Waiting and Worshiping at the Alter: Reply to Auerbach

I would like to begin by saying that I was happy to see that John Auerbach and I shared as much common ground as he reports. I also want to record agreement with his ideas that psychoanalysis must submit itself to more rigorous research and that there are good reasons to be skeptical of constructivist epistemology. However, and I think Auerbach would agree, before scientific testing can begin, there must first be psychodynamic hypotheses to test—one cannot merely read scientific findings in neighboring fields and think psychodynamic ideas will spontaneously emerge from there. Moreover, despite his signal that he is skeptical of constructivist epistemology, his offering of six core propositions of psychoanalysis does not offer any model of imagos (internal objects), no dynamic relations with them, nor anything that would be at odds with constructivism.

My proposed Neo-Freudian model offers clinical evidence to isolate specific repetitions in the passive-altruistic pole and show that certain “character” states, and their repetitions, are due to projective identification (PI) or taking over the place of the parental/sibling imago. I could have been more explicit in my article that it is Freud's central proposition that character is based upon identification with imagos:

The considerations that led us to assume the existence of a grade in the ego, a differentiation within the ego, which may be called the ‘ego ideal’ or ‘super-ego’… still hold good… We succeeded in explaining the painful disorder of melancholia by supposing that [in those suffering from it] an object which was lost has been set up again inside the ego—that is, that an object-cathexis has been replaced by an identification. At that time, however, we did not appreciate the full significance of this process and did not know how common and how typical it is. Since then we have come to understand that this kind of substitution has a great share in

determining the form taken by the ego and that it makes an essential contribution towards building up what is called its ‘character.’ (1923, p. 28)

Identification with imagos, so that one takes on their perfection or death, is the very heart of the psychoanalytic model of personality. Freud already acknowledges the idea of how this identification can go along with the individual treating someone else as they were treated by the parent or parental substitute. For example, in narcissistic object-choice Freud (1905, 1921, 1922) sees it as loving another who resembles one, as one's mother loved one. Moreover, he has ideas of moving from passive to active in mastery, moving from scopophilia to exhibitionism, etc. that certainly recognize something like projective identification. However, Klein's idea of PI in which one wants to unconsciously pass on the ego injury that caused the identification to others, so that one can identify with them, as it happens, projectively, takes this to another level. Klein's idea involves both identification with the imago and identification with the person who represents the ego.

Attachment theory and the other works that deal with motivational systems, which Auerbach cites, do not have identification with the parent/sibling imagos as the basis for their theories. The contribution that I sought to make in the article was to show how the imagos of perfection and death are related to each other through psychosexual development, through discrete phases, and to show how id drives of affection/restoration are a complement to id aggression. Ideas of generativity and “rebirth” are available in psychoanalytic and Jungian fields but have still escaped formalization and id aggression has undue prominence in our field still. I was hoping that as a self-described “Blattian,” Auerbach would have brought in interesting and relevant findings from that field, since we share the basic premise of what Freud calls the active and passive binary in motivational systems. Instead, like a constructivist, he makes charges of sexism, accusations of a “one-person psychology,” and insistent calls that classical terms must be renamed.

Reading his reply, I couldn't help but think that most of the central points of my article were lost. For example, Auerbach reports an agreement with me on the binary of overinvestment in self and overinvestment in others. However, the point of the article was to expand beyond Freud's basic proposition and what has historically been known as the

narcissism vs. masochism binary. As opposed to renaming terms because they're attached to a system that is allegedly “one-person,” I gave arguments for how masochism made the passive pole derivative of the active one, and offered concepts that allowed for inter-relations between different stages, and their phases, to be hypothesized. PI on the passive pole was conceptualized as the individual becoming death (in both maternal and paternal forms) and this was put forward in dynamic relation to becoming “the good imago.” I attempted to show that a lot of “altruistic” behavior on the passive pole is similarly PI with the good imago and underwrites behaviors like not being able to say no, sacrificing oneself, or fostering others. Auerbach engages with none of this and, for example, I have no sense of what his version of idealization of the object or overinvestment of them is supposed to be. Where I had hoped that he would bring in some findings from the Blattian field, I instead got complaints about “outmoded” terminology and that my case examples “pertained very little to the transference-countertransference matrix” (p. 30). I will address the former soon, but I would like to share a few thoughts on the latter first.

In the clinical vignettes I gave, I do not work with the repetitions of patients through their transference to me. My patients describe how certain current ways of relating to themselves or others in their life is problematic and I elicit statements about how they see these others, or how these others might see them, and then trace them back to the original ego injuries that were repressed and caused these repetitions. As I show, id impulses of aggression and affection are contained in the emotional reactions that my patients have to others. What Auerbach calls the procedural unconscious is created in the overstimulating, and consequently repressed, id impulse for the individual or group that is receiving the transference from an imago or internal object. Then, the repressed returns, and the individual repeats specific ego or object drives with others whose individual psychology make them suitable partners for this. I certainly work with transference to myself and my countertransference feelings but working with the transference to others allows for specific interpsychic relations to be captured in how they are lived in the regular lives of my patients. Moreover, one of the problems of solely focusing on the transference-countertransference matrix in individual therapy is that the analyst may not have the individual psychology that allows for some of the patient's repetitions to take place there.

Auerbach, as is still fashionable, wants to call classical terms outmoded because they are allegedly intrapsychic. However, it is a patent absurdity, that Freud is only “interested in others as they appear in our mental lives, not as they actually appear in our lives” (p. 32). Although I can appreciate the versatility of Hegel's use of the word recognition (in its English translation), is it really Auerbach's and the intersubjective/relational school's position that the ego and object drives do not strive to have others see us in certain ways? For example, when Freud and Adler use of the term will to power, to denote egoistic strivings, is this not the idea that one is motivated to have others see one as successful and powerful, as responsible and competent, as attractive and tasteful, (etc.)? Then, when one isn't seen in this way, does Freud not register that a “narcissistic injury” can occur, that we can be “shocked,” “mortified,” “humiliated,” “disappointed,” (etc.)? As my clinical examples illustrate, these ego injuries are connected to id impulses formed in psychosexual development and clearly relate the current object with the imagos of the caregivers of our infancy, from whom the imagos were internalized. I'm curious to hear how Auerbach believes that others in our life receive the power or status to give us these ego injuries. Does he derive this power of the object from the intellectual perception that he or she is a unique and free subject and that one “chooses to bestow” this power upon them (p. 32)? If so, he is giving an atomistic conception of the individual and not one that is primarily related to others.

Similarly, with Klein's concept of PI, Auerbach would uncharitably assume that she thinks of it in a “Cartesian” fashion—that is, “mainly inside the head of the person engaging in this process… putting disavowed material ‘into’ another person” (p. 9). However, Klein's ideas relate to the play therapy that she pioneered and how, in play or art, children can dramatize these relations between imagos (internal objects). For example, she writes:

excrements and bad parts of the self are meant not only to injure but also to control and to take possession of the object. In so far as the mother comes to contain the bad parts of the self, she is not felt to be a separate individual but is felt to be the bad self. (1975, p. 8)

Does Auerbach think that Klein is literally describing PI as putting one's feces into another person? Klein's reference to the mother is not the literal mother but the internal object or imago.

As I mention in the article, the child controls the internal object that represents the mother or father and usurps its power while the parental imago “becomes the ego-ideal” of the child (1975 p. 9). In some of the clinical examples I showed how this means that the individual will unconsciously seek to give the same ego injury it received to another.

Auerbach complains that this formulation is inferior to a relational definition that recognizes “the interactive pressure on the other to conform with the contents” (p. 9). This bugaboo of relational and intersubjective thinkers misses the point. The PI that a person is engaged in is a defensive operation in their head, which is why it is possible to work with it in the way I show in my clinical vignettes. Klein cites the example of PI that was performed on Greta Garbo with whom the patient had no contact (Klein, 1975, p. 9). In other words, “interactive pressure” is not always needed for PI. Klein also gives an example of a patient who “dislikes people who are too much influenced by him, for they seem to become too much like himself and therefore he gets tired of them” (Klein, 1975 p. 13). In the latter case, when there is an actual relationship between the patient and another person, I find it hard to believe the Auerbach would really think that an impressive analyst like Klein wouldn't acknowledge “interactive pressures.” It is easy to imagine how the person would initially be seductive and energetic in the romantic relationship so that the other person would find themselves adopting his phrases and interests, before he ends up growing distant and rejecting, to pass on the same abandonment injury that received himself. Just because Klein does not spell this out does not mean that she would not appreciate that this is going on. Moreover, the intrapsychic defense of PI still exists in the individual in relation to his or her imagos even if there is not someone they are unconsciously repeating it with.

I would like to stress again, that “interactive pressures” only go so far, and that the most important thing is that the individual with whom one is playing out the PI has the relevant character structure. The person in PI won't be attracted to engaging in a relationship with another whose character structure doesn't align, for the most part. To add some nuance, I have worked with some patients with domestic violence charges who didn't have any prior history of abuse and who reported that the abused said emasculating things, taunted them, and was able to provoke anger

in them1. Similarly, there are people who weren't serial philanderers before they entered the relationship with a romantic partner who was suspicious of them and insistently accused them of cheating, to the point that they did. However, for the most part, the repetition-compulsion in us makes us attracted to the people who will play out the PI with us.

Dual Drive Theory

Where Auerbach implies that using Freudian language is part of the insularity of our field and that we should be showing the rest of the world that we have evolved in the last 80 years, I see it as honoring our tradition. I have read the criticisms that the ego psychologists have made of the classical terms and have found them wanting. It's easy to define something poorly and dismiss it, and I would invite Auerbach to share what he thinks were the damning criticisms made. Moreover, the public only knows Freudian terms and no other school of psychoanalysis, save for the Lacanians in the humanities, has reached the public in any substantial way. Instead of disowning our past, I think it is more valuable to own it.

This turns me to Auerbach's problem with dual drive theory. He states that there must be “far more than two such motivational systems” and that “we cannot collapse territoriality, competition, dominance, predation, etc. under the all-purpose heading of Aggression, we also cannot collapse sexuality, attachment, affiliation, caregiving, etc. under the all-purpose heading of Eros, as Bowlby's work demonstrates” (p. 5, 12). Auerbach will have to share Bowlby's scientific research to prove the lack of connection between sexuality and attachment, I would be interested to see it. Otherwise, I cited my agreement with Freud that philosophy of language does show how these things can be organized into larger groups. Freud cites the use of Eros which gives many types of love in the Greek (directly sexual, romantic love, love for family, etc.) and, in parallel, I show that competitiveness and ambition similarly invoke references to aggression (cutthroat, killer instinct, etc.). I would ask Auerbach if territoriality, for example, could be collapsed into an example of possessiveness concerning one's land or “turf,” and whether feeling jealous possessiveness over one's romantic partner could be similar?

Then, I would ask him if it's possible to conceive of someone who is strongly competitive as possessive regarding their reputation as being the most talented and skilled at something? Philosophy of language, and seeking “a family resemblance” between different motivational patterns is possible if one can invoke similar words and phrases without losing meaning (Wittgenstein, 2001). Of course, this is on the level of individual psychology and it is possible to point to group psychology and group traditions for explanations. For example, an individual might not be territorial on his own and might be enforcing respect for the territory of his group because it is a custom or because he's caught up in mob mentality with others who are territorial.

It is possible that Auerbach is right and that there are more than these two systems2. For my part, I further divide the active and passive into two types based upon the observable pathology and attempt to isolate different phases within the stages of development3. The problem, as I see it, is that people like Auerbach will appeal to the inherent complexity of personality in order to say that there must be more, but that “more” is

not forthcoming. I put forward a hypothesis, based upon clinical examples, to try and see how far I can take the dual drive theory. It's more than possible that I will have to revise this theory and admit its inadequacy to account for future experience. The question is whether it is better to make a theory to test, that is inherently psychodynamic and derived from clinical interactions, or whether it is better to assert a complexity that is impossible to overcome. If Auerbach has ideas for a three, four, or five part motivational theory, and something real to offer up here, I invite him to share it.

Sex

Auerbach engages more with Freud's use of sexuality, and I would like to take this up. First, he asserts that attachment is not derivative of sexuality and that sexuality is “anaclitic” upon it. As I show in the article, Freud's position is that the “affectionate current” is older than the sensual or literally sexual current which joins it (Freud, 1912, p. 53)4. In Freud's model, both forms of these object drives are underwritten by id “erotic object cathexis” towards the caregiver(s) and then are constituted at the level of the ego in different ways (Freud, 1923a). Second, Auerbach misrepresents my appeal to the literature on bonobos. I do conjecture that humans might have had the same wide sexual expression as bonobos in the past and therefore that Freud might be right to claim that “aim-inhibited sexuality” is important. However, I also equally use them to illustrate that their many affectionate interactions show that affectionate behavior cannot be solely derived from aim-inhibited sexuality. Auerbach then asserts that my reference to bonobos is problematic because chimpanzees are also closely related to humans and that they “have

a very different social structure” (p. 12). He acknowledges that sexuality and aggression are very clearly portrayed in these different structures, and so I do not see the existence of chimps as a counterfactual to my observation that humans likely shared the hypertrophy of sexuality. Just as Auerbach acknowledges his mentor's position that the intermixture and tension between the two poles can propel things forward, I think that Freud's position would similarly be that the tension between sexuality and aggression would propel the human mind forward. Chimps have lost the tension from sexuality and bonobos have lost the tension from aggression; these represent two ways that social structure can go on this level of development. If environmental pressures and/or some mutation caught on in a tribe, then sexuality and aggression might force development forward in our higher primate cousins and something closer to human could arise from them.

Auerbach's position appears to be that sexuality and aggression cannot play a role in the development of the mind. He writes:

it is easy for us to overlook that other key differences between the two species might be that bonobos seem to have a greater capacity for empathy and social cognition but that chimpanzees are much more likely to engage, at least in natural or wild settings, in tool use (; ; ; ), a differentiation more suggestive of the distinction between relatedness and self-definition than that between sexuality and aggression. (pp. 13-4)

Since bonobos illustrate both a hypertrophy of literal sexuality and show more affection, more egalitarianism, and EQ, while chimps have much more aggression, more hierarchy, and more IQ (as evidenced in tool use), I would think that this example backs up Freud's position. Freud (1911) links aggression with the epistemophillic drive and external world forms of ego cognition while fantasy and mimicry through identification are equated with sexuality (p. 22; 1921). This is not from Freud doing a bad reading of the outdated science of his time, but from clinical connections with, for example, obsessive patients like the Ratman who show that the overuse of a cognitive function is tied to “sadism.” In my article, I show that inhibited forms of cognition or ego functions are tied to the death imago acting in an intrapsychic formulation. Instead of a repetition with

an external authority figure, the superego, as part of the “reality-principle” of the ego, can be represented as an internal authority (pp. 50-52). Moreover, instead of an id impulse of aggression being paired with this imago, an id impulse of restoration is linked to it. These impulses are clearly related to loving feelings in my examples, and I am not averse to the family resemblance between love, sex, and affection. Again, I am very much for formal scientific testing to be done, but repeated clinical experience of these id impulses being linked to cognitive issues makes me open to Freud's connections5.

Moving onto Auerbach's worries about my sexism, if I overused the female pronoun with passive-altruism, no offense was meant. Many of my vignettes on passive-altruism and echoism were with female patients. My position is not to “equat[e] masculinity with activity and assertiveness and femininity with passivity and submissiveness” and in my previous work, I mention that there are active and passive forms of masculinity and femininity (p. 10). Auerbach is right to mention that there is much work on gender and sexuality that has been written since Freud, but my concern is not with sociology but with individual psychology. In previous work, I have made it clear that sociological considerations and “ego identifications” with bullies, social pressure, or authority figures can pass on gender roles . However, my interest is not ego identifications in this article, but superego (projective) identifications which come from psychosexual development.

When someone is unable to say No to others or stand up for themselves and are male (therefore gender roles and “what society tells them to be” is not the issue), then what do we make of this? Many patients, and many of their therapists, will fall for rationalizations that they were “raised Christian” or that there is some belief system that influenced them.

However, my clinical examples show that E&O statements can be elicited, and the relevant ego injury can be found to undue the identification with the good imago (and the PI expectation that the other person will feel upset with one for assertiveness or keeping a boundary in the way one did in the past). Psychoanalysts should be skeptical of theories in which the ego is made master of its own house, whether this comes from ideas of individual volition and freedom or discourse theories that rely on the ego receiving society's messages. Individual psychology or the individual's “economics of libido” is often the cause of this behavior and this means some essentialism. Insofar as some of the passive behavior I noted can be identified as female, I can only say that I see it more often in women than I do in men and cite female analysts who have observed the same thing (Klein, 1932, Chasseguet-Smirgel, 1970). For example, Edith Jacobson (1954) observes that “extreme idealization of women, which Freud considers a characteristically masculine attitude can in my experience be observed more frequently in men who have strong, unconscious female identifications” (p. 120). The Freudian notion that a biological male can have repetitions and issues with certain motivations and defenses that most commonly show up with women, or vice versa, makes his position a fairly progressive one. It is only the social constructivists who want to claim that there is only gender, and that no sex or pre-discursive desire exists, who would find this position problematic.

Auerbach acknowledges that I see both narcissism and echoism as pathological identification with the parental imago. They come from suppression of the opposite pole, so that the depersonalized individual in echoism does not show evidence of the power and competitive side of themselves and vice versa in narcissism6. Auerbach also correctly acknowledges that I see the return of repressed sadism from one's suppressed power pole as creating masochism in examples of someone staying in a relationship with an abusive and sadistic partner, boss, friend, (etc.). Then, following Blatt, he asserts that that these psychodynamics imply that when one isn't in narcissism or echoism that there is a balance between the two poles. However, while I agree that working through echoism means that

the dynamic suppression of the other pole is undone, there is still the dynamic between healthy pleasure-principle functioning and the repetition-compulsion. As long as there is the repetition-compulsion then the particular phase specific drive will give emphasis to the passive-altruistic pole.

Death

The next issue of contention is the status of the death imago as a negative quality. Auerbach mentions confusion about what the death imago is and how it complements the ideal of perfection (p. 18). I spent the first part of the article explaining the idea of the parental imago of perfection in the active pole, how it is a negative quality, and how it is part of the superego and “demands for perfection” in egoism. I also discussed how one can becomes it in PI: in either a maternal-grandiose form, in which one believes oneself to be perfect, or a paternal-compulsive form, in which there is perfectionism concerning what one does. Instead of the egoistic striving for one's perfection in maternal wealth, success, and power or paternal mastery of skills and one's professional field, I followed Freud's thought that these “active” dynamics are complemented by altruism in which love for others is primary. One of Freud's most famous concepts is that when the beloved dies, there is an identification with the lost, dead object. I tried to show that becoming the death imago, which is expressed differently across the stages of superego development, just like perfection, shows up in a maternal and paternal phase too (and I shared the clinical data upon which this was based). I showed that there was a maternal phase of depersonalization in which one becomes outside of life and that in early stages this can register as the desire to disappear or vanish or feel oneself to be empty. In contrast to the superiority-inferiority binary in egoism, I employed the outsider-insider binary in altruism and how one will defensively become the outsider instead of seeing the beloved insider being lost. In the paternal phase, I showed that partial death was related to Freud's definition of melancholia, which is becoming the criticized or judged beloved, who has failed or abandoned one. I added that there is often inhibited cognitive functioning (as opposed to compulsive) and inhibited mastery and assertiveness which amounts to stuckness in underpaid jobs and not taking good care of oneself. The paternal melancholic will self-revile and often show life envy or concerns about how normal people have a better life while they are unlucky, or

are missing some part of themselves that stops them from being normal.

In parallel to the imago of perfection becoming an ideal to strive for perfection in egoism, I used the death imago to become an ideal for identification (mimicry) with the object (whether individual or group). Underpinning cooperation is the idea that the individual identifies with the desire of others and will “go with the flow” and adopt their desire. In such moments, one is essentially outside of one's own desire and fills the emptiness of this with the desire of the superego object. In the paternal phase, this is expressed as becoming the missing function of the superego object and assisting them in their job or profession (e.g., doing the books at their business) or helping them maintain personal relationships with their family or friends, for example. I gave clinical examples to show these repetitions, and just as I sketched different levels of superego authority in ambition, the same applies to these forms of altruism.

Auerbach also criticizes my “uncritical acceptance of Freud's claims that death anxiety is indirect and, that humans cannot imagine their own deaths, and that the unconscious does not know its own death (p. 16). Auerbach's assertion is that it is “quite clear that humans can imagine both their own deaths and the deaths of their loved ones” (p. 16). I think what he might be confused about here is the idea of picturing the death of others or oneself in the mind's eye vs. imagining the experience of oneself or others being dead. While it is certainly easy to do the former, it is the experiential piece of the latter in which Freud's argument lies. As I quote him in the article, “whenever we attempt to [imagine our own death] we can perceive that we are in fact still present as spectators” (Freud, , p. 289). Many patients share the self-observation that they feel dead and can imaginatively elaborate on this with images of seeing themselves as “a reanimated corpse,” “a ghost,” and other forms that amount to being dead but also undead. However, what I understand Freud to have in mind is that when I try to imagine the experience of dying, I still have my self-consciousness (and its self-talking accompaniment) and cannot create the experience of my consciousness being snuffed out. In this way, Auerbach's report of being capable of imagining his own death is impossible because if he is aware that he did imagine it, then he was still spectating or self-observing.

In Freud's late work, he still maintains this position and additionally

points out that when one faints and therefore both consciousness and self-consciousness this “has left no observable traces behind” (Freud, 1926, p. 130). In other words, death anxiety is not from the observed separation of soul from body or the perception of the grim reaper or the darkness coming for us. When all consciousness is lost, as in fainting or seizures, we remember nothing of it and there are no signs of death anxiety with this. Death anxiety, as Freud postulates, is a fear for life, a fear to not accomplish one's goals, a fear to not be with loved ones, or anxiety that the beloved will die. It is a signal that death would mean something in relation to the loss of life. The impossibility of the direct perception of death means that egoistic anxiety for one's own death must be paired with the imagined perception of oneself being outside of life7. The loss of the object is primary on the passive pole and comes into active pole.

Along with the impossibility of imagining one's own death I added the impossibility of imagining the death of the beloved too. As I showed in some of the vignettes, the loss of belonging with the object and the loss of the object's belonging with others can be “traumatic” and repressed and that this is paired with the fantasy of the object being outside of life. Since id impulses seek to retrieve the person or part of their personality from the outside of life, this shows that the death of the object is not emotionally experienced. In mythology, there are other planes of existence, after death the soul goes to different places, and even when death is recognized as an idea it is still paired with the idea of resurrection. Again, the individual can have signal anxiety related to fearing for the life of the other but, experientially, they do not regard them as dead in the truly finite way. Many patients, after abreacting their id restoration, describe a sense of their dead loved one being in them, or with them. In so far as they loved them and have a memory of the beloved's personality over time—what they might say or do in certain situations—they can bring this to mind and, therefore, what that person is, still does existence in a consciousness.

Re-reading the passages on death in Auerbach's reply, I get the sense that my efforts to describe the idea of identification with death on the passive pole did not register for him. While I agree that the anxious encounter with the fear for one's own life can lead to PI with the imago of death, I did not discuss this nor give clinical examples of it (p. 18). Instead, the focus was on the ego injury caused by losing the beloved in literal or symbolic death. These perceptions of the beloved wanting one to be a certain way and not caring for one's individuality, the beloved being selfish and not showing concern for one, the beloved losing belonging by being embarrassed or having their authority disregarded, (etc.) are how I showed that death enters in the passive pole.

Culture

The next issue Auerbach has is with my “speculations about the potential political ideologies and affiliations of the various character types” (p. 21). I didn't intend this section to be a treatise on political science. Instead I wanted to give a phenomenological representation of how to understand the intermixing of the two poles across the stages of psychosexual development by using certain political types. I wanted to show that in the stages of secondary narcissism, belonging takes on more importance in the active-egoistic pole, while issues of power show up more for passive-altruists. I was careful to give a disclaimer in a footnote about how many other factors play into political beliefs other than individual psychology, although you would not get this impression by reading Auerbach's commentary here.

Auerbach's biggest reaction to my article also lies in this section. “In no way here,” he writes, “can I discuss all of the problems with these ideas, in which the individual, like society, progresses from primitivity to rationality” (p. 22). Like his other criticisms, he is quick to give a superficial reading of a position and then zestfully attack his strawman. I would ask Auerbach why he would think that I would go to pains to describe different psychological types only to claim that all “primitives” are narcissists who believe in the omnipotence of their wishes? I appreciate that Freud has some passages that do read like he took refuge in the social narcissism that people from simple political-economies all believe in their religious beliefs. I can say that I personally do not see any good evidence for this in the anthropology that I have read. Just as we have individual

psychology that can see a person raised in a dominantly Christian town in America rebel against her beliefs, I think that this could have happened in the past. Just as someone today can remain Christian officially, but also just go through the motions of following the traditions of the faith, I think something like this could also have occurred in the past. Just because the science, mathematics, technology etc. we have now did not exist in primitive-political economies, this does not mean that our culture is superior. I am very open to the idea that the culture and traditions of some earlier political-economies sowed more social harmony and helped people to be less neurotic.

What interests me is the idea that psychosexual development can be paralleled in culture and that the omnipotence of thoughts, other forms of magical thinking, and the whole host of fantasies that are associated with early stages of development and narcissistic and echoistic defenses, might have resonance with primitive world-views. As Auerbach's six points on what's radical in Freud show, he doesn't concern himself with the origins of his patient's fantasies, he doesn't work with id impulses, and appears to not concern himself with the psychoanalytic literature that tries to understand psychosexual development. I would add that the vast majority of the modern anthropological literature doesn't concern itself with these psychoanalytic ideas either. I think it is reasonable to remain open to such an idea instead of taking the opinion of academics whose view of human nature does not take into account the many facets of mental life that I get to see in work with psychopathology.

In conclusion, what Auerbach offers is the idea of Freud and Klein as “primitives” who had backwards intrapsychic views, while the modern intersubjective and relational schools have importantly corrected their errors. As he represents it, the best part of Freud consists in identifying transference/repetitions and the resistances that go along with them. We get nothing about childhood sexuality nor magical thinking from Freud's work. We get nothing about the superego and how pathology can repeat in the interpsychic and the intrapsychic. We get nothing about id impulses and the process of primary identification that forms imagos. We get nothing about the body-ego, erotogenic zones, and the productions of symbols related to them. One can wonder why Auerbach would even carry the burden of calling himself a psychoanalyst and open himself to being viewed as “outmoded” and non-empirical.