The Ego Ideal, the Grandiose Self, and Ardent Love
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THEORY II: BEYOND WISH AND DEFENSE THE EGO IDEAL, THE GRANDIOSE SELF, AND ARDENT LOVE Aim: The purpose of this class is to introduce the student to the radical revision of psychoanalytic theory inherent in the propositions contained in the essay "On Narcissism." The introduction of two new psychical agencies, the conscience and the ego ideal, the normalization of narcissism as an epigenetic fore-runner of object relations, and the concept of an ideal self formed by identifications with the ego ideal will be explored as they manifest themselves in ardent love and the clinical manifestations of the grandiose self. Reading: Freud S (1914): On Narcissism: An Introduction. SE 14:73-102. Optional Reich A: A contribution to the psychoanalysis of extreme submissiveness in women. Psychoanal Quart, 1940; 9:470-480 Reich A: Pathologic forms of self-esteem regulation. Psychoanal Study Child, 1960; 15: 215-232. Parkin A: On sexual enthrallment. J. Amer. Psychoanal. Assn., 1964; 12: 336-356 Sandler J, et al.: The ego ideal and the ideal self. Psychoanal Study Child, 1963;18:139-158 He yields his life if I'll Yum-Yum surrender. Now I adore that girl with passion tender, And could not yield her with a ready will, Or her allot, if I did not Adore myself with passion tenderer still - W.S. Gilbert In 1914 Freud created a total, revolutionary, revision of his theory. He took the Leonardo model and normalized it. The finding of an object along the path of narcissism was now no longer a secondary phenomenon, occurring in a few select individuals. It became a primary phenomenon, a universal in all human object relations. Every instance of falling in love has become an externalization of a self-self relationship and every substitution of a self-self relationship for a pre-existing object relationship a return to an earlier state of affairs. The first object of the individual had become the self, and every (external) object- finding a lending to that object a psychic interest that had first been invested in the self. Freud now maintained that the bulk of the libido must be considered to have always remained in the narcissistic position and to return to that position in the face of trauma, frustration, or loss. He first voiced this thought in Totem and Taboo in which he “suspected” that “this narcissistic organization is never wholly abandoned” and that “a human remains to some extent narcissistic even after he has found external objects for his libido.” A contemporary critic comments, “This is an understatement if there ever was one (Whitebook, J: Hans Loewald: A radical conservative. IJP 2004 85:97-116).” Two new psychic agencies were now added to the psychic apparatus: the conscience and the ego ideal. Since it is the conscience that enforces the adherence to the ego ideal, there is now a new central object, the ideal self (the ego as modified by identifications with the ego ideal) which can manifest itself clinically as (what Kohut later came to call) the grandiose self. Now object representations are to be considered the final editions of an epigenetic series of projections (of versions of the ideal self) introjections (of abandoned objects). No object representation is thinkable without reference to the ideal self. Defense can no longer be equated with repression since denial (the substitution of fantasy for unpleasant reality) and idealization are already at work in the creation of the self- and object-representations before wishes directed at these objects can become the target of repression (i.e., pre-repressive defenses). It also makes self-esteem maintenance the central focus of inner psychic regulation, thereby shifting the paradigmatic illness of psychoanalysis from hysteria to depression. 1. Jones on the impact of "On Narcissism" This is a passage in which Jones, writing in 1953, quotes himself from 1925. What is striking to me in this passage is how little Jones understands of the complexities of Freud's thought 11 years after "on Narcissism" was published. The sophistication of what we have described above is completely missing and in its place there is a flattened, simplified and rather caricatured version of what Freud is trying to say: In 1914 Freud made one of his radical revisions of his views on the structure of the mind in an important essay entitled "On Narcissism: An Introduction." It caused some bewilderment among his adherents until we were able to assimilate its numerous implications. To convey the impression this essay made on psychoanalysts I may reproduce the comments I made on it [in 1925]: The second phase in the development of Freud's ideas ... dates from 1914 when he published a disturbing essay "on Narcissism." ... Self-love appears in its purest form in a sexual perversion Havelock Ellis was the first to describe by the name "narcissistic," ... but it is easy to detect numerous other manifestations of the same tendency elsewhere. They can be found in the megalomania of insanity, in the attention the hypochondriac devotes to his body, in various observations easily made on children, on the aged, on patients desperately ill, even in the phenomena of normal love. Common to all these fields is a remarkable reciprocity between the love of self and the love of others, between what analysts term narcissism and object-libido respectively; when one increases, the other diminishes, and vice versa. Freud supposed with good reason that the libido to begin with is all [focused on the self], that self-love is the beginning of all love. When it flows outward we call it object-love, love for objects other than the self. That unfortunately it can flow back again, be once more [directed at the self], is a familiar enough fact. In most marriages there are times later on when one partner reproaches the other that he (or she) does not love as much as formerly, that he (or she) has become "selfish." And, as hinted above, there are many typical situations in life, such as in disease, after an accident, in old age and so on, when the tendency to this withdrawal into self-preoccupation and self-love is apt to become pronounced. Now the reason why I called Freud's essay "On Narcissism" a disturbing one was that it gave a disagreeable jolt to the theory of [drive objects] on which psychoanalysis had hitherto worked. The observations on which the new conception of narcissism was founded were so unmistakable and easily confirmed that we had to accept it unreservedly, but it was at once plain that something would have to be done about the theory to which we were accustomed. For [now we should have to reckon] the self- preservative instinct as a narcissistic part of the sexual instinct (N.B., my italics)... And what had become ... of conflict? It is true that the psychoneuroses, [Freud's] proper field of study, could still be described in terms of conflict: namely that between narcissistic and object-libido. But did this mean that ... there was no other source of conflict in the mind? These and similar questions were thronging in our minds just as the Great War broke out, and Freud was not able to give any answer to them until after its termination. Jones E (1955): The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud, pp. 302-303. 2. A Short History of Freud's Concept of the Ego Ideal The term ego ideal is introduced in this paper. Freud asserts that the individual "has set up an ideal in himself by which he measures his actual [self]." The development of this ideal corresponds to the development of an internalized narcissistic object. "The subject's narcissism makes its appearance displaced on to this new ideal [self], which, like the infantile [self], finds itself possessed of every perfection that is of value ... What he projects before him as his ideal is the substitute for the lost narcissism of childhood in which he was his own ideal." Freud specifically distinguishes the ego ideal from the "special psychical agency which performs the task of seeing [that] the narcissistic satisfaction from the ego ideal is ensured and which, with this end in view, constantly watches the actual [self] and measures it by that ideal." Unlike the "narcissistic ego ideal" the "institution of conscience" is a "censoring agency", "an embodiment, first of parental criticism, and subsequently that of society." Freud repeated the formulations of 1914 in the Introductory Lectures (1916-1917). The ego ideal was seen as arising "in the course of ... development," "for the purpose of recovering thereby the self-satisfaction bound up with the primary infantile narcissism, which since those days has suffered so many shocks and mortifications." Unlike the ego ideal, the conscience represents the demands of the outside world and acts as an internal critic: "We recognize in this self-criticizing faculty the ego censorship." In 1917, in "Mourning and Melancholia", he did not refer to the ego ideal but specifically called the "critical agency" the conscience. In 1921, in Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego, he began by asserting, as he had earlier, that melancholia shows us "the ego divided, fallen apart into two pieces, one of which rages against the second... the piece which behaves so cruelly is not unknown to us ... It comprises the conscience, a critical agency within the ego, which, even in normal times takes up a critical attitude towards the ego." However, he went on: On previous occasions we have been driven to the hypothesis that some such agency develops in our ego which may cut itself off from the rest of the ego and come into conflict with it.