room', our 'Guilt Room', our 'Resentment, Anger, or Rage Room'. our 'Envy Room', our 'Jealousy Room'....
Our 'Compensatory Psychotherapy Room' may be mom's couch (with mom there of course), our own couch, our own bedroom, someone else's bedroom, our computer, our fridge, our local 'watering hole', our local shopping mall, our local drug dealer, the local casino, our local church, our local massage therapist, our local psychotherapist, etc...some of these 'rooms' obviously healthier than others, others more self-defeating, self-destructive, obsessive-compulsive, addictive....
Going back to what Freud wrote in 1895 (Studies in Hysteria) -- and I am paraphrasing and building upon what he wrote back then -- a 'neurotic-(existential-here-and-now) symptom' is usually based on a 'false connection' between a 'here and now stresser, encounter, relationship, memory, and a memory from the person's more distant past, usually their childhood past, which can be called a 'transference memory' (although Freud never called such a memory this).
The childhood transference memory -- not always but usually -- can be viewed as a 'rejection memory', an 'eviction memory', a 'failure memory', an 'alienation or isolation memory', a 'non-attachment or non-inclusive memory', an 'abandonment memory', a 'shameful memory', a 'guilt memory', a 'resentment memory', or something of this nature. To be sure, most of us have 'positive memories' too, but it is these 'negative transference memories' that tend to dominate the negative parts of our evolving lives....
Case in point -- Freud's first memory that I have interpreted a number of times in other essays now...
Little Siggy -- at about 3 years old -- busts into his parents' bedroom while they are having sex...He has no clue as to what is going on...His dad, angry at little Siggy for busting in on them screams at Siggy to get out of the bedroom and close the door....Little Siggy retreats, confused, mystified, but stubborn and rebellious at the same time...If he could have said something to his dad, it probably would have sounded something like this: 'What the heck are you doing to mom, dad? You can lie to me, resist me, evict me from your bedroom, but I will find out. If it takes the rest of my life to find out, I will find out what exactly you were doing to mom, and why...'
And so you have the main 'transference template' of Freud's life -- in Freud's case a 'transference-counter-phobia' and 'sublimated obsessive-compulsion' that led him unconsciously to the 'creation of the psychoanalytic room -- and the psychoanalytic couch -- and Freud asking questions of the patient (a 'transference surrogate' of his mom or dad) in a manner that met with 'resistance' -- just like he had with his dad -- but with Freud 'pounding away' with questions and interpretations until he 'was confident that he had gotten through to the core of the person's particular neurosis and neurotic symptoms by unlocking the sexual secrets of the patients memories and fantasies'....
Notice the connection between the perceived 'sexual etiology' on Freud's part -- that he stuck to animatedly, anally-retentively, and with a 'pit bull's bite' protecting it for his entire career (losing numerous co-workers in the process) -- and the 'sexual component' in Freud's first transference memory. Over-generalizing from our transference memories is what we all do unless or until we can arrive at a certain 'awareness enlightenment' and 'emotional maturity' that we no longer need to react phobicly, paranoidly, schizoidly, and/or obsessive-compulsively ('counter-phobicly') to the 'negative self-esteem memory' that is destabilizing the foundation of our self-esteem and 'strongly motivating' us to take 'radically extreme defensive and/or compensatory actions'....
We have interpreted the 'oral-demanding', 'oral-narcissistic' transference need on Freud's part to find out his patients' 'sexual secrets' as 'transference surrogates' of his 'parents' sexual secret'
in his first transference memory....This is the 'transference game' that Freud was locked into as a vital component of his perceived self-esteem. Call this 'the transference handicap challenge' where Freud is consciously or non-consciously aiming to move from a 'position of being on the outside, evicted by his dad from the master bedroom, and not knowing what is going on' to a 'position in the psychoanalytic room where Freud is metaphorically on the inside of the master bedroom but still not privy to 'visual evidence' which only leaves the patients' own self-confessions available to him (and/or his interpretations, reconstructions of these confessions) with these 'longed for', 'demanded for' confessions on Freud's part usually being clouded in the 'smoke and mirrors', 'allusions', 'symbolism', 'symptoms', etc. that can all be viewed as a combination of 'id-shadow impulsive drives and/or vicissitudes' and the person's 'ego defenses' against these same impulsive drives/vicissitudes designed to 'safeguard' his or her self-esteem, moral integrity, etc....from social embarrassment, ridicule...etc...
The first 'primary, oral-narcissistic, oral-demanding, oral-obsessive-compulsive' part of the transference memory will be called the 'transference mastery compulsion' or partly in Adler's words, 'transference superiority striving' or the 'transference masculine (or feminine) protest'...
Let's now look at the 'negative, secondary defensive, anal-schizoid' side of Freud's first transference memory.
To be continued...
