Narcissism, Echoism, Perfection, and Death: Towards a Structural Psychoanalysis

The drive has always been connected to an object in Freud's work, and characterizations of Freudian theory as being a one-person psychology have only replaced earlier ideological misreadings with new ones. For Freud, the ego and object drives, and the attempt to derive them from sexuality and aggression, must correspond to common language perceptions of individual motivations (Pederson, 2015). General motivations, like competing, cooperating, or seeking glory or harmony are inseparable from wanting to be seen as superior (not as inferior) or to be seen as good (not being disapproved of). A drive has its aim in the desired response of the object, and as Freud indicates in the quotation above, “only rarely” would we examine the individual in another way. Although I agree with Richards (1996), that psychoanalysis is the science of motivations, and with Mills (2004), that Freud's drive theory is “the paragon for potentially explaining all facets of intrapsychic and interpersonal phenomena,” no model of interpsychic motivations exists (p. 673). Freud often lamented the state of drive theory in his day, and things have not improved much since. I will show, however, that he gives

us several valuable reference points for the creation of such a model. His notions of the admixing of sexuality and aggression to form different social drives, different levels of relations to authority in the superego, and the individual becoming his own authority in narcissism allow for further inferences to be drawn.

I will begin this article by introducing the ego and object drives and show how, in Freud's late phase, aggression or the destructive drive is seen as the basis for competitiveness. I will make the case for two phases of ego drive competitiveness (a maternal and paternal) with the latter being derived from having the admixture of Eros. Next, I will show how this competitiveness is an ideal which references a negative parental object of perfection that forms the superego. The “demands for perfection” from the superego and the resulting inferiority feelings when one does not win or triumph are formed at four different levels of psychosexual development (Pederson, 2015, 2018). I then use one meaning of narcissism in Freud's texts to explain that one withdraws authority/perfection from the superego objects and to become one's own authority. However, I build upon this with Melanie Klein's concept of projective identification (PI) to highlight that one replays the ego injury or trauma underlying the defense with an object that represents the self. I will offer examples of repetition with a superego authority and illustrate how id impulses underlay them. Next, I will expand on the relation to authority through Freud's concept of psychic bisexuality to show that along with the active-competitive-defiant relation to authority, there is also a passive-cooperative-submissive relation that arises from Eros.

My central contribution will be to argue that sexuality creates a negative parental imago of death that forms the superego for the passive-cooperative pole of the personality. I will show how sexuality in Freud ranges over affection, romantic love, helping others in an altruistic ego drive, as well as the most spiritual devotion and the most frivolous interest we take in things. Then, from Freud's notion of how suggestibility emerges from the “need of being in harmony,” I oppose the power principle of the active pole with the belonging principle of the passive pole. Next, I explicate the negative status of death in Freud's work and argue for the primacy of death as a parental object, which solves the problem of how the perception of one's own death arises. In parallel to perfection in the active pole, death plays a part in the imperative to belong and PI with

death is central in maternal depersonalization and paternal inhibited character. I will show that this binary previously existed in the literature as the opposition between narcissism and masochism, but argue that the use of masochism is problematic. The binary of narcissism and echoism will be offered up so that the passive pole can be appreciated on its own terms. The imago of death has important connections to id affectionate impulses of restoration. They show that it isn't the loss or absence of the object, but the representation of the imago as outside of life and able to return that is at stake. In parallel with the perfection imago, the relations of the death imago will be explicated across the four levels of psychosexual development and the admixing of perfection in the paternal phase. I will use a clinical example to show that masochistic id impulses are part of passive pole phenomena, but will argue that it is likely that a primary aggression is forced upon oneself because love is stronger in this pole.

Building on the death imago, I argue that this negative object is itself negated by what Klein (1975) calls “the good object.” Various forms of “people pleasing,” “turning the other cheek,” and repetitions of sacrificing, rescuing, and protecting are linked to this superego object. With this in place, a model of the intermixture of the two poles across a phase of primary narcissism and a phase of secondary narcissism will be given. Object drives move from literal sexual desire in primary narcissism to love in secondary narcissism with the inverse of this occurring on the passive pole. I coin the term active-affection to complement the trait of passive-aggression and use relations with children to illustrate them. In the ego drives the attitudes of contemporary political positions are used to highlight the qualitative differences as needs for belonging enter the active pole and power enters the passive one.

Aggression and the Ego Drives

In Beyond the Pleasure Principle Freud (1920) announces that what were formally self-preservative drives were now regarded as having a libidinal basis. Before this, Freud described the relationship between the ego and object drives as oppositional, replacing an earlier polarity of the self-preservative and the sexual drives. The ego and object drives corresponded to Freud's interest to go beyond biology and to take into account the 'psychological ego” (Freud, 1920, p. 51). The ego drives still include hunger, but interpsychic motivations like “self-assertion,” “mastery,” egoism and

altruism, “the will to power,” and “magnification of the individual” are added (1913c, p. 73, 1917a, p. 137; 1917b, p. 148; 1920, p. 39; 1933a, p. 96). In one way, basic impulses like hunger keep one alive and are necessary to grow, and their inclusion with the life drives seems uncontroversial. In another way, I understand Freud's inclusion of self-preservation with the life drives to reference a sense of healthy competition with others as a form of attachment or affiliation. Competing with others is a way in which some individuals engage with individuals and/or groups and is therefore also references union in Eros. Fears to compete with others or holding oneself in higher esteem than one's work merits can remove the individual from interaction with others.

Some readers may be surprised by this formulation of the ego drives because their ties to self-preservation and hunger have most frequently been emphasized. Additionally, Freud has some statements that might appear to contradict this conceptualization at first glance. For example, Freud (1926a) refers to “the so-called ‘ego-instincts’, which are directed towards self-preservation, and the ‘object-instincts’, which are concerned with relations to an external object” (p. 265). However, there are two issues with this formulation. First, in other places he writes that the object is “brought to the ego from the external world in the first instance by the instincts of self-preservation” (Freud 1915b, p. 136). Thus, even if one tries to regard the pre-1920 dominance of hunger as not having a regard for an object, Freud has other passages which point to the ego drives as advancing the child through development, while the harmony found in sexuality does not force change. Second, regardless of whether ego or object drives might lead the way, Freud (1926b) writes that the “social instincts are not regarded as elementary or irreducible” (p. 265). “By the admixture of erotic components,” Freud (1915a) writes, “the egoistic instincts are transformed into social ones” (p. 283). In other words, self-preservation moves from its original sense of bodily desires, to the social level of self-assertion, magnification of the individual, etc., that finds its object in the preservation of one's reputation (Pederson, 2015, 2018).

Ultimately, I have defined the ego and object drives as roughly relating to work or public life and romantic or private life, respectively (Pederson, 2015, 2018). A parallelism between them is easily visible. For example, a man can feel jealousy that his girlfriend views another man as more

desirable or superior to him, and feel “jealousy,” or envy, that one of his friends makes more money or will get a promotion. Both have objects, both are triangular, and both can lead to anxiety situations and id impulses of aggression.

Although Freud (1920) withdrew the idea that the death drive was the basis of the ego drives, after 1920, he quietly puts forward this idea again. Freud (1924) begins to reference the externalized death drive or “the destructive instinct,” as basis for “the instinct for mastery, or the will to power” when they had previously been linked to self-preservation (p. 163). This view is a return to the earlier formulation that “[h]ate, as a relation to objects, is older than love” when Freud (1915a) investigated the role of ego-instincts in creating the object (p. 139). Although he regarded this hate, “which is admixed with love,” as having its source in the self-preservative drives, at that time, post-1920 hate and aggression are explicitly part of the destructive drive (p. 139). The centrality of the destructive drive as the new ingredient that is mixed with Eros is explicit in later writings like ‘Why War?’ (1933b); Freud writes of love and hate and how:

the phenomena of life arise from the concurrent or mutually opposing action of both. Now it seems as though an instinct of the one sort can scarcely ever operate in isolation; it is always accompanied—or, as we say, alloyed—with a certain quota from the other side, which modifies its aim or is, in some cases, what enables it to achieve that aim. Thus, for instance, the instinct of self-preservation is certainly of an erotic kind, but it must nevertheless have aggressiveness at its disposal if it is to fulfil its purpose. So, too, the instinct of love, when it is directed towards an object, stands in need of some contribution from the instinct for mastery if it is in any way to obtain possession of that object. The difficulty of isolating the two classes of instinct in their actual manifestations is indeed what has so long prevented us from recognizing them. (pp. 209-210, emphasis mine)

Freud's thoughts on the destructive drive and hate have a prima facie plausibility. The risks a person can take to conquer in war, or to ambitiously gain power in any other pursuit in which war metaphors work (sports, business, etc.), require something else be added to self-preservation.

Otherwise, accumulating wealth or resources should stop once the basic needs of an individual and her dependents are met. However, while many could agree that some aggressiveness could be necessary to make it to the top in business or sports, Freud's thoughts on aggressiveness in romantic relations might cause some people to recoil1. But consider a common complaint made by some timid male patients about how they often end up in “the friend zone” and that women are attracted to “assholes.” It is corroborated by some female patients who complain about unassertive men who don't make a move on them, or who are with nice men whom they do not feel very attracted to. Of course, this is not universal, but Freud's claim here is that one might need to be aggressive if one wants to secure social prestige, and that one might have to be persistent and dominating to secure some love objects.

There is also a philosophy of language argument for the link of competitiveness and aggression. If we follow common language, being aggressive, cutthroat, combative, rivalrous, antagonistic, or having a killer instinct are synonymous with competitiveness. This language use is further reflected in social media in which competition between two speakers in YouTube videos, for example, will be characterized by one debater being destroyed, annihilated, or some variation of this. Instead of literal destruction, being triumphant in a debate, thwarting someone who wants to cut you off while driving, or stubbornly resisting good advice can be examples of “winning” that destroys the intended effects of another's will. Additionally, being “owned” is a colloquial expression for dominating an opponent, and communicates that one's rival is demoted from being an equal or challenger to being a plaything with whom one is entertaining oneself.

In Hesiod's description of Eris there is a two-phase construction that is valuable for illustrating two types of competition. The first phase fosters war and cruelty and the second appears as shame in not wanting to be seen as inferior and wanting to be seen as doing well in one's trade or profession. Hesiod (1920) writes:

So, after all, there was not one kind of Strife alone, but all over the earth there are two. As for the one, a man would praise her when

1. The instinct for mastery is defined as cruelty in the social sphere and is paired with sexual sadism (Freud 1917b, p. 327; 1913b, p. 322).

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he came to understand her; but the other is blameworthy: and they are wholly different in nature. For one fosters evil war and battle, being cruel: her no man loves; but perforce, through the will of the deathless gods, men pay harsh Strife her honor due. But the other is the elder daughter of dark Night, and the son of Cronos who sits above and dwells in the aether, set her in the roots of the earth: and she is far kinder to men. She stirs up even the shiftless to toil; for a man grows eager to work when he considers his neighbor, a rich man who hastens to plough and plant and put his house in good order; and neighbor vies with his neighbor as he hurries after wealth. This Strife is wholesome for men. And potter is angry with potter, and craftsman with craftsman, and beggar is jealous of beggar, and minstrel of minstrel. (11-24)

In the first example of strife, in war, which I take in both the literal and metaphorical sense, one has a basic antagonism towards others and experiences delight in cruel competition with them2. One of my court mandated patients disclosed how he viewed himself as “a shark” that must “keep going and never stop.” He expressed that if his bosses knew what he was thinking they would “be afraid,” and “know their jobs [wer]en't safe.” This patient was ruthless, but not grandiose. He could appreciate learning from others, but he did not feel gratitude, nor show strong interest in the trade itself; he was simply aiming at power as defined by having wealth, a good-looking romantic partner, and a position of prestige. As with several of the drug dealers I have seen in therapy, conscious motivations of power seeking are up front and center with such borderline patients.

In the second form of Eris, envy and jealousy appear under a possible identification with one's profession due to an admixture of Eros. Instead of power-seeking, there is the sense that one's way of doing things is better than how others do things, or there's some shame when one compares one's work-life to others. Envy or possessiveness in this domain is described as “wholesome” by Hesiod. The conquering impulse is softened

so that one wants to appear competent, knowledgeable in one's area, conscientious, and responsible. Freud (1911, p. 61; 1914, p. 96; 1922, p. 10) often identifies the entry of Eros into the development of boys with homosexual desire towards the father, and its ties to friendship, comradery, and an interest in ethical life. There is a dialectical meeting of the high ego ideal of ambition with the new high ego ideal for one's reputation as a good person, a good employee, and good steward of one's craft. In previous work, I have identified the former power seeking with the maternal imago and its combination with competency and conscientiousness as the influence of the paternal imago (Pederson, 2018)3.

Ego Drives in Relation to the Superego as Perfection

Competitiveness has an important reference point in the superego. Distinct levels of authority that relate to an increasing ambitiousness, along with narcissistic defense of becoming one's own authority are conceptualized through the ego ideal aspect of the superego. This may sound strange for readers who identify the superego with conscience, but this narrow interpretation of the agency is not to be found in Freud's texts. He is explicit that:

it is more prudent to keep the agency as something independent and to suppose that conscience is one of its functions and that self-observation, which is an essential preliminary to the judging activity of conscience, is another of them. And since when we recognize that something has a separate existence we give it a name of its own, from this time forward I will describe this agency in the ego as the “super-ego.” (Freud, 1933, p. 60; 1914, p. 95; 1919a, p. 235; , p. 97; 1921, pp. 109-110)

Self-observation means that one can judge oneself as shameful, guilty, or bad in a moral sense but motivationally, one can also judge oneself

as weak, impotent, a failure, a loser, etc. (Lewis, 1971; Pederson, 2015, 2018). Freud generally associates measuring oneself from the ego ideal with inferiority tensions, but self-observations go beyond evaluating one's sense of power, skill at something, or one's successes (Freud, 1921, pp. 131-132; 1923a, pp 50-51; 1933a, pp. 65-66, 78). To regard oneself as boring, as being ugly, as being weird, as being alone and vulnerable, etc. are also examples of superego self-criticism. But what I would like to focus on in this section is the concept of ambition and Freud's idea of perfection in the ego ideal and its derivation from the representation of one's parents. Freud (1933) writes:

One more important function remains to be mentioned which we attribute to this super-ego. It is also the vehicle of the ego ideal by which the ego measures itself, which it emulates, and whose demand for ever greater perfection it strives to fulfil. There is no doubt that this ego ideal is the precipitate of the old picture of the parents, the expression of admiration for the perfection which the child then attributed to them. (pp. 64-65)

To attain success is to approximate the ideal of perfection. Freud is careful to note that this ideal is generated by the representations of the parents and is attributed to them. This attribution is important because it means that the infant is not taken to have adult intellectual powers— as if it were studying its parents' behavior and perceiving their power in contrast to its own. Instead, in earlier work, Freud (1920) identifies the idea of perfection as a negative quality. He naturalistically denies the existence of some innate idea of perfection and instead holds that it is formed by a

repressed instinct [which] never ceases to strive for complete satisfaction… [and] provides the driving factor which will permit of no halting at any position attained, but, in the poet's words, [‘Presses ever forward unsubdued.’] …with no prospect of bringing the process to a conclusion or of being able to reach the goal. (1920, p. 42)

As a negative quality, an individual may have moments when he feels that an achievement or success has allowed him to triumph and reach perfection, but this feeling cannot be sustained. A new goal, a new amount of money, another skill set, or some new achievement will become the next

embodiment of perfection4. The perfection demanded by the superego is dynamically related to ego ideal self-criticism. In other words, one is not free to choose perfection, because to not strive for it will be paired with inferiority feelings, self-hate, or incompetency feelings.

There is an important corollary to defining the superego by this perfection: there is not just one form of perfection. The child “has a different estimate of its parents at different period of its life,” Freud (1933) writes; “the super-ego… has been determined by the earliest parental imagos” (p. 64). The child encounters parental authority in psychosexual development, and forms an imago of perfection that becomes a placeholder for authority in the cultural life outside of the home. Freud (1924) writes:

The course of child-hood development leads to an ever-increasing detachment from parents, and their personal significance for the super-ego recedes into the background. To the imagos they leave behind there are then linked the influences of teachers and authorities, self-chosen models and publicly recognized heroes, whose figures need no longer be introjected by an ego which has become more resistant. The last figure in the series that began with the parents is the dark power of Destiny which only the fewest of us are able to look upon as impersonal… (p. 168)

In psychosexual development, ego cognition slowly develops from birth and forms increasingly complex representations of the parents, people, and the non-human environment. In previous writings, I have sketched out a four-level model to capture these superego relations to perfection and authority (Pederson, 2015, 2018). At the height of the phallic Oedipus complex, in which the most complex representation of the parents exists, the child sees them as vastly reduced in perfection from how he did in earlier development. Their authority at this point is comparable to the community level view of the authority of one's boss or teacher in which some idealization of them still exists, but they can also be

viewed as having normal problems and human frailties or failings. The earlier imagos, from earlier forms of the Oedipus complex, represent an increasing magnitude of perfection and authority. For example, beyond the community, there are people with ties to the upper classes and there is a visible pyramid structure in our institutions and corporations that lead to a national level of public recognition. CEOs, athletes, celebrities, professors at Ivy League institutions, and everyone else who becomes “publicly recognized” are salient. Then, the magnitude increases from being nationally recognized, to being a world-historical individual who will live on in history books for contributions to one's profession, for the record one set in one's sport, (etc.). At this stage, authority begins to be mixed with the supernatural. The “great” people who reach this level can be represented as being super-human, magical, or uncanny in their ability. Then, as Freud points to, authority and perfection can expand to a spiritual hierarchy that reaches the height of Destiny, Fate, or God5.

Along with denoting different levels of ambition that an individual may have, these levels also show up in examples of psychopathology. For example, there are people who suffer from narcissism or grandiosity, and who believe they are geniuses although they have never published any work, made an invention, or done anything that corroborates this. Instead of striving to achieve their ego ideal, they usurp the place of the parental imago which provides the estimate of perfection which is housed in the superego6. Freud (1914) references this process in how

“megalomania itself is no new creation… it is… the narcissism which arises through the drawing in of object-cathexes [and] a secondary one” (p. 74)7. In other words, authority, power, or perfection was originally in the superego object, and to withdraw the transference to it and put oneself in its place is secondary. However, in my clinical experience, this ego defense is never performed in an atomistic way. When one becomes the parental imago, one will make an object, even intrapsychically, feel the ego injury which originally caused the ego defense. I identify this with Klein's concept of projective identification (PI).

Along with maternal narcissism or grandiosity there is also paternal narcissism or PI that links to what has been classically called compulsive, rigid, or industrious/over-focused character (Reich, 1990, , ). The grandiosity of believing oneself to be God, a world-historical individual, someone more famous or important in the culture, or that one or one's family is looked up to and important to the community is a fairly obvious progression. However, identification with a profession and compulsive “workaholism” doesn't have obvious links to other compulsive expressions, and some clinical experience is needed to see them. Stages of paternal PI are linked to compulsively doing something that takes into account developing ego cognition in psychosexual development. The ideal of feeling like one must have the best way of doing things in simple tasks, must be more organized and efficient, or must have one's bearings or be aware of one's environment are examples. They reference such things as Time and Space that are also a part of the imago's attributes and form an important part of psychopathology (Searles, 1960, Pederson, 2015, 2018).

Although the imago placeholder will take on content from one's particular

culture, what are important are the human relations that can take place with authority and are shared across cultures. Freud (1924) writes, “all who transfer the guidance of the world to Providence, to God, or to God and Nature… still look upon these ultimate and remotest powers as a parental couple… and believe themselves linked to them by libidinal ties. (p.168). When one works with a patient who has had something tragic happen to herself or a loved one, she can sometimes express this through being angry with God. Within the plaints of depressed patients who talk about the pointlessness, or purposelessness of life, I began to hear a criticism against a God who had made the world in this way. It became important to make this preconscious relation to God conscious so that the “libidinal ties” could be explored and take the patient back to the actual interpsychic relation that began to be played out at this deeper level of authority9.

I have developed what I call ego and object (E&O) statements to elicit feelings and thoughts about others, or about oneself from the point of view of others, to link current libidinal ties (or repetitions) to past instances. By asking the patient to repeat the statements to see if he had felt this way about someone in his past, the original ego injury can be found. Then, I use the bilateral stimulation (BLS) of EMDR to help the patient focus on bodily sensations to get to the specific id impulses that originate in idiosyncratic zones of the body (Pederson, 2018). The ego injury, or trauma, caused overstimulating emotions and the link to the imagos formed in psychosexual development is found in the id drives of aggression or affection. A person can feel anger, for example, in her hands and want to hit or choke, or in her legs and want to kick, but sometimes anger will show up in the chest, the eyes, the shoulders, etc. and zones in which there is not a practical expression. It can only come out of these zones in a fantastical way. Feeling like the anger wants to explode out of one's stomach, a beam of light wants to shoot from one's chest, ectoplasm wants to emerge from one's throat, and many more idiosyncratic forms are quite common to me now. I ask the person to feel how the anger wants to come out of the zone and to picture himself expressing it in his

mind's eye upon the object until it is discharged. For some people verbalization accompanies the physical act and seems important, and for others it is less so. The pictured effect of the aggression upon the person, place, or thing is often a part of the release. I conceptualize this as the repressed aggression having been turned upon the self and that its effect upon the imaginal other gives us a sense for what aggression had been doing to a part of oneself.

In some cases, I ask individuals to superimpose images over or into the relevant bodily zones and if they feel that their body accepts and begins to map onto the image or symbol, they fully embed it (Pederson, 2018). After expression of the id impulse, there is sometimes a further step of getting past the destruction by letting oneself imagine a new symbol. I would like to give an example of a patient who transferred much more intense feelings of being controlled onto the authority figure of probation and got to the relevant id impulse and the creation of a new symbol:

Client talks about the fear she has about missing another drug test. She has a sense of “impending doom” and “When is it going to happen?” She blames her memory problems, and discusses missing her drug test, as “more hiccups” in her life— a life in which she increasingly doesn't feel a sense of control over. She then gets into how probation is “over [her]… controlling [her], telling [her] what to do.” She rhetorically asks, “Will I ever be done [with the program] and get my freedom?” Because of past work I ask her to say these things about her ex-husband as E&O statements (he is over her, controlling her, telling her what to do, and when will she ever be done with him and get her freedom) and to see if they feel true to say. She quickly identifies that they feel true and talks about “letting him control things” when they were married. I begin BLS and ask her to see if there's a specific memory she goes to or a strong reaction in her body. After BLS, she talks about how “if [she would have] stood up for [her]self, it [wouldn't have been] as bad as [she] thought it would be” and already appears to be processing it. I resume BLS and ask her to tell me what her body says. After, she reports anger in her chest and tells me that she was picturing her ex in their house about 4 years ago. I ask her to see how the anger in her chest wants to come out. After BLS she tells me that it wants to come out as a “sonic boom” and she pictures “sound waves” coming

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out with her yelling. I ask her to let it fully be expressed, and to say any words that go with it, until she feels that she's done with anger. After BLS she tells me that she pictured yelling at him and that he, the whole house, and “the whole environment was destroyed.” She tells me that she was standing alone and around her was “just dirt.” I ask her to look at the destruction and to see if her body has any reaction to it. After BLS, she tells me that she still feels a reaction in her chest, but that the anger is gone. I ask her to superimpose the desert-like environment inside of her chest and to see if it feels right (if she feels like her sensations want to map onto it and accept it there)? During BLS, she tells me that it feels right and I tell her to keep picturing it there until it feels fully embedded. After BLS, she tells me that there's an empty and “barren” feeling in her chest. I ask her to picture the environment and imagine the effects of time on it and see if the environment wants to change, on its own. After BLS, she tells me that she pictured the rain eventually came and that sprouts formed in the ground. I ask her to let this continue and see what the new landscape wants to become. After BLS, she says that she saw “trees and plants spreading around” and pictures her family there. I ask her to keep looking at this and to see if the feeling can spread around into other parts of her body. After BLS, she tells me that she feels a “calm,” and “relieved” throughout her body.

This patient had very strong feelings of being controlled from an early parental imago that she transferred onto the people associated with her probation. I knew that nothing had changed in how her probation officer was treating her and that we had been working through the ego injuries the came from her controlling and abusive ex-husband, and so I anticipated where her transference came from. However, with most other cases I simply ask for the patient's own associations to the statements in order to get to the relevant figure from the past. This patient's id aggression of a “sonic boom” that destroys not just the person, but also everything in external Space, is one I have encountered with several patients now. Its expression, and work with the rebirth of the land, resulted in no future complaints about feeling controlled by probation again.

I would like to offer up a vignette that operationalizes an authority imago in a different way. Although, for the sake of length, I will leave out the full processing of it:

Client shares that his girlfriend doesn't want him to have friends of the opposite sex, but although he raised the issue, he quickly backs off from it. He tells me that he doesn't care really if she wants this, and doesn't want to add stress. He then gets into something totally unrelated about seeing “weird sequences in numbers” in books, on a streetlight, and in other things. He talks about it as “playing that game” and doesn't represent it as something that is necessarily obsessive or pathological. After, he repeats the phrase “playing a game” and then refers to “the game of life.” Client has shared about playing a lot of video games, and I ask him if it feels any different when playing them, and the number game, in contrast to when he plays the game of life? Client tells me that he “feel[s] good at games but do[es]n't in life.” He tells me that friends and acquaintances “ask [him] for advice” in video games and that while he feels adequate in this domain, he “suck[s] a lot in life.” He then backs off of the self-criticism to say that there are a lot of “pointless rules” in life. In life “you have to play games to get ahead, to succeed” but people are “fed into the system,” and “society is controlling.” “If you don't do this, if you don't fit the mold” he says in a serious voice, “we have no use for you.”

I ask client to think about “the system” as if there was a person who orchestrates it and pulls the strings. I ask him what he would say about a person who designed society in this way? Client responds, that he would be “greedy,” “careless,” and that he imagines that the person “surrounds himself with people to make him appear more valid or important,” although he is “undeserving,” and “not smart enough.” I ask client to reflect on these as E&O statements and to tell me who comes to mind from his past. Client tells me that his best friend from high school comes up. I ask him to focus on him and to tell me what memory of him comes to the fore and what reaction he has in his body. After BLS, Client tells me that he feels it in his stomach and his “gut is wrenching.” I ask him to keep his eyes closed and see if there's an emotional tone to it. After, Client tells me that the sensation is “tinged with anger.” He tells me that others saw this friend as “charismatic and funny” but that his friend was a liar and likely “a sociopath or something,” and lied about small things he didn't have to “like a klepto steals when they have money.”

The libidinal ties my patient had with ‘the system’ were able to become personalized into thoughts and feelings about an Oedipal figure that he was then able to match with someone from his past. In a similar way, someone who complains about how the world is or what life is like is able to get to thoughts about the God that made things this way. Although my patient's friend was not an authority figure in any traditional sense, I have come to see that ego injuries can move between spheres. One with a past romantic partner in the object drives can be repeated with one's boss in the ego drives, or vice versa.

Psychic Bisexuality

So far, we have only examined the ego drives and authority as they relate to power and perfection. Freud's concept of psychic bisexuality recognizes this as the active pole of the human personality, but also contrasts it with a passive pole that has a different motivational pattern and relation to authority. While gender, or masculinity and femininity, is appreciated as a “sociological” construct by Freud he still stresses how individual psychology, understood as the economics of libido, is more important than the sociological factors (Freud, 1930, pp. 83-84)10. In other words, despite attempts by parents, and later by authority figures like bosses or teachers to reward and punish children to have certain beliefs and personality qualities, the child's personality, as developed from the psychosexual stages and later ego defenses, is primary. Parents can strive to mold their children, but the personalities of siblings can be vastly different. Moreover, in some cultural time periods, and within different classes of society, very little active molding can occur.

Freud (1913a) considers bisexuality to be “among the clinical postulates of psycho-analysis” and has scattered remarks about the active-passive binary throughout his writing (p. 182). He (1923b) contrasts “two sets of emotional impulses… opposed to each other… impulses of an affectionate and submissive nature, but also hostile and defiant one” (p. 85). He (1933a) holds that the two poles “are completely ambivalent, both affectionate and of a hostile and aggressive nature” (p. 120). The drive for mastery, which was mentioned above, is identified as masculine by Freud and fits within the active-competitive-defiant pole (1905, p. 198, p. 1913b, p. 322, p. 1917b, p. 327). In contrast, Freud originally defines “feminine mental qualities” as traits such as “shyness,” “modesty,” and “need for instruction and assistance” in a passive-cooperative-submissive pole but later moved away from classifying traits and motivations as masculine or feminine (1905, p.144). Instead, Freud (1933) points out that activity and possessing more musculature or greater size is not always found in the males of other species of animals and this binary is not written into the laws of nature (p. 115). “For psychology the contrast between the sexes fades away into one between activity and passivity,” he writes, “though anatomy, it is true, can point out the characteristic of maleness and femaleness, psychology cannot” (Freud, , p. ).

Regardless of a possible connection to biological sex (within the human species), what is important for Freud's drive metapsychology is how the relations to authority also reference Eris and Eros11. We have already seen the link of Eris, and Freud (1921) pairs passive-submissiveness with aim-inhibited sexuality when he says that the latter “contains an additional element of paralysis derived from the relation between someone with superior power and someone who is without power and helpless” (p. 115). Additionally, when discussing suggestibility in hypnotism, Freud (1905) references a submissiveness that goes along with the “masochistic components of the sexual instincts” (p. 150; 1921, pp. 114, 125); thus, males or females who are on the passive pole and show more submissive traits, more affection, and more suggestibility are dominantly

erotic. Those that show more competition, more anger, and more defiance towards authority are more dominantly eristic.

Eros

Now that we've seen the passive pole's relation to authority, I would like to examine sexuality more thoroughly in Freud's work. After discussing the features that are present in both poles I will turn to the passive-altruistic drives. I will oppose the active pole's principle of power with the principle of belonging and, in parallel to the former, a maternal and paternal expression will be isolated. These two phases of the passive pole and their relation to the passive parental imago will be explored in the next few sections.

Freud invokes the concept of both ‘Eros’ and the usage of love in German (which also works in English) for the wide expression of sexuality (1921, pp. 90-91;1930, p. 102). The Greek Eros more formally captures different types of love in friendship, the family, and God, but there is a wider use of the German or English verb to love. For example, constructions like ‘taking a lover’ and ‘to make love,’ show its relation to sex, but it can also be seen in constructions like, “I love music,” “I love hiking,” and “I love pizza.” Love can be used for a felt connection with the most spiritual and ethereal objects as well as the most mundane and frivolous. However, in most of his writings Freud (1921) prefers to reference the wide use of love in Eros through sexuality “to avoid concessions to faintheartedness” (p. 91); he uses the term aim-inhibited sexuality, which, as mentioned above, is often an expression of the passive-submissive pole of the personality. “To this class belong in particular,” Freud (1923c) writes, “the affectionate relations between parents and children, which were originally fully sexual, feelings of friendship, and the emotional ties in marriage” (p. 258; 1911; 1914; 1921; 1930). Aim-inhibited sexuality, or love, comes into the object drives of the active pole at later stages of development and in sections 8 and 9 below I will discuss the synthesis of the two poles, but, for this section, I will keep to general ideas on sexuality or their passive pole expression.

Calling love aim-inhibited sexuality does not seem controversial to me. Although such a formulation might bring up derogatory labels like pan-sexualism, we can note that in sexed animals there are varying amounts of affection, sociality, and hierarchical structure. The

foundational relatedness that they all share is sex, and to refer the increased sociality of some animals as relating to this base is a logical inference. Moreover, when Freud calls attention to the transformation of literal sexual desire into aim-inhibited sexuality there are two corollaries to consider. First, I understand him to mean that as our genetic cousins, the bonobos, show, sexuality was originally expressed very widely at some prehistoric period in humans12. Therefore, it is likely that human culture or ethical life stepped in to enforce the renunciation of it, which forced sublimation. However, along with this forced sublimation, Freud (1923c) also notes that aim-inhibited impulses “are held back by internal resistances” (p. 258). Bonobos, as well as other higher primates, show affectionate behavior without having something resembling the civilization of humans. As we will see in the last two sections, before literal sexual desire emerges in the object drive, there are still component drives in earlier psychosexual development that manifest in affectionate ways, such as hugging, wanting to be in the other's loving gaze, wanting one's skin caressed, (etc.)13.

So far, the examples have pertained more to one's object drives or private life and there is still a question of how the passive ego drives are expressed. Freud generally uses the term love as a catch-all on this account, since devotion in love “is no longer to be distinguished from a sublimated devotion to an abstract idea” (1921, p. 131). However, he (1913c, 1917b, 1930) also uses the term altruism in contrast to the egoistic drives aligned with active pole. In his most precise statement Freud (1917b) also shows how the passive-altruistic ego drives can come into conflict with object drives:

The opposite to egoism, altruism, does not, as a concept, coincide

12. “The rate of sexual interactions is higher among bonobos than chimpanzees… sexual interactions among bonobos occur in every possible partner combination regardless of age or gender with the notable exception incest among siblings. These interactions reflect a much broader sexual lexicon in bonobos than in chimpanzee; in addition to vaginal, bonobos utilize oral and manual stimulation in a variety of copulation positions…” (de Waal, 1995).

13. Ultimately, even these component drives still have ties to sexuality in the form of the initial id erotic-object choice from which the ego is formed out of the id (Freud, 1920, p. 42; 1923a, pp. ).

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with libidinal object-cathexis, but is distinguished from it by the absence of longings for sexual satisfaction. When someone is completely in love, however, altruism converges with libidinal object-cathexis. As a rule, the sexual object attracts a portion of the ego's narcissism to itself, and this becomes noticeable as what is known as the ‘sexual overvaluation’ of the object. (p. 418)

Here the absence of longings for sexual satisfaction no doubt references the shyness and modesty that Freud had formerly identified as feminine. Additionally, as we saw in the last section, the overvaluation of the object in romantic love also connects to the overvaluation of one's boss, teacher, or authority figure in the ego drives. Chasseguet-Smirgel (1970) explores this in a study of women who attempt to complement an authority figure as “the right hand, the assistant, the colleague, the secretary, the auxiliary, the inspiration for an employer…” (p. 124). I will further take up this expression of altruism, as assisting in the perfection of others, in section 6. However, as we saw in section 1, with Eros coming into the active pole to soften the expression of Eris in the paternal phase, a reference to the power of the object is a similar admixture of Eris into the passive pole. The question is what the earlier maternal phase of altruism might be?

In previous work (Pederson, 2015), I have argued for the importance of not defining the passive pole in regards to power, and put forward that the principle of belonging as the best candidate. I have since come to appreciate the prominence that others have given the concept (Horney, 1939; Fromm, 1941; Jacobson, 1959). Although Freud (1921) does not formally use the term in this instance, he captures what is at stake in it:

if an individual gives up his distinctiveness in a group and lets its other members influence him by suggestion, it gives one the impression that he does it because he feels the need of being in harmony with them rather than in opposition to them—so that perhaps after all he does it [‘for their sake’/‘for love of them’] (p. 92; 1930, p. 103)

Freud captures the principle of belonging as a silent imperative to be like others in the group and lose one's distinctiveness or desires. In the public life of the ego drives it would signify having a cooperative, or “go with the flow” attitude instead of a competitive one. The desire for harmony can

also invoke how such individuals don't like to see fighting, anger, or discord among others, although, finding oneness with others is a deeper formulation than talking about an individual's agreeableness or discomfort in watching others argue. Freud (1923a) relates that passive individuals who have “had many experiences in love there seems to be no difficulty in finding vestiges of their object-cathexes in the traits of their character” (p. 29). In the tendency to find oneness with others, in both the ego and object drives, the impulse of active mastery is opposed by an impulse of passive mimicry (Pederson, 2015). Moreover, just as power-seeking has distinct levels of ambition, so too does mimicry show a progression. “Copycat” or “chameleon” is visible in the surrender of the mind over to the hypnotist in which one can completely act from another's agency instead of one's own. Along with suggestibility, pre-consciously copying the style, the phrases, the tones, and the mannerisms of others and one's environment is salient at early levels14. Then, at later levels, mimicry can involve more complicated pursuits like copying the profession of a parent or the individual can adopt the signs, or consumer styles, of group member in families, classes, or subcultures.

The passive harmony that Freud identifies here reminds me of Winnicott's (1971) formulation of being vs. doing (p. 80-85). As we saw, the maternal active-egoist is status-seeking and is very much doing in order to attain power. The maternal passive-altruist who lets himself be changed by others, in harmony, captures a sense of being. The term belonging sounds less solipsistic, and I would like to continue to use it, but Winnicott's more generic terms also have some value. For some patients, there is a question of how to be with others and merely cooperating and going with the flow can become troubled and ambivalent. Belonging at the maternal phase is paired with ego ideal feelings of aloneness or ‘fear of missing out’ and the related longings/tensions that drive the individual back to others— even when being with them is problematic. I would like to give an example of such problems of being in belonging:

Client talks about taking a trip home and then shares a thought about whether she should bother to contact a friend, Jen. Client

14. Preconscious mimicry is key here. I am not referring to the self-conscious mimicry that comedians use to do an impression of someone or that an actor might channel for a role, which would be associated with a later phase.

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tells me that “haven't been talking” and gets into how she “can't really rely on her.” Client explains how it has felt like she had been the one reaching out and it hasn't been reciprocated. However, with the prospect of going home, client expresses how she “feel[s she's] missing out” and has a “longing to be close… in person” with Jen. We briefly discuss the idea of Client confronting Jen with the bad state of their relationship and seeing if she shows an interest to repair it. After this discussion, Client brings up how Jen became very focused on her studies, and then Client goes on to talk about how school “became [her] life in undergrad” too. Client then goes on to lament how it is “harder to maintain friendships” when one gets older and then tells me about a few of the people with whom she feels like she's been able to start a friendship. Despite these new friendships, Client swings the topic over to the people she hasn't been able to get closer to. Client brings up a group of Biology students she had spent some time with. On the chair in front of me, Client begins to adjust her body into some semi-awkward postures and expresses how she didn't feel like she could connect with them. She tells me, “[she] do[es]n't fit” and the words feel significant to me. I ask her to focus on being with them and to see how strong of a sense she has for it in her body. After BLS, she tells me that she feels the “discomfort” of it more: how she “do[es]n't know how to be” or “hold [her]self.” She tells me that she feels it in her chest and jaw.

In this vignette, my patient has issues with knowing how to be, or how to feel belonging with others, because she transfers an emptiness onto them with which it is difficult to feel in synch. This transference arises from the lack of care and real acceptance from her mother and this also appeared to be repeated to her friend. Bion (1965), Sopher (2018), Hook (2018a), Gerson (2009), and Laub (2005) all identify an object of absence or emptiness; however, the absence or emptiness only references the object no longer being in life— the manifest state of affairs. Since my patient's mother can be brought back, her absence signifies that she is somewhere else, the hereafter, or outside of this life, and this is the deep structure that is important. Like id impulses of destruction, impulses of restoration show up in different bodily zones and have idiosyncratic

expressions. I will give several examples of them, as well as being outside of life, over the next few sections.

What is necessary is that we understand the form of the parental imago that forms the superego in the passive pole. As we saw in section 2, striving for perfection and becoming perfection in defensive narcissism (or PI) invokes both a negative object and a beautifully simple defensive structure; the passive pole deserves this treatment too. In Freud's statement above, there is a subtle hint in the idea of giving up one's “distinctiveness” in seeking harmony and belonging with others. In previous work, I have identified that the passive pole is linked to the parental imago of death (Pederson, 2015, 2018).

The Death Imago and Echoism

I will examine Freud's thoughts on the negativity of death and make a case that it provides the same explanatory power as perfection as the basis of the superego. After making this connection, I will discuss the opposition of narcissism and masochism in the history of psychoanalytic thought. Although classical theorists already identified all the behavior and pathology I will link to the passive pole, I'll show that the term echoism is superior to the term of masochism. Echoism does not make the passive pole derivative of the active one nor does it imply that the painful aspects of a relationship are consciously desired or experienced as pleasurable.

Freud acknowledges death anxiety but argues that it must be indirect. I understand the necessity of this indirect construction as coming from a scientific naturalism in which finite humans cannot perceive the infinite directly (Pederson, 2015)15. “It is indeed impossible to imagine our own death,” Freud (1915b) writes, “and whenever we attempt to do so we can perceive that we are in fact still present as spectators” (p. 289). He goes on to write:

Our unconscious, then, does not believe in its own death; it behaves as if it were immortal. What we call our ‘unconscious‘—the deepest strata of our minds, made up of instinctual impulses—knows nothing that is negative, and no negation; in it contradictories coincide. For that reason it does not know its own death, for to that we can give only a negative content. Thus there is nothing instinctual in us which responds to a belief in death…The fear of death, which dominates us oftener than we know, is on the other hand something secondary…(Freud, 1915b, pp. 296-7, emphasis mine)

In the repressed unconscious, there are only different drives of aggression and affection that are connected to the parental imagos that form the superego. Drives are moments of becoming (i.e., one feels lustful, has sex, and then gradually the lust will return) that are sent to the not-be-coming of the unconscious, however, the repressed returns, and with it comes the relevant imago that is paired with the id drive and they create the ambivalent repetitions in our public or private lives. The parental imagos are what are formed out of negations and as my clinical vignettes show, the repetitions and the relevant imagos are preconscious and can be found following E&O statements or bodily sensations. The fear of death, which Freud admits can “dominate us oftener than we know”, is related to an anxiety situation with a superego object (1923a, p. 58). He uses the indirect construction of “fear for life” to capture it and places it as one stage of different types of castration anxiety (Freud, 1926, p. 129). For any of these forms of anxiety we are conscious of the fear and preconscious of the ego injury that caused the repression of the id impulse and instated the repetition with the relevant imago. It is the id drive that is unconscious and requires interpretation or must be produced in the individual from the memories of the ego injury.

Although I appreciate Freud's formulations here, we are still left with the question of where the “fear for life” anxiety comes from. If we can never imagine our own death, because to do so makes us spectators of it, and if we do not hypothesize a soul, which is able to feel itself separating from the body, then how does death anxiety exist? I started with the postulate that the negative quality of death first appears in the parental imago of the passive pole (Pederson, 2015). As we saw with the vignette in the last section, it is not just one's own death that is impossible to represent to oneself, but one cannot imagine the death of the object either.

Instead, the object is taken to be outside of life, which will be conceived of in different ways depending on the psychosexual level of development. Moreover, just as we saw that Eros mixes with Eris to give us different motivations in different phases, the ongoing syntheses of the two poles means that individual death anxiety enters the active pole from the primary view of the passive parental imago as being outside of life. These syntheses mean that death from the passive pole becomes the anxious limit in the active pole, just as perfection from the active pole becomes the limit of the anxious fear of disapproval in the passive one (Pederson, 2015).

Death as the basis for the ego ideal means that one is prone to lose one's “distinctiveness” and replace it with the distinctiveness, emotions, or desires of others. Furthermore, as with the active pole, PI is possible in which the individual does not just emulate death but becomes it. These states were contrasted with narcissism/grandiosity in the history of psychoanalytic literature as the lowering of tensions (Freud, 1920), inner contactlessness, inner deadness, and striving after disintegration (Reich, 1990), longing for oblivion, vanishing into nothing, and loss of the self (Horney, 1937, 1939, 1945), and states of depersonalization, estrangement, and self-consciousness (Fairbairn, 1952). They have generally been included in the designation of masochism (Reik, 1941 Reich, 1990; Horney, 1937, 1939, 1945, Jacobson, 1964, Berliner, 1942, 1958, Menaker, 1996, A. Reich, 1940). I will turn to some clinical examples of these states, but for the moment I would like to address their inclusion under the term masochism.

Beginning with Freud, social masochism has existed in parallel to sexual masochism. “Those who find their pleasure, not in having physical pain inflicted on them, but in humiliation and mental torture,” Freud writes, “may be described as ‘mental masochists’” (p. 159). In his structural approach, Freud (1924) links this enjoyment of pain to primary masochism in the id. However, I will later give evidence that it is sadism that is primary and not masochism, so I would like to instead observe that Freud implicitly gives another construction of masochism as the suppression of the active pole in the passive individual. This is a dynamic structure that complements how the active-egoistic individual becomes narcissistic through repressing the passive pole. “It is possible to be absolutely egoistic and yet maintain powerful object-cathexes,”

Freud (1917b) writes, but “it is [also] possible to be egoistic and at the same time to be excessively narcissistic—that is to say, to have very little need for an object” (p. 417). Conversely, he writes, “in addition there is an altruistic transposition of egoism on to the sexual object, the object becomes supremely powerful; it has, as it were, absorbed the ego” (1917b, p. 418 emphasis mine). In other words, a person cannot be a “people-pleaser,” be unable to say ‘No,’ and have assertiveness issues if his active-egoistic pole is functioning. It must be suppressed in order for the individual to become masochistic, just as the passive-altruistic pole must be suppressed so that one can become a grandiose psychopath, an autistic philosopher, or someone who can ignore the pain and suffering of others for the sake of logical consistency. Reik (1941), Horney (1937, 1939) and A. Reich (1940) all develop this idea to show that being psychologically stuck in relationships in which one is tortured, abused, or extremely submissive occurs because the object represents the passive-altruist's narcissistic pole.

Masochism is also used to cover what are really just passive-altruistic repetitions (i.e., those that do not involve PI). Berliner (1940) has the important insight here when he writes that the masochist “loved those persons who hated him and caused him to suffer (p. 325). The masochist's desire for approval is attached to someone who intimidates her, makes her “walk on eggshells,” and who simply does not give her the approval she seeks. I'd like to share a vignette on this:

Client shares a dream in which she goes to a chain store. She tells me that she has items in her cart and has to urinate, and since she knows about the rules about not bringing items into the bathroom, she approaches a guard about this. She chalks it up to being “super-cautious” and tells me that it feels “awkward” as she talks with him and that it's “like [she's] in school again.” However, she says that the guard is nice and there isn't an issue. Client begins her associations to how she tries to “get approval” and tells me about how she “tell[s] her boyfriend things he doesn't need to know” while working at his company. She shares some examples of things she's responsible for that she will tell him about, and she's right, he probably doesn't need to know about them. I ask her why she thinks she does this, and she tells me that she “never wants to make a mistake,” and if she “ask[s] permission before any move” then it won't

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happen. Client goes on to talk about being “the littlest in the family.” She has many good rationalizations about how being the baby likely made her this way, but I don't see any affect or non-verbals that would alert me to the repressed content we need to get to. I ask client to return to the dream and first have the idea that the urination might be the wish, and that without it, it might mask an impulse to take the cart to the bathroom in order to steal. However, when I ask her about her thoughts about going to the bathroom, without the excuse of peeing, she doesn't have any and I don't detect non-verbals that show she might feel self-conscious or deceptive.

The other part of the dream I can see a wish for is the guard's reaction. Even if client isn't stealing, the guard could think she is, and the wish may be that he is kind during her “awkward” and “super cautious” reactions, instead of suspicious or annoyed. Client discusses the idea of the guard not being nice and associates it to her boyfriend. Though she shared about getting his approval, she didn't share that she feels like she never gets it. She slowly begins to convey how he is “intimidating,” “puts [her] down,” and how she feels like she is often “walking on eggshells” in his presence. She says he can make her “so nervous, that [she] mess[es] up” and she does an impression of him saying “Come on, you should know this!” that communicates a lot of annoyance and frustration. Client's narrative gradually begins to include some push back of how she's been doing real estate longer than he has (although she acknowledges that he has a construction company and does more than her). Client also talks about how he is always doing things with his other companies and that he doesn't let her know what he wants her to do, and should “let [her] do what [she] know[s] to do!” I explain to her that in these relations, the person often sets the other up to fail, unconsciously. Client appears to accept this and returns to the idea that she will fail because “he expects [her] to read his mind.” Client adds that she “do[es]n't know what he's pounding on [her] for” and with some exasperation, laments again “he doesn't let [her] know” what she should do!

My patient has the sense of not doing her job well and it is tied to anxiety that it is too much for her. As mentioned above, when perfection comes into the passive pole it can emerge in work life and patients like this feel like they have to find ‘a needle in a haystack’ and need re-assurance or

approval, however, in these cases the necessary authority who can give her approval does not give this to her. There is no evidence that these patients enjoy this frustration and pain. My patient's frustration with the lack of love and approval from her ex-husband was caught up with the repression of some id aggression to clear him out of her space, and this kept her in a repetition with someone who withholds approval.

Pain is the consequence of the passive-altruist's behavior but it is not part of her conscious intentionality. Approval-seeking remains the conscious aim of the repetition but when there is a rupture, and the authority figure is irritable and makes her walk on eggshells, the passive altruist accepts it. Moreover, even when the altruist perceives that no approval is coming, she consciously feels that standing up for herself, leaving the person, or voicing her discomfort is presumptuous or conceited (Pederson, 2015). From the perspective of an active-egoist who does not have problems with assertiveness this can understandably seem like the passive-altruist can say ‘No’ or walk away, and therefore chooses to invite pain or humiliation16. What must be understood is that aggression in the early stages of the passive pole reaches its height in abandoning or walking away from the object (as will be seen in the next vignette). In contrast to the active-egoist's id impulses to annihilate, obliterate, and destroy the object in early stages, the passive-altruist's aggression is more about keeping personal space. Its repression, as in the case above, means finding a new person who will be “mean” to one and excite the id aggression but without the altruist being able to keep conscious of it.

I think that it could be valuable to keep the term masochism when a person is in a codependent relation with an abuser who represents the victim's own narcissistic pole and sadism17. There is an unconscious identification with the pleasure and power of the dominant individual in such cases even if there is not a conscious pleasure in the pain. Otherwise, the clinical example above does not relate to pleasure in pain (conscious or unconscious) and more logically remains an example of repetition in passive-altruism. Moreover, when the passive-altruist represses the active pole it need not go along with her own narcissistic and

sadistic impulses returning in an abusive partner or authority. In such cases, when the focus is on the altruist becoming the parental imago of death, I would like to continue to suggest that the opposite of narcissism is better termed echoism (Pederson 2012, 2015, 2018).

Echo is a reference to the nymph in the story of Narcissus, who repeats his words and whose body eventually wastes away in her unrequited love for him, until she is just a disembodied voice. The mimicry of the other in “echoing” is her significant trait and continuing existence with the loss of her body is the significant defense. Dean Davis (2005) makes a similar contrast with the term, but instead of ties to Freud's framework of sexuality in the passive pole and mimetic behavior across many stages, Davis only cites verbal echoing of the parents as evidence (pp. 142-143). He also leaves out any reference to the literature of masochism as the previous complementary scheme to narcissism and locates echoism in the defensive operation already spelled out by Freud in the “altruistic transposition of egoism” mentioned above. Malkin , Savery , and Klika have similarly used the term of echoism as the opposite to narcissism, yet, they similarly fail to reference the previous literature on masochism while continuing its tradition by defining echoism in regards to deficient or negative narcissism, or as caused by narcissism. The principle of belonging in contrast to power, the death imago in contrast to perfection, and restorative impulses in contrast to destructive ones are needed for echoism to be appreciated on its own terms (Pederson, 2015).

Representations of the self-destructiveness of the death drive, dead objects, and a dead self-representation have also appeared in the literature, and partially overlap with traditionally masochistic material. For example, Rosenfeld (1971) mentions the unfused death instinct as leading the individual to desire to “disappear into oblivion” and “pull the whole of the self away from life into a deathlike condition by false promises of a Nirvana-like state” (pp. 173, 175). However, this is different than the recognition of a parental imago of death, and uses the language of instinct. Winnicott (1975) has suggestive passages of a patient being in a death state in which she didn't belong with her body or breathing, nor her mind (p. 252). Like Klein (1975), Jacobson (1954), and many others there are also representations of dead people and a dead self in fantasy that he observes, along with the idea of the child feeling of “unthinkable anxiety” if the mother is gone too long and her “imago fades” (Winnicott, 1967, p. 369).

Joseph mentions patients who are passive and inert and for whom “this identification and the preference for lifelessness or near-death” leads to an empty life and personality (p. 69). Joseph gets closer to recognizing death in the parental imago, but attributing lifelessness and near-death to it, does not constitute a structural approach. Durban (2016) and Schmidt-Hellerau (2006) both make reference to a death object and a dead self-representation, however, the defensive PI of becoming death on the passive pole along with death originating from Eros are not found in their accounts.

The closest theorist to take a structural approach to death has been Andre Green (1997). However, in Green's work on the dead mother, the formation of this object is based on a contingent experience with a depressed mother that he equates to a phallic mother or combined parent imago (pp. 149, 157). While I agree with Green's formulation of the dead mother as a contingent and non-universal phase, I have advocated for death as a parental imago in the other phases as well (Pederson, 2015). Green also has a concept of negative narcissism that resembles the binary of narcissism and masochism— including the passive pole being defined as deficient narcissism. He defines positive narcissism with the view that others are “of low value: ignorant, vulgar, common, cheap” while in negative narcissism, “the patient is the one who is worthy only of universal contempt; he or she has no right to any respect or satisfaction” (Green, , p. 645). In my experience, much of the self-reviling is an introjection of angry judgments towards love objects, as Freud (1917c) defines melancholia. In other places, Green (1997) seems to recognize this in his distinction between black and white depression— with the former relating to self-hatred and the latter relating to “the problem of emptiness” (p. 146). However, this is not connected to the relation to the parental imago. Green also claims that negative narcissism is “aiming at nothingness and moving toward psychic death,” but the more precise formulation is that one becomes death in identification with the parental imago (p. 637). The nymph Echo continues to exist after her body disappears from the world; she is outside of it.

I would like to begin with a clinical example to anchor this point. The patient's state of depersonalization blocks her access to the feelings in the target memory. I am able to resolve it through ego and object statements that show that her state of depersonalization was from PI:

Client gets to a memory of a breakup with a former lover who had “betrayed” her. She describes her initial experience after BLS as “twisted” and talks about how it's like her lover had tried to make her “not trust reality” (i.e., tried to gaslight her). Client then recounts how her lover looked “deeply hurt and wounded” and Client begins to go into how he “had a bad childhood.” I challenge her about intellectualizing, and intellectualizing in a way that minimizes her feelings and absolves the other. Client smiles uncomfortably and I ask her if we can just stay with the feelings and resume BLS. She agrees, and after Client reports that she feels sensations in her throat that she soon calls “bile,” but instead of getting into her feelings, Client looks at me and says with slight protest that “he's hurt,” in reference to her ex-lover. I tell her that I understand that it's easier to focus on his feelings, and ask if she can get into her feelings and tell me what the bile and being twisted really feel like. She agrees, and after BLS, client reports that she feels like she has left her body and has gone “to the top of [her] head.” Instead of challenging this, I ask her to go all the way into it and see if she wants to fully disappear or not. I ask her to stay with the image in her mind's eye, fully vanished or not, to hold it, and feel how it feels right to be in this state. After BLS, client tells me that it doesn't feel right to fully disappear but that she is just the light at the top of her head and has floated up into the sky. She calls the feeling of being this way “floaty” and talks about the “bird's eye view” she feels she can take in this place. I ask client to stay in this place to see if any compensatory feeling arises. After two rounds of BLS, client reports that she feels “choked” in this “stuck place” with her ex-lover. She tells me that she feels “compelled to comfort [him],” and to go down to him, and this means, “disregarding [her] own dignity.” She laughs a little and tells me that “[her ex-lover] liked it when [she was] in anguish with him.”

I ask Client to stay with this sense of the loss of her dignity and I resume BLS. After, she tells me that she re-appeared in her mind's eye and told his image that she was “not going to engage this.” I ask how he looked after this and Client says he looked “furious.” She tells me that she pictured some friends there too and that her ex told everyone “to go fuck themselves” and that “he was done.” I

With many patients who depersonalize, or vanish to another plane, the same masochistic id impulse of water, bile, poison, or some liquid in the upper chest or throat appears18. They can never externalize it or discharge it as aggression in the internal Space of fantasy, but they can leave it with the person who mistreats them and abandon them. Although their inability to discharge the anger and aggression outwards could be called a masochistic id drive, Freud's idea on the admixture of the aggression and Eros also gives a different origin than “primary masochism.” In the first clinical vignette of this section, we saw that my patient was able to get to her aggressive id impulse that linked her to a bad paternal imago that

frustrated her approval seeking. Although she got to frustration with the situation, it is difficult for altruists like her to get to their aggression, and often times they introject their angry judgments of others, as Freud (1917c) shows in melancholic self-reviling. If we simply take this as the predominance of Eros in the individual, then when we return to this earlier maternal phase, there is even less Eris. The E&O statements in my depersonalized patient above show that there was clearly anger at the object and this leads me to conclude that it was primarily directed externally but that her Eros would not allow this, and this forced the self-destruction in the PI. The anger at the lost object is directed upon the self and she becomes the dead object outside of this dimension.

In other cases of depersonalization, it is the loss of an intimate, whether literal or symbolic death, that sees the passive-altruist become death in order to not see the beloved as being outside of life. In contrast to the traditional use of inferiority feelings being covered up in defensive superiority, I use the binary of inside and outside (inclusion and exclusion) to capture the same dynamic in belonging (Pederson, 2015, 2018). On one hand, feelings of aloneness and longing for the beloved, from being away from the object, can move to a more diffuse loneliness in which the individual doesn't seek to connect with someone new or rectify the situation19. On the other hand, there is also the loss of the beloved or group with whom one was an insider. With the loss of this connection, whether one is mistreated or whether one is abandoned, there is a perception of the object as being outside this belonging. This causes an ego injury and can lead one to defensively become an outsider. Although, as we saw in the vignette last section, one may not defend against the object's death and continue to transfer it upon others. Regardless, what seems to be operative is another form of ego and object drive parallelism20. Aggression

leads to depersonalization, as does affection, just as a disappointment in a romantic relationship and a social humiliation can lead to defensive superiority in the active-egoist.

This principle of being outside of life operates at different levels21. At the first stage, we see that the individual who depersonalizes enters into another dimension outside of external Space. At the next level, the echoist can then be physically present but feel out of synch with humanity. He is outside of society and feels like he belongs in another historical Time and/or removes himself in homelessness or in lonely solitude. Then, instead of being a part of Civilization and enjoying the life of being a tax-paying citizen in a specific culture, one can be outside of this in social death. For example, being an anonymous individual, or face in the crowd, who lacks friendships or close group ties. Lastly, one can be a “black sheep” or outsider in one's family, or feel like one's family is regarded as being outside of the community22.

I would like to make further note on depersonalization. It can also be contrasted with a stronger longing to dissolve completely and merge into the external world. Clinically, it shows a connection to the further repression of affectionate id drives once one is in PI. For example:

Client reports that his grades are up significantly and that he's gone several weeks without depression until a few days ago when it hit him quite severely for two days. I ask client to describe it and he

21. In Schmidt-Hellerau's (2006) account there is a trauma, then an anti-cathexis to protect the self once the internal stimulation barrier is breached, and then “preservative” impulses that want to rescue this anti-cathected dead self or dead object (p. 1082). I appreciate her spatial metaphors and her use of different “screens” that make self and object appear in a different quality. However, they also obscure the organizing ontic principle of being in life or outside of it.

22. Hook (2018b) metaphorically references death as the attempt “to evade the constraints of symbolic fixity, to secede from the ‘social life of symbolic obligations, honors, contracts, debts‘” (p. 479). Like Rosenfeld, his reference is to the death drive, or jouissance, and not to becoming the parental imago. Additionally, his account of the evasion of the “social link” is made primary instead of viewing it as an elaboration of a prior ontic relation to Space, Time, Civilization, and the Family as the different levels of the impersonalized imago (Pederson, 2015, 2018).

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tells me that he feels “emptiness, loneliness, not belonging, and drifting.” He looks off and thinks for a moment, and then adds that it's like “being a gas… a cloud that is spreading out… your particles are everywhere… it feels like I'm everything and everywhere.” He continues, and says that he “feel[s] less emotionally inclined… grey, dull… not as colorful and vibrant, like [his] usual self.” He adds, “it's like I'm frozen, nothing is going on…. time moves slower.” I ask him to go back into spreading out and ask him if it feels like he wants to dissolve into the universe. He says “it's like [he] want[s] to merge into space itself.” He describes this as he can “blink and realize [he's] upstairs, and blink and [he's] in the kitchen, and blink…. [he's] everywhere at once.” I ask him to anthropomorphize space and to describe what this would be like from its point of view. He begins to give statements: “you're exploding… I'm trying to gather you up… I'm a jar and trying to contain you, trying to repair you, fix you.” He goes on to a pizza dough metaphor of how “globs of it sticks on your hand, and you try to wash it off but it stays and sticks.” He also compares it to “bubbles” and I record these words thinking they might be pictures-words, but don't follow his metaphor very well. I ask him to turn these into E&O statements and he tells me that his dad comes up.

Client zeroes in on a time when his dad was “super stressed,” because “he couldn't get us to become a family.” Client explains that when his father remarried, that the merger of the two families didn't go well. Client says that his father “was trying to catch the family, which was exploding, and he was exploding himself.” I ask client what that looked like in his dad? Client says, that he was “panicked, scared… he wanted everyone to work out but it didn't happen.” I ask client to focus on his father from that time and to see if there's a memory that comes to the fore and to see how his body reacts. After BLS, client tells me that he sees his father as “cold, scared, and empty,” and compares this to how he felt on those two days, except without the fear; “it seems more panicked when it happens to [dad].” I ask client to focus on his bodily response. After BLS, he tells me that he feels it in his chest and upper arms and “want[s] to hold him and hug him and keep him together.” I tell client to let himself do this in his mind's eye and to say any words that might go along with it.

My patient overcame his active longing to dissolve and merge into everything with the abreaction of the affectionate impulse towards his father, however, this was a symptom that still had an underlying PI with death expressed as “emptiness, loneliness, not belonging, and drifting.” I will have more to say about this in section 7 when I make a further distinction between a bad dead object and a good dead object. As mentioned above, other theorists have noted longings for disintegration. Notably, Wilhelm Reich (1990) pairs them with what he calls “the striving after orgastic release” (p. 333). Reich can very well be right, and this may dovetail with Jacobson's (1959) findings on depersonalization entering into the genitals in frigidity. However, it is important that literal sexuality not cover up the specific id impulses of affection that are involved. In the eighth section I will return to the notion of affection, love, and sexual desire and attempt to place them on a continuum.

The Admixture of Perfection with Death and Restoration Impulses

When the paternal imago enters and some of the perfection/power of the active pole comes into the representation of the imago, there is a reduction of the magnitude of death. Paternal death comes to be seen as a part of the personality or body that is missing. Instead of completely being outside, the parental imago is now outside in relation to fully embodying its status as leader and protector, or lacks the pieces that had defined his or her personality or identity.

Just as there is sense of existence outside of life that the depersonalized person experiences in vanishing, there is also the sense that the missing piece of the person is outside of life, and can be restored. In this vignette, I use the homunculus protocol which is designed to get at the intrapsychic relation of deficient or inhibited cognition. In contrast to the paternal imago in the active-egoist, with whom PI can lead to compulsive perfectionism, the passive-altruist expresses intrapsychic problems as the absence of dreaming, problems with memory, issues with

performing arithmetic, and more:

Client has been seeing me for a few months and we have done good work but he has never produced a dream. I've always just casually told him to let me know if he has one between sessions and this time I ask him how long he thinks it's been since he remembered them. He says “a long time” and probably not since his early teens. I introduce the Homunculus protocol and ask him to imagine that there's a room or office in his mind and that there's someone in there who used to make dreams for him, but that now when he visits that room, the person is not there, or has nothing for him, or isn't doing his job… I first ask him to tell me if he pictures a man, woman, child, animal, or creature in that room. He tells me that it's an “older guy,” and I ask client if there's anything distinguishing about how he looks. Client says, he's white haired and says that nothing else comes to mind about any of his other features. I ask client to describe their relation back when this white-haired man used to give him dreams. Client says, “he gave me things and I felt good… I was happy.” I pause and client gives me a look like he's got nothing else to say and so I ask him to tell me what happens with them now. Client says, “Now I come to see you and I can't get in.” Client tells me that the old man is behind the door and he “knows he's there, but he can't get to [client] either,” and “it feels like something is missing or wrong.” I ask client to say these as ego and object statements and he associates to his grandfather “after he had a stroke.” Client tells me that “he had always been a funny guy” and then tells me a story about how after the stroke that he had taken his shirt off and his grandma asked him if he was hot, and his grandpa said, “No, because I'm sexy.” Client laughs and tells me that his grandpa was “always in good mood, even after the stroke.” He continues, and says, “he was content and didn't blame anyone or himself” but “he'd get frustrated with others having to help him… because the left side of his body didn't work.”

I ask client to focus on his grandpa before and then after the stroke and see if there was a certain memory that comes up. After BLS, he tells me that he focused on “seeing him after [the stroke] not being able to take care of himself.” Client tells me that he felt “sad for him.” I ask him to focus on the memory and feeling and see if there's

Working through these intrapsychic issues and abreacting the id impulse allows for the full return of the inhibited functions and for psychic aliveness where psychic deadness had reigned (Eigen, 1996). My patient's restoration impulse was put into action by the impromptu surgery that he performed but others have felt rays of light, positive energy, life-giving liquid, and further variations of this impulse issue from a relevant bodily zone. The reported sense of compassion, pity, or love in the bodily zone and in its restorative expression affirms that the connection to the

parent (-substitute) is a sexual one.

In contrast to the sexuality involved in restoration impulses and altruism, Schmidt-Hellerau (1997, 2005, 2006) has proposed a drive theory in which self-preservation drives are displaced onto others. She writes that the preservation of a dead object includes a “wild, intense lethic urge to retrieve what has been lost” that has to be worked through in mourning (p. 1083). Schmidt-Hellerau's term lethic is used for self-preservative energy in contrast to libido and she has elaborated a complex system around the return to Freud's first drive model. However, her basic premise is that what we see as altruistic behavior is an egoism that is confused about who the self is23. Moreover, her attempt to place her model in Freud's work is based upon a misreading. When Freud (1912) makes the separation between the “affectionate and the sensual current” in love, Schmidt-Hellerau (2005) claims that “we must not mistake the affectionate for the libidinal” (p. 195). However, Freud (1912) is explicit that it is libidinal. He writes, “the affectionate current is the older of the two” which implies they exist on shared track (p. 180). He conjectures that “the sexual instincts find their objects by attaching themselves to the valuations made by the ego-instincts,” which implies that the ego instincts are on a different track (p. 180). Ultimately, Freud (1921) holds that love and sexuality “keep their identity recognizable (as in such features as the longing for proximity, and self-sacrifice)” and Schmidt-Hellerau would replace the bridge that Eros builds to others with a failure in identity formation (p. ).

While Klein (1975) identifies restorative impulses in her work, she shows a cynical tendency to interpret them as reparative. Every encounter with death is based upon unconscious aggressive wishes towards the parents or parental-substitutes. Although there are certainly examples of reparation, I think she conflates actual examples of reparation and bad conscience with restoration which can be motivated by love, gratitude, loyalty, and other motives that can make the individual wish that

the dead or injured object was whole, healthy, and alive. I do not see any evidence that my patient wanted his grandfather to lose part of his personality, nor does the example of restoration from section 4 show that my patient wanted her mother to not exist. On the contrary, both wanted their love objects to be there and it's the perceived loss of them that generated the id restorative drive.

In an interesting essay on the uncanny, Carolyn Feigelson (1993) focuses on the idea of personality death in loved ones that have brain injuries and become “strangers.” The sudden dehumanization of the loved one and the sight of them as “partially dead” is taken as a rightful trauma on its own, without death wishes playing a part. She likens this partial loss of a loved one to the person becoming ‘a double’ to the person who had loved him. There is a sense of “one person within another,” or that the former personality is locked away while a “wooden and dead” personality is in control. Her explication of the double fits with the general principle of death meaning the object is outside of the World, Space, Time, etc. and is not truly gone, however, it's not just injuries in personality but also bodily injuries that can take from the beloved who they had been. Bad conscience can also play a role and I have had several patients who have felt that breaking up with a romantic partner would cause their ex to get depressed and ultimately die.

I would like to give another example of restorative impulses that highlights the altruist's appreciation of the perfection of the paternal imago. When its perfection is absent or lost, this becomes an injury to the altruist's love and she can move to PI with this partial death:

Client gives me a dream where she's at her old job at the retirement home. Client is currently on disability and tells me that she feels “glad to be back working” but in the dream she “can't keep up.” She tells me “all these things happen and [she] can't get anything done… [she's] falling behind.” She details some of the “mishaps” and then tells me that it ends with her feeling “upset, stressed, and freaked out.” I explain to her the idea of the wish and ask her to consider the idea that all the mishaps rationalize that it's something about her that is making her fall behind. She assents to this right away and brings up her fear that returning to work with her pain issues makes her feel intense “dread.” She also tells me that she felt this at

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her old job, and that she went on disability not too long afterwards. I ask her to focus on this feeling in her old job and to see where she feels it in her body. After BLS she tells me that she feels it strongly in her upper body and that it feels “hollow” and like “being inadequate.” She shares thoughts of “what if I can't do it today?” and how she'd go into work in a bad space. I ask her if she was worried about what others might think about her and she quickly agrees. I ask her what thoughts she didn't want people to have about her and she gives me words like “failure,” incapable,” “disabled,” and “you can't be [what you want to be].” I ask her to focus on this and to see if the feeling in her upper body wants to expand. After BLS, she tells me that it spreads down her legs and to her feet but that it isn't in her arms or head. I ask her to project it out and she tells me that she pictures “a void.” I ask her to describe it and she says she pictures a black hole. I ask her to see if it fits in her chest or in any of the other parts of her body. After BLS, she says she was able to embed it in her upper body, but denies any immediate reaction.

I ask her to listen to the statements about how others might see her and how she saw herself and to see if they feel right to say about anyone from her past. After, she tells me that her mother comes to mind. She tells me about a memory from when she was around age 8 when her family was camping and that she went hiking with her dad and brothers while her mother stayed at the campsite. She tells me that she remembers “her feeling like she wanted to go, but [she] couldn't… she had lots of physical problems.” Client details some of her mother's issues and I then ask her to focus on the camping trip and to see what her body's reaction is. After BLS, client has tears in her eyes and tells me that she “felt bad for her” and that she feels it in her upper body, where she had previously felt the hollowness and the void. I ask client to stay with her compassion and feeling and to see if she feels that there's any expression in it. I tell her that just like the anger in her previous sessions that compassion can also have an expression and that love wants the other person to be whole and happy. After BLS, she tells me that she feels like her love would come out as a “light from [her] chest,” and she has more hope in her eyes than sadness. I tell her to let it fully emerge and to see what happens to her mother when she gives her the energy. After

In this vignette, we see that my patient was in PI with the injured paternal imago whose deadness is in being inadequate, a failure, incapable, disabled, and not being what she should be; it is not angry or hateful judgments alone that lead to melancholic self-reviling24. In parallel to compulsive character and compulsive symptoms as phenomena in active paternal PI, passive paternal PI as inhibited character and symptoms of inhibition. As we saw at the beginning of the section, there is loss or inhibition of certain cognitive functions or entering/exiting different states (ex. sleep, appetite). There are fears and complaints about one's ability to function across different levels— from knowing how to function at one's career, down to time management, and then to basic direction sense and noticing things in one's environment. In such a state there is often lebensneid (life envy). Everyone else is felt to have found his or her place, to have found love, to have a good life, or be on the road to getting it. The

paternal echoist envies what is viewed as normal, in contrast to the egoist envying the person who is superior25.

Just as there are two phases of competition and perfection in the active-egoist, there are two phases of cooperation and death in the passive-altruist. We saw that the first, maternal phase went along with death signifying that one adopts the views or desires of others. In the second phase, with Eris entering, the passive-altruist seeks to contribute to the perfection of the superego object. Like how Antigone becomes the eyes of Oedipus, the paternal drives of the altruist seek to compensate for the missing part of the personality or body. This likely corresponds to Klein's “injured parent” object and, as mentioned overlaps with Chasseguet-Smirgel's take on the altruist finding a secondary role (Klein, 1975; Chasseguet-Smirgel, 1970)26. In contrast to the maternal phase of being, more doing comes into the passive pole once Eris comes in. Here's another vignette that highlights this behavior:

Client tells me that she and her husband saw his mother over the weekend. Client, with some humor, reports that he and his mother are similar to each other, and both are “hard headed.” Although, she observes that she has “softened” her husband and brings up how

25. I also worked with the black hole in this vignette, and it has shown up with several other patients. I understand it to be an early representation of the imago of death. As opposed to vanishing and being in another dimension of Space, PI with the black hole signifies an earlier relation in which the individual struggles to put thoughts into words, to visualize images, and to voice what is happening with her. The first outside of becoming, is the not-becoming of the unconscious, which is also an outside to life that can return (Freud, 1920, p. 28, Pederson 2015).

26. Lacan (2006) holds that the feminine position is to “be the phallus” but references this to the mother and the symbolic law that “inducted” her into her position (p. 471). I agree that there can be a relation to the phallic mother, and mention this in the conclusion. However, the paternal imago is the focus of this phase and the dynamics reference the need to see its perfection in contrast to the belonging of the maternal phase. I also disagree that the symbolic is the cause. Eros and the death imago are prior to the symbolic, although a patriarchal social structure can lead to the strong likelihood that women will have to encounter this ego injury.

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she reminded him to tell his mother that he loves her at the end of the visit, and he did so. Despite this softening, Client shares that he is “socially awkward, big time” and tells me how she's the one to deal with the customers at their jewelry store and tries to “make it easier for him.” She details a few interactions and how she'll get into a customer's personal life, while he is all business. She then brings up how she'll also know about what the customers want, and lack the words for, and she will have everything translated and prepared for him when he starts work on the pieces. However, she adds that if she doesn't have all of the specifications ready by a certain time, he can be “short” with her. She complains that he “automatically thinks [she] should know.” I tell her that it sounds like she is helping a lot to get their store some business and ask whether he's come to expect this of her and doesn't appreciate what she does? She tells me that “99% of the time [she] know[s] what he needs” and has it ready for him, but adds with a sigh, “I've spoiled him rotten… he takes it for granted.” But she then adds that she tells him “there's so many ways to do things without screaming.” Client then does an impression of him shouting out her name in the house, and mimes her frustration with it. I point out to client that it does sound like she's spoiled him and with some of her previous complaints about his lack of emotion, affection, and lack of his interest to really talk with her, that it sounds like she's done such a good job being his personality for him, that he lost the little he had when she first met him. She stays silent on this, but doesn't correct me.

My patient and I continued to work with the death of her mother in future sessions, but the connection to her and my patient's husband was established with the ego and object statements. We see death referenced in my patient both becoming her husband's missing affectionate relations to others and in the worry that if she didn't provide this function that he would ultimately die without her. The partial death in the paternal imago was able to contain the full death of the maternal imago. My patient's self-observations of being “empty,” “vacant,” and “alone” capture the earlier relation to maternal death. In order to explain the contrast of this state with the example of depersonalization in the previous section, I will have to complicate the model a little further.

The Good Imago in the Passive Pole

The death imago is born of negation but appears to be part of a dialectic in which it becomes negated too. In my clinical experience, it becomes what Klein (1975) calls the good object. The element of death is still expressed in regards to loss of one's own desires and distinctiveness and what Atlas (2015) identifies as the mysterious or enigmatic dimension of sexuality. While this dimension comes in across both the active and passive poles, I would like to link it more specifically to the goodness on

the passive pole. Like the hunter with no backstory in Little Red Riding Hood or a masked superhero, the good object returns from being outside of life but still possesses some of the otherworldliness and mystery of it. In popular sentiment there are expressions like “only the good die young” or references to someone as “too good for this world.” The good object is often expected to return to the other place that it outside of ours.

Following the idea of more Eris and doing coming into the paternal phase of the passive pole, PI with the good maternal imago resembles benevolence and “turning the other cheek” and then develops to a more involved paternal beneficence; this beneficence as a projective identification was intuited by Brenman (1952) who gives examples of patients who project their neediness onto others to whom they are giving and self-sacrificial. However, before describing this developmental structure further, I would like to jump into a vignette in order to anchor this. For example, one patient who was inhibited and unable to be assertive with his girlfriend is able to trace this back as PI with his brother:

When I ask him how things have been with his girlfriend, client tells me about a fight they had recently. He tells me that she came home from work and he asked her what she was going to do for dinner, and that she got really upset. I try to explore this and Client tells me that both of them work, both of them take care of their kids on their days/nights off, and both take turns cooking. Client expresses that he gets tired too on some days, but he still does what he has to, while his girlfriend will have “moods” and that they can control the house. In a practical way, I suggest that if client and his girlfriend formalized who cooks or does X on a given day, then things might be cut and dry and there would be no argument. However, as I discuss this with Client it becomes clear that there was no argument: he made the dinner, and bit his tongue. He is able to assent to a general submissive attitude towards her in which she “wears the pants” and he avoids conflict. I inquire about Client's recent relapse and we are able establish a pattern of Client not standing up for himself, and “stuffing his anger,” and how it will build up until he says “fuck it” to his life and goes out and gets high.

I ask client if we can explore what was left unsaid? Client says that if he had said what he wanted to, that he “wouldn't have said it in

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the nicest way.” I cajole him to say it, and he says, “Bitch, stop being lazy” and other expletive filled variations. I ask client to humor me and to picture his girlfriend in his mind's eye, say what he told me to her, and to see how it feels and to see how his girlfriend reacts. I tell him that what is important isn't the reality of how she might react, but his own expectation and inner models for this. He agrees and with just a few passes of BLS, he stops me and tells me that she isn't happy. I ask him to give his best guess of what she must be thinking about him. He says, “you're being a prick,” “unfair,” “you're not being nice,” “you're not being caring,” and “you're an asshole.” I ask him to say these as ego and object statements about someone from his past and see who comes up. He is able to quickly tell me that his brother comes up. He says that his brother “wouldn't want to involve [him] in things” when they were younger. He tells me that his brother is about four years older and would make him play video games by himself, even though Client knew that his brother liked the game too. Client soon gets into a memory of when he and his brother got into “big fight” when client was about age 10. Client reports that he hit his brother with “something blunt” on the side of the head and that his brother “slammed him on the ground afterwards.” I begin BLS on the memory and client reports strong feelings of fear, adrenaline, and wanting to get away. We discharge these with client imagining that he runs out of the house they are fighting in and gets over to a friend's, where he feels safe. Client does this a couple times and reports that the fear has mostly discharged. I ask Client to go back into the target memory and see if there's any feeling/reaction left. After BLS, Client tells me that still feels some disturbance in the memory and so we talk about what he thinks about how his brother treated him, and what he thinks he wanted from him when he was younger. We piece together something along the lines of: client thought his older brother was “cool,” that they “had lots in common,” and that his brother was “a dick” and shouldn't have been that way with a kid who looked up to him. I ask him to picture his brother from the time of the fight and to say all of this to him and to see if he accepts it, and begin BLS. When client signals me to stop, I ask him how his brother took it. Client smiles and tells me that he pictured him “listening and nodding” and that he had “good non-verbals.” Client reports that his brother

In this example, my patient is projectively identified with the expected response in his girlfriend.

He never actually acted this “rude” way with her, although when he was high or exasperated, he could very much say “dickish” things to her. In common therapy speak, he would stuff his anger and his sense of being wronged, then explode, and then feel bad and repeat the cycle. In expressing his disappointment to the representation of his brother and feeling like his brother felt badly and was sorry for it, my patient processed this relation. Along with the expression of id impulses and developing new symbols to embed in the body, working through forgiveness is necessary in some ego injuries (Pederson, 2018). I identify this patient's relation as maternal PI. He was always in a good mood and smiling, but had major assertiveness issues. In contrast to people who actively seek to help, to protect, or take care of others, this patient was just well-disposed towards others and would always “turn the other cheek” when he was put down or taken advantage of. Ultimately, one becomes the good imago that one expected the other person to be, but one will eventually give a benefactor the same ego injury that one received.

I would like to give an example of moving from PI with the good dead imago to the bad dead imago, which I also place in the maternal phase. Basic recognition of others and benevolence is what the patient registers as being withheld:

Client tells me that he sees himself as “a stranger, unnoticed on the street in a large crowd of people.” He tells me that he “could interact with them but [he] do[es]n't… [he's] pushed that aspect of life aside… that level of trust with people is not there.” Client is able to say that his ex-girlfriend has “blown” his ability to trust, he “do[es] n't want to trust… [he] choose[s] not to.” I ask him to say more about the crowd and if there's anyone who stands out at all. After BLS, he tells me that they are all dressed the same and he can “blend in” and not be noticed. He is “one of many faces in the crowd,” which he wants, and that “everyone else in the crow has a connection” but he

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doesn't. I ask client to focus on the idea that someone in the crowd does notice him and to guess at what they might think about him. After BLS, he tells me that he can picture someone saying hi to him but that he gives “no reaction.” I ask him what the person might think about that and Client says the person thinks, “he's having a bad day, what's his problem?” Client tells me that “saying hi” is a “basic interaction: hey, you exist and I exist” but Client wants to be “anonymous.” I ask client to use these as E&O statements and see if they feel right with his ex (i.e., “you are checked out, you've pushed the world aside, you aren't connected to my world, you have no reaction, etc.). Client affirms it feels right and his anger deepens. He says that his feeling is “screw you, you don't love someone and then poof, disappear, and stop thinking about them…“

My patient draws attention to how there's a conscious sense of pulling away from others and choosing not to belong. In contrast, PI with the good maternal object has a sense of being an insider who is connected, sees others as good, and focuses on the positive. Both positions go along with not being able to say no, nor resist others because of the suppression of the active-egoistic pole in echoism. When one has been hurt and used too many times while in PI with the good imago, there appears to be a conscious surrender to the death imago. Another patient told me about always going along with what her family wanted and doing what they asked of her, until she told them one day that she was “an alcoholic and would no longer be available” and began drinking daily. She didn't attempt suicide but admitted that she no longer cared if she lived or died, and that she would put herself into risky situations in which she could have died.

There is a good case to be made that the example of vanishing depersonalization, from the fifth section, is the maternal phase relation to the good parental imago. In contrast, states of being empty, vacant, lonely etc., as we saw in a vignette last section, reference the same sense of not being in external Space and a state of depersonalization that is more constant. At later levels of psychosexual development, as with the vignette above, internal emptiness is not mentioned because Space is not the relevant coordinate, instead, being outside of Civilization is the reference point and the anonymous patient above discussed how he was choosing to exist in social death there (Pederson, 2018).

There is often a reference to Eris in PI with the death imago. As mentioned in section five, the paternal altruist is susceptible to feeling like the other is annoyed or irritated with him. In the maternal phase this can feel like the echoist is hated by others and the sense that his presence is intrusive. When a patient gets into a state of emptiness or some estrangement, I will ask how a third person might observe him from the outside and often he will report that the person would say he looks irritable, angry, or some variant of this. The echoist does not often look this way to me, nor show the behavior of these emotions, but this additional statement will often lead them back to a parent or superego object that did. This is also illustrated in the patient from the vignette above who mentions that others would think that he's having a bad day and that something is wrong with him. In maternal PI with the death imago, objects that represent the self will be felt as intrusive, being around them is felt to be draining or they are felt as overly clingy or needy. Because anger is not easily accessed, this often leads to the echoist becoming “flakey” and not showing up for plans or important events or “ghosting” others who are felt to be too needy.

Moving back to paternal PI, the death imago increases in anger or hate. The objects who represents the self will be felt to annoyingly want approval, reassurance, or as “just not able to get it.” This will more often be voiced in contrast to the maternal phase, but in complaints to others and not the “annoying” person. This is very commonly seen in the helping professions in “burn out.” The paternal echoist is still trying to help others yet talks of his own impairment in the role and has moments of anger about patients and anger with how the clinic, hospital, etc. is ran. In parallel to the narcissist who has illusions of being seen as more successful, wealthy, or important in the later stages of psychosexual development, the paternal echoist will often be illusional about how he is seen as inept or inadequate compared to others and “circle the drain” as far as staying in underpaid positions or jobs without prestige.

In the move from benevolence to beneficence through the phases, there is a rough progression that is visible with the good object. Being unable to say no or point out the problems one has with another person moves to sacrificing one's desires and acts of giving to others. This in turn moves to rescuing and more consistent helping which then develops into more constant protection and active fostering. This progression introduces

more than the maternal and paternal phases that I have discussed. It also includes the non-universal phallic mother phase, or the combined parent imago, and the sibling imago that emerges after the paternal imago and concerns those of “one's generation” in contrast to the parents (Pederson 2015, 2018). I will acknowledge the incompleteness of this article on all of these accounts in the conclusion; however, I thought that the more complete progression would be valuable to see in this case.

I would like to add one more vignette here that shows how PI with the good parental imago that goes along with sacrifice and the beneficence of giving gifts to others:

Client reports that he's been thinking about the description of dependent personality disorder, that I had read to him last session. He had told me about asking others about his plans and how he felt like he could change his mind from person to person. I asked him if he ever felt like there were times he disagreed with the advice but went along with what the person said? Client tells me that he usually asks someone their opinion first before giving his own, but brings up talking to “a friend” about what he thought about some person. Client tells me that he maintained his own opinion but “didn't want to disagree.” I ask him for his impression of how his friend took this disagreement and he negates, “offended isn't the right word.” With his pauses becoming longer and longer, client eventually says that he “just had that awareness of part of [him] that wants to gel with everyone… no contention.” Client goes on to tell me about how he's liked a movie, shared that with others, and that when someone disagrees with him, he “doubt[s his] own taste,” and ends up “seeing it their way.” I ask client if there's any other time of contention with someone that comes to mind.” Client brings up a previous counselor and begins by saying positive things about respecting him, how he helped Client, but how he brought up reasons why Client shouldn't pursue his major in university. Client says nothing negative about his counselor and instead tells me how he is “making him sound like he was rude.” I gently bat that idea away and then Client tells me that there have been several people who have thought that the major was fine for him and that he sees he “can't keep [his] opinion and move forward… [he] veer[s] off… get[s] lost.” Client expresses the bigger wish that he “could stay motivated to do stuff.“

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I ask client to picture his old counselor, bring up his ideas about staying in his major, and see if it feels like Client can stick to his opinion and motivation and hold onto his own opinion. After BLS, Client tells me that he found it hard to focus and wasn't able to see it through. I ask him to focus on his body and see if there's any zone that goes along with his wish to have his own opinion. After BLS, Client tells me that it's his chest and he's able to project out a ball, a “dodgeball made of red rubber.” I ask Client if we can use this ball and whether he feels like he can hold it, or whether his old counselor will be able to pull it away and get to have control over client's decisions? Client agrees to try and it isn't very long into the BLS that client stops and tells me “here you go…” and gestures having offered up the ball. Client says again that he doesn't like contention. I ask client to describe what his counselor had been thinking before client gave up the ball. Client says, that the counselor had “tricked [him]” and that he had “asked for it and wouldn't give it back.” I again ask him what the counselor might think about him and he says that client is “easy to manipulate.” I ask client if he has a sense of whether he feels more powerful than client or how he felt they were matched. Client tells me that the counselor was “between an equal and below [Client].” Client adds that when the counselor got the ball that it reminded him of Golem in who gets “his precious.” Client says that after he got it that the counselor “lost focus on [client].” I ask client if he has a sense of whether the counselor is still slightly below him after he has the ball. Client says that the counselor “feels more equal to [him] with the ball.” I ask Client if he wants the ball back and Client again says that it “makes it less contentious” to give it up, but acknowledges it had felt “special to [him]… [even though he's] not going to hang onto it” or try to get it back.

In PI, my patient became the good parental imago who has gifts to give to others. The idea that these gifts were both money, which he didn't have much of, and his opinion on others or cultural objects, place this at an early level of psychosexual development. In contrast, later level gifts would not reference such a big sacrifice. Although my patient expressed

that his parents didn't love him as much as his brother, the relevant ego injury was shown to be seeing his mother in a “castrated” state from the disrespect of his brother. My patient became the good parental imago that he could no longer see her being. In this case, it was the good phallic mother27.

The history of psychoanalysis shows a strong propensity to interpret phenomena based upon principles of power and aggression. Those who did the most to develop the phenomenology of the passive pole, like Horney (1937, 1939, 1945, 1950), also show a tendency to flee from Freud's idea of sexuality and structural theory. Now that we have a better understanding of the dynamics of the passive pole, I would like to turn from the admixture of Eris and Eros through the phases of a stage to their admixture throughout the stages of psychosexual development.

The Synthesis of the Active and Passive Poles

There is a dialectic in the psychosexual stages of development in which Eros comes to match Eris in the active pole, and vice versa in the passive pole; this dialectic or intermingling of the two poles has been discussed by Klein (1935), and by Eigen (1986) and Blatt (1998), both of who compare it to the double helix of DNA. In this section I would first like to sketch this development in the object drives: in both “romantic relations” and relations with children in one's private life.

Although there is a latency period and a return to literal sexuality in puberty, Freud still sees sensuality appear in psychosexual development. Developmentally, Freud identifies full anaclitic love entering into the active-egoistic pole in the phallic stage of psychosexuality (Freud, 1921, p. 111; 1923a, p. 32). Before this stage there can be idealization/infatuation

with the romantic object but upon entering the early stages it gives way to a regression in two ways. In the first, aggression mixes with mere lust (i.e., desire “to fuck”) and Freud (1921) notes how the idealization at lower levels is extinguished after sexual contact (p. 115). In the second, the diminishment of Eros can also go along with treating the sensual object as a possession. A lot of thought and jealous worry can go into one's possession, but this could not be confused with the love feelings that develop in the later stages.

In the passive altruistic pole there is a reversal. Love first enters the pole at earlier stages because of the dominance of Eros, and then as more Eris comes into the pole, the height of the phallic stage would correspond to sexuality without requiring love. Additionally, just as sadism is mixed with sexuality in early development, affection is mixed with love in the passive pole (Freud, 1912). The passive-altruist can move from having sexual desire in the love relationship to simply longing for closeness in things like cuddling, non-passionate kissing, and other expressions of affection. Of course, as Deutsch points out, the submissive individual will sometimes satisfy the beloved even without feeling his own sexual desire since avoiding contention and discord are important28.

These patterns of aggression/power and affection/belonging in the early stages of psychosexual development can also be easily seen with children and in the externalization of one's ego ideal upon them. For example, narcissistic ideals are clearly visible in things like putting children in beauty pageants or bragging about how one's child reaches developmental milestones sooner than average. ‘His majesty the baby,’ sometimes receives the narcissistic hopes of the parents, after they lose faith in finding their own worldly success or passionate love. The wish for a child can re-route one's own narcissistic strivings and make the child become an extension of, or reflection of one's own worth.

This visible narcissistic relation to the baby can be cashed out clinically in what I would like to call active-affection as the complement to

passive-aggression. Active-affection is visible in narcissists who are generous to people in their family (and sometimes people outside of it) in order to keep the beneficiaries in their power. If the beneficiaries act against the narcissist's desire they can be quickly cut off or become recipients of his or her vindictiveness. Several patients I have worked with remained at the mercy of an active-affectionate parent who wanted to “control” their lives, which wanted their children to see him or her as “perfect,” and who wouldn't stand for criticism. Such parents don't seem entirely conscious of their active-affection, they will say they love their children and often moralize about why they act as they do with their beneficiaries.

In contrast, affection in the passive pole is much more conscious and has a much more expansive life29. Freud's idea of the baby being an “erotic plaything” can be understood as a reference to how affection, hugs, kisses, mimicry, etc. can be lavished upon the baby and how it can be viewed as the pinnacle of cuteness and goodness (Freud 1912, p.181). While failures in one's own active-egoistic striving can lead to investing narcissistic hopes in the baby's success, the passive-altruist can similarly take back hopes for finding harmony and love in the world and re-route her echoistic ideals through the nursery. The baby, or baby-substitutes in animals (ex. fuzzy kittens), is then seen as containing goodness, innocence, or aliveness that is idealized in a culture of sentimentalism that can be set up in the house30.

The discomfort with aggression and self-assertion in the earlier stages of echoism and the discomfort with affection and empathy in the early stages of narcissism show an important period of time in psychosexual development. The admixture of Eros into the active pole in the first

period allows the narcissist to include his children as extensions of himself. In the second period, enough Eros enters that children can be appreciated in their individuality and be allowed to have their own plans and desires. Passive-aggressiveness can even come into this loving relation and the active-egoist can attempt to guilt them into showing more love to their parents. The admixture of Eris into the passive pole in the first period allows the echoist to access aggression to protect her children, or on behalf of loved ones. In the second period, enough Eris enters that active-affection and the desire that one kids be popular, fit in, and appreciation of their subjectivity can become diminished.

Primary and Secondary Narcissism and Moral-Political Philosophy

I would like to discuss and develop the notion of these two different periods of psychosexual development, in relation to ascribing to different political positions. In previous work (Pederson 2015, 2018), I have used primary and secondary narcissism to designate these two periods. I recognize that primary narcissism is also a stage of psychosexual development, and importantly is the one in which “the object makes its appearance” (Freud, 1915b, p. 136). The object of this stage needs to be understood in contrast to objects of later stages.

As mentioned above, development in the active pole reaches its height in phallic love and regresses to sensuality that is paired with aggression, however, there are still earlier stages in which love or sexual desire can be satisfied without any involvement from an external object. For example, in masturbation sexual desire is not directed at a person in external Space, but at the memory of someone one has met, a celebrity, and in some cases it is someone created by the imagination that never existed in real life. Literal sexual desire for an object can also be introverted into scopophilia in which the object does exist in external Space. For example, a “peeping Tom” might similarly masturbate to what he sees in the window. The literal sexual drive that is paired with finding and then enjoying intercourse with another person becomes satisfied with an object relation in which the other person can just be an idea (Freud, 1914, p. 74).

The emergence of the first object as a mental representation allows for one to also imagine that certain effects can be produced in it. Thus,

Freud (1914) defines primary narcissism as this imagined relation to others across more than one stage and in more than one way; it comprises the “over-estimation of the power of their wishes and mental acts, the ‘omnipotence of thoughts’, [and] a belief in the thaumaturgic force of words” (p. 75). These are different forms of what can be called “magical thinking.” For example, individuals who believe that they can will success into their lives by the power of their conscious wishes, or people who can send love or positive vibes to someone to make their journey safe. There are also people with an interest in magic and who want to conjure or summon something out of nothingness, even if it is just an illusion or trick they play on others.

These early ideas of objects interact with both internal and external Space and form a dialectic between them that creates the idea of ghosts, angels, and demons that are from another Space (ex. heaven or hell), or live in another dimension. Patients can both literally believe someone is possessed by a demon or is an angel who has come into their life, or they can fear a person or treat them with such importance that it is like they are believed to be a demon or an angel. In the repetitions found in early level relations, the metaphors of treating someone like a god, fearing them like they are a monster, or disregarding their wishes like they are a possession are more than metaphor. They are real transference feelings someone can get from putting the stage's superego authority upon them. Additionally, whether someone thinks that they are dealing with a ghost or demon in their life or someone puts the transference of this upon an actual person in external Space, both types of objects fail to reciprocate a full human relationship. Similarly, animals and inanimate things can satisfy early level component relations to an object. They can be imbued with an importance or depth of interaction that show that later level relations are introverted upon them or be regarded as fetish objects or avatars of gods or supernatural forces (Searles, 1960; Pederson, 2018).

I would like to use Freud's analysis of world-views as model to introduce secondary narcissism31. He uses the progression from animistic beliefs found in early cultures, to religion, to science to speak about the developing relation of power and narcissism in the individual (Pederson 2015, 2018). As Freud (1913) writes, “[a]t the animistic stage men ascribe

omnipotence to themselves“ (p. 88). This is not a reference to what I have identified with Klein's concept of PI and usurpation of the parental imago of perfection. Rather, the omnipotence here relates to the omnipotence of wishes and other forms of magical thinking mentioned above that are expressed in the religious and magical rites that are found in animism. In the religious stage, Freud holds that humans “transfer it [omnipotence] to the gods,” although they “reserve the power of influencing the gods in a variety of ways according to their wishes” (p. 88). Instead of the individual competing with reality by introducing magical or supernatural aspects to it, the individual transfers to society and group membership the power to make him believe in things that he has not seen. Freud (1921) writes:

“We are reminded of how many of these phenomena of dependence are part of the normal constitution of human society… of how little originality and personal courage are to be found in it, of how much every individual is ruled by those attitudes of the group mind which exhibit themselves in such forms as racial characteristics, class prejudices, public opinion, [religious creed, nationality] etc.” (pp. 117, ).

In other words, secondary narcissism means that there is a basic acceptance of society and that ego identifications with these groups will see individuals adopt their views. If an individual identifies with a certain political party, for example, he will begin to take up “talking points” from their group's media sources and “parrot” them in conversation with others. However, the individual in secondary narcissism still has his own ego ideal that goes with the desire to be viewed as a tax paying citizen and he will feel shame if he gets a criminal charge and his name appears in local media, for example. Outside of group membership there is a general sense of the authority or good reputation of different universities, news outlets, (etc.) and the ideas disseminated from them establish what valid knowledge is or what is true in the world. Fashion will determine what are desirable or prestigious clothes to have, what music is popular, and indicate general consumption patterns. There are also sub-culture groups that one can choose to join and they can refract dominant culture into many more reference points of what is deemed fashionable or good. However, in secondary narcissism, the only way to “influence the gods” is to get into positions of authority and/or power so that one can control

the messaging a group puts out to its members.

Freud holds that in the last phase science arises32. What I understand to dominate in this view is a sense of going beyond one's belief system. Striving for a good reputation for oneself, one's family name, or for the good name of the groups to which one belongs is tempered by a sense of equality with other individuals or other groups. In science one cannot have certainty or make oneself or one's views try to appear stronger than they are, but must put forward one's work for peer review and make it reproducible for others. “[M]en have acknowledged their smallness,” Freud writes, although “some of the primitive belief in omnipotence still survives in men's faith in the power of the human mind” (Freud, 1913b, p. 88). To be clear, I do not see this phase of science as the child emerging into “reality” after the phallic-Oedipus complex, instead, I see the conflict between the two poles of bisexuality as creating something like Jung's concept of individuation so that certain individuals have both the willpower to master a field and ability to sublimate or “play” with the empirical data and existing theories to construct their own ideas (Jung, 1944). The interplay between the poles pushes for higher syntheses that lead to “originality and personal courage.”

Any psychoanalytic moral-political philosophy has to reference the dominance of Eris in the active-egoist and Eros in the passive-altruist during primary narcissism and the opposite pole coming into match in secondary narcissism33. In other words, primary narcissism should be understood as reaching its height in an acceptance of society and feeling

of equality with other humans. However, this acceptance is subject to defusion and ambivalence that corresponds to the active-competitive-defiance and passive-cooperative-submissiveness. This would go along with more radical political views that call for major restructuring to society. For example, the active-egoist in primary narcissism can translate into the politically right position of the libertarian. In this view, the government is seen as bad and the smallest possible government is sought. Additionally, there is isolationism with a decrease of military presence outside of the country. The principle is one of self-sufficiency and there is the idea that the bad government will either impinge on one's freedom or “screw things up”; it is viewed as either tyrannical or incompetent. In contrast, the passive-altruist can translate into the leftist position of socialism. The state is seen as good and trustworthy, there is state ownership of business and much more direction in terms of what one's job and role in society must be. There is a similar decrease in military, but due to seeing others as basically good and with the principle of sowing harmony. The suffering of others and helping them is emphasized with basic rights and security for all people being emphasized over the pursuit of excellence and competition.

When the aim-inhibited sexuality of the passive-pole begins to intermingle more with the active-egoistic pole in secondary narcissism, the sense of belonging and love for authority strengthens in it. This means that conservatives show more respect for the national anthem, traditions, and “proper” behaviour. These issues are a much more serious affair to them than for liberals, and in parallel, they are much more serious about good manners and respectful behaviour in the work place. Additionally, the identification with one's country and the presence of more Eros corresponds to an increase in military that reflects more care about the country's international reputation and having an important role in the community of nations. On the liberal side, there is more irreverence towards authority and tradition. Liberals are often “progressives,” but in the service of helping outsiders become insiders, instead of fighting for changes that benefit themselves. Liberals are also much more fashion-serving in secondary narcissism and can dismiss the past, as the conservative can dismiss social change. Liberals have more of an acceptance of the military although they are much closer to diplomacy than flexing the muscle of the military.

Of course there are many variations at these different levels. For example, primary narcissism on the political right can also include, for example, a fascist state that wants to expand its military and seek the return of past glory in conquest while destroying the scapegoated enemy. Additionally, secondary narcissism on the left can include the relation of trying to be the missing piece of the death imago. One can seek to make a marginalized group appear to be whole and anxiously avoid any reminders of the social death of the group. Worries of “triggering” members by reminding them of their outsider status in the past and seeking to show the importance of their group's contributions follows the repetitions we saw with the death imago on the individual level. A full political characterology is beyond the aim of this article.

Conclusion

I would like to end this article with just a few thoughts on how things could be expanded. First, each pole actually has an egoistic and altruistic expression (i.e., passive-egoism and active-altruism), and also PI relation to imagos of perfection and death. In this, there are forms of passive-narcissism and active-echoism. Psychopathology like depression has an active pole form and there is passive pole compulsive pathology, for example. Things are much more complicated and nuanced than the extremes of character rigidities that I have sketched above, however, even with this complication it is not difficult to differentiate between, for example, the moral perfectionism— the righteousness, the pride, the judgmental quality— that active-altruism possesses in contrast to passive-altruistic sympathy .

The key is that the active individual will not show affection in its forms of sentimentality, cuteness, cuddliness, and playfulness, while the passive individual has issues with aggression in its form of being angry at others, confronting others about their problematic behavior, or taking leadership roles. There is a strong case that aggression comes into the passive pole through the admixture of Eris, but it is often what becomes repressed and introjected as Freud (1917c) shows in Mourning and Melancholia or becomes id masochism as shown in depersonalization. In contrast, affection is what is often repressed in the active pole and externalized. Many active psychopathic patients have been able to get to images of a clown, a smiling idiot, SpongeBob Square Pants, and other

views of their repressed affection, that are hated in others who appear this way in public. Additionally, compulsive deadness, often expressed as feeling machine-like or robotic often goes with the individual seeing himself as logical and general talk about women or illogical others being emotional.

There are also more phases than I formally presented in this article. I isolated an earlier maternal phase and a later paternal phase of the parental imago, but between them is a non-universal phase that concerns the phallic mother or combined parent imago (Klein, 1975, Pederson, 2018). This phase reduces the amount of Eros and idealization of authority figures for the active-egoist and increases her confidence and self-regard. It also reduces the amount of Eris and perfection in authority figures for the passive-altruist and increases belonging and merger with others. Additionally, after the paternal phase there is a move from parental figures to a sibling imago who is “of one's generation” but who one will still look up to. However, this phase is also non-universal in the sense that some individuals establish full equality with the sibling imago (Pederson, 2015, 2018). Altogether, there is a move from the maternal, to the phallic maternal, to the equality of the paternal and maternal following the Oedipus complex, to the ascendency of the paternal as equality, fairness, and guilt after the Oedipus complex34.

Lastly, in The Economics of Libido (2015), I offer an expansion of the active and passive poles into four libidinal positions. While someone can be narcissistic or possess an attitude of superiority (arrogance, vanity) about their physical or intellectual potency or their social power there is another group that is conceited or vain about how physically attractive they are or how superior their taste is or how they live a beautiful life. Both refer to a type of perfection and I refer to the former as subject egoists (SE), and the latter as object egoists (OE). This is the pole that concerns power, superiority/inferiority, and relating to others by competing with them, trying to dominate or control them, or strategically removing oneself from competition.

On the other side, someone can echoistically depersonalize and put the desires of others before his or her own as the good imago. He or she can volunteer to help others, and focus on raising them up, or be unable to turn them down when they are in need of money or assistance— even when he or she is taken advantage of or doesn't have the time or money to share. The other group echoistically desires the approval of others in the sense of wanting to be liked, to be seen as interesting, and to fit in. The former is usually tied to being “people-pleasing,” being “self-effacing,” etc., and the latter is tied to being a “people person,” being gregarious, or “a social butterfly.” Death enters into the latter position with how social life can be experienced as dead, empty, or boring, as in the pronouncement that ‘this scene is dead,’ or ‘punk rock is dead.’ I refer to the former as subject altruists (SA) and the latter as object altruists (OA). This is the pole concerned with belonging, being an insider/outsider, and relating to others by cooperating, or trying to help underdogs or restore those who have fallen from grace (including oneself) to become an insider. They can also remove themselves from interactions in depression, anxiety, and desiring for someone to come and help them.

With the elaborations of the passive pole and the illustrations of the dynamic importance of projective identification, a psychoanalytic model of interpsychic motivation is now possible. Freudian structural theory still remains the most comprehensive vision of the mind and I hope that by returning to it there is a possibility to overcome the tribalism of the fractured schools of psychoanalysis. What is radical in Freud's theories—how much we are determined by the unconscious—still remains radical today. The question is how much an analyst wants to borrow from other disciplines vs. how much she wants to let the psyche speak for itself.