The Singular Object of the Oedipal Stage and Earlier Component Objects

The actual ego…which we describe as the system Pcpt.-Cs… is turned towards the external world, it is the medium for the perceptions arising thence, and during its functioning the phenomenon of consciousness arises in it. It is the sense-organ of the entire apparatus… We need scarcely look for a justification of the view that the ego is that portion of the id which was modified by the proximity and influence of the external world…the ego must observe the external world, must lay down an accurate picture of it in the memory-traces of its perceptions… The relation to time, which is so hard to describe, is also introduced into the ego by the perceptual system; it can scarcely be doubted that the mode of operation of that system is what provides the origin of the idea of time. (Freud, 1933, pp. 75–76)

In Freud's view, the ego is developed out of the id over many stages to form increasingly complex representations of the external world and the objects in it. The ego is not just reason or logic but that which allows for perceptions and consciousness in general (Freud, 1923a, 1938). Freud (1915b) holds a Kantian view that the external world and its objects are only perceived as “subjectively conditioned and must not be regarded as identical with what is perceived” (p. 171)1. As expressed in the quotation above, he even holds that the ego must also form a subjective sense of space and time and they can also be taken to develop and become more complex along with our representations of objects (Freud 1920, p. 28). Freud's Kantianism appears to be something that perplexes most of his

critics and the failure to understand it has been part of a great regression in psychoanalytic thought across many schools.

I will be releasing a series of articles that will tackle Freud's idea of primary narcissism, beginning with this one. In explicating what his Kantian view entails, I will show how many criticisms of Freud's work misinterpret his positions. This misinterpretation goes hand and hand with ideology which I see, in part, as a desire to import findings from unrelated disciplines into psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysis has its own clinical approach and generates data from it. When theorists seek to appeal to other disciplines it often goes beyond this data and constitutes an appeal to authority. For example, it is very common to hear that Freud's drive theory is outdated and based upon a Newtonian mechanistic model. The appeal is to how physics has moved on since Newton to relativity and quantum advancements and therefore Freud's approach must be wrong. However, it is forgotten that Newton's formula can still be used to calculate some instances of gravity and, in parallel, some drive behavior is very simple and mechanistic. For example, I get hungry, I eat food, and then my hunger goes down or I feel inferiority, strive to get more money, success, or prestige, and with my sense of triumph in an achievement my inferiority tension goes down. Moreover, Freud's theory has a place for the confluence of multiple drives and superego functions in a single act and claiming his theory to be mechanistic in every motivation is very uncharitable and simplistic on another level.

In this article, I begin with Freud's opening thoughts on narcissism: that there can be a move from actively pursuing a romantic object to a state in which one just fantasizes about one. This is the sense of narcissism as “developmental recession” as opposed to the narcissistic defense which is “the libidinal complement of egoism” or the commonplace understanding of narcissism as excessive self-love (Freud 1917a, pp. 222–223). I will explicate developmental recession as the move from the oedipal to the pre-oedipal in which the former is defined as the stage in which one is driven to pursue a single object for sexual or love (aim-inhibited sexuality) gratification. In contrast to the full Oedipal object drive, Freud defines the pre-oedipal in relation to earlier component drives and I will use the term component objects to denote what these drives seek. Moreover, I will show that Freud doesn't merely define these objects as fantasy objects and will offer a phenomenological account of how to

conceive of external pre-oedipal objects. I will argue that Freud's model is best understood by two ideas: the earlier the object, the greater the magnitude of idealization and the earlier the object, the simpler the representation of it. The Oedipus complex, in regards to a developing ego, qua system perceptual-consciousness, is defined as achieving the most complex view of an object2.

I will use the term four-dimensional to encompass the idea that the complex representation of the object also includes a sense of it over time. We form a representation of the object, but also of ourselves, in which we can come to appreciate how someone has grown, changed, or potentially become as shadow of their former selves. The pre-oedipal will be discussed as seeing an object that becomes three, two, and at its earliest form, one-dimensional. Ultimately, this earliest level will be compared to the earliest parental-substitutes, God and the Devil, who represent both the greatest magnitude of power/authority/idealization as well as the most one dimensional view of objects being pure goodness/light or pure evil/darkness. I will also bring the oedipal ego drives of power/work into the discussion. They similarly have the most complex cognition for their work object and competitiveness regarding one's reputation. The magnitude of the importance of one's work project or ambition for power increases in relation to the growing idealization in earlier stages.

I will use Jessica Benjamin's intersubjective approach as an example of ideology. As stated, she has sought to import recognition theory from the academy and she does not engage with Freud's Kantianism to understand it as a foundation to psychoanalysis. I will argue that she returns to a naïve empiricism of imagining that there is an “other who is truly perceived as outside, distinct from our mental field of operations” (1990, p. 35). This lays a foundation in which she makes the neat division of dealing with a “real” external object in contrast to an “intrapsychic” object which makes our interactions with others a relation to fantasy. However, this effaces two important distinctions that Freud makes. First, the binary between interacting with others based upon “death

drive” repetition-compulsions and interacting with them under Eros or pleasure is obscured. Two, his model of love that is based, in part, on putting the object into the ego ideal/superego, which comes from primary identification with the parents, is ignored. Ultimately, love will always reference a previous object in some way, even when it goes with loving an object whose individuality we are able to glimpse.

Lastly, I will finish off this article by turning to defensive narcissism and its complement, echoism, in order to give an example of what an intrapsychic version of love actually looks like. While narcissism deals with power issues and the defense of superiority to not feel inferiority, echoism deals with issues of belonging and the defense of seclusion to not feel exclusion. This exclusion is the loss of the object's love—in work life, love life, or friendship—whether from its death, departure, or from its hate, anger, or lack of approval (Freud, 1923a, 1926, Berliner, 1942, ). Seclusion signifies the idea of no longer feeling this exclusion by becoming empty, estranged in dissociative phenomena, withdrawn, lost, lonely, preoccupied with one's difference from others, one's brokenness or one's badness, or generally outside of life in identification with the dead object (Freud, 1917b, Reich, 1990, Horney, 1939, Eigen, 1996, Pederson, 2015a, 2018, 2020a)3. In the defenses of narcissism and echoism our search for love isn't based upon finding a parental-substitute, but includes the idea of finding a part of ourselves in the object.

I

In introducing primary narcissism, Freud (1914) begins with discussing hysterical and obsessional neurotics who do not have any romantic relations nor show an interest in acquiring them. He points out that this is only in their external life and that in their internal life they still have objects in fantasy; they have “substituted for real objects imaginary ones from [their] memory… and on the other hand, [t]he[y] ha[ve] renounced the initiation of motor activities for the attainment of [their] aims in connection with those [external] objects” (p. 74). In other words, some people get their hearts broken or feel they have been betrayed by their lovers, and shut down, put up walls, and no longer actively seek

a romantic partner. They may rationalize how there are not any good men or women out there or have thoughts about being undesirable themselves. Either way, their libido has regressed after an ego injury and is preoccupied with the internal life of imagination. Some of these patients may turn to daydreaming about someone new coming into their life, some may masturbate to the reminiscence of past loves, or they may simply satisfy this drive vicariously through a family member, friend, or through movies, books, or some entertainment.

The object of fantasy is an example of an object related to a component drive, and it needs to be contrasted with the Oedipal stage drives. Freud (1925a) writes that his

increasing experience showed more and more plainly that the Oedipus complex was the nucleus of the neurosis. It was at once the climax of infantile sexual life and the point of junction from which all of its later developments proceeded… In the Oedipus complex the libido was seen to be attached to the image of the parental figures. (pp. 55-56)

For Freud, the Oedipal stage is the creation of the first object towards which one is driven to have sexual intercourse. The parents are its first object, but there are two important qualifications to this. First, although the parents are the first objects, literal sexual desire does not stay attached to them, it is depersonalized from them, and we go on to form an object drive that is “directed towards a sexual aim attached to some extraneous sexual object” (Freud, 1905, p. 197; 1917a, pp. 328-329)4. Second, along with a drive for sexual intercourse, Freud (1923b) also

pairs this stage with what he calls “aim-inhibited sexuality” in the form of “the affectionate relations between parents and children, which were originally fully sexual, feelings of friendship, and the emotional ties in marriage” (p. 258; 1911; ; ; ). I have discussed sexual vs. aim-inhibited love as following the active-egoistic vs. passive-altruistic pole distinction in Freud's concept of psychic bisexuality in which the active pole concerns the principle of power and the passive revolves around the principle of belonging (Pederson, , , ).

Freud doesn't use the term “whole object” to describe the Oedipal object, but instead describes this object as “the unification of the various [component] objects of the separate [component] instincts and their replacement by a single object.” (1917a, pp. 328–9). I take this to mean that whether in love or in sexual lust for an object, the ego now has the cognitive capacity to be capable of being preoccupied with the subjectivity of the object. Freud (1915a) discusses how the “total ego” is required for love to be used appropriately:

Thus we become aware that the attitudes of love and hate cannot be made use of for the relations of instincts to their objects, but are reserved for the relations of the total ego to objects… Thus the word ‘to love’ moves further and further into the sphere of the pure pleasure-relation of the ego to the object and finally becomes fixed to sexual objects in the narrower sense and to those which satisfy the needs

5. In short, this binary can be understood as the active group being more competitive people who want to achieve success, wealth, or fame and those who have more concern for their craft and drives for mastery. In other words, to be the best or to do things the best way expresses this competitiveness. In defensive narcissism, they identify as being the best or believe their ways of doing things are the best or with being obstructive and blocking someone's striving. The passive group is more cooperative and they are driven to be in harmony or oneness with others and take on the desires of others or they seek to help others and supply what they are missing. To have others be in harmony generally and to help a boss or leader be in harmony with his objectives or others expresses how someone can be cooperative. In defensive echoism, they identify with the absence or death of this harmony or with the weakened and failed leader or they become the good and loving figure they wanted the parental-substitute to be. However, I have also argued for a distinction of active-altruism and passive-egoism in which the former can show moral perfectionism instead of sympathy and helpfulness and the latter have an anxious perfectionism instead of a strong self-reliance and willpower (Pederson, 2015a, 2018, 2020a).

Page 56

of sublimated sexual instincts… The fact that we are not in the habit of saying of a single sexual instinct that it loves its object, but regard the relation of the ego to its sexual object as the most appropriate case in which to employ the word ‘love‘—this fact teaches us that the word can only begin to be applied in this relation after there has been a synthesis of all the component instincts of sexuality under the primacy of the genitals… (pp. 137–138)

The “total ego” formed at the Oedipal stage gives rise to the cognitive complexity and syntheses needed to love or hate someone. The developing ego forms increasingly complex representations while simultaneously forming longer periods of psychic time in which it can hold these representations. Freud (1921) writes that “[a] path leads from identification by way of imitation to empathy, that is, to the comprehension of the mechanism by means of which we are enabled to take up any attitude at all towards another mental life” (p. 110fn). The affectionate current of sexuality, that forms the principle of belonging allows for a sympathetic or imitative sense of the feelings of others. The ability to form full empathy—to think through what an experience might be like for another over time—enters at the oedipal stage. This culmination allows for the object to be comprehended as a mixture of different drives, defenses, inhibitions, and quirks or what Freud calls and individual's economics of libido (Freud, 1930; Pederson, 2015a, 2018). Moreover, it would also include the perceptions of such traits and how they might have changed in an individual or how they are enacted differently around other people. All this can be held in mind—we can understand others as manifesting patterns of personality or character disorders and also understand how they weren't always like this and see them getting better6.

The idea of different personality types is visible in cultural objects like the Zodiac, in polytheistic elaborations on different types of gods, and there are many models of personality available in psychology. Some analysts fundamentally distrust personality typologies, but even they can appreciate that an actor, for example, might be able to draw upon a close relation's ‘sensibility’ in life and use this ‘impression’ of them to bring life

to a role they are playing. Similarly, a comedian could go beyond copying a person in an imitation to generating new phrases that the object would say that feel right, even though the person has never used the phrases. Moreover, some patients have a sense for how they haven't been themselves or have been a shadow of their former self for a long time. More than a depressed patient observing that she doesn't get pleasure from previous interests, some individuals show a strong sense for how they felt and thought differently in their past. Some can even place the change to certain events and let their analyst know that they haven't been the same since a bad break up or after some humiliation. They intuitively know the importance of such events in bringing about pathological defenses without having any psychoanalytic knowledge.

This kind of empathy, which gives one a sense for different types of people and/or one's relation to one's self in the past is not universal. There are certainly many high-functioning patients who don't show a good sense of themselves over time nor a sense of the vast differences in psychological types. However, if Eros is associated with the passive-belonging pole, then it's at least possible to say that the Eristic, active-power pole of the binary can be associated with sexual desire for a single object which can be idealized and lusted after so that other objects don't tantalize or beckon one7. The sexual oedipal object of the active pole is best understood as the single object that preoccupies one and that one attempts to possess even with reduced appreciation for its individuality8.

Now, Freud doesn't have systematic work on empathy in his oeuvre. Instead, he has general ideas on sexuality and aggression combining through psychosexual development and suggestive comments. Freud does not offer us a fully completed system in which he accounts for

everything; he only has unsystematized models. This was part of his criticism of Jung, that his former protégé's ideas might very well be wisdom but that they aren't scientific. Freud's approach was to identify agencies and structures in the mind by studying them in psychopathology: “split and broken structures…. [reveal] more about internal, psychical reality and can reveal a number of things to us that would otherwise be inaccessible to us. (Freud, 1917a, p. 58). This brings me to the difficulty I have in understanding the need for a breakaway from Freud's basic models as found in American psychoanalysis. Freud is often treated like he has a completed system or that he reduces everything to sex, auto-erotic bodily zones, or some element with which he can be caricatured. At the same time, this is done so that different names can be given to existing ideas and contemporary schools can fetishize their concepts as something new.

I would like to use an early article on intersubjectivity by Jessica Benjamin (1990) as an example of both caricaturing Freud and making an appeal to outside authority. In it she seeks to lay out the division between Freud's approach and her own, and begins by criticizing the psychoanalytic term object in favor of “the other who is truly perceived as outside, distinct from our mental field of operations” (1990, p. 35). The problem with this view is that it essentially ejects the psyche out of psychoanalysis and lays the foundation for misunderstanding Freud's positions on objects. I take this as an example of ideology in that Benjamin explicitly reports that she is importing Habermas' concept of recognition from philosophy (p. 35). To be clear, there is no problem with a reference to philosophy in psychoanalytic theory, but it should have some clinical grounding, an argument from psychopathology, that justifies it.

In Freud's model, any object we perceive must have a “mental operation” associated with it. In previous work (Pederson 2015a, 2018), I have argued for the importance of recognizing Freud's Kantian position that psychical representatives, menmic traces, or representations are needed so that the psyche can perceive both external and internal reality. The central argument for this—once again an argument from psychopatholgy—is that we need to account for the phenomenon of hallucination. For someone to see something that is not there shows that the psychical representative of an external object is separate from the object. Otherwise, there is a naïve empiricism that we simply see, hear, etc. the external object and it directly causes our perception. In such an account,

a hallucination would be linked to a chemical imbalance or some physicalist notion of neurons firing wrongly. However, Freud adds another layer to this with reference to the fact that we all hallucinate every night in dreaming. In dreams, we experience other people and the environment as if they were real and can have powerful emotional reactions to them and this is without an external object causing them.

To be clear, neither Freud nor Kant hold that real world might not exist and ‘it all might be in our heads.’ This is the idea of Berkeley and idealist philosophers before Kant, while Kant only argues for the need for phenomenal or transcendental idealism in which our minds need a representation of reality in order to give our conscious attention to objects or their features. Just as Kant (1999) includes a “refutation of idealism” that concerns pre-transcendental idealism, Freud (1911a, 1925b) holds that the reality principle comes in and our psychical representatives become connected to external objects. The ego can no longer hallucinate gratification except in the reduced form of daydreams9. Thus, the vast majority of us do not have to question whether we are delusional and, for example,

In her early ‘Outline,’ Benjamin (1990) goes on to contrast her intersubjective view as “carrying on a relationship with an other who is objectively perceived as existing outside the self an entity in his or her own right” with the “intrapsychic” model she attributes to Freud (p. 41). In the latter, she regards the intrapsychic as relating to fantasy and making the object something that is used for repeating past relationships instead of seeing the object as “a subject.” This is truly a strange position to take on Freud's work. It amounts to attributing to him the position that all interpsychic connection is through the repetition-compulsion or death drive—as if Freud did not contrast relating through Eros with relating through the death drive. He explicitly writes of Eros bringing us together in “ever larger unities” with objects and he sees it as “hold[ing] all living things together” (Freud, 1920). It is a caricature of his drive model to say that a drive could not seek novelty or new experiences, or that there could not be a drive that would find pleasure in getting to know someone better. Freud (1915a) observes that “[n]o objection can be made to anyone's employing the concept of an instinct of play or of destruction or of gregariousness, when the subject-matter demands it and the limitations of psychological analysis allow of it. (p. 124) However, Freud's work does not seek to classify every different type of drive, that would be the purview of a more general psychology. Freud is interested in drives that play a role in psychopathology and his research into them pulls in the opposite direction of trying to derive more specialized drives from more basic groups in order to understand basic conflicts in the mind.

Once Freud's Kantian position is appreciated, it provides an analogy for Oedipal level engagement with the object. Freud (1911b, 1925a, 1938) holds that the infant first has the chance to form a representation of external reality through the breast. This makes the breast the prototypical object of the function of forming other representations. Once the reality principle links the infant's hallucinated representation of the breast to the external breast, the infant forms the ability to make representations of other objects and see them as different and distinct from the breast. This

relation between the prototypical object and a specific cognitive function holds true for every stage of development. Although the parents might be the first objects whose individuality we glimpse in the Oedipal stage, this cognitive function goes beyond them so that we can also see others in this way. With the intrapsychic model that Benjamin attributes to Freud, the external world would only be populated by breasts and the mental apparatus wouldn't form a psychic representative of anything new.

Lastly, Benjamin (1990) only cherry picks some of Freud's early remarks on the child's omnipotence and hate of the external world to further strawman his position (p. 39). She misses that Freud's ideas on hate only reference the active ego drive relation to the object and that Freud (1912, 1914, 1917a, 1920) certainly mentions affectionate relations to the parents before this current develops into the sensual one. Moreover, Freud (1923a) very much focusses on “the lengthy duration in man of his childhood helplessness and dependence” (p. 35; 1926; 1927; 1930; 1933). The issue is not at all one of the omnipotent infant having to come to see others as subjects but the reverse for Freud in his late period. Although, he initially held that “the infantile ego, finds itself possessed of every perfection that is of value,” he changes this with the formal introduction of structural theory (Freud, 1914, p. 94). From this point on, perfection is first perceived in the parental objects and the child strives after perfection, in the ego ideal, after renouncing the relation to the parents (” ‘Look, you can love me too—I am so like the object’ “) (Freud, 1923a, p. 30; 1933, pp. 64-65). What is primary for the late Freud is the authority and idealization of the parents the become linked to parental-substitutes through the superego (, , , ).

The superego, which generates parental-substitutes, conscience, and the ego ideal is where Benjamin's imported idea of recognition comes into contact with classical theory10. First, Freud holds that love “can be

completely summarized in the formula: The object has been put in the place of the ego ideal” (p. 113). The ego ideal also has “a double kind of tie” that links us to authority figures (1921, p. 130). Later, Freud subsumes it under the concept of the superego, and continues to hold that “parents, and their personal significance for the super-ego recedes into the background,” and “[t]o the imagos they leave behind there are then linked the influences of teachers and authorities…” (Freud, 1924, p. 168). Bosses, teachers, mentors, and those we look up to in love, friendship, or in some ideal way belong to the class of parental-substitutes. Second, Freud (1926) also notes that “[j]ust as the father has become depersonalized in the shape of the super-ego so has the fear of castration at his hands become transformed into an undefined social or moral anxiety” (p. ). Castration anxiety, which is stretched across every stage of development to birth anxiety, can exist in the triangular relations with a parental-substitute, but it also concerns our reputation for being seen as a good person by others (i.e. shame): “later the parents are replaced by an indefinite number of fellow-men” (, p. ; , p. , , pp. ). I have argued that the object of the ego drives is best conceived of as similarly “being seen as good” in terms of having a reputation for one's talent, attractiveness, being interesting, being helpful, or one of the other ego ideals we may possess (Pederson, , , ). Even in early work, Freud discusses “the libido becom[ing] collaterally reinforced owing to some disappointment over a woman, or is directly dammed up owing to a mishap in social relations with other men—both of these being instances of ‘frustration‘” (p. ). Then, with the introduction of narcissism, he holds that “loss of love and failure” are capable of causing “injury to self-regard,” with self-regard comprising self-esteem, self-respect, etc. in the measurement of ourselves in relation to our ego ideal or the return of regard from a love object (Freud, , p. ; , pp. ; , pp. ; ,

Understanding of the importance that we give to parental-substitutes and the community, it is closer to Freud's model to say one's ego is the subject (in its meaning of being ruled by a monarchy, as has been the

Of course one can never fully overcome being a subject, but individuals have varying amounts of self-conscious individuation in post-oedipal development, which is one of the most important ideas in Hegel's philosophy14.

In sum, we saw above that the Oedipus complex represents the advance in ego cognition to the point of being able to love an object for its singularity. It is built upon a Kantian foundation in which even the most basic perceptions of an object require psychic representatives. Although the parents are the prototypical relation that forms the imago it becomes depersonalized from the specific caregiver in two ways. First, at the oedipal stage, the ego's ability to use empathy to understand the parents' singularity goes beyond the parents to other objects. Second, the object is still placed in the superego to become a parental-substitute and receive idealization or authority even if the individual is not engaging with it in a repetition-compulsion. Freud has a binary of coming together with others for pleasure in the concept of Eros vs. repetition-compulsions in which traumas or ego injuries are repeated with objects. It is not inconsistent with his model to fall in love with an object in which part of the attraction is based upon the singularity of the beloved when coming together under Eros or the pleasure-principle. However, there can be regression from the Oedipal stage to earlier pre-oedipal stages so that one is no longer seeking a singular object and this is what I'll turn to in the next section.

II

… In the Oedipus complex the libido was seen to be attached to the image of the parental figures. But earlier there was a period in which there were no such objects. (Freud, 1925a, pp. 55–56)

Freud's formulation is that there are “no such objects” before the oedipal stage, but this does not mean that there are no objects. Earlier component drives and their partial or component objects must be defined in contrast to the oedipal or single object. With them, the object is not being appreciated as a singularity or in four-dimensionality and the “nature and importance of the sexual object recedes into the background” (Freud, 1905, p. 149). For example, someone who has regressed from searching for a new romantic partner to daydreaming can imagine a “prince charming” coming into her life but this prince is often a fairly generic or two-dimensional character.

The component drives do not solely deal with the internal object of a daydream, but also have external objects. Freud (1917a) writes that

A child's sexual life is indeed made up entirely of the activities of a number of component instincts which seek, independently of one another, to obtain pleasure, in part from the subject's own body and in part already from an external object…. The instincts for looking and for gaining knowledge [the scopophilic and epistemophillic instincts] are powerfully at work… A few of the components of the sexual instinct, then, have an object from the first and hold fast to it—for instance, the instinct for mastery (sadism) and the scopophilic and epistemophilic instincts. (pp. 316–328)

Here Freud mentions that component drives may have their object as part of the individual's own body (i.e. auto-erotic and narcissistic stage) but before the Oedipal stage there are still relations to an external object. Classically, the oral and anal stages are used to designate the earlier component drive relations to the component object but Freud was aware that referring to the objects of preoedipal stages by their associated bodily zone was not enough. Freud (1913) writes of a “gap in our hypothesis” and that “the developmental disposition to a neurosis is only complete if the phase of the development of the ego at which fixation occurs is taken into account as well as that of the libido” (p. 324). Although the work of developmental psychologists must be integrated with any psychoanalytic position on ego development, it is still possible to stay with Freud's work to offer a sketch in what could be called a phenomenological account.

A phenomenological account would begin with comparing individuals who can experience sexual lust or love for a single object with those who show more plasticity with their objects. Again, it is important to understand that a component object is not just an internal object of fantasy but can also be external. Thus, if we take the above mentioned scopophillic drive in an object drive manifestation, it could be satisfied in a peeping Tom who has an external object that he watches in the window. Clinical experience will show that the peeping Tom may have several different women he watches and that they share two-dimensional characteristics in common with a past romantic object. Similarly, a voyeur may enjoy watching his romantic partner have sex with someone else and take vicarious enjoyment in her being “fucked” or “sexually dominated” by a man who is viewed as more virile or potent. The voyeur may have an ad on a website and solicit several different “bulls,” or dominant men, to have intercourse with his partner. Unconsciously, a traumatic oedipal

triangle that became traumatic was experienced and becomes expressed through his sexual desire at an earlier component stage in which the person in the role of “the father” is seen in a two-dimensional way. “The bull” is seen a physically more dominant, having a bigger penis, and capable of satisfying the woman much better15.

This brings to mind an important distinction to introduce between regressing from the single object and introverting libido from it. Although Freud (1914) uses it differently in some other passages, his definitive statement is that “the path from introversion to regression—is to be linked to a damming-up of object-libido” (p. 84). In other words, regressed libido returns to earlier stages and is stuck there while introverted libido can return or extrovert afterwards. If, in the second example of the preceding paragraph, the man is still capable of having sex with his own wife, and his getting turned on or having an erection is not dependent upon voyeurism, then the object drive only becomes introverted to the earlier stage and then extroverts back. In contrast, the peeping Tom who is regressed will not show a real interest in looking for a romantic partner. It is possible that he may have a girlfriend or wife but, in such cases, they often do not have any sex. In cases in which they

do, some subtlety must be exercised in examining what kind of sex it is. For example, the Peeping Tom might be fantasizing about his scopophillic objects and essentially be using his partner to masturbate in.

The scopophillic object is one of many component objects and I want to be clear that an individual can have sex with such an object himself. The main qualification of the oedipal stage is the singularity (even if the empathy for contemplating it isn't well developed in an individual). However, many people show a two-dimensional quality to their sexual desire and can have something for redheads, be into Asians or a certain race, and put such basic identity markers into the forefront. With certain patients, I have seen three-dimensional repetitions in which a person who is seen as good or innocent comes to be “corrupted” and it is desired that she desires her own defilement or desire sex or pleasure removed from love or modesty. The repetition includes this change in the object, but once it occurs interest is lost in the object. What is clear in the regressions or introversions to earlier stages is that the desirability or the idealization of the sex object increases. The man who desires redheads, for example, sees them as offering a better sexual experience or as something more valuable to possess.

Returning to love, an inverse relation appears as the child develops through the psychosexual stages: the more developed his perceptions of the object are, the less idealized it becomes. Freud (1915a) is very clear that “[p]reliminary stages of love emerge as provisional sexual aims while the sexual instincts are passing through their complicated development” before the oedipal stage (p. 138). Additionally, Freud (1905, 1938) also has passages in which he refers to “a child sucking at its mother's breast has become the prototype of every relation of love” and the breast as “the first and strongest love-object” (p. 222; p. 139). This idea of the object being more idealized in earlier development is apparent in Freud's conception of the superego. When he discusses parental-substitutes in a series, their power or authority increases in magnitude, 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,

Page 69

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… Providence… or… God and Nature… (p. 168)

Simply, in the stages of psychosexual development the child creates a placeholder for the power, perfection, and authority of others from its caregivers (Pederson, 2015a, 2018, 2020a)16. This placeholder is the parental imago that is formed in primary identification and, as Freud (1933) writes, “the super-ego… has been determined by the earliest parental imagos” (p. 64). Externally, the superego and its ego ideal will take on content from one's culture at different levels. There is the authority in our parents, teachers, and bosses in our community and this deepens to the authority of people of higher classes who have more wealth or influence, to people who are national figures in different professions, politics, the arts, (etc.). Authority can then deepen to being a world-historical individual who will be in history books to representations of individuals with magical powers, to God or some ultimate authority.

In the cultural past of the West—though still present in tiny subcultures—there are people who cultivate the transference to early superego objects. Cult leaders and kings of the past have received transference in which they are taken to be the embodiment or avatar of God. What such individuals reveal is that an early component object must remain aloof and remove themselves from personal interactions. By having throne rooms, pageantry, and ceremony around them, they appear only in glimpses to their subjects and their subjects can imagine that they are much more than they are. Their followers can imagine that this embodiment of God loves them back, but it is not human and involving mutual vulnerability. The grandiose and narcissistic humans who often assume such roles love themselves and are not capable of love for others. Without the total oedipal ego, earlier idealizations may be more intense, but they are three, and in the deepest level, one-dimensional. The other person, becomes “one's world” or one's God, and like cultural representations of God, they don't have personal things to discuss or say. They exist to speak about the state of the world, about the importance of the other world (heaven

or hell), or their presence alone is supposed to represent their message. They seek to embody the idea of being all good or all powerful (God) or all bad and powerful (the Devil).

There are two important caveats for the idea of God and the Devil. A common one dimensional representation of God is “the light,” a basic representation of a sense of warmth, connection, or goodness. A representation of God as light may arise in relation to patients' echoistic defenses of feeling themselves to be in a void, cold, and all alone. No qualities or identity is ascribed to this light except this basic goodness. However, more complicated relations, from more advanced stages, can be played out with the representation of God. The second is that He, just like other superego figures, is implicitly a part of many intrapsychic defenses that can be accessed (Pederson, 2020). I'd like to share a vignette, from my practice, on how God might be implicit in a construction and then show how this intrapsychic issue can be returned to its interpsychic origin.

Client brings up how he's felt down, stressed by his finances, and how sometimes he thinks that he's changing and doing better but sometimes not. This back and forth theme grows and I encourage him to develop the idea that he and his life situation aren't improving. He then gets into ideas that he's been “fucked from birth” and since addiction is in his family: his DNA is “messed up;” he “didn't have good role models;” and “life feels unfair.” This is a moderate change from a previous theme of client feeling “unlucky,” “damaged and disadvantaged,” and “alienated and alone.” This session, client's self-pitying and (life) envy of others who get to be normal while he's left out, sounds like it is at a deeper level. I know client is an atheist, so I ask him to humor me and tell him that I want him to pretend that there is a God and to imagine that client's soul was in heaven with all the other souls and that God chose to put his soul in his messed up body and messed up family. Client responds to my proposition by saying that he used to tell people that “if God is real, I don't like Him.” Client looks off, repeats the scenario of souls in heaven under his breath, and then begins to describe it as God “playing fuckin games,” God being “an asshole… [and] running some fucked up experiment.” Client elaborates that God giving some people harder lives than others in which “some will grow stronger” but “some will cripple themselves” is “fucked up.” Client then gets into how God is supposed to be “all knowing and

Page 71

powerful” and therefore “He doesn't need to experiment because he's not going to learn something He doesn't know.” Client infers that He therefore must be “sadistic” and “playing sadistic games… like a kid burning ants with a magnifying glass and ripping their legs off for his own amusement and pleasure.” Client adds that he feels like he “had a lot of potential to do a lot more [in life]” and that “feel[s] like [he] already wasted [his] life.” He then brings up the sentiment that he has to “work so hard to get to square one when others start at a way better place,” again.

I ask him to read these thoughts on God as Ego & Object statements and ask him to see who this feels right with from his past (i.e. “you are a fucking asshole, you are sadistic, etc.). Client tells me that a girlfriend from high school comes up. She has come up before and he expresses some surprise about her coming up again. Client then tells me about how “she'd make observation s about other people and ask [client] why [he] can't be like that” or point out “a guy who is really attractive.” Client expresses the feeling that he “wasn't her type” and that “she maybe thought she could mold and change [him].” Client makes the comparison of this behavior to God and her being sadistic in it. I ask him to focus on the memory of her and to see where he reacts in his body. After focusing, he tells me that he feels it “a lot in [his] chest and heart” but that it's also a “tingling and burning feeling” in his neck and ears.” He tells me that in the latter place it feels like he's “intensely embarrassed.” Client then seems to begin processing and talks about how “maybe she was young and clueless” but at the time he saw her as “an evil creature.” I point out that maybe from his current wisdom and experience he can be more charitable but that it's important to stay with the view of her from his younger days. Client agrees and tells me that “she was a bitch” and “a hateful person…”

My patient here is in identification with the death imago in which he feels self-pitying, an outsider who is different than others, and envies their life of being normal while he is not (Pederson, 2020)17. The material he produced was around his origins and being born to the family and

having bad DNA but of course other patients blame society, the city they are in, or other authorities for their woes as well. Hearing this level of authority, I introduced a proposition to have client focus on its relevant figurehead, God, in order to access the interpsychic relation in order to use it to associate to the ego injury. God as sadistic and cruel experimenter is more than a one-dimensional representation of Him but as my patient accessed his feelings with his ex girlfriend as “an evil creature” and “hateful person” there is some sense of the one dimensionality that could be attributed to the all bad Devil that he begins to access from it.

Many schools that eschew the idea of the developing ego lose sight of this 4-dimensional or what I will call “human” love. It's clear that there is a tension between love deepening to earlier levels of increased idealization that, by definition, cannot house the complexity of representation, and the Oedipal stage push for perceiving the individual's economics of libido. The earlier introversions can be seen in how the lover can become enamored with how the beloved smells, delight in an idiosyncratic gesture, or want to get lost in their eyes. The push for knowing the object and idealization that makes the object appear as more perfect, and possessing every virtue are the tensions that animate love in the Freudian model of mind. However, in the next section we will see that there is also the idea that this “anaclitic” view of love is contrasted with a “narcissistic” view of love in which the beloved comes to represent a part of our own personality that has been given up.

III

Before turning to more of the vicissitudes of love, it is needful to mention that the ego drives have another relation to the authority housed by the superego. Freud pairs the object drive of sex/love with the ego drive of aggression/competition (Pederson, 2015a, 2020a). The will to power or the “ego interest” of the competitive ego drives can experience the same vicissitudes of introverting or regressing from the object of possessing a reputation of excellence or mastery in one's field or in terms of overall success in life (Freud, 1914)18. Freud (1917a) notes this process in how

the artist “turns away from reality and transfers all his [ego] interest, and his libido too, to the wishful constructions of his life of phantasy” (p. 376). It is not just love, sex, or affection that can be the subject of daydreams, but also imagining oneself as a famous singer being adored by a crowd, imagining oneself to be the boss at a job and how one would treat one's subordinates, or imagining oneself to be the president or a YouTube celebrity. Externally, just as one can regress from seeking a singular romantic object, someone can regress from seeking the singular definition of success in their family, community, or societal ideals. For example, their ego interest, or will to power, can regress to gambling or stealing to make themselves rich or they can choose some giant project for a unified theory of the humanities which will never be completed. The multifaceted ideals of success become more flattened and simple. The envy of colleagues who are publishing in journals is stuffed down by ideas that one is working on issues that are so much more important or the short-term windfall of money is used to shore up the idea that one isn't a consistent and reliable provider to others. However, in parallel to the object drives, these examples can also be points of introversion which can be returned to total object competition and not be solely regressive.

An artist is an example of introversion when she seeks to bring her work out to the public and open herself to judgment and competition with others. But, she can also be part of a regression in which she lives more in her fantasy life and through her characters, than in attempts to possess what she desires in her real life19. Additionally, an artist's internal life is also subject to regression in which she loses the interest in taking on new forms; she might be producing works which resemble her earlier ones and which lack inspiration. Just as many people use movies, video games, TV shows, novels, and other forms of entertainment for their own internal life, the artist can stand in this relation to her own work and her

internal life can become derivative of its already existing forms20.

Although the ego drives are undertheorized and are much more interesting, for this last part of the section I will return to the object drives because Freud has much more material on them. We know that the Oedipal stage represents the nucleus of neurosis from which “we are bound to fall ill if…we are unable to love,” but it is important to note two other forms of the libido withdrawing from it (Freud, 1914). One was already mentioned in the contrast between the love of the pleasure-principle and love in the repetition-compulsion. While the former seeks the possibility of an open-ended growth with someone, the repetition-compulsion seeks the pain or ego injury which was formerly experienced and repressed. For example, love objects who cheat on one, who are emotionally unavailable, etc. are selected unconsciously and for some individuals, their relationship history decisively shows that short term relationships ending in pain are much more powerful than any pleasure-principle love. For most people, it is common to have both pleasure and pain being sought and as they go through analysis and work through the repetitions, they come to see whether they are joined more in the one or other to their partners.

The repetition compulsion desire for pain can go even further when the romantic partner does not just represent a parental-substitute but comes to represent a pole of one's personality. One of Freud's uses of narcissistic-object choice is in how, for example, someone functioning on the passive pole (belonging) can seek their own active pole (power) in the love object and

will love what he once was and no longer is, or else what possesses the excellences which he never had at all. The formula parallel to the one there stated runs thus: what possesses the excellence which the ego lacks for making it an ideal, is loved. This expedient is of special

20. The individual may identify with the motivational system and desire of the characters (Pederson, 2018). For example, those who are competitive and want power can enjoy the triumphs of the hero, those who are motivated more by love will enjoy a romance. The individual may also enjoy the semiotics of the film. Those who feel like outsiders will find belonging in cult films or a film may have the reputation of being a classic and someone might enjoy it as part of an image of sophistication. Ideals of being an outsider may not be valorized, and ideals of being normal may see an individual consume popular entertainment to fit in.

Page 75

importance for the neurotic, who, on account of his excessive object-cathexes, is impoverished in his ego and is incapable of fulfilling his ego ideal. He then seeks a way back to narcissism from his prodigal expenditure of libido upon objects, by choosing a sexual ideal after the narcissistic type which possesses the excellences to which he cannot attain. (Freud, 1914, p. 101)

Freud also goes on to mention the “crippling dependence” on the romantic object when it represents one's active-power-narcissistic pole (Freud, 1921, pp 114–115, 125). I have written on this “altruistic transposition of egoism” which makes “the object become supremely powerful” under the heading of echoism from the myth of Narcissus and Echo (Freud, 1917a, p. 418, Pederson, , 2015a, 2018, 2020a)21. In such romantic relationships, the echoist needs to be with the love object instead of wanting to be with them. So long as it is the need to refind a part of oneself in the object, the narcissistic beloved senses that the echoist really can't leave and any problems they might begin to have with the relationship are ignored. It's also possible that this is played out with friends or bosses, who similarly have the power in the relationship and don't acknowledge the echoist's desires or feelings.

This need for the other is also played out in narcissists, and often without the veneer of love. Michael Balint (1960) raises this issue in what he sees as a problem with Freud's view of narcissism. He maintains that Freud depicts the narcissist as “independent… self-contained, or self-sufficient” and does not see that they are as much in need of objects as the echoist above (p. 27). Balint regards the narcissist as “easily hurt and offended” and “hardly ever able to exist alone” (p. 27). I agree with Balint that Freud, at times, writes about narcissism as if it means that one has no need for an object, one is self-sufficient, etc., but he also has remarks that place these statements in context. For example, Freud (1937) acknowledges that a man can be wholly dependent upon a woman while he won't allow himself to be passive with any males (p. 252fn). He acknowledges the narcissism of minor differences in which one can't bear to see others who are too similar to oneself because they potentially might be held in higher esteem and take one's spotlight (Freud, 1930). Most

generally, Freud (1914) places an increase in the self-love of narcissism next to a decrease in the ability to love others, but he does not say that this increase in self-regard means that the narcissist does not have any ego requirements that he seeks in his objects. Lastly, in one of his final statements, Freud (1931) indicates that it is the individual who has the most developed superego who shows more of an “internal instead of an external dependence [and] develop[s] a high degree of self-reliance” and he contrasts this “obsessional type” with the “narcissistic type” that has a less developed superego and would therefore show more external dependence (p. 218). I don't believe it is incompatible with Freud's thoughts on narcissism to say that the narcissist needs mirroring or someone to reflect back his self-love.

Balint (1960) raises the idea that narcissists must “live together with their split-off doublets,” like Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, and that without “the partner['s]… help and ministration the glamorous and seemingly independent narcissistic partner would perish miserably” (p. 27). In other words, Balint, who cites Rank (1924) and Deutsch (1937) for the idea of the doublet, essentially holds that the narcissist must find his passive pole in an individual no less than Freud sees that passive individual must find her active pole in the object. However, where Freud could be accused of not highlighting the weaknesses in the narcissistic defense, Balint does the same for the echoistic one. He ignores Freud's writing on the altruistic partners of the narcissist, and says that the “unglamorous and unnarcissistic partner, who is capable of object love, is the one who is really independent from the hazards of everyday life and can cope with them (p. 27). Balint doesn't highlight their problems with saying no, “people-pleasing,” their problems with taking the leadership role, with being center of attention, and knowing what their own desires are, etc. (Pederson, , , ). The echoist is blocked in being able to show aggression and being assertive on behalf of himself but often looks more functional when they are acting on behalf of the narcissist, children, or friends.

In previous work, I have similarly come to thoughts about putting one's passive belonging pole in objects (Pederson, 2015b, 2016, 2018, 2020a).

As a more concise, structural formulation, I would say that just as the echoist enjoys his own power and perfection in the narcissistic object, the narcissist enjoys his own belonging and death in the echoistic object. The narcissist doesn't cultivate relations with others who won't increase his power transactionally (i.e. those who don't give him ties to important people, admiration, or grant him “narcissistic supplies”). He doesn't care about just belonging and fitting in23. By projecting death into the object, I mean the status of symbolic death in being an outsider, in feeling weird, “too much,” “out of touch,” low class, (etc.)24. Or, alternately, I equate it with the psychic death of the echoist in which parts, or the whole of his personality or body are outside of life, which sees him depersonalized, empty, feeling lost, unable to properly access cognitive functions, or lacking preferences or desires of his own25, 26. To put his feelings of “not belonging” or loneliness into others creates an inverse tendency of the narcissist in wanting to give the impression of “exclusivity” in being of higher class, important, and an insider. Depending on the phase of his narcissism, he may feel grandiosely perfect and have illusions to being regarded as important by others, or he may be perfectionistic and absorbed into his work, hobbies, or interests and this may be what takes

I would like to give a clinical example of this dynamic with someone who is compulsive-narcissistic. Instead of a grandiose idealization of self, the compulsive individual idealizes himself and his work so that he does things in the best way, his way is the right way, and this can get to patterns of micro-managing others (Pederson, 2018, 2020a). This investment in work takes away from the investment in loving and the value of simple belonging and spending time with family. As much as another type of narcissist talks about himself and makes others feel alone by not asking about them, this type can be a workaholic and give the impression of being more adult and contemptuous of things that aren't doing what is important, and similarly make the object feel aloneness.

Client is separated from his wife and has begun to get past representing her as all bad in order to talk about their issues while they were still together. This session, Client talks about how she wanted to be with him all the time and how he worked 80 hours a week and didn't always want to go shopping with her. I ask him to tell me what the experience of shopping with her was like and he says that “she'd get frustrated when she couldn't find what she wanted, or they didn't have [something] in her size.” I ask what their dynamic was like and he tells me that she'd often ask him to step out of the store and that “[his] body language isn't the greatest” and that “people ask why [he's] pissed off” all the time. He denies feeling bored or put out by shopping with her although the contempt was clearly in his face and tone as he talked about her frustration. He tells me that he sees his wife as having reacted to his body language, or just being frustrated herself when she'd send him away.

I ask him to give me his best guess about what she might have be thinking about him, even though it might be wrongly reading his intentions. He says that she'd think, “you're irritated, you don't want to be here… I'm making you miserable, dragging you through this… I'm sorry, I'm sorry… I should just do this alone” I ask client to say these things about someone from his past and see if he's ever felt this way about someone himself. I read him the ego and object statements a few times but no one comes up, and I don't see any non-verbals to indicate that he's holding anything back. However, Client then tangentially moves on to talk about an ex- girlfriend from high school who had recently contacted him. He tells me about their conversation, how she's currently doing, and then how they had dated. Client reports that it ended because a friend's relative had “lied,” said that client told him that he had “fucked her,” and that she believed him. He reports that the friend's relative had wanted to date her, but she wouldn't let him. I ask him how much the break up bothered him and he gets into how they “hung out all the time,” as he had expressed with his wife.

I try to make a parallel between the relation between this girlfriend and his wife. Client at first dismisses a comparison and I explain to him that people have many parts of their personality and many ways in which they connect with others. He's able to slowly build parallels of him “going with the flow” with the girlfriend, as he did with going

along with things that his wife wanted to do. He's also able to identify both her and his wife as “bubbly, free-spirited, open and loving… spontaneous…a joking around and having fun personality.” This is the first positive thing that he has said about his wife but he says that she was only like this at the beginning of their marriage. I ask Client to stay with the girlfriend and to talk about how she must have thought about client after she was told the lie. Client says that she would think, “why would he say that, that never happened,” and she would have felt “hurt and angry.” I ask him if there was ever a time when he identified as being “bubbly, free-spirited…” and he quickly assents and tells me that he used to be like that when he was young. I ask him to think about himself that way and to say his ex girlfriend's thoughts about the situation with him about someone from his past (i.e. why would you say that, that never happened, etc.). He tells me that his best friend comes up and recounts how his friend didn't want him to get married and told him “[he was] too young to get married,” and “thinking with his dick.” He tells me that his friend was “mad and upset” and client felt “hurt and angry.” He said that he and his best friend “hung out all the time… like brothers” and weren't “as close as before” after he client “got accused” by him.

I ask client to focus on this memory and tell me how strong of a reaction he has? He tells me that it's about 7/10. It's early on in the therapy and, up to this point, all his depth work has been around anger and aggressive feelings and so I ask him if he feels like we can go into these more vulnerable feelings or not? He agrees to it and I ask him to think about his friend accusing him and see where his focus goes in the memory and in his body. After focusing, he tells me that the point when his friend had called him “a fucking idiot” was central and that client felt “if you don't respect [what I want] fuck you.” Client tells me that he feels anger in his hands and I tell him to go back into the memory and to express this however it wants to come out of his hands (i.e. slap him, hit him, strangle him, etc.) and privately say whatever words go with it. After focusing, client tells me that he “popped him in the face” after yelling at him. I ask him for his friend's reaction and he first tells me that his friend “stared at [him]… like what did you do.” He then adds that his friend “was shocked.” I ask him to picture this shocked face and to see if his body has any reactions to it. During

focusing, he tells me that his chest and back “are sinking.” I tell him to stay with it and let it fully develop. After, he tells me that he “feel[s] [he] let go… and feel[s] better,” but I can tell he's thinking about something else too. I ask him how it felt to lose his best friend and, tangentially, he quickly gets into anger with his wife and tells me how what she's doing is “irritating the living shit out of [him].” I can tell that he is not yet ready to get into his vulnerable feelings and aloneness and we have months more sessions of aggression before he is first able to cry and get into his hurt and soften his compulsive workaholism.

My patient was able to identify with the “bubbly, free-spirited, open…” part of his ex wife and ex girlfriend. This part of him was tied to the experience of seeing someone else as irritated, miserable, etc. with him and this experience goes along with feelings of aloneness and feeling unwelcome to be oneself. My patient compulsively worked and often gave his ex the sense that he was put out by having to do mundane things with her. My patient was too adult, too serious, and righteous at times and there wasn't a place for sharing humor and spontaneity. He had shut down or dissociated this part of him when his best friend became angry with him and they had a falling out28.

I would like to make one further note on these phenomena: not every echoist puts up with an abusive partner and the classical sadist and masochist relationship requires that the echoist's own identification with the sadist in order for her to stay (Pederson, 2018, 2020a, 2020b). In parallel, not every narcissist is cruel and delights in breaking another person, in bullying weaker people, or is unable to stand the sight of affection, joy, or aliveness in others29. In sadistic cruelty, he must be identified with the longing for nothingness (or complete merger with the object) or the state of destruction or brokenness that can appear in the masochism of

the echoist (Pederson, 2020a). While I disagree with Freud (1920, 1924) on primary masochism, and see clinical evidence that masochistic id experiences were originally anger for an object that couldn't be expressed, his formulation of sadism being derived from masochism holds true in this formulation (Pederson, 2020a). The sense of self-destruction that one is left with is directed outward into the object. In Kleinian terms, the sadist projectively identifies with the object in whom one brings about this state, while one identifies with the greatness and terribleness of the parent or parental-substitute who had originally broken one.

In previous work (Pederson, 2018, 2020b) I have shared examples of echoistic-masochism in romantic relationships. Here I would like to share an example of narcissistic-sadism, albeit in the fantasies of a depressed man who essentially references the poles of power and belonging and their dynamic relation. Along with putting loneliness into the object the added dimension of wanting to break her and how he himself is broken is brought into view:

Client was a married man whose wife left him. Client became depressed and suicidal afterwards, with hearing that his separated wife had begun dating someone new. Client has had a couple of months of therapy, his depression has begun to decrease, and instead of his standard suicidal ideation, “sadistic” fantasies are now preoccupying his mind. This session client enters into the fantasies which begin with killing his ex's boyfriend. He tells me that he wants to make her feel pain and that he'd then go to her parents' house, kill them, and be waiting for her to arrive there. Client goes on to describe “violent sex” and that he'd rape her. Although, he has variants in which she enjoys this and then her crying and resisting. With the latter, he describes that he'd punch her and she'd stop resisting. Client tells me that he doesn't kill her after and that “to make her live in pain is the goal… live with the fact that she caused what happened [by divorcing client]… it's her fault that her parents died.” I ask client to picture the aftermath of this and how she would be living with this. Client tells me that he imagines her “going through what [he's] going through… [with] each day [being] a struggle… living hour by hour… but it's almost worse for her.” Client adds that he pictures her “in a studio apartment, a square room” and that “she's curled up in a ball all alone… worn out, tired…a broken person.” I ask him if there's anything else in the room? Client

Page 83

tells me that “around her is a light” but there's “deepening shadows further in the room [in the corners].” I ask him for his reaction to this picture and he tells me that he thinks of “revenge and karma… she know feels how [he] feel[s] and she got equal treatment in a way.”

I ask client how right it feels to picture himself in the room instead of her and if we can use this image to get into his brokenness? Client agrees and asks me if I have seen the movie ‘The Hobbit’ and tells me about a scene of Gandolf the wizard fighting a shadow. He tells me that when he pictures himself there that it feels like “the shadows are coming in to take [him] over.” I ask him if he has a sense or what will happen if they do? After focusing, he tells me that he'd “die and become heartless… doing what [he's] daydreamed about wouldn't be hard” and he adds that “if [he] let the caring part of [him] die… all that matters is revenge” and that “the reason [he is] depressed is that the caring part of [him] cares.” I ask client if he can superimpose the image of his ex curled into a ball and whether it feels right to imagine his body taking this posture? After focusing, he affirms that it does and we begin to work on his brokenness…

My patient loved his wife and where he saw her as absent or dead as a good, loving parental-substitute he identified with this in his depression. Then there is a further sense, in his fantasy, of letting himself “die” or dissociate from his passive pole to seek revenge and projectively identify with his own “broken” state by sadistically killing her parents and new boyfriend to make her alone and feel responsible for bringing this about. He had a “see, look at what you made me do by leaving me” attitude arise. There are questions here about how much the aggrieved sadist is revenging himself upon objects vs. how much he may just enjoy the obscene pleasure of cruelty with people who are otherwise innocent. In the latter formulation, he may be identified with what he sees as the inherent wickedness of life or the idea that there are no innocents in the world. However, such an investigation is beyond the scope of this essay.

Conclusion

Appreciation of the Oedipal stage in terms of ego development and the complexity of the representation of the object has always been in the background of Freud's thought. While intersubjectivists, like Benjamin, have sought to give prominence to the idea of the “real external other,”

they have done so with an unnecessary denigration of classical psychoanalysis. Freud's models of mind not only implicitly contain their ideas but, as Mills (2005) points out, the American schools have been unable to formulate their own models with any sophistication. Instead of a serious study of Freud's Kantianism, we have the return to a naïve realism or a postmodern epistemology—both of which fail to shed any light on psychopathology. Such ideological imports lean on the authority of academic discourse instead of deriving their authority from the data of over-functioning, under-functioning, or missing parts of the mind. These imports, along with renaming psychoanalytic terms, resemble an exercise in corporate branding more than the progression of the science of the mind.

Ideology doesn't only belong to new American schools. Historically, I can appreciate how they emerged as a reaction to an ego psychology that had already bastardized classical psychoanalysis and adapted Freud's work to appear as a completed system. However, while we can certainly attribute ideology to an authoritarian school that views its brand of psychoanalysis as “the one true way,” theoretical pluralism is equally problematic. The latter enshrines the position that “there is no way” but only different lenses to apply from the different schools. Neither of these starting points contribute to progress in psychoanalytic knowledge, since its blasphemy for the former to submit itself to formal research agendas and the latter is unable to give scientific research any higher status than one lens among others. Although, the latter approach could be of value if it the institute had diverse practitioners who were going to teach the techniques that went with the theory.

The question of what to do about ideology in psychoanalysis is analogous to the question of what to do with ideology in our current politics. Donald Trump came to power with slogans such as ‘drain the swamp,’ but any knowledgeable person knows that his tax cuts and policies only muddied it further; they didn't actually help the ‘forgotten American’ he claimed to be fighting for. We are in the beginning of Biden's presidency, but we can similarly see that not much will be done for ‘the people.’ Biden didn't win the presidency based upon a strong policy agenda. He opposed ‘Medicare for all,’ raising the minimum wage, and policies that would directly benefit the working class. Voting for Biden was a not-Trump vote and part of the culture war between right and left.

In this culture war, politics do not address the problems of the majority of Americans who live paycheck to paycheck and continue to make less and less money while the wealthy get a bigger piece of the pie. Instead of addressing this straightforward issue, Americans are offered ideology. If an American is stuck in a low paying job or loses it, the political right might, for example, seek to blame illegal immigrants for driving wages down instead of observing how CEO salaries are up. In contrast, the political left does not seek to deal with the issue of CEOs making 320 times more than a typical worker in their company, but will instead be concerned with why the CEO is not a woman, not black, or showing diversity. This devolves to paranoid thinking on both sides in which the outgroup on the political right is demonized and the ingroup on the political left is demonized (i.e. Cis White people have to confront their unconscious racism/bigotry and search for their inner evil).

The issue of political rhetoricians getting into power and not helping the majority of people to have a better existence was already observed at the beginnings of Western Civilization in the works of Plato. He has the conclusion that that those individuals who want to get into positions of power are never the people who deserve them. Famously, his answer in The Republic is to have philosopher-kings. I do not want to offer up a complete renegotiation of the social contract or prescribe a revolution. Instead, let's observe that Trump's rhetoric indicates that he was elected as a political outsider (i.e. non-establishment) and that the majority of the political right believe he won his second term. What can unite both the political right and left is a system that has much more transparency so that election results can be accepted by both parties and that motivations of individual politicians aren't suspect. This could come from having a political system that does not have corporations paying for campaigns, lobbying for legislation, and which approaches politics in the media with more fact checking and less editorialization. Psychoanalysis similarly needs this transparency.

Psychoanalysis is in a unique place in the humanities in that its practitioners aren't philosophers or speculators judging human phenomena from afar. We have symptoms to resolve and character disorders to work through which give us access to concrete data. This data should be what's used to criticize the theory of another—not slogans and strawmen. Denigrating classical psychoanalysis will only lead to reinventing

the wheel, if it isn't simply part of a narcissistic posturing of the American schools to be providing something wholly new and original. As with political change, psychoanalysis will only change when the majority of its members demand transparency. Who has not been to a “scientific meeting” at an institute only to see the speaker give an earful of jargon or appeal to an outside authority in academia? There must be a demand for clinical work to be center stage. New concepts should follow a change in praxis or clinical technique that shows that the undoing of psychopathology as its starting point.

Ideology reigns so long as people want to be subjects and champion a thought leader instead of thinking for themselves. However, simply asking people to think more for themselves is not an option. As analysts, we know that people stop growing and feeling the pleasure of learning in work or love due to ego injuries and their resulting regressions or defenses. I would suggest that transparency begins in psychoanalysis when its adherents take the attitude that ‘the Emperor has no clothes,’ instead of feeling inferiority, inadequacy, or guilt about not understanding an instructor or speaker. This could be expressed in asking a would-be thought leader to clarify what he or she means in common language, asking for clinical examples to illustrate a point, and asking for scholarship/quotations when the position of another school is criticized.