Rom J Psychoanal 2018, 11 (1):37-50 doi:10.26336/rjp.2018-1101-4 Rom J Psychoanal BROKEN MIRRORS: LOOKING FOR A TRUE IDENTITY Milagros Cid Sanz8 (Accepted for publication 8 May 2018) Abstract: This article reviews the importance of the double for the integration of narcissism and the formation of the Self. A brief review of Freud’s articles On Narcissism and The Uncanny serves as a starting point for reflection on the narcissistic double. The article On Narcissism uses the myth of Narcissus as reference. With regard to the uncanny, it demonstrates the frequent appearance of the double in literature and in certain intensive regressive states, or the disorganization of the Self, along with the disturbing relationship between the familiar and the uncanny. Subsequent contributions from contemporary authors, such as de M’Uzan, have developed this concept within normal evolution and pathological formations. The concept of the mirroring object has been theorised by different authors such as Lacan, Winnicott, and Kohut, among others, pointing out the importance of the object in the formation of the subject, and the ways of mirroring transference in the 8 Madrid Psychoanalytical Association; e-mail: [email protected] 37 analyses of this type of narcissistic functioning, along with the associated technical difficulties. The function of the internal and external frame is considered to be a third necessary for (re)constructing the triangulation. One clinical case illustrates some transference- countertransference difficulties in these cases. Keywords: identity, Narcissus myth, narcissistic double, mirroring object, third. Introduction The conquest of one’s own identity is a long and uncertain process. This process is usually subject to oscillations that are more or less intense depending on the development of narcissism and the ways object relations are identified and formed. As we know, the earliest exchanges with the object — the mother as first seducer — (Freud, 1905) are essential to the formation of the ego and its progressive differentiation from the object. The connection between narcissism, the double, and the mirroring object is part of the evolution of being within the construction of identity. Its failures are observed in pathological conditions and have technical implications. Narcissism and the Double The introduction of the concept of narcissism represented a change in the first drive theory, which considered drives as being divided into two groups: sexual drives and self-preservation drives. At first, Freud’s theory opposed two fundamental types of drives, the self-preservation drive and the sexual drive, an instinctual dualism which led to a second phase of drive theory: the opposition between life drives (Eros) and 38 death drives (Thanatos), as defined in the so-called structural model of the mind (Freud, 1923). Considering that, in the Freudian conceptualisation, there are no drives without object, even if the object is oriented toward the ego, this is only possible when care is provided by an adequate external object, allowing the integration of autoerotisms (Freud, 1914). Considering the second Freudian drives theory, an adequate external object allows the fusion between the death drive and the life drive/libido. If equating narcissism with self-love constitutes a reduction, and if narcissism denotes an archaic form of interaction, then to consider that Narcissus perished because he was in love with himself is to, in fact, reduce the myth. He was in love with a reflection which he failed to recognise as his own. In Ovid’s version, when Narcissus noticed this image had no independent existence, but was an illusion instead, he committed suicide, succumbing to a fatal destiny. He was a beautiful only child, the result of Liriope’s ravishment by the river god Cephisus. The absence of a father and siblings prevented him from recognising alterity and the differences between sexes and generations. Curiously, the water on the surface of which Narcissus sees his reflection is the water of the spring that the nymph Liriope, his mother, presided over. This mirroring relationship with his mother is what ultimately kills him. According to Rank (1914), the doubling of one’s self involves tension between the self and its double, the latter’s presence challenging the self’s existence and initially acting as a parasite, aiming to displace or destroy the original self. The phenomenon of the double refers to the division of the subject into a self and a non-self. On one hand, it ensures immortality (as evoked in Plato’s Phaedo), while on the other, it threateningly announces death. The primitive concept of duality of the soul, where the soul, the mind 39 is separate from the physical body, arises from Man’s need to immortalise himself. The relationship between the double and narcissism was also underlined in more recent times with Freud’s work On Narcissism. Freud pointed out the presence of the uncanny in literature (1919). The ambivalent relationship between the familiar or the homely (heimliche) and the uncanny or the unhomely (unheimliche) is related to certain disorders of the ego. These manifest as regression to periods where the ego has yet to be clearly differentiated from the outside world or from the other. In M’uzan’s view, the double is not a pathological entity, although it can be put to that use, but is instead the inevitable consequence of a fundamental split that occurred in the early phase of psychic development, when identity is formed. It implies that identity, which we normally tend to consider a unitary concept, paradoxically rests on a divide which produces a capacity for adjustment to various situations. As a result of these considerations, he defined the paraphrenic twin as a psychic being whose place and nature can be inferred from its traces, which remain present throughout the individual’s history. “This double/twin, emanating from primordial psychic activity, is the expression of a work of personalisation to which one can only gain access subsequently during experiences of depersonalisation” (de M’Uzan, 1999, p. 105). Compared to Winnicott’s transitional object, the paraphrenic twin is a transitional subject, and does not exist as a real object, as in Winnicott’s conceptualisation. De M’Uzan (1974) does not recognise a precise, certain, and permanent frontier or barrier between the ego and the non-ego, but in its place he locates an intermediate space that he calls the spectrum of identity. This is “defined by the loci and quantities cathected by narcissistic libido, from the narrowest view of the ego to the image of the other in his full alterity” (Michel 40 de M’Uzan, 2013, p. 61). Midway between the extreme poles of the spectrum there is a zone of floating individuation. In clinical work, his concept of “chimera” defines the characteristics of this kind of deep unconscious communication that takes place between the analytic couple participants. Bion (1967) appraises the double in quite a different way. In his article “The imaginary twin”, while describing a clinical case, he considers “(…) the imaginary twin as an expression of his inability to tolerate an object that was not under control (…). The function was thus to deny a reality different from himself” (Bion, 1950, p. 19). The Mirroring Object The mirroring object can refer to the dyadic relationship with the mother. The ideal ego as the heir of narcissism leaves the subject vulnerable to the other’s glance, looking for an unattainable standard of perfection. The myth of Narcissus in fact portrays the love of a mirror image that is tragically taken for a real object. In the myth, Narcissus’s inability to love other objects appears to be linked to his early life. Oscar Wilde (1879) gives the myth a rather different ending, emphasising the mirroring function of the object therein: “But I loved Narcissus because as he lay on my banks and looked down at me, in the mirror of his eyes I saw ever my own beauty mirrored.”9 The mirror stage is a concept initially developed by J. Lacan (1936), constituting a period of infant development from six to 18 months and lending particular importance to the moment of self-recognition through an exteriorisation of one’s own image, or to how the image of one’s own body is 9 Wilde, O. [1879] Poems in Prose. The Disciple. Kindle Edition. Published March 30th, 2011 by Amazon Digital Services (first published 1879) p. 4689. 41 sustained by the image of the other. In this stage, the infant, who previously experienced a fragmented body, piecemeal or shapeless, can identify with the unified, yet alienated, image of her/his body, reflected in the mirror. Lacan insists on the evolutionary and structuring aspect of this stage in the recognition of the body image at the beginning of subjectivation. Winnicott (1967), reprising the metaphor of the mirror from another perspective, emphasises the mother’s gaze as a first form of mirror, indispensable in establishing one’s illusion space. This Winnicottian mirror refers more to a stage of subject-object undifferentiation, allowing for the incorporation of the first forms of identification. Kohut (1977) considers the grandiose self to be the pole of the self that draws its strength from the self-object’s responses to mirroring needs. The notion is related to mirror transference. If the mirror does not respond to this demand for recognition, as occurs in the story of Snow White, the denial established as protection against feelings of envy and rivalry may become intolerable to the Self. As B. Bettelheim (1975) wrote about Snow White’s stepmother, the magic mirror represents her narcissism and her constant search for security regarding her beauty, long before the beauty of Snow White eclipses her own. C.