Narcissism

A Critical Reader

Polona Curk, Anastasios Gaitanidis

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9780429916489
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

This book provides a comprehensive review of the existing perspectives and applications of narcissism as a psychoanalytic concept that has been extremely influential in the fields of psychotherapy, social science, arts and humanities. Ten authors from different disciplines have been invited to write on the topic of narcissism as it is approached in their specialist field, resulting in an exciting and inclusive overview of contemporary thought on narcissism. This book is also a critical reader. Each author closely examined and analysed the possibilities and limitations of different views on narcissism. It is thus a very useful book both for students and experts who look for a deeper and broader understanding of the notion of 'narcissism' and its various psychotherapeutic, social and cultural applications.

Chapter One
Narcissism and the autonomy of the ego

Anastasios Gaitanidis

The concept of narcissism is regarded as one of Freud’s most challenging introductions to psychoanalytic theory. This is because his discovery that the ego is formed through the dynamics of narcissism renders the autonomy of the ego in relation to the id problematic, forcing subsequent psychoanalytic theorists to demand either the (absolute or relative) restoration or the complete abolition of this autonomy. The aim of this chapter, therefore, is to present the problems that have been created by Freud’s accounts of the formation of the ego in its relation to narcissism and to critically examine the different theoretical formulations that have been provided by Heinz Hartmann, Jacques Lacan and Paul Ricouer as possible solutions to these problems.

Let us begin with Freud’s initial conception of the ego. This conception, which arguably remained most fundamental throughout his career, is already to be found in the Project for a Scientific Psychology (1895), when the ego is portrayed as a system which progressively differentiates itself from the rest of the neural network as a result of its perceptual contact with external reality and which consequently becomes the representative of the demands of that reality, charged with controlling the spontaneous impulse of the organism towards a reckless or hallucinatory gratification. From 1914 onwards, however, with the publication of ‘On Narcissism: An Introduction’’, a new group of themes begin to overlay this primary conception of the ego. Freud now suggests that a ‘new psychical action’ (eine neue psychische aktion) should be assumed that unifies the previously disorganised auto-erotic drives and brings about the stage of ‘primary narcissism’ (Freud, 1914c, p. 77).¹ In fact, he has already alluded to the existence of this stage in his paper ‘Psychoanalytic Notes on an Autobiographical Account of a Case of Paranoia’ (The Case of Schreber) written in 1911:

There comes a time in the development of the individual at which he unifies his sexual drives (which have hitherto been engaged in auto-erotic activities) in order to obtain a love-object; and he begins by taking his own body as his love-object and only subsequently proceeds from this to the choice of some person other than himself. [Freud, 1911c, pp. 60–61]

Presumably, the ego in this scheme is formed at the stage of primary narcissism, between the stages of auto-eroticism and object love. But it is not clear in Freud what is this new psychical action that brings about ego formation, though we are told that it can be closely linked to the act of taking one’s own body as a love object.

One thing is clear, however, during this initial stage of ego development: the ego itself is the ‘great reservoir’ (Freud, 1905d, p. 218)² in which all the libido is stored and from which some is later given off to objects. Yet, at the same time as the ego can invest some of its libido to objects, another portion of this “original libidinal cathexis ... fundamentally persists” in the ego “and is related to the object-cathexes much as the body of an amoeba is related to the pseudopodia which it puts out”. Because of the persistence of this original narcissistic investment, the “pseudopodia” can be “drawn back again” from objects and reinvested in the ego—as a form of secondary narcissism—whenever excessive danger or disappointment is experienced with objects in the external world (Freud, 1914c, p. 75). In this version of the theory, then, cathexis emanates from the ego in primary narcissism to the cathexis of objects and, finally, to the recathexis of the ego in secondary narcissism.

An important point that should be noted here concerning Freud’s view of the ego in 1914—despite the fact that it is partially obscured by the use of ‘energetic’ vocabulary—is his struggle to conceptualise the ego as subject and the ego as object.³ Thus, although the ego is the object of the sexual drives—indeed, this was one of the momentous discoveries of the narcissism paper in which the ego “found its position among sexual objects and was at once given the foremost place among them” (Freud, 1920: 52)–insofar as it has its own ‘ego-instincts’ and energy (Ichtriebenergie) at its disposal, which are not derived from the sexual drives, the ego is viewed as a subject or agent that can pursue its own ‘ego-interest’ (lchinteresse) of self-preservation and adaptation to the environment, an interest that is distinct from the aims of the sexual drives.⁴

However, Freud raises the following objection: if the ego can be an object of the sexual drives,

Why ... is there any necessity for further distinguishing a sexual libido from a nonsexual energy of the ego-instincts? Would not the postulation of a single kind of psychical energy save us all the difficulties ...? [1914c, p. 76].

The main difficulty that Freud faces here is that although he maintains that psychopathology is the result of conflict, he cannot detect any fundamental conflict between narcissistic libido and ego-instincts as they both aim to preserve the integrity and unity of the ego. However, there is still possibility for conflict: if the primary interest of the ego is its self-preservation, then it cannot achieve this by loving itself too much, that is to say, by believing that it exists absolutely in and through itself and finding no reason why its freedom should be limited by the pull of nature and object-bound forms of existence and determination. In other words, if the ego is to account for the seemingly obvious truth that it is dependent both on nature (bodily and external) and others for its survival, then it clearly cannot assume such an omnipotent narcissistic position. Yet, the assumption of this position and its potential opposition to the primary ego-interest of self-preservation are equally untenable from the perspective of narcissistic dynamics. Thus, to the question:“ ... whence does that necessity arise that urges our mental life to pass on beyond the limits of narcissism and to attach the libido to objects”, Freud replies:

The answer which would follow from our line of thought would once more be that we are impelled when the cathexis of the ego with libido exceeds a certain limit. A strong egoism is a protection against disease, but in the last resort we must begin to love in order that we may not fall ill [1914c, p. 66].

The ego, therefore, needs to give up its narcissistic self-enclosure in favour of forming relations with others—that is, it has to learn how to lean on/love others (what Freud calls ‘anaclitic object-choice")—so as not to fall ill. Freud also seems to suggest here that pathological narcissism ensues when the ego cannot invest what it cannot afford to lose, that is to say, its cathexis with libido cannot exceed a certain limit that will impel it to invest its surplus libido in others. This, in turn, implies that either the initial libidinal investment in the ego is insufficient or minimal or the ego’s investments in others are not met with their approval and/or their reciprocal investment in the ego. Due to one of these two reasons (or perhaps both), the ego’s energy sources are (or become) depleted and the ego has no other option but to retreat to a narcissistic state of self-enclosure and to avoid forming intimate relationships with others. Thus, it is forced to follow the path of least resistance, that is, the path that leads to the avoidance of hard work that is required in dealing successfully with the problems presented in the formation and maintenance of intimate relations with others. Psychoanalysis, in this respect, pushes the ego to the path of maximum resistance as it invites it to work hard so as to negate (in the Hegelian sense of transcending by simultaneously destroying and preserving) its narcissistic boundaries that prevent it from investing its libido in others, that is to say, it enables the ego to move from narcissism to object-love. Therefore, if narcissism represents the negation (in the Hegelian sense again) of the original state of autoerotic existence, object-love represents the negation of this negation. Pathological narcissism, therefore, signifies the ego’s inability to engage with the systematic and continuous (psychoanalytic) work of dialectical negation.

Moreover, when the ego desperately attempts to attain to an affirmative state where it is no longer in thrall to nature and others, then it positions itself in a realm where its dependency on others provides no obstacles to the realisation of this illusory affirmation. Thus, it develops the tendency to model its object on itself, or to choose an object which possesses precisely those virtues which it feels itself to lack, namely, it picks out objects by identification or by incorporating them into itself—what Freud terms ‘narcissistic object-choice’.

A little under a decade after ‘On Narcissism: An Introduction’’, in his key essay on the Ego and the Id (1923b), Freud advances even further in this direction, that is, he employs the process of identification to explain not only narcissistic object-choice but also the formation of the ego itself. Thus, he abandons the concept of primary narcissism, arguing that the newly defined id must be seen as the initial reservoir of libido from which cathexes can be sent out to objects, leaving thus the ego with no independent energy sources of its own and also suggests that the ego not only chooses objects which resemble itself, but also models itself to a large extend upon its earliest objects. Specifically, it originates in identifications with objects that were cathected by the id and then lost. Another way of putting this is that the ego is formed by loss of intensely loved objects and by identifying with and taking in the lost objects as part of oneself. As Freud puts it:

The character of the ego is a precipitate of the abandoned object-cathexes, it contains the history of these object-choices. [1923b, p. 29]

Thus, whereas in the earlier scheme the narcissistic cathexis of the ego always precedes both the cathexis of the object and the secondary narcissistic reinvestments in the ego as a result of the withdrawal of cathexes from objects, in the new scheme “the narcissism of the ego is … a secondary one, which has been withdrawn from objects”, (1923b, p. 55)–i.e., the ego is formed through, indeed it is the product of, secondary narcissism. The ego itself appears to be a vicissitude of libidinal forces, with no independent origins of its own.

In spite of these new theoretical developments, Freud’s former belief on the importance of ego’s autonomous function remains almost unaltered. He continues to describe the ego as having privileged access to reality and as the much harassed mediator between the claims of reality, super-ego and id. The ego may be severely limited in its autonomy and possibilities for action, yet through its control of motility, its development from “obedience to drives” to the “curbing of drives” and its transformation of “the object-cathexes of the id into ego structures”, it appropriates some of the id’s energy for its own purposes (1923b, pp. 55–6). Indeed, for Freud “psychoanalysis is a tool which should make possible the ego’s progressive conquest of the id”. (1923b, p. 56)

However, no sooner has Freud listed these ego strengths than he begins to retract them. With respect to the ego’s capacity for reality testing, he simply points to the common situation in which “whenever possible” the ego engages in rationalisation rather than reality testing—that is, it sacrifices the truth—so as to “remain on good terms with the id”. Concerning the ego’s control of motility, Freud writes that this power is “a question more of form than of fact”. With respect to action, the “ego’s position is like that of a constitutional monarch”, which is to say, while no wish can be transformed into action without the ego’s “sanction”, the ego “hesitates long before imposing [its] veto” on the id, just as the monarch is reluctant to exercise veto over the legislation of the parliament. In both the cases, then, the ego “only too often yields to the temptation to become sycophantic, opportunist and lying, like a politician who sees the truth but wants to keep his place in popular favour”. (1923b, pp. 55–6) With regards to the ego’s ability to appropriate the power of the id for its own purposes, Freud argues that the ego acquires the id’s energy and thereby advances its own development seductively, that is to say, libidinously. By assuming the characteristics of the love object, that is, by identifying with it and offering itself to the id as a substitute for that object, the ego entices the id to abandon its sexual aims and relinquish its object cathexis. As he puts it:

When the ego assumes the features of the object, it is forcing itself, so to speak, upon the id as a love-object and is trying to make good the id’s loss by saying: Look, you can love me too—I am so like the object [1923b, p. 30].

While this process of transforming object cathexis into a narcissistic one through identification with the object allows the ego to “obtain control over the id and deepen its relations with it”, there is nevertheless a price to be paid for that achievement. The ego must “to a large extent” acquiesce “in the id’s experience”. (1923b, p. 30)

Yet, despite the above remarks, Freud will repeatedly decline to construe the ego as utterly passive and subservient to the id. For example, in Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety (1926d), he dissociates himself from those psychoanalysts who, following his earlier work, made into a Weltanschauung the theory of the “weakness of the ego in relation to the id”. (Freud, 1926d, pp. 95–6) However, several pages later one can find a statement that ‘minimises’ the ego’s strength in relation to the id: “Although the act of repression demonstrates the strength of the ego, in one particular it reveals the ego’s powerlessness and how impervious to influence are the separate instinctual impulses of the id”. (1926d, p. 97) Thus, Freud equally refuses to regard the ego (or the id) as the commanding factor in psychic life. He realises that attention to the ego proceeds only at the cost of the id and vice versa. This ultimately promotes an unproductive either/or logic. Freud seeks to retain both moments–although he occasionally vacillates between negating the renunciation of unconscious drives as repression contrary to reality and applauding it as beneficial to the ego’s adaptation to reality—and, moreover, foresees clearly that a turn to ego or id psychology will entail a renunciation of the specific gains of psychoanalysis. A letter of Freud to Jung in 1909 is a testament to Freud’s insight, showing him acutely aware of the dangers of an either/or mentality and of the threat—in Adler and Jung—of ego abstracted from depth psychology:

We have agreed already that the basic mechanisms of neurosogenesis is the antagonism between the instinctual drives–the ego as the repressing [force], the libido as the repressed. ... It is remarkable though, that we human beings find it so difficult to focus attention equally on both of these opposing drives. ... Thus far I have described only the repressed, which is the novel, the unknown, as Cato did when he sided with causa victa. I hope I have not forgotten that there also exists a victrix. Here Adler’s psychology invariably sees only the repressing agency and therefore describes the ‘sensitivity’, this attitude of the ego toward libido, as the basic cause of neuroses. Now I find you on the same path … that is because I have not sufficiently studied the ego, you are running the risk of not doing justice to the libido which I have evaluated. [Cited in Schur, 1957, pp. 17–8]

Thus, instead of being loyal to both dimensions, both Adler and Jung choose to prioritise the ego at the expense of libido and the id. Following Adler’s and Jung’s example, Heinz Hartmann—probably the most important of the ego psychologists–opts to detach the ego, or part of the ego, from the id and its narcissistic libidinal origins; he dubs this the ‘conflict-free ego sphere’ (Hartmann, 1958, p. 8). The ego, therefore, can perform its rational functions without experiencing any interference from the id. The aim of psychoanalysis, according to Hartmann, is to help the ego “achieve a better functioning synthesis and relation to the environment”. (1958, p. 81) However, by excluding the influence of the id—and the conflicts that it creates—from this particular ego sphere, Hartmann advocates the ego’s uncritical adaptation to society. The ego, therefore, becomes for him a mere receptacle of social reality because he fails to fully appreciate one of the most important functions of the ego: to facilitate the derivation of pleasure from the satisfaction of id impulses. Once this has been consigned to the repertoire of tricks for adapting to society, without consideration of that moment in pleasure that transcends subservience to social imperatives, the ego’s capacity to criticise the social reality which prevents the realisation of pleasure is seriously compromised.

For this reason, Hartmann is accused by Jacques Lacan for recoiling from Freud’s utterly subversive discovery—which consists in the demonstration that the unconscious, or the “subject of the unconscious”, as he calls it and not the ego, constitutes “the core of our being” (Lacan, 1988, p. 43)—and attempting to rehabilitate the pre-analytic ego. His introduction of autonomous ego functions, so Lacan maintains, amounts to turning back from Freud’s decentring of the ego vis-à-vis the unconscious and reinstating the ego of academic psychology: “Ah! Our nice little ego is back again!’’ (1988, p. 11) Lacan’s polemic against Hartmann and his return to Freud are thus meant to reverse this regression. He insists that the disagreement with Hartmann is absolute, without possible mediation. If the latter is correct,

[w]e will have to abandon the notion I tell you to be the essence of the Freudian discovery, the decentering of the subject in relation to the ego and to return to the notion that everything centres on the standard development of ego. This is an alternative without mediation—if that is true, everything I say is false [1988, p. 148].

In contrast to Hartmann, the...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Dedication
• ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
• ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS
• INTRODUCTION
• CHAPTER ONE Narcissism and the autonomy of the ego
• CHAPTER TWO "I-not-I": narcissism beyond the one and the other
• CHAPTER THREE Tracing the origins, centring on selves: reading Kohut and Kernberg from a developmental perspective
• CHAPTER FOUR From narcissism to mutual recognition: the "mothering" support within the intersubjective dialectic
• CHAPTER FIVE Narcissism, primal seduction and the psychoanalytic search for a good life
• CHAPTER SIX Narcissistic wounds, race and racism: a comment on Frantz Fanon's critical engagement with psychoanalysis
• CHAPTER SEVEN The culture(s) of narcissism: simultaneity and the psychedelic sixties
• CHAPTER EIGHT The psychoanalytic framing of the art object as narcissistic agency
• CHAPTER NINE Narcissism, individuation and old age
• CHAPTER TEN "I'm not in my own skin. I want to be in my own skin": revaluing fragmentation and narcissism
• REFERENCES
• INDEX