Trevor Pederson's paper, “Narcissism, Echoism, Perfection, and Death: Towards a Structural Psychoanalysis,” is a courageous trial to understand psychical development in an original and wide scoped inquiry. Its starting point is Freud's structural theory, yet it is successfull in weaving together Kleinian thought, different French schools, and a very wide variety of psychoanalytic thought into an integrated and persuasive argument.
In his paper, Pederson follows others in contrasting the term Echoism to Narccisism. His contribution lies mainly in the understanding of the development of Echoist tendencies, as opposed to masochistic tendencies. Pederson writes:
“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.”
Pederson's distinction between Echoism and Masochism, as different opposites to narcissism, echoes the distinction Ghent makes (1990) between submission and surrender. Although, to Ghent, surrender is merely “… liberation and expansion of the self as a corollary to the letting down of defensive barriers” (p.108), to Pederson Echoism remains an area of immense psychical pain. This distinction also brings to mind Ferenczi's ‘confusion of the tongues‘ (1949)—the child seeks surrendering to a parent. In the need to build up his identity and strengthen his self, he seeks to absorb within him the (idealized) other. However, if the caretaker is a malignant Narcissist and an abuser, the child's devotion turns into submission: The Echoist may turn into a masochist.
Pederson makes plenty of use of the terminology of Dialectics and
Synthesis, words brought to psychoanalysis from Hegelian phenomenology, first and foremost via Lacan (who studied with the Hegelian scholar Kojéve), and later via Benjamin, Ogden and others. Hence, I would like to examine Hegel's thought (which seems to have influenced Freud's ideas), as the root of some of Pederson's suggestions as well.
Pederson's dialectic between Echoist and Narcissist may be compared to Hegel's famous passage on Lordship and Bondage in ‘Phenomenology of Mind’ (1967 [1807]). This passage has evoked interest in psychoanalysis, as it may be interpreted as an inquiry on the encounter with the other: In the chapter in which this passage appears, Hegel examines the dynamics which take place when two ‘self consciousnesses’ meet. At the moment of the encounter, both self-consciousnesses wish to annihilate the other, for self-consciousness ‘comes out of itself’ in the encounter. Furthermore it becomes an object to the other, a thing. Hegel uses the German word Aufheben, which is a paradoxical term that means negation as well as preservation. This wish to annihilate the other, as a threat to each self-consciousness, takes the form of ‘a struggle to the death.’
At this point, Hegel makes a distinction between the two poles of each self-consciousness. For one self-consciousness, the need to subordinate the other and negate him (aufheben) is dominant—this is the Lord's pole. At this pole, self-consciousness went all the way in the struggle of life and death, willing to die, and had shown the other to be merely negation of itself. However, this subordination made the Lord dependant on the Bondsman as verifying his being for itself.
At the pole of the Bondsman, self-consciousness' fear of death is stronger. This pole is eventually the pole in which self-consciousness gains its independence: the fear of death is the recognition of negation in its absoluteness. Hegel writes: “… this absolute dissolution of all its stability into fluent continuity is, however, the simple, ultimate nature of self-consciousness, absolute negativity, pure self-referent existence, which consequently is involved in this type of consciousness” (Hegel, 1967 [1807], p. 237). Moreover, this pole works for the Lord, thus making the mark of its being on nature. Due to both these outcomes (fear of death and work), it is really the bondsman's pole which asserts the independence of self-consciousness as being.
It is important to note that Hegel's distinction is not between the two self-consciousnesses of the encounter, but between poles within each self-consciousness. The notion of Death, as a negation to all, eventually dissolves this distinction. Besides pointing out the resemblance of Pederson's distinction to that of Hegel, I would like to suggest that the pole of Narcisisst development might co-exist with the pole of the Echoist one in the same person. Perhaps it is always so, while the dominance of the poles differs among different personalities.
Pederson uses Freud's dual drive theory to understand the dynamics of the Echoist, the complexity he brings forth, and the mental pain he suffers, while identifying with death as a parental object. In a purely Hegelian manner, Pederson writes: “The death imago is born of negation but appears to be part of a dialectic in which it becomes negated too.” Pederson argues that the negated death image becomes what Klein calls the good object – the purely giving object, perhaps the Bondsman.
Pederson's ‘good object’ echoes Winnicott's extreme environment mother, the mother absorbed in primary maternal preoccupation (1975 [1956]), negating all her other interests and her being. Pederson explains that the passive pole of the Echoist identifies with this parental imago of death. In this, Pederson follows psychoanalytic thought in which Hegel's dialectics is turned around: The survival of the other—the baby—becomes the focus of attention, and the self (temporarily) annihilates its own being in order to preserve the life of the other. However, in normal development, the survival of the baby is, of course, immanent to the psychical life of the parent as well. This is not what happens in extreme Echoism.
Winnicott's account of the encounter with the other is opposite to Hegel's on the part of the infant as well. As he rejects Klein's ideas on aggression and the Death Drive, Winnicott sees the wish to destroy the object paradoxically as the wish to confirm the objects existence outside of the sphere of the infant's omnipotence (Winnicott, 1971 [1969]). This idea is linked to Pederson's quote of Freud, that the object is brought by the instincts of self-preservation in the first place. It is not an Hegelian encounter forced upon self-consciousness.
However, contrary to Winnicott, Pederson seems to accept the Death Drive: Pederson argues that Eros and the predominance of the maternal
phase does not allow the Echoist to turn aggression towards external objects, but it does not delete the aggresive drive. Thus, the echoist turns aggression towards himself. This is a completely different view from Winicott's aggression as motility, vitality, and seeking of the other.
Pederson claims that in order to gain normal development, one must achieve the ability of fusion of the drives: the ability to compete, as well as the ability to erotically love the other. He understands Freud's inclusion of self-preservation with the life drive as healthy competition. Competition is also part of the willingness to interact with others. The Echoist achieves neither of these abilities, as he strives towards annihilation of the self and idealization of death as the archaic superego, and the identification with the death of the parent. Just as the Narcissist strives towards perfection, so the Echoist strives towards absolute fusion with the other and the sacrifice in its totality.
At the second step of the Echoist's development, Pederson brings forth the paternal contribution. Pederson follows Winnicott's analogy of the difference between being and doing to maternal and paternal functions: In the maternal phase, the identification is with the good maternal imago who passively “turns the other cheek’1 and continues the other's (the infant's) going-on-being, while in the paternal phase the Echoist identifies with active self-sacrifice. Pederson uses Klein's concept of ‘Projective Identification,’ as the Echoist projects his neediness and needs into the other.
Pederson refers to Green's dead mother, in his discussion of identification with the dead parental object. However, Winnicott precedes Green in the idea of dead mother (1965 [1963]). Again, Winnicott's account of the child's psychical consequences in such an interaction is paradoxical: On the one hand he speaks of the child playing dead in the presence of a mother whose main object is dead, as to fit to her preconception of a dead object. On the other hand, the child may try to liven the mother with liveliness which is the opposite of aliveness. This child strives to be alive. “To be alive is all” says Winnicott (1965 [1963], p. 191).
It is interesting to note that the origin of this phrase Pederson uses is in the biblical ‘Book of Lamentations,’ in which the Hebrew is expected to turn the other cheek to the conqueror of Judea. Some interpreters understand this expectation to be a fulfillment of God's will to punishment.
Winnicott brings forth here a view very different from Pederson's, in which the Echoist's desire is formulated as ‘to be dead is all’. This may be due to Winnicott's rejection of the death drive, or else it may be due to the difference between an idealized self-sacrificing mother, negating herself for the other's needs of survival, as opposed to a depressed mother, whose other did not survive.
In some parts of his paper, I found it confusing that Pederson uses the idea of Projective Identification. For instance, Pederson writes on the subject of the Echoist depersonalization: “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.”
Pederson writes that when the Echoist is in identification with what he terms as ‘the maternal death imago,’ he feels the other as intrusive and draining. But in the more regressive state in which the Echoist places himself outside of life and uses depersonalization, it seems to me that he must have no capacity for the idea of a three dimensional space. Winnicott (1945) sees depersonalization as a symptom of disintegration. I would rather assume that at such a psychic state, the Echoist will be using Adhesive Identifications (Melzer, 1975) rather than Klienian Projective Identifications, and indeed it seems that Pederson describes the clinging and mimicry as such. This seems compatible to Lacan's view, in which the dyad with the maternal remains imaginary, whereas only when the paternal third enters as an additional relationship, subjectivity and symbolic space may evolve.
When the paternal imago enters play, Pederson states that the Echoist wishes to compensate for the imperfections of the paternal ‘superego object.’ He writes: “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.” It is intersting to note that in Sophocles’ trilogy, the paternal compensation of Antigone as her father's sight, appears in Oedipus at Colonus and precedes the maternal phase of Antigone's identification with death in Antigone. I agree with Pederson's view, and see it as parallel to Green's Red Anxieties as more advanced than his White ones. It therefore seems Antigone is regressing as the plays progress.
Pederson gives plenty of clinical vignettes to exemplify his examination throughout the text. I must confess that I am not familiar with his basic techniques of EMDR accompanied by BLS (bilateral stimulus) and formations of what he terms ‘Ego and Object statements,’ as I work in the more classic techniques of analysis as well as in analytically based face to face psychotherapy. However, what was striking for me in the clinical vignettes was the almost total lack of attention to the transference relationships and to the here and now situations, not only in the interventions, but also in the discussion of the cases. For example, in one of the vignettes, Pederson writes how he read to the patient the description of ‘dependent personality disorder.’ The following session the patient returns, after he had thought about this at home, and noticed he might change his mind about his plans according to different inputs he receives from other people. Pederson asks him whether he sometimes feels that he disagrees with advice, and the pateint eventually replies that he sometimes maintains his opinion but is reluctant to disagree. It is striking for me to see that no reference is made by Pederson to the paradox involved in this verbal exchange in session. One may or may not make a reference to the transference in the session itself, but Pederson does not relate at all to the clinical situation being a meeting of the self consciousness of the patient with that of the therapist, and the paradox involved in questioning a patient about what he does when he disagrees with another.
Only in his last vigniette Pederson insinuates the ‘here and now’ transference situation when he writes: ‘I try again not to fill the silence.’ In this he is aware of the tendency to repeat the internalized object relations in the therapeutic relationship itself.
We see that in the clinical situation both patient and analyst share both poles—that of the Lord and that of the Bondsman. The analyst is working for the patient, tirelessly. Nevertheless, the patient is also working for the analyst (Lacan, 1977 [1953]). The analyst seeks perfection in his work, but he also wishes to be silent, to fade into the analytic situation and allow the patient to become (much like in Winnicott's primary maternal preoccupation (1956)).
Pederson calls his theory a structuralist theory, following Freud's structuralism. This psychoanalytic idea, an idea of structure within the psyche and in between psyches, is opposed to Hegel's phenomenology and
the idea of dialectics and synthesis, in which the final outcome is deconstruction and fusion into the absolute spirit. Hegel's somewhat religious ideas are dangerous to psychoanalytic aims, and are perhaps even psychotic. For in psychoanalysis, distinctions, differences, and conflict are inherent. For this reason, I prefer Winnicott's understanding of a paradox that cannot be resolved to the Hegelian idea of dialectics, an idea some analysts embrace; dialectics may hold in a world where synthesis is possible and the law of contradiction is rejected (thesis and antithesis result in synthesis), whereas paradox still holds the contradiction as unresolvable. This holds not only in intrapsychic understanding, but also in inter-subjective inquiries; there is no Lord and Bondsman – in the encounter with the other, one self-consciousness creates as well as finds the other. The paradox must not be resolved, lest dissolving into the absolute spirit occurs.
Having said this, although Pederson's conceptualization of Echoist and Narcisisst is instructive and usefull, one must not forget that in the clinical situation there is no such thing as (purely) Narcissist or (purely) Echoist. Both poles interact in paradox within every single person.