18 July 1959. Cogitations

(An inability to dream and hatred of common sense) implies (destructive attacks on all linking and anti-social acting out)

The anti-social acting out is an attempt to destroy the common sense which the patient cannot get rid of. In analysis it contributes to the danger of murderous attacks on the analyst. The analyst's common-sense interpretations are attacked by being seen and felt as sexual assaults. But does the patient really feel them as sexual assaults, or is this an instance of anti-social (i.e. anti-common-sense) attacks on common sense; a sort of ‘You're another’ retort to someone who is felt to frustrate?

Social-ism versus Narcissism = Frustration of all instincts.

The aimless wandering is described in terms such as, ‘down the road’ and, ‘I don't know why’. But these terms also give a lively impression of the protesting and bewildered parent who is suspicious but can get no relief for anxiety either through confirmation of anxiety, or final or even temporary dismissal of doubts. Is this his conscience playing up both him and me by being delinquent, by being a delinquent superego which knows just how to produce the maximum anxiety?

How does this link up with the common sense? The most obvious would be Freud's early super-ego which he equated or associated with social guilt. If this is so, Freud's denial of guilt before the Oedipal situation, except for social guilt, is a more fruitful theory than Melanie Klein's.1 But splitting attacks on the super-ego, common sense, would lead to a mass of super-egos – the bizarre objects I spoke of in ‘The Differentiation of the Psychotic from the Non-Psychotic Part of the

Personality’ ( [Volume VI]). It is a murderous super-ego. He rebels against it but it is itself delinquent.

What is the relationship between common sense, super-ego, narcissism?

The super-ego is certainly opposed to his existence: it is o