Just finished...August 12th, 2011...
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In this essay, I will look at different ways of 'splitting' and 'extending' Freud's
Classic triadic 'id-ego-superego' model, created by Freud in 1923.
Today, August 10th, 2011 -- if my math is right -- that is about 88 years past the date at which the 'id-ego-superego' was published.
In some ways, the model is still humming along famously, still useful to a very significant extent. And yet other models and theories have risen up in its place, both inside and outside of Psychoanalysis.
The Classic Freudian triadic model has been picked apart like vultures picking apart a dead carcass. This is not necessarily a bad thing -- we might call it 'conceptual evolution' as long as the new models show some signs of significant 'improvement' over the old one -- and/or at least a different way of looking at the human psyche/self/personality that adds new dimensions to the old Freudian model.
Otherwise, we would be talking about 'conceptual de-evolution' -- which of course, is based on subjective judgment as well as what we like to call 'objective, empirical' results -- but of course, they too are more subjectively and narcissistically biased than what we would generally like to think.
I am certainly not a 'subjective relativist' but, at the same time, it is very hard to get away from Nietzsche's ominous proclamation: 'There are no facts, just interpretations' -- and Kant told us basically the same thing in more compicated words.
Hume tried to bring everything down to the level of what can be 'sensually verified' but that too 'caused' significant difficulties. (Hume never liked to use the word 'caused' because 'causes' are 'interpretive entities' beyond the realm of the 'empirical senses', and thus, they are 'associative assumptions', not 'verifiable sensual, empirical data'. From this line of 'hard-line, empirical thinking', 'behavioral psychology' was born that doesn't chase such things as 'instincts' and 'values' and 'beliefs'....and/or anything else inside the 'black box' of the human psyche.
Freud did of course -- to the point of 'pushing the limits of inferential believablity' -- but that was Freud...
Freud's model has been modified, extended, reduced, exchanged for different concepts altogether... in a wide assortment of different ways to satsify the many different perspectives of many different Post-Freudians -- again, both inside and outside of the school of Psychoanalysis.
Adler, Jung, Klein, Horney, Fromm, Perls, Berne -- amongst a wide array of other Post, Anti-, and/or Neo-Freudians have all added their individual perspectives and models inside the 'Personality Theory/Model' spectrum.
In probably every case, you can tell as much or more about the individual theorist from the personality model that he or she has created than you could if you conducted an 'inkblot (Rorschach) test' on the particular theorist under scrutiny.
Freud spent most of his professional years focusing on 'Id Psychology' -- from May 1896 to pretty well the end of his career and life in 1939.
And yet when you think about it, there is a lot of Id Psychology that has been largely left open -- and/or evasively abstract -- since Freud died.
A significant number of psychoanalysts who were studying, practising, and writing about psychoanalysis when Freud was alive have left and gone on to create their own individual schools of psychology. Some of the large list of 'ex-psychoanalysts' is listed up above. Other psychoanalysts -- such as Klein, Balint, Bion, Fairbairn, Winnicott, Guntrip, Kohut, Lacan, and many other psychoanalysts who have stayed within perimeters of 'Psychoanalysis' (if in name only) have 'pushed the theoretical boundaries of Psychoanalysis significantly outwards' -- or knocked them down altogether -- creating new 'sub-schools' of Psychoanalysis.
However, not many psychoanalysts who I am familiar with seem to really want to significantly 'play with the old classic, triadic Freudian model of the personality' -- in an effort to make it better. The unwritten message seems to be that you don't 'mess' with the legacy of Freud's work. Masson may have been the last theorist to want to completely 'deconstruct' Classical Psychoanalysis and go back to 'Pre-Classical (pre-1897) Freudian Traumacy-Seduction Theory. And most of us who have studied Psychoanalysis to any significant degree know where that landed Masson....(Out of Psychoanalysis on his derriere...before he moved on to the study of animal psychology in the 1990s.)
And yet here I am wanting to 'play' with Freudian theory -- and test the outer limits of my creative abilities as well as where 'Post-Freudian Classical Psychoanalysis' could still go -- and I am not even a Psychoanalyst. (Let's just call me an 'underground student and theorist of Psychoanalysis').
No psychoanalytic theorist that I know of has ever seriously -- since the early 1980s -- tried to 'link, integrate, synthesize...' Freud's and Masson's work.
That is my specialty. And I have nothing to lose professionally -- no Psychoanalytic career to hang on to which makes my job that much easier -- without the potential political, professional, and economic barriers that Masson faced back in the early 1980s.
I have already asked the question: What would have happened if Freud had created the concept of 'the id' in 1894-1895 rather than in 1923? How would it have been different?
Rather than describing the id as a 'biological instinct reservoir', I am surmising that he may have described it as a 'traumatic memory reservoir'....
What a huge difference this would have made to the future of Psychoanalysis -- a 'reality based id' rather than a 'fantasy based id'...a 'traumatized id' rather than a 'pleasure based id'....that would eventually in 1923 move 'beyond the pleasure principle' and become a 'reservoir for both the life and death instinct' of which the 'life instinct' would include both the 'sexual instinct' and the 'self-preservation instinct'; and the 'death instinct' would include the 'aggressive, destructive, and self-destructive instinct'....
Where does 'narcissism' fit into this equation.
By 1914, Freud had become intrigued by the concept of 'narcissism' and published his classic paper 'On Narcissism'. But narcissism at least partly collided with his theory of 'libido' because 'narcissism' (self-absorption) wasn't quite the same as 'libido' (sexual energy). They intermixed but they weren't quite the same. Which took precedence over the other -- narcissism (self-absorption, self-esteem, egotism, self-enhancemnt...) or libido (psycho-eroticism)?
I don't think Freud ever totally answered this theoretical and clinical problem even though he argued at different times that both were 'primary' in the form of 'infantile eroticism' and 'infantile narcissism'.
Where does narcissism fit in with 'the life and death instinct' and the 'self-preservation instinct'?
Is narcissism 'healthy' or 'pathological' -- or potentially both?
Where does 'narcissism' 'fit' on the 'hierarchy of human instincts' -- assuming we want to even call it an 'instinct' somewhere in line with Freud's 'life' and 'death' instinct?
These are very 'metaphysical' questions with potentially 'moving parameters' relative to how 'narcissism' should even be defined....
Narcissism can probably be defined in as many different ways as 'love' can....which can lead us to another series of questions: What is the relationship betwwen narcissism and love, narcissism and hate, narcissism and altruism, narcissism and self-preservation, narcissism and self-esteem, narcissism and sex, narcissism and traumacy, narcissism and destruction, narcissism and self-destruction, even narcissism and suicide?
I put narcissism at the very top (and bottom) of the 'human instinct hierarchy'....
In this regard, I put narcissism above both the life and death instinct in terms of 'primal priority'...
Everything branches off from human narcissism in terms of human psychology, physiology, biology, and biochemistry...
This falls into line with Ayn Rand's 'Virtue of Selfishness', Nathaniel Branden's 'The Psychology of Self-Esteem', Maxwell Maltz's 'Psycho-Cybernetics' (the first psychology book I ever read back in 1972), and even, I imagine, Heinz Kohut's 'Self-Psychology' (which I have not analyzed in any detail). It also falls at least partly in line with Alfred Adler's 'Superiority-Striving'...
I feel partly reluctant to use a sensitive example here but theoretical concepts and theories -- if they are to have any sense of 'following real life' -- have to show that they can follow real life. If Freud was on his death bed -- which he was -- dying of cancer, and in excruciating pain, and he whispered to his personal doctor, Max Schur, to increase his next dose of morphine to the point where he didn't have to deal with this cancer and all this pain anymore, that can hardly be called an act of 'self-preservation' on Freud's part. But it does follow the pleasure-unpleasure principle to the extent of 'wanting to rid himself of horrible pain', it does follow Adler's principle of 'wanting to move from a perceived worse place to a better one', and it does follow -- or at least can be viewed as following -- the principle of 'narcissism', i.e., doing what Freud thought was 'best at that point for him'....
So let us assume that a newborn baby is born with 'narcissistic self-interest' throbbing through his or her body and psyche....seeking pleasure, avoiding pain, and addressing -- to his or her very limited capabilities -- the business of 'survival' or 'self-preservation'....which can be viewed as a step down from the over-riding principle of 'narcissism'.
From 'narcissistic energy', we can branch out into 'biological energy', 'hormonal energy', 'hedonistic energy', 'self-preservative energy', 'sexual energy', 'egotistic energy', 'work energy', 'play energy', 'existential energy', even 'altruistic' or 'love energy'...
What is the connection between 'narcissism' and 'altruism' as well as having the contrasting relationship of seemingly 'bipolar, opposite concepts and phenomena'...
Well, the word ancd concept of 'narcissism' -- like most if not all other words/concepts of its abstract nature -- can be seen to function at at least two different levels of abstraction: 1. as a description of a phenomenon -- which we will label as 'primary narcissism' from which all other forms of human energy are born including 'altruism'; and 'secondary narcissism' which is what we generally equate with the more commonly used word -- 'selfishness' which can thus be defined as the opposite of 'altruism'.
However, 'primary narcissism' is -- well -- more 'primal' in the human psyche than both 'love' and 'altruism', and indeed, both love and altruism are born from primary narcissism. How is this?
I say, 'I love you.' There is a 'subject' (I) and an 'object' (you), and a particular feeling that I feel towards you that I am calling 'love'.
In order for me to love you, you have to be very important to me, and in this regard, trigger a 'strong, positive emotion' within me that I am calling 'love'. But here is the important point: Without my 'I' involved -- as in me being strongly attacted to, or strongly valuing you -- there is no emotion within me that I can call 'love'. In other words, I need you to be involved in this feeling, but I also need 'me' to be involved in this feeling. Without the 'I' as well as the 'you' -- there is no love. Thus, 'love' has a 'narcissistic' base to it. It has to involve the 'I' before it involves the 'you'. Or worded alternatively, 'love' is based in 'self-interest'. If you weren't very, very important to -- me -- then there would be no love that I feel towards you.
To summarize my point above, love is built from narcissism and in turn, altruism is built from love (assuming we are talking about 'real altruism' and not 'fake altruism' which has a feeling of 'obligation' attached to it).
What is the relationship between 'narcissism' and 'traumacy'?
In this regard, I take you back to November 7th, 1906, the 5th meeting of The Vienna Psychoanalytic Society. Subject of The Discussion: 'On The Organic Bases of Neuroses' -- The Speaker: Dr. Alfred Adler.
Present also at the meeting: Freud, Bass, A. Deutsch, (Paul) Federn, Heller, Hitschmann, Hollerung, Hautler, Rank, Reitler, Stekel, Kahane.
I view this meeting as being a crucial point in both Psychoanalytic and Adlerian history -- a point in time where Freud and Adler were perhaps the closest they would ever come to each other in terms of the ideas that Adler presented here on 'organ inferiority', 'compensation', and 'supervalent cerebral activity' that would eventually cause them to split company but here in this meeting Freud was quite impressed with Adler's new line of thinking.
The rest of the group was split in terms of those who liked Adler's new line of thinking, and those who criticized it -- mainly with legitimate, valid criticisms.
Adler needed to qualify his conclusions as not all 'neuroses' were initiated by perceived and/or real 'organ inferiorities'. (Adler incidently had 'rickets' when he was three years old and also almost died from pneumonia at four years old. It was at that point that Adler decided that he wanted to be a doctor -- which would become the prototype of his evolving theory that was just 'being born' in this session: 1. a 'perceived organ and/or psychological inferiority'; 2. 'compensation' or 'overcompensation' aimed at 'overcoming' the perceived inferiority feeling; 3. 'supervalent cerebral (mind-brain) activity' in the direction of the compensation which Adler would later come to call 'superiority striving'.)
It is interesting to note that while Freud more or less walked away from his traumacy and seduction theory in the spring of 1896, here you can possibly see the beginning of Freud returning to it in modified theory and different terminology. Freud was heading toward his 1914 concept of 'narcissism' and by 1923 he had arrived at the concept of 'narcissistic injury' -- a valuable concept that can be equated with the idea of 'ego-traumacy', which was more or less a 'throw-back' to his old 1895 'traumacy theory'.
When Freud introduced the concept of 'narcissism' into Psychoanalysis in 1914 (Adler had left Psychoaanalysis to start his own school of psychology in 1911), Freud felt that he had a concept -- narcissism -- that was better than both Jung's concept of 'non-sexualized libido' (a general life energy) and Adler's concept of 'the masculine protest'.
Freud -- who still, in 1920 and til the end of his career -- was basically a 'biological reductionist' and a 'pansexual' theorist, did not like the fact that Adler (at this point in his career around 1920) was trying to usurp his own concepts of 'castration anxiety' and his newer concept of 'narcissism' with the Adlerian concepts of 'inferiority feeling' and 'the masculine protest'.
Thus, at the beginning of 'Beyond The Pleasure Principle', Freud rhetorically retaliated against Adler in which he wrote a 'protest' against Adler's concept of 'inferiority feeling' and 'masculine protest'. Freud did not deny the significance of these concepts but rather deemed them as 'inferior' to his own concepts of 'castration anxiety' and 'narcissism'.
A lot of the rhetorical conflict here in my opinion was about 'language' and 'knit-picking' over their respective 'terminology' and 'conceptuology'.
To me -- with a little 'language translation' -- they were both saying essentially the same thing. But they needed someone like me to provide the necessary 'conceptual and theoretical translation'.
To me, they were both saying something about 'self-esteem' -- and in particular -- 'sexual self-esteem', and again more particularly, primarily 'masculine self-esteem' (a 'narcissistic bias' as they were both 'men').
Firstly, Freud's concept of 'castration anxiety' is barely used anymore whereas Adler's concept of 'inferiority or insecurity feeling' still goes on strong.
Most students of psychology today would probably argue that Freud's concept of 'castration anxiety' was created in a very 'sexually prim and proper' Victorian Society where the 'threat of castration' may have been used in many families against a little boy by either his mom and/or dad to 'deter' him from 'touching his thing'....as it was culturally deemed 'bad behavior'.
Even as an adult clinician and theorist Freud was linking masturbation with 'neurasthenia' (low energy, low sexual energy, depression...) whereas I would be more prone to argue the opposite -- i.e., the less we have a sexual outlet of some kind or another -- even if the sexual outlet/object is ourselves -- the more likely we are to feel agitated, depressed, cranky, low motivation and/or energy, etc...
Freud had some pretty 'wacky, neurotic' ideas about masturbation, castration anxiety, and 'penis envy' -- at least by today's standards -- but, for the most part, we chalk this up to the Victorian time and culture that Freud was living in. He was caught in a 'neurotic, cultural, sexual paradigm'...
However, if you loosen Freud's concept of 'castration anxiety' up a bit, maybe call it 'psychological castration anxiety' or 'masculine performance anxiety', then we are starting to move closer and closer to what Adler meant by 'the masculine protest'.
Unfortunately, Adler got caught up in the tail end of the same 'cultural, sexual paradigm' that Freud was caught up in -- and thus, Adler used the same concept of 'the masculine protest' to describe the 'neurotic plight of women' as well as men. He would have been better creating the concept of 'the feminine protest' to better describe the 'neurotic' -- and/or 'non-neurotic' -- movement of women (as they moved towards trying to improve their civil rights both individually and collectively).
The concept of 'the masculine protest' led to some semantic confusion and difficulties for Adler. He would have been better to compare and contrast 'masculine' vs. 'feminine' anxiety, depression, resentment, anger, rage, etc. and its 'compensating' features.
What Adler was talking about here was basically 'sexual self-esteem' which may have not been too far off what Freud was trying to talk about with his concepts of 'castration anxiety' and 'penis envy'. Adler and Freud were perhaps more on the same page than they themselves believed.
Freud's concept of narcissism took him closer to Adler's area of 'self-esteem'. Rather than sticking solely with his concept of '(sexual) libido', and being accused by Adler, Jung, and others of 'pansexualism' or 'sexual reductionism', Freud created a concept -- narcissism -- that would take him into the area of what might be called 'ego-libido' as opposed to 'id or sexual-libido'. The concept of narcissism, as in 'ego-libido', was thus being connected with the idea of 'egotism' which was more about 'self-esteem' than 'sexuality' (although egotism -- and/or the lack of it -- was often connected to sexual issues).
In a similar fashion, Adler's concept of 'the masculine protest' was also connected to issues of both 'egotism (self-esteem) and sexuality'.
If a culture has a particular 'masculine ideal' and an individual man does not believe that he is anywhere close to living up to that 'masculine ideal' -- i.e., there is a serious gap between his 'masculine ideal and his masculine image' (another 'fitting game') -- then then 'heavy' masculine anxiety, fear, panic, depression, despair, resentment, anger, rage, and many different forms of 'neurotic compensation' can follow...
This is what Adler meant by 'the masculine protest', the concept could equally be developed in terms of 'the feminine protest', and both could be equated back to Freud's evolving concepts in 1920 and onwards such as 'narcissistic injury', 'narcissistic wound', 'narcissistic blow', 'narcissistic scar', right up to Kohut's concept of 'narcissistic rage' in 1972.
These are all incredibly important, modern-day, theoretical and clinical concepts.
If anything, Freud wanted to steer away from Adlerian Theory even as he was at least partly practising it himself -- in his own 'narcissistic' terminology.
We have to give Adler his 'just due' and 'top status' here -- it was Adler who opened up the subject of 'organ inferiorities', 'compensation', and 'supervalent cerebral activity' (in the direction of the 'compensation') in 1906 long before Freud's ideas on 'narcissism' and 'narcissistic injuries' started to surface in his work (1914, 1920, 1923...). Furthermore, Freud's idea of 'the mastery compulsion' in 1920 (Beyond The Pleasure Principle) sounded alot like the 1906 ideas listed above of 'compensation' and 'supervalent cerebral activity'...as well as Adler's later concept of 'superiority striving'...
I will probably work more often with the idea of 'narcissism' and all its conceptual derrivatives and/or viscisitudes than I will with the concepts of 'the masculine and feminine protest'. However, if I feel I need the latter two concepts, I will certainly use them, hoping that you will know what I have just written about in this essay...There will probably be 'synopses' of the same material again...
For our purposes here, what we are interested in is the 'rise and fall of narcissistic energy' and all its various derrivatives: 'sexual energy', 'egotism', 'hedonism', 'existential energy', 'creative energy', 'destructive energy', 'neurotic energy', 'dream energy', 'psychotic energy', and the rise of all these different types of energies -- derrivatives of our 'primary narcissistic energy' -- from the very bottom of the psyche (The Genetic-Biological Self, The Id, Nietzsche's Abyss and/or Anaximander's Apeiron) up to 'The Experiential, Memory, Transference, and Learning Templates', to 'free-floating narcissistic id energy' to 'blocked narcissistic id energy (The Shadow-Id Vault) to 'escaped and/or 'loosely bound' narcissistic Id energy', to 'The Dream, Fantasy, and Nightmare Weaver', and then up into the preconscious and conscious Ego ...which itself can be divided up into conceptualized 'Underego-States', 'Ego-States' and 'Superego States'..
There is a lot of potential new and old Freudian theory here....as well as Object Relations Theory, Self-Theory, Adlerian Theory, Jungian Theory, Bernean Theory (Transactional Analysis), Gestalt Theory (Perls), Massonian 'Deconstructive and Reconstructive Theory'...and more...
But that is enough for today...
We have covered a lot of theoretical ground...
-- dgb, Aug 12th, 2011,
-- David Gordon Bain
To be continued...
