Good morning!
I have two essay 'coming down the pipe here' -- one on transference theory and the other on character structure and personality theory. The two are intimately interconnected: transference theory contains the core and the essence of character structure and personality theory, whereas character structure and personality theory provides the broader context by which we can 'zero in on' the study of transference theory.
I am going to write the essay on personality theory first because, it is by far the easiest one to write as it has been evolving in my mind both recently in its latest rendition, and for over 30 years, going back to my university days in 1978-79, my last two major papers in university, including my Honours Thesis (which focused mainly on the activities of what I would now call 'The Central Ego'), providing the initial humanistic-existential and cognitive-problem-solving foundation for what is to follow -- without the Gestalt, Adlerian, and Psychoanalytic influences (the first two taking shape in the 1980s, and the Psychoanalytic influence being built up primarily over the last two or three years but stretching back into the 1980s as well when I started to study Object Relations, Narcissism, and Transference Theory.)
I am happy with my latest model of character structure and personality theory to the extent that I do not believe I will change this model, from hereon in. (However, I have said that before and made further changes.)
The model uses 20 different 'compartments' -- an inordinately large number by most standards considering Gestalt Therapy uses 2 compartmets (topdog and underdog), and Classical Psychoanalysis uses 3 compartments (ego, id, superego).
As large and cumbersome as my model may seem to many people, it is like many models in that it simply needs to be understood better to be used easier. There are basically three parts to the model: 1. is a 'Dialectic-Classical' model that integrates traumacy-seduction theory with drive-fantasy-wish theory -- in other words, all of Freud's work in Strachey's 24 Volume Complete Standard Edition of Freud's work; not just the work he did after 1897; 2. is an Object Relations-Transactional Analysis model that looks at 'ego-states' and 'specific ego-function' (and/or dysfunction) within or between each ego-state; 3. is a humanistic-existential model that aims at 'trumpeting and recovering' a 'humanistic-existential phenomenology of spirit' for the 21st century. This is largely a spirit of self-assertiveness and self-directedness, a spirit of self and social caring, a spirit of conscious, cognitive enlightenment and romantic-emotional-balance, a spirit of creative drive and in the process allowing ourselves to be spiritually created....
I look at the 'ego' as representing the 'whole self', 'the whole psyche'....with all the different 'ego-states' or 'ego-compartments' representing more 'specialized functions' of the work of the overall ego.
If we equate the ego with 'the whole self' -- which is the way that it was originally defined by German philosophers like Fichte, and one way that Freud defined it before 1923, but not after he wrote 'The Ego and The Id' in 1923 -- then an 'ego compartment' -- or 'ego state' -- can be defined as a particular 'part of the whole ego, or the whole self'.
Freud ran himself into a philosophical and psychological conundrum after he wrote The Ego and The Id in 1923. If 'the ego' by previous standards referred to 'the whole self', then what is 'the id'? -- a 'compartment' or 'department' in the self representing the 'non-self'? The 'it'? This reflects a 'dissociation' in the self, in the whole personality, allegedly even among healthy people. It is like we all allegedly have an 'alien' inside ourselves, even as we start life, and our 'alien' is allegedly our own 'life' and 'death' instincts.
Thus, we start out as 'man against himself' -- a man, or woman, whose own instincts are 'alien' to him or her. Even the so-called 'life' which includes the 'self-preserving' as well as the 'sexual' instincts are allegedly 'alien' to us because they are part of our 'id' which is our 'it' which is an allegedly 'foreign being' inside us that also creates our 'ego instincts' which means that even they must be 'foreign' to us -- allegedly speaking by Freud's 1923 philosophical and psychological perspective. It is like we are 'self-destructing' even as we begin life as a newborn baby -- before any 'trauma' even enters the situation (other than perhaps 'birth trauma').
How does Freud reconcile that, logically (or illogically) speaking, according to this perspective, we start life as an 'it', and then our 'it' turns into our 'I', while at the same time maintaining our 'it/id' status through the remainder of our life? And that our 'it' continues to 'psychologically feed' our 'I'? Freud has told us that our 'id' is full of internal contradictions.
Allegedly, one of these contradictions could be the contradiction between our 'it' and our 'I', but the fact that our 'it' allegedly contains all our 'life instincts' including our self-preservation, sexual, and ego instincts blurs the boundary line so much between our 'id' and our 'ego', that one wonders why even have a 'boundary line' at all? Why not just say that the 'id' is the precursor to the 'ego' and that both contain 'life' and 'death' instincts in similar and/or different formats? Or that 'the id' is a 'compartment' of 'the whole ego, the whole self'? Thus, the 'id' and 'the superego' become different 'specialized compartments' of the whole ego. Thus, we could talk about the 'Idian Ego', which upon consciousness, might become either 'The Hedonistic, Pleasure Ego' or 'The Narcissistic Ego'. Or -- since the 'id' contains all the life and death instincts, presumably this would mean that 'the id' -- being the 'energy system' of the personality -- feeds all the different 'ego-compartments' that we may want to talk about, including all aspects of 'the superego'.
Anyway you want to cut it, by Freud's own inherently contradictory definition, the so-called 'line of distinction' between 'the ego' and 'the id' becomes so blurred by this definition that it only makes sense that at some point we have to start to talk about the 'evolution of the id into the ego' -- and at this point, as contradictory as this may sound -- the concept of 'the ego-id', or 'the idian ego' makes complete sense. The ego essentially becomes the ultimate 'vicissitude' of the id.
Either that -- or as some, indeed many, psychoanalysts have already done -- you scrap the concept of 'the id' altogether.
We must keep in mind that such 'compartments' -- whether we are talking about 'the id' or 'the ego' or 'the superego' -- are essentially 'conceptual conveniences' -- they are essentially 'make-believe sub-realms of life' -- turned into ideas with boundaries inside our head that may or may not have any bearing on any type of 'empirical boundary' that we may, or may not, be able to physically see. Many concepts have 'metaphysical boundaries' -- like 'the id' and 'the ego' and 'the superego' -- which means that these are concepts that have boundaries that we have likely made up inside our own mind. Or at least someone did -- like Freud -- and we have chosen to follow suit -- or not.
These types of concepts with 'metaphysical boundaries' might also be referred to as 'functional fictions'. We draw boundaries where life doesn't -- mainly to help us make life easier to understand. Sometimes our 'conceptual and/or theoretical reductionism' is useful to us; and sometimes it is not.
In Freudian post-1920 terminology, ideas are essentially no different than people. They both carry 'death instincts' inside them which at a certain point, especially if we are not aware of them, 'cause' us to 'self-destruct'. Connect this to what Hegel wrote -- that 'every idea, every theory, carries the seeds of its own self-destruction'. The only way to avoid this is to carry multi-dialectic concepts and theories inside us that allow us to 'continue to evolve outwards' at the point where one theory loses its 'functional edge and importance', and another, usually bipolar concept and/or theory and/or paradigm picks up where the previous one left off. Then -- with our freshly evolving, multi-dialectic concept-theory-paradigm pulsating in our brain, we rise up -- like the Phoenix -- we don't self-destruct with the outdated or overmatched or one-sided 'Concept-Theory-Paradigm (CTP)' that we left behind because we were smart enough to see that it had lost its 'theoretical and practical importance' when it 'overstepped a boundary of life' -- the range and focus of its functionality.
Failing to see this, the results in practical, real life are evident every day....life 'zigs', we stay still, or 'zag'....and are left holding a bagful of conceptual and theoretical 'nothings'....Our theory doesn't match with real life processes, and thus, it breaks down because of its 'unpredictability' and 'dysfunctionality'....We need to move on and change generalizations, change theories, or at least modify them so that they can stand up under the test of life 'changing directions'....That's the biggest problem with one-sided, anal retentive theories: life moves on and our theories stay the same...
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We say -- 'Pay attention to this particular part of the ego because certain ego-functions are carried on here that significantly affect the working of the whole personality. These 'compartments' can also be viewed as 'departments' like the type of departments we might find in a large store or other type of commercial business or government institution.
Thus, 'The Nurturing Ego' carries out nurturing functions, 'The Dionysian-(hedonistic-pleasure) Ego' carries out functions aimed at sensual/sexual pleasure, 'the Righteous Ego' carries out righteous functions, 'the Distancing Ego' carries out distancing functions', 'the Narcissistic Ego' carries out narcissistic functions....and so on....And each of these conceptualized domains can 'split' into 'topdog/superego compartments' and 'underdog/underego states' based on contextual self-image perceptions. That is 5 different ego-states -- or 10 if you count the bipolar splits within each of these 5 ego states around the issue of 'power' and 'self-image'.
So really all I am doing here is expanding the Gestalt model and/or The Classical Freudian model, depending on which paradigm you may be more comfortable working inside of.
But again, we are talking about 'abstract, metaphysical concepts and boundaries' here; not empirically and physically based concepts like 'the brain' or 'the heart' or 'the liver'. You can't see a 'Narcissistic Ego' -- but you can metaphysically and abstractly 'classify' its presence from the type of behavior you witness in a person. If you see a 'lot of narcissistic behavior' at work in a particular person's personality, then you/I/we can 'infer' a 'dominant Narcissistic Ego' at work in this person's personality. Have we explained anything? Not really -- we have simply generalized our observations into a particular part of the personality that we have given a name to, in order to identify it, and help make people more aware of its 'metaphysical presence' and 'inferred resulting behavioral activity'. We can then go further in our 'psycho-analysis' by looking for what might be inferred as the 'etiological roots or causes' of this 'dominant narcissistic ego-activity' (either a narcissistic role model, or a 'pampered childhood', or perhaps a 'compensatory defensive line of activity' aimed at 'covering up' a weak underlying self-esteem' And alternatively, we can look at 'the teleological purpose' of the behavior -- i.e., what type of results is this type of behavioral activity aimed at achieving? Freud called this 'the whence' and 'the whither'.
Without counting all the 'Object Relations Splits', the first 11 compartments listed below are both realistic and idealistic. In other words, we can see how they work each and every day, in our small and large 'problem-solving' and 'conflict-resolving' endeavors, and also, we can see our 'arrival' at the 'idealistic humanistic-existential ego states' when our problem-solving and/or conflict-resolving endeavors reward us with 'the fruit of our labour' -- in the form of the celebration of positive, rewarding, self-fulfilling, self-nurturing, experience. This is what I call 'Nietzsche's Mountain'.
In contrast, the collapse of our self-confidence and problem-solving/conflict-resolving capabilities into a state of 'cognitive-emotional-humanistic-existential depression' -- is what I refer to as 'Nietzsche's Abyss'.
The last 11 ego-states or ego-compartments -- the 'top of the iceberg' if you will -- can be classified as follows:
20. Nietzsche's Mountain;
19. The Central-Executive Ego (Nietzsche's 'Tightrope' to Self-Empowerment, Being and Becoming');
18. The Public Persona Ego;
17. The Private-Shadow Ego;
16. The Romantic-Spiritual Ego;
15. The Anal-Schizoid-(Angry-Distancing or Abandoning) Ego;
14. The Oral-Phobic, Anxious Ego;
13. The Dionysian-Hedonistic Ego;
12. The Narcissistic Ego;
11. The Righteous-Apollonian (Constructive, Deconstructive, or Destructive) Ego;
10. The Oral-Receptive-(Nurturing-Altruistic) Ego;
Below these ego states or compartments listed above, we can find another set of evolving 'id-ego' states or compartments that can be viewed as 'precursors' to the ones listed above. These are:
9. The Dream and Fantasy Weaver;
8. Escaped or Released Vicissitudes of The Evolving Subconscious Id-Ego;
7. The Detaining Subconscious-Id-Ego Vault;
6. The Post-Transference, Subconscious-Id-Ego;
5. The Transference-Lifestyle Memory-Learning Templates;
4. The Pre-Transference, Evolving Subconscious-Id-Ego;
3. Nietzsche's Abyss;
2. The Evolving Subconscious-Id-Ego in The Womb;
1. The Genetic Potential (Humanistic-Existential) Self (or Id-Ego).
One of the most important distinctions between Classical Freudian Psychoanalysis and what has evolved here -- informally stated -- as, in effect, DGB Gestalt-Adlerian-Psychoanalytic (GAP) Theory, is that Freud defined and described his concept of 'the Id' in two different and largely mutually exclusive, incompatible ways: 1. as the 'reservoir' of our deepest, darkest instinctual drives, most notably, sex, and then, later aggression and destruction; and 2. as a further evolution of the previous theory -- the 'reservoir' of all 'life' and 'death' instincts, which more or less takes away the significance of Freud's previous dualism (before 1920) between the 'sexual (id) instincts' and the 'self-preservation (ego) instincts'. Now, since the concept of 'the id' didn't formally come into existence until 1923 (The Ego and The Id), Freud, more or less, conflated the two different ideas of the id into one definition and description, but not without newly created problems for his overall theory. With his definition of the id as the reservoir of all life and death instincts, Freud basically 'blurred the vision of the psycho-dynamic relationship between the id and the ego. Firstly, the ego is viewed as the largely 'conscious part of our self or Self' -- an 'organic, thinking, feeling entity' -- whereas the id is simply viewed as a more or less 'inorganic reservoir' -- which, I am sure, that is not how Freud wanted us to view it. The 'organic, psycho-dynamic component of the id, as technically described by Freud would seem to be 'the instincts' contained within the id; not the id itself. And/or 'the vicissitudes of the id'.
But when Freud started to include the 'ego-self-preservative-and-defensive-instincts' with the 'sexual' (Eros) and 'death-destructive' (Thantos) instincts, Freud had reached a state of conceptual and theoretical abstraction where more or less 'everything' had 'conflated' into the 'reservoir of the id', to the point where one had/has to say that the dualistic distinction between the id and the ego had/has essentially become non-existent or increasingly blurred.
The only fruitful way out of this Freudian conundrum, as I see it, is to say that 'the id is the precursor of the ego and indeed, the superego too', and that the id essentially evolves and mutates into all the various ego and superego splits, functions, states, compartments that I have conceptualized above -- and that we are perhaps better talking about 'ego-ego conflicts between the different ego-states', as well as perhaps 'id-id conflicts' between the evolving and contradicting parts of the id that later evolve and mutate into the different parts of the ego.
This is my justification for the use of the term 'the evolving id-ego' -- or 'The Subconscious-Id-Ego' within the confines of the subconscious personality; and the id-ego, or simply the ego, within the confines of the more conscious, self-aware, personality.
In my opinion, we are better viewing the ID as 'The Paradoxical, Impulsive-Defensive Ego' like the newborn baby that cries out of impulse and need -- or the frustration of such -- and 'spits out food' as a sure sign that the baby's 'Defensive-Detoxification System' is just as in place when it is born as its 'Impulse-Need-System' is. Both systems are vital to the newborn baby's -- and the adult ego's -- survival. If we are going to use the concept of 'the id' at all, then it should be viewed as a 'wholistic precursor of the ego'; not an 'It' that is buried in the unconscious like some form of 'alien being'...
Alienation, detachment, repression, dissociation...and all the rest of the defense mechanisms -- used outside of awareness -- are usually signs of 'neurosis' and/or 'psychopathology'; not 'psychological health'. 'Congruent wholism/holism' is usually a better sign of psychological health. And a newborn baby, and even a young todddler is generally born and functions in a 'congruently wholistic' style -- until either the forces of 'socialization' and/or 'narcissistic trauma' -- and the 'fixation' and 'defensive compensations' to this narcissistic trauma -- start to set in. Then you begin to see the evolution of what might be better called 'The Divided Self'.
When we move to Part 2 of my first part 'transference essay', we will be referring to what happens within #5. The Transference-Lifestyle Memory-Learning Templates. And this includes the impact of 'trauma fixation' and 'narcissistic-compensatory-defensive serial behavior patterns' to this trauma fixation.
It is to this essay, that we will next turn.
-- dgb, October 29, 2012.
-- David Gordon Bain
-- Dialectic Gap-Bridging Creations and Negotiations...
-- Are Still In Process...
