The American Icarus Revisited: Phallic Narcissism and Boredom. A Reply to the Discussion by Alan J. Eisnitz

Dr Eisnitz (1974) indicates his approval of our 'interesting and attractive thesis [on] the role of narcissism in … the sympton of boredom'. But, politeness aside, it is clear that his understanding of the problem is completely different from ours (Weinberger & Muller, 1974). It is perhaps somewhat less clear just what his understanding is because he uses some novel terms. In the interests of clarity, we will present our understanding of our critic's position, staying as close as possible to his own words in his discussion of our paper.

According to Dr Eisnitz, a 'sense of self' emerges first as the primitive body-ego, and later in a much more complex form unifying processes of drive (id), delay and redirection of impulses (ego), and maintenance of stable values (superego) in an overall 'self representation'. This self representation merges together 'elements of the past, present and future and has both conscious and unconscious aspects. From its overall unity and stability comes the relatively constant feeling of the self, the "me" which all must experience and which must be maintained in spite of many quite different functional roles.' Boredom, in Eisnitz' view, is symptomatic of a disturbance in this experience of the self, i.e. an affective symptom that occurs in situation where the related aspects of the self presentation are insufficiently cathected, and the individual is unable to experience himself as capable of mastering the situation. 'Without adequate cathexis of the self representation there is, in a sense, much less of the self to be involved.' Boredom is not in itself an affective state, but merely an attribution that certain individuals make to their surroundings ('… life is boring'). Where there is narcissistic pathology of an inadequately cathected self representation, the more important aspect than the ascription of boring-ness to events is the subjective feeling of emptiness of the self.

The basis dynamic, then, of Eisnitz' position is insu