While a quick overview of how Freud theorises the notion of conflict throughout his work might seem like an obvious preamble to this discussion of conflict and ego ideals, things get much less obvious once we start tracking down the notion across the Freudian corpus. A batch of unresolved problems indeed arise, starting with the lack of a fully coherent metapsychological theory of conflict. On a basic level, this is hardly surprising as it is very much in keeping with the notion of conflict itself: by definition, conflict is one of those notions that you cannot get your mind around very easily, which is what happens when you are dealing with something inherently contradictory, with some fundamental incompatibility that the lack of theoretical coherence somehow reflects. This inevitably leads us to wrestle with some form of irreducible dualism – pairs of opposites, polarities – and the Freudian system is no exception in the matter: predicated on a dynamic view of a sexual unconscious/unconscious sexual envisioned as a force that exerts constant pressure, the Freudian system is structured by a series of terms that consistently clash and spar – be it sexuality and self-preservation, pleasure and unpleasure, activity and passivity, life and death – across complex configurations, permutations and reversals. Such persistent dualism does not imply, however, that the model itself should be seen as dualistic.
On a more concrete level, it has to do with the fact that, even though Freud posits conflict as constitutive of the human psyche, he does so according to a variety of perspectives which are difficult, if not impossible, to coordinate. When theorising conflict, because of the complexity of each perspective, it is indeed very hard to combine the economic, the dynamic and the topographical within a full metapsychological articulation. There is conflict from an economic or a dynamic perspective, on the one hand, that is to say drive-related conflict or conflict between the drives and this is an extremely complex topic. Without getting into too much detail, let us say that, in the first theory of the drives, Freud mainly opposes the sexual drives and the ‘ego-drives’ which he initially conflates with
the self-preservative functions. ‘From the point of view of our attempted explanation,’ Freud states in 1910, an ‘important part is played by the undeniable opposition between the drives which subserve sexuality, the attainment of sexual pleasure, and those other drives which have as their aim the self-preservation of the individual – the ego-drives’ (1910: 214), an opposition which the distinction between hunger and love famously illustrates. The introduction of narcissism in 1914 then leads Freud to posit a distinction within the sexual drives themselves between narcissistic libido and object-libido (i.e. libido taking the subject's own self as its object or libido directed at an external object), leaving the ego-drives as they were formerly theorised somewhat on the margin. And, most importantly, with the theorisation of the death drive in the 1920s, the model shifts rather radically, henceforth opposing life drives or Eros and death drives via mechanisms of fusion and defusion. If we follow the sexual drive as a leading thread across Freud's drive theory, we see how radical the theoretical turns really are, even though – and that is something – sexuality always retains its central position. Indeed, after being opposed to self-preservation, sexuality joins forces with Eros in the second theory of the drives and departs from the ‘primal’ and the ‘demonic’ which the death drive now comes to epitomise. At this stage, it gets to the point where it is quasi impossible to distinguish between life and death drives, and this is where the system becomes everything but dualistic. Because of its fusing function, the life drive necessarily strives to merge with the death drive and resolve their opposition, whereas the death drive naturally seeks defusion and dissolution: in other words, the collapse of the opposition between life and death drives is also the condition for its preservation, and vice-versa, in keeping with the respective nature and function of each term of the opposition. And yet, undeniably, conflict persists. This is where Laplanche is very useful insofar as he offers to reinscribe sexuality on both sides of the opposition, positing that the sexual drive pertains to Eros as much as to the death drive, thus accounting for the persistence of psychic conflict (1999: 189-218).
On the other hand, there is conflict from a topographical perspective, that is to say conflict between systems or agencies. This is the perspective that
I would like to focus on more specifically at this point. This perspective can be said to arise from the 1914 essay on narcissism. In this key text, Freud accounts for the shift from the auto-erotic to the allo-erotic that underlies the formation of the ego via the convergence of self-idealisation and identification: this is what Freud refers to as primary narcissism. Here again, this is a rather complex process. The ego is not an innate entity, it ‘has to be developed,’ Freud tells us, as opposed to the ‘autoerotic drives’ which are ‘there from the very first’ (1914: 77). For the ego to be developed, Freud explains that something must be added to auto-eroticism, something he refers to as ‘a new psychical action’ whose task is to bring about the instatement of ‘a unity (…) in the individual’ (1914: 77), i.e. the ego. As Freud puts it in Totem and Taboo, ‘the hitherto dissociated sexual drives come together into a single unity and cathect the ego as an object’ (1913: 89) – an internal object, Freud specifies. In drive-related terms, Freud posits an important link between the emergence of the ego as an internal object and the scopic drive: ‘[w]e have become accustomed to call the early phase of the development of the ego, during which its sexual drives find auto-erotic satisfaction, “narcissism” (…). It follows that the preliminary stage of the scopophilic drive, in which the subject's own body is the object of the scopophilia, must be classed under narcissism, and that we must describe it as a narcissistic formation’ (1915: 131-132).
Interesting how scopophilia – etymologically the love of looking, the pleasure of seeing – is absolutely instrumental here. For the ego, it is love at first sight. But how does the subject's own body become the object of the scopophilia? How is it that human subjects thus fall in love with themselves? What or who is it that they see in this primary scopophilic and specular moment from which the ego arises? A Gestalt of unity and control, Lacan famously tells us in the mirror stage, a mirage of self-adequacy and omnipotence which the budding subject ‘assumes jubilantly’. This ‘jubilant assumption’ as Lacan puts, is the core of infantile narcissism and it is a rather fatal assumption which dooms the subject to become ensnared in the frozen perfection of an ideal that is always already lost. Perhaps foreshadowing the later stage of Freud's drive theory, this convergence of self-idealisation and identification implies
a constitutive conflation of self-love and self-destruction, as the tragic figure of Narcissus reminds us: ‘too much plenty makes me die for want’ Narcissus significantly says in Ovid's classic rendition of the myth.
This foundational ‘too much plenty’ of infantile narcissism – the narcissistic formation posited earlier – is what Freud further theorises as the ideal ego, ‘the target of the self-love which was enjoyed in childhood by the actual ego’ and which human subjects seem unable to relinquish or mourn. ‘As always where the libido is concerned,’ Freud continues, ‘man has here again shown himself incapable of giving up a satisfaction he had once enjoyed. He is not willing to forgo the narcissistic perfection of his childhood’ (1914: 94). Even though Freud does not do so explicitly, I would like to posit that the ideal ego should in fact be regarded as a distinct unconscious narcissistic formation. It is Herman Nunberg who formally isolates the ideal ego as an autonomous entity. Nunberg is an interesting figure, a Polish neurologist and psychoanalyst who joined the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society in 1915 and worked with Jung prior to that when he was a student. His lectures were published in German in 1932 with a preface by Freud who expresses great admiration and enthusiasm towards Nunberg. ‘The as-yet-unorganised ego which feels as one with the id corresponds to an ideal condition, and is therefore called the ideal ego. For the small child, up to the time when he meets with the first opposition to the gratification of his needs, his own ego is probably the ideal’ (1955: 126).
I am drawing here more generally on the work of Daniel Lagache who endorses Nunberg's view of the ideal ego in a text entitled ‘Psychoanalysis and the Structure of Personality’ which Lagache presented in 1958 (published in 1961). In this important text, Lagache discusses Freud's second topography as a dynamic structure made up of substructures combining relative autonomy and heteronomy and involved in intersystemic and intrasystemic conflict. In this context, Lagache discusses the intrasystemic conflict between three substructures of the superego: the ideal ego which I just mentioned and which Lagache defines as ‘a narcissistic ideal of omnipotence’ (1961: 43), the ego ideal which pertains to self-observation and self-esteem and the superego
which pertains to authority and moral conscience. Importantly (and this is a crucial addition that Lagache makes to Nunberg's theorisation), Lagache insists on the fact that the ideal ego is supported by a primary identification with ‘another being invested with omnipotence’ (1961: 43), foregrounding ‘the syncretic participation in maternal omnipotence’ (42). The most archaic form of ego ideal, the ideal ego is inscribed in a pre-oedipal/dyadic configuration and it dwells in primary conflict; the ego ideal and the superego conversely are supported by secondary identifications and are inscribed within triangulated configurations and in secondary conflict. My use of the terms primary and secondary should not be understood in a developmental or chronological sense. As Lacan puts it very well in seminar XX, ‘it is not because a process is said to be primary (…) that it is the first to appear’ (: 56), as best evidenced by Freud's distinction between primary and secondary process.
Following Lagache, I would now like to apply this topographical model of intrasystemic conflict and ego ideals to a series of clinical situations and discuss a few possible configurations where Lagache's model will prove hugely helpful in my opinion. My personal view is that the ideal ego is an unamendable and persistent formation endowed with momentous weight in psychic conflict. For those of us who work in the area of psychosis, this statement is rather self-evident as the psychotic subject is somewhat locked in ‘a primary identification with another being invested with omnipotence’, trapped in a precarious dyad ruled by the unfettered tyranny of the ideal ego. The ego ideal-superego system seems completely inoperative in psychosis. This leaves the ego with very few options, either it is the ideal (magical omnipotence) or it is depleted to the point of annihilation when it inevitably fails to meet the exorbitant demands of the ideal.
This is exemplified by this psychotic patient of mine who enjoys singing and, frankly, she is not very good at it (she sometimes performs for me in the course of her session), but when she talks to me about her vocal achievements, she uncritically sees herself as Peggy Lee. It is not that she aspires to become or approximate this celebrated figure, she
is Peggy Lee in those moments and this is a good example of ‘primary identification with another being invested with omnipotence’. This aptly illustrates what Lagache also refers to as ‘heroic identification’ in this context (41), i.e. identification with prestigious or exceptional figures, a type of identification behind which the ideal ego always lurks. But then, something happens which brings home the radical impossibility to sustain the heroic identification. The something in question is not the ‘reality’ that my patient is not Peggy Lee, it is another kind of superseding reality we are talking about: that of the expropriating omnipotent other reclaiming its unfettered sway. Any bossy opportunistic know-it-all crossing my singing friend's path will do the trick and invoke the beast. My patient will soon deplore having been used, misled, wiped out by the expropriating other. So we make sure that she remembers to always put herself first – the exact opposite of what we might do with our neurotic patients because that is what they precisely cannot stop doing. This incidentally sheds some light on the difference between primary and secondary narcissism and on the place of repression in the distinction.
Unlike in the first case I mentioned, the ideal ego is sometimes featured in very subtle ways, almost invisible and it is the conflict between the superego and the ego ideal that is at the fore. A good example is the obsessional's opposition between the personal construction of himself as perfect – the one that, by definition, never gets embodied so that, of course, it never dies – and the ideals out there, the ones that he sees others as embodying. For the obsessional in short, self-observation is always at odds with moral conscience. But the prevailance of the conflict between superego and ego ideal in obsessional neurosis does not mean that the ideal ego is not there. In fact, as a primary formation, it upholds the ideals featured on both sides of the obsessional's ontological dilemma, it is the invisible centre-piece. This is perhaps why obsessionals are often so close to psychotic patients in the clinical situation in my experience at least, as if they somehow shared a wall, the lurking ideal ego being tied to some knowledge about death that cannot be turned off. The analyst's response to these two clinical situations is, of course, quite distinct respectively.
Lagache also insightfully posits a conflict between the ideal ego
and the ego ideal in mania and melancholia, the ideal ego prevailing over the ego ideal in mania, (an absolutely brilliant clinical insight in my view), with the opposite being the case in melancholia. This is useful, obviously, when working with patients who come to us with a ‘bipolar’ diagnosis. But Lagache's insight also resonates for me with a very complex profile of patients that I come across quite regularly: they are patients who present full-fledged psychotic symptoms (paranoid delusions, hallucinations), they are often in a state of great mental suffering but, unlike psychosis per se, the metaphorical function remains operative in these individuals and ambivalence holds a major place in object relations, which is quite distinct from the picture you would have in categories of psychosis such as schizophrenia. These cases are often associated with a variety of psychiatric diagnoses ranging from ‘borderline personality disorder’ to ‘complex PTSD’, which often signifies that they are seen as quasi ‘untreatable’ and that they struggle to find a place in the spectrum of available treatments and techniques. I will concede that working with them is extremely challenging because their territory is that of the negative therapeutic reaction. What that means concretely is that every possible sign or prospect of therapeutic efficacity is generally doomed to destruction and obliteration, so that persecutory turmoil and negativity always ultimately prevail. Always failure in the face of success, as French psychoanalyst Catherine Chabert points out in her excellent book on melancholia.
This mechanism is at work in melancholia indeed but it is interestingly in his essay on masochism that Freud mentions the phenomenon in relation to an unconscious sense of guilt. ‘The satisfaction of this unconscious sense of guilt’, says Freud, ‘is perhaps the most powerful bastion in the subject's (…) gain from illness’ (1924: 166). For the patients I have in mind, the negative therapeutic reaction therefore signals the implementation of a neurotic or perverse defense in the form of moral masochism within a general organisation in which the individual is otherwise relentlessly driven to his or her self-destruction. The cost is high but there is also some definite advantage in not relinquishing this masochistic defense. Moral masochism, Freud claims, is ‘a classical piece
of evidence for the existence of the fusion of drive’ and, as such, we would assume that it should contribute to the ego's binding function which the melancholic organisation constantly jeopardises. Yet, Freud continues, the danger of moral masochism ‘lies in the fact that it originates from the death drive and corresponds to the part of that drive which has escaped being turned outwards as a drive of destruction. But since, on the other hand, it has the significance of an erotic component, even the subject's destruction of himself cannot take place without libidinal satisfaction’ (170). In other words, while the melancholic ego is constantly facing the threat of disintegration, the masochistic defense is a fusing and binding mechanism which unfortunately tethers self-destruction to libidinal satisfaction. As such, it does not constitute the best possible ally.
For the rest, the landscape I have encountered in these patients I will refer to as ‘non-neurotic’ for lack of a better term is an extreme form of despair which Freud's account of melancholia captures really well in my view: ‘a profoundly painful dejection, cessation of interest in the outside world, loss of the capacity to love, inhibition of all activity, and a lowering of the self-regarding feelings to a degree that finds utterance in self-reproaches and self-revilings, and culminates in a delusional expectation of punishment’ (1917 [1915]: 244). Melancholia is one of those rare cases when the ego is not always able to prevent its own destruction, which is what makes melancholia ‘so interesting – and so dangerous’ as Freud notes (252). Going back to Lagache, we see how, in melancholia, the ego ideal prevails over the ideal ego: psychic conflict remains somewhat integrated, internal, which contributes to the functioning of the ego's synthesizing and unifying function. At the same time, it does so rather perilously and counter-productively by relying on the perverse defense of moral masochism.
In some cases, paranoid delusions or other psychotic symptoms are mobilised and they visibly make up an effective defense, not ideal either of course, all things considered. For this profile of patients, interestingly, the attacks from without are often experienced as more tolerable than the attacks from within, which I would not expect in the case of schizophrenia where it would be the exact opposite. It could
therefore be useful, in this context, to establish a distinction between psychotic symptoms and psychotic structure. We could also float the idea of reintroducing the category of ‘narcissistic neurosis’ which Freud distinguished from both transference neurosis and psychosis . No transference neurosis in those cases but perhaps a case is to be made for the possibility of transference psychosis instead. This might shed some light on psychoanalytic technique and theory in relation to the clinical area of ‘borderline’ or ‘non neurotic’ phenomena and the negative therapeutic reaction.
Time to conclude, I realise this is a vast topic. I hope I have conveyed how clinically astute and useful Lagache's model of ego ideals and intrasystemic conflict is, especially his focus of the ideal ego, the most archaic narcissistic formation which precariously draws its power from the omnipotent other on whom, in the state of radical helplessness we started out from, we all once were wholly dependent – an unmournable core of love that everlastingly ties us to our own destruction.