THE SELF AND THE EGO
VANN SPRUIELL, M.D.
INTRODUCTION
The various meanings ascribed to ego and self have become confused in at
least part of the psychoanalytic literature. Freud originally used several
different words for self in its everyday sense, and different abstract
terms for those underlying psychic structures and functions which could
account for the self in experience and in action. He settled on Das
Ich. In German that term can stand in both experiential and non-experiential
senses. In translation, Das Ich became ego. But ego is not
an everyday word in English; self and the first person pronouns are. For
sundry reasons there has been a tendency among English speaking analysts
to separate the terms: to limit the ego to abstract systemic meanings
and to use self and self-representation in place of the phenomenal ego.
Although words are only words and the important thing is to maintain clarity
of meanings, there seems little gain in this (essentially undefended) practice
of separation. And there are unfortunate consequences, among them the loss
of lexical implications of connectedness between the experiential and the
nonexperiential meanings of ego. Still more unfortunate is the inclination
to extend the use of self in its everyday sense to highly abstract levels,
thus to reify it as something different from the abstract ego. When
this is done, metapsychology acquires an embarrassment of riches: two abstract
systemic concepts, a reasonably well-defined abstract ego, and an equally
abstract (or perhaps "superordinately" abstract), but poorly
defined, self. The two are even thought by some to have complex "relationships"
with each other. This paper is an expression of my own opinions. It is
not an attempt to cover the appropriate literature. That is done in a more
recent paper of mine, "Self," in the "Compendium of Psychoanalytic
Concepts," (vs91b).
In this essay, I shall examine some of the causes of this unhappy theoretical
development by criticizing the alterations made by Hartmann (and many others)
to Freud's use of the term, ego. Distinctions between the experiences
(and generalizations) of the analysand and those of the analyst will be
drawn in order to contrast what can be known about the phenomenal ego --
what the analytic observer can comprehend about the self of another
-- and what can be known, through valid inferences, of the systemic ego.
In the course of tentatively exploring related issues of narcissism, I
will argue that Freud's use of psychoanalytic theory as an open system
(in his language) remains adequate in subsuming the present state of clinical
knowledge -- adequate, providing the separate parts of that theory are
integrated and the separate levels of discourse are distinguished.
The nature of psychoanalysis has been epitomized in various ways. It is
said to be a theory of the dynamic unconscious, of intrapsychic conflict,
a theory having to do with meanings, interpretation, adaptation.. Whatever
else it is, psychoanalysis is also a matter of knowing.l
The psychoanalyst knows his patient in two rather different ways. "Knowing"
is used in its everyday sense: knowing oneself, knowing another. Abrams
(1980) has written an interesting developmental study of "knowing"
in the sense of progressive steps of insight. One way of knowing might
be characterized as empathic and subjective, not so much based on a set
of discrete observations as on global, affective understandings from a
position within the two-person field (Loewald, 1971). These understandings
are of two sorts: a) the knowing of the mind of another by way of an analogy
with one's own, and b) the knowing of the mind of another as a complementary
object, e.g., to be loved is to know something about the lover. Psychoanalysis,
by limiting actions, becomes an astonishing opportunity for one mind to
discover "an equivalent center of self in another," to uncover
inner thoughts, feelings, and memories that even lovers do not share, that
even the most intimate friends living long years together do not share.
The other way of knowing is even more important. Freud was never willing
for psychoanalysis to become simply another "mentalistic" discipline;
classical analysis has never been willing to rely on empathy alone. The
psychoanalyst attempts more objective observations. This way of knowing
is a matter of generalizing from an empirical set of observations made
from a position outside the two-party field, the normal investigative
approach of any natural science. It depends upon psychoanalytic training,
including the personal analysis, the development of a coherent theory,
and ongoing experience both in doing analysis and communicating with other
analysts (Freud, 1926b).
Both forms of knowing, and oscillations between them, are necessary for
an analysis to be an analysis. A total or preponderant reliance on one
or the other results in "a something else," not psychoanalysis.
But when it is psychoanalysis, it provides the opportunity to generalize
from the multileveled experiences of the single analyst with his individual
patients and to generalize from the collective experiences of many analysts
using similar methods. The result is a continually evolving set of theories
integrating both the phenomenal and the noumenal, both the experiential
and the nonexperiential realms of the mind (Sandler and Joffe, 1969), both
the "internal world" of awareness and the "inner world"
of mechanisms. At this level of theoretical abstraction, there is no longer
the need for the English word—so private, so individual -- self. If used
in such a sense, as mentioned above, it would have to acquire highly abstract
meanings. Then it would entail not only the logical problems involved in
positing both an abstract ego and an abstract self, but the multiple connotations,
imprecisions, and philosophical antinomies to which, in English, the word,
self, is heir. Better to make use of the existing words of metapsychology,
in particular ego, which for Freud as Das Ich had both the
particular meaning of the self as perceived by another in analogy and/or
in complementarily with his own, and related, abstract, systemic
meanings. It is a virtue, not faulty logic, that both sets of meanings
reside in the same word; the particular is thereby related to the general.
The believer-theologian sometimes prays to and sometimes thinks about his
god's nature; the form of address differs, not the god.
11
It may be that the tendency to reify and elevate "self" and "identity"
to "superordinate levels" of abstraction is primarily a phenomenon
of English-speaking analysts. But, as Glover (1966) suggested, the tendency
began at least with Jung. Perhaps there are universal wishes to discover
"core" meanings of human life: to locate some sort of "primal
self" at the beginning, which might open up like a Japanese flower
in a tumbler of water; or to discern over-riding "identity themes,"
beginning in the earliest mother-infant relationship in which, it is thought,
the mother's unconscious might serve as a sort of cast (Lichtenstein, 1963).
Certainly there are tendencies toward synecdoche, the emphasis on one or
a few aspects of the psyche as though they were a new whole, or a whole
as though it were a part. The conscious ambitions to create new theory
and the (usually) unconscious wishes to deny the (sometimes) grim implications
of parts of classical theory guarantee that.
However that may be, Freud would no doubt be astonished to learn that he
had "neglected" the self in his work (Levin, 1963), or that he
"never developed an elaborate theory of the self" (Mitterauer
and Pritz, 1978). The fact is that Freud's entire work had to do
with a series of more and more elegant theories having to do with those
meanings we subsume in English as self. In most of the nineteenth century,
psychology was a conscious psychology. The self was what one was privately
conscious of being or what one publicly proclaimed it to be. Only Nietzsche,
as far as we know, developed a concept of a truly dynamic unconscious,
but he had no way to validate his philosophical speculations. It was left,
of course, to Freud to patiently explore relationships between, on the
one hand, what he variously referred to as will, volition, consciousness,
and "Das Ich" (early on he sometimes used quotation marks
in an effort to avoid philosophical conundrums), and, on the other hand,
the psychological influences variously referred to as counter-will, antithetical
ideas, or the unconscious. Thus, he constructed the first metapsychology
(Brenner, 1980). His monumental (and premature) effort to construct a neuropsychology,
the Project for a Scientific Psychology (1895), surely postulated
a complex system to explain the self or ego. Why else would he call that
system Das Ich?
It would be redundant and unnecessary to trace here the development
of Freud's topographical structural theory (see Arlow and Brenner, 1964;
Gill, 1963). But what else would the Cs.-Pcs. system be but an abstract
reference to the known self? And did not the dynamic unconscious have to
be, at least in part, a reference to the unknown (but potentially partially
knowable) self? And to what else could the instinctual drives refer but
finally to their relations to the self?
It is also unnecessary here to trace the development of the ego concept
in Freud's work (see A. Freud, 1936, 1952; Hartmann, 1950, 1956; Laplanche
and Pontalis, 1973). After developing the Cs.-Pcs. and Ucs. systems,
Freud used the ego in the casual sense of self. But as he largely turned
away from the topographical system, he developed elaborate abstract conceptions
of the ego as a coherent organization (1923, 1926a, etc.). He continued
to use the ego-as-self and the ego-as-system, relying on the context to
define the level of abstraction. But some authors imply that Freud was
not aware of the distinctions.
In fact, Freud was deliberate. "We call this organization their 'Ich.'
Now there is nothing new in this. Each one of us makes this assumption
without being a philosopher, and some people even in spite of being philosophers....
You will probably protest at our having chosen simple pronouns . . . instead
of giving them orotund Greek names.2 In psycho-analysis,
however, we like to keep in contact with the popular mode of thinking and
prefer to make its concepts scientifically serviceable rather than to reject
them" (1926b, p. 195).
Hartmann (1939), later in collaboration with Kris and Loewenstein, continued
to develop the metapsychological ego systematically (I contend, too
systematically). There is no question of the value of their accomplishments,
or their great influence on psychoanalysis. However, even the greatest
theoreticians can be criticized (and should be). There is one reformulation
of Hartmann's which, although almost universally applauded, especially
calls for such criticism; in my opinion it has had negative and unnecessary
influences on subsequent theorizing.
Hartmann was interested, quite rightly, in the economic assumptions having
to do with the more or less "neutralized" "energic"
processes of the ego as an organization, and those other, less neutralized
energies having to do with narcissism. It was important, he said (1950)3
to differentiate, as Freud had not, the concepts of ego, self, and person:
. . . "in using the term narcissism, two different sets of opposites
often seem to be fused into one. The one refers to the self (one's own
person) in contradistinction to the object, the second to the ego
(as a psychic structure) in contradistinction to other substructures of
the personality. However, the opposite of object cathexis is not ego cathexis,
but cathexis of one's own person, that is, self-cathexis; in speaking of
self-cathexis we do not imply whether this cathexis is situated in the
id, in the ego, or in the superego. This formulation takes into account
that we actually do find "narcissism" in all three psychic systems;
but in all these cases there is opposition to (and reciprocity with) object
cathexis. It therefore will be clarifying if we define narcissism as the
libidinal cathexis not of the ego but of the self. (It might also be useful
to apply the term self-representation as opposed to object representation)."
(pp. 84-85).
In 1953, Hartmann spoke of "the cathexis of the self-image (a complex
of representations)" (p. 85). Similarly, in 1955 he wrote, "If
we accept [his definition of narcissism as the cathexis of self], we may
then speak of self-representation (in the case of libidinal cathexis: narcissism)
in opposition to object representation . . ." Similar propositions
were repeated in 1956.
These formulations have been repeated as dogma by most writers who concern
themselves with self. They have been particularly influential in Jacobson's
(1964) work, in the "object relations" theories which have grown
up (among them, Kernberg's [1976]), in the over-extensions by some writers
of Mahler's (1975) theories of separation-individuation (see my paper,
Freud's concepts of idealization, vs79b),
in the creation of a "self psychology" by Kohut (1977) and his
followers, in proposals that the self should be created as the fourth
metapsychological macrostructure (Levin, 1963; Mitterauer and Pritz,
1978; Panel, 1958), and, finally, in a variety of idiosyncratic systems
based as much on fantasies as on observations of preverbal children.
An adequate economic drive theory must distinguish between erotic and aggressive
cathexes of the ego-as-self and the presumably more neutralized energies
"powering" the ego-as-system. Nevertheless, there are a number
of objections to Hartmann's reformulations, which equated narcissism with
the libidinal cathexis of the self.
The problem with narcissism as a concept is that it has never been adequately
integrated with the later theoretical concepts of which On Narcissism
(Freud, 1914) was itself the harbinger. It was written before the structural
theory -- id-ego-superego -- and before the later dual instinctual drive
theory was developed. Narcissism was contrasted with egoism (and
this distinction reappeared even after l920).
On Narcissism was indeed "An Introduction.'' The concept, as
noun or adjective, was applied to a normal developmental phase, a perversion,
a type of object choice, the ego ideal, regulations of self-esteem, omnipotence,
anti self-love. Narcissism has been identified solely with self-esteem,
or solely with omnipotence, or solely, as in Hartmann, with self-love.
It would be better to think of them as constituting related parts (see
my vs75a).
Hartmann's economic treatment of narcissism in terms of self-love is a
concretization, or at least a narrowing of the concept, as if it were self-evident
and precise, easily transferable to the structural point of view. Yet,
as an umbrella concept, it cannot account sufficiently for the myriad of
clinical phenomena dubbed "narcissistic," as Joffe and Sandler
(1967) convincingly demonstrated.
And what did Hartmann mean by "self" when he spoke of its being
cathected by libido? As we have seen, he variously meant self-representation,
a collection of self-representations, and a person as a whole. But if person
as a whole, then "self" is unnecessary, except as an indicative
pronoun. If "psychic apparatus," then self is simply a word for
some individual mind in its totality. It is true that Freud occasionally
(1915, p. 130) used Gesamt-lch to refer to "the ego as a whole"
as distinguished from the ego as part of the systems id-ego-superego. But,
as Loewald (1973) put it, "If self is something like Freud's Gesamt-lch
. . . then, far from being a content or a structure within the mind,
self would be the mind as cathected in its totality" (p. 450,
my emphasis). A totality "cathecting" a totality, however, is
problematic. Did not Freud himself disabuse us of the belief that the self
was master in its own house? Did he not demonstrate the crucially important
impersonal aspects of the mind? Self-as-one's-whole-person is an interpersonal,
not an intrapsychic term.
Nor can a totality logically be equated with a part of the totality, a
content, a psychic representation, or collection of representations. The
"representational world," as it is ordinarily conceived,4
is analogous to an intrapsychic map. The map is hardly the terrain. Even
the representation of wholeness is questionable. Although a person regularly
perceives himself as agent, he rarely experiences himself as a "whole."
In states of altered consciousness, during orgasm or some forms of meditation,
feelings of wholeness may be experienced—but then the very delimitations
and details of the self become blurred. It is a misunderstanding of the
concept of psychic representation to equate self with its varying representations
(Loewald, 1973). Beyond the fact that "self" refers to a collection
of exceedingly important fantasies, it cannot be adequately defined. The
purpose of this essay is to try to herd the term back into the corral of
solipsism and out of theoretical fields.
Finally, Hartmann, who taught us to avoid reification, spoke of our "finding
narcissism in all systems." But how can narcissism, an abstraction,
be "in" any abstraction? The problem with Hartmann's reformulation
of ego and self is that it represents an overly systematized approach to
what is, after all, a speculative mental economics. The result is a further
detachment of the abstract concept of ego -- the non-experiential realm,
and the experiential ego (Sandler and Joffe, 1969). Although Schafer (1973),
who also would refrain from using abstract conceptions of self, asserts
that Hartmann did not use self and identity as metapsychological notions,
it is impossible to agree with him. How can the "self," whether
as "whole person" or as a representation, be cathected without
assuming for it some sort of metapsychological status?
Hartmann sought to resolve a theoretical ambiguity concerning the ego.
But the effort not only brought forth new problems, it weakened the original
concept.
As Laplanche and Pontalis (1973) put it,
"The attempt to identify and eliminate a supposed "terminological
ambiguity" is . . . merely a way of avoiding a fundamental problem....
In our view this position builds upon a purely conceptual distinction,
running ahead of a real solution to some essential problems. The danger
. . . is that the real contributions of the Freudian usage may be lost.
For Freud exploits traditional usages: he opposes organism to environment,
subject to object, internal to external, and so on, while continuing to
employ "Ich" at these different levels. What is more,
he plays on the ambiguities thus created.... It is this complexity that
is shunned by those who want a different word for every shade of meaning
(pp. 131-132).
The other theoretical speculations which have fueled enormous confusions
(Glover, 1966) have to do with "identity," which is usually,
but not always, seen as synonymous with self. Abend (1974) has contributed
a useful survey of the various ways the term has been used -- and the clinical
confusions which can result. Reviewing a book by Erikson (1974), Simon
(1978) remarked, "Unfortunately, the core term in Erikson's argument,
'identity,' remains as tantalizing and as amorphous as in his previous
writings. It encompasses the subjective and the objective, the conscious,
the preconscious, and the unconscious, the social and the intrapsychic,
as well as the ego ideal and the 'ideal self' " (p. 460).
We are left with a massive and confusing literature on the self. Terms
do not always represent concepts; sometimes they merely cover their absence.
A redundancy of terms in psychoanalysis exists. Self, identity, identity
themes (along with mysterious hybrids: ego identity and self identity),
variously mean the individual, the mind (phenomenally or noumenally), or
even something like a metaphysical fate, as in identity themes. Such global
confusion would be enough to fill many volumes. Unfortunately, all too
frequently the core propositions of psychoanalysis get left out.
111
When I speak of self I can speak with immediacy only of my own self. It
is impossible to think of self without including its reflexive nature,
the self experiencing itself. I can directly experience only
my self, no other. But the possibility of self-deception is ubiquitous.
My introspective judgments are much less veridical than the analytic judgments
of another, even though the latter judgments, too, are limited.
Sometimes clinical material can be an oasis in the occasionally arid desert
of theory. Let us suppose that once I was in analysis with you, the reader,
before I became an analyst myself. Assume that I was analyzable and that
I wanted very much to be analyzed. Let me speak of a part -- I emphasize,
only a part -- of that experience. When we began, I did not understand
the peculiarities of the analytic situation as a unique kind of social
relationship. Nevertheless, I adapted to the set-up and gradually came
to distinguish its nature from what I presumed to be your idiosyncrasies.
Striving to observe the fundamental rule (perhaps you never said anything
explicitly about the rule, but I learned it well), I discovered that it
abrogated many of the silent rules of dialogue that I had learned
and accepted over the years. There were thoughts and impulses and feelings
I had assumed one simply did not mention to another person. The early difficulties
in freely associating, as I saw them, had to do with breaking all those
other rules, observed most of my life, which guaranteed at least
acceptance, and possibly safety and love. But as I became more accustomed
to the unparalleled candor required, I felt relieved because no bad consequences
came about. In fact, good things happened. For one, I learned gradually
that my own private mind was probably not greatly different from the private
minds of others, inasmuch as my confessions elicited no surprise, nor was
I rejected or even reprimanded for the things I said. More important, I
began to see the connectedness of my variegated experiences and actions.
Many things happened between you and me, of course. One of them was my
learning that, try as I might, I could not consistently freely associate,
even when consciously free to do so. I failed, over and over. And partially
through your help, I learned that there were aspects of myself of which
I had been unaware and which seemed to impede. even battle, the analysis.
More incredibly, and to my naive astonishment, I began to have intense
feelings about you, reactions to you, and impulses toward you which seem
to me, for a long time, to have nothing to do with apparent realities.
But gradually, these phenomena, too, began to make a new kind of sense
to me. I discovered that there were areas of myself which had been segregated
from other areas, falsely ascribed to the past, or pushed out of my awareness
altogether (I learned that I was also the pusher) or denied, or assumed
to exist in other people rather than in me. I even learned that there were
parts of myself, or what I had thought to parts of myself, that
did not belong to me at all, but belonged to other people (for example,
I may have thought my mother's fantasies about me were my own demands).
There were responsibilities I thought must certainly were mine, which were
not and could not be mine (to "save" other people, perhaps).
And there were responsibilities which I thought belonged to other people
which later became evident to be mine (you, I had thought, were
supposed to "save" me).
Along the way, I learned, or relearned, that everything pertaining to myself
pertained to my body, and that my apparently more general notions and feelings
about myself were all reflected in consciousness -- or once conscious --
imaginations about my body: its size, strength, and expanse; exaggerations,
diminutions, or distortions of its various parts; its beauty or ugliness.
All these qualities, and others, were associated with a multitude of different
feelings. In addition, I learned a great deal about things that were not
exactly "me" but "mine" -- possessions, so to speak:
my things, my conscience, my impulses, friends, enemies, values, and the
like. At the same time I learned to distinguish all these from the possessions
of others. On occasions -- wonder upon wonders -- they could be shared
without loss to either of us.
I discovered -- rediscovered -- the erotic and destructive passions and
terrors of early childhood by experiencing them with you, that I learned
how my past penetrated sometimes overly influenced the present, that infantile
wishes continued to be alive, and the previous secret ways I used in the
attempt to gratify them or ward them off carried a terrible price, that
the original dilemmas continued, and that in re-creating them with you
I cast you as a major actor. In all this I was either able to recover some
memories, or was able to reconstruct many of the more passionate happenings
of my childhood. But precise memory failed the times before words. And
let us suppose that I learned that every psychic act of mine represented
a compromise and integration of multiple motives. And that I never can
escape unconscious forces, but I can come to cope with them in adult ways.
Nor can I totally avoid self-deceptions, although I can rely on (some)
others' observations to help expose them.
I have not attempted to cover more than a part of the analysis. Not to
go on and on -- let us suppose that I experienced a good analysis.
In the course of that analysis, much depended on your interests.
If you were devoted to some particular theoretical system or clinical
investigation, I would be very apt to sense the interest and unconsciously
use it for my purposes. Also, if you were alienated from some period of
your own life, say adolescence, it is doubtful that we would have learned
much about my adolescent self. More likely I would have behaved
like an adolescent with you. But if your interests were reasonably non-tendentious,
if you respected my autonomy, we should have been able to reconstruct a
great deal of the development of what I call my self and what you
(privately) call my ego or, perhaps, my character. All that time I was
trying to experience my own self, trying the while to communicate everything
I could about it, failing, discovering my own reasons for creating the
failures, taking more and more responsibility for myself, including the
responsibility for acknowledging some areas of absolute helplessness. I
came to modify those areas of harsh (or missing) conscience that derived
from childhood, as well as to alter the unrealistic ideals and the sometimes
vain, sometimes humiliating responses I felt in regard to them.
In undergoing these changes (which you understood far better than I could
-- but not always!), my relations with others, my capacity to empathize
with others, my ability to love -- and if necessary to combat -- expanded
and deepened. I became less self-centered and more self-directed. Changes
having to do with my self were inextricably intertwined with changes having
to do with other people, either in living memory or in the actual present.
Whether I became more free is a matter for philosophers, but there is no
question that I experienced more freedom and more responsibility
for myself. Even on a physical level I changed, perhaps in terms of bearing
and posture, perhaps even in terms of physiology and tissues. And my character?
Some traits diminished in intensity I may have become less anxiously apologetic),
but other traits became more obvious in that I no longer needed to conceal
them from myself and from others.
From time to time, you pointed out characteristics of behavior of which
either I had not been aware, or, if I had been, I regarded as "just
me". As far as I was concerned they were simply an untroublesome part
of my self. In fact, I was likely to be offended by your noticing them,
but we often found that bringing them up led to the uncovering of new areas
of my self. After a time, I came to see that these were what you called
"character traits," some hardly to be distinguished from symptoms,
others simply regular and even valuable ways of doing things. But what
I called my "character" was apt to be more an intellectual insight
than anything else -- consisting of what I knew about others' understandings
(and misunderstandings) of me. They also (I came to see later) had to do
with regularities of my mind's functions that others could sense, but I
couldn't.5 Yet I was -- and still am -- only partially
able to experience these characteristic operations in any direct, affective
way, not necessarily because they were part of the unconscious,
but because they were everyday matters that seemed to take place automatically.
In a way they were the opposite of "self-consciousness," the
anxious self-regard when one believes, rightly or wrongly, that the environment
is dangerously hostile. I can experience myself self-critically reasonably
well only when I do not feel either self-conscious or automatic
in my doings. With changes in my habitual self-awareness I could also get
better insights into the ways other people "are," how they react,
what they tend to think about me.
What we call a character trait is a regular or predictable action as
perceived by others. While I am the one I am doing something -- say, riding
a bicycle, or associating on the couch with comfort and considerable freedom
-- I am mostly unaware of myself: I am not self-conscious. But when, on
the other hand, I am being self-conscious, perhaps anxiously or perhaps
not, I cannot do the thing at hand very freely (although some other action
which did not require attention, for example doodling, might be possible).
When "I" act, the "me" drops out of awareness, and
when the "me" is dominant, the "I" recedes. Of course
if things are going well and I do not have be anxiously self-conscious,
I can be aware, to some extent, of what I am doing while I am doing it.
If I am neither very anxious or afflicted with other self-preoccupations
I can reflect with some accuracy about what I just done. But there are
always limitations to what I can experience about myself. In some ways
you can intellectually understand more about these things
about my self because you do not have to be me. But in other ways, you
are forever isolated from me. You can never know exactly what it is like
to be me.
Now, as all this analysis was going on, a quite different set of operations
was taking place in your mind (I know this now because I have been an analyst
a long time). You had the advantage of perspective; you had been analyzed
yourself, you had worked with other people, and you had learned from other
analysts. And in some ways the analytic situation itself was deliberately
unbalanced socially -- from the beginning of modern psychoanalysis as we
know it. That is, it is not merely a matter a matter of convention; it
is a central necessity if an analysis is to unfold as part of a coherent
process (see An analyst at work, vs84a)
Just as I was enjoined to try to give my mind freedom and say everything
that came to it, you enjoined yourself to try to give your mind similar
freedom -- but not to say anything substantial that did not have to do
with furthering the analysis (see Rules and frames...vs83b).
This discipline had its burdens, but it had its protection as well. It
made it possible for the analyst to do his work. For instance, you could
be much more richly subjective in regard to analyzing me -- and more objective
in understanding our subjective relationship.
Thus, you were able to see patterns in my associations and other behavior;
more, you were able to feel them; often you were also able to note that
thing had bean left out of the dialogue. From time to time, with discipline
and tact, you let me know what you knew or supposed. You observed from
the outside, so to speak; yet, drawing on your analytic experience, you
were able to be much more empathic -- of, sometimes, less empathic; you
were able to understand me in a way that was, in earlier times, unprecedented.
But what I call my "self," you called "you" or "yourself"
or "you" this or that. When you were not addressing me, but were
thinking about me, what I called my "self" you called "him"
or "his mind" or "Spruiell" or, descriptively, "his
character," or, more dynamically, his "ego."
The only other way you come even closer to knowing my self were those time,
often unexpected times, when you found that your were able to "put
yourself in my shoes," and, in the process, "know that it was
so." You knew because both you and I were temporarily quite synchronized
emotionally; we had both "been there" as human beings. You could
not force yourself to do this by some act of conscious will. Nor could
you "convey" your empathy in any deliberate way. But those times
when "it came to you," you knew me because you knew yourself,
and there was a close analogy between our respective selves, especially
at such crossings. And I did not need to be informed by you of those times
-- I sensed them.
I also have reasons to believe that there were other times when you empathized
not with me, but with some other important person in my life. Then you
knew me, by analogy, by knowing me through my "object," my "other."
And then were darker times of apparently estrangement, of you to me or
me to you. They were painful but inevitable -- and both of us survived,
the better for the experience.
Analysts vary in their capacity to empathize, but it is safe to say that
if you had no empathy at all for me, only an intellectual analysis would
have taken place -- not a valid one. On the other hand, if you had become
carried away by your empathy, at the expense of more objective observations,
or if you could only feel for me and not for the poor people around me,
if there were not useful times when you did not empathize with me,
then it is safe to say that only some of kind experiential psychotherapy
would have taken place, not an analysis.
You had two ways of knowing me, one more or less objective in nature, the
other subjective. As a good analyst, you put those ways of knowing together.
Then you were apt to use words (though not to me) like drives, defenses,
ego, id, superego, dynamics, genetics, transference, transference neurosis,
infantile wishes, ego idea, and the like. In using these words, which refer
to concepts you share with other analysts, you are able to learn from them
(and perhaps understand me even better), and you may be able to teach them
(from your experience with me and others). But you cannot teach them much
about my self. While I am even more limited -- there is more to me than
I can know -- you know much more about these areas you call unconscious
ego or those regularities of behavior you call my character. Yet you have
only glimpses of my self. And our colleagues can know still less. However,
all of us can know more about the ego and its id and superego and
objects; we can know more about human minds in general as a result of every
successful analysis, provided there is communication about it.
IV
Perhaps you will indulge me a bit longer and play two other games. Since
you are a psychoanalyst I will assume that you have a (perhaps very concealed)
playful streak in you and that you might well have become (with appropriate
training) an observer of infants and toddlers and an analyst who treats
older children. Let us first assume that I am the infant, and later, the
toddler, and you are the observer.
Since you are who you are, I take it for granted that you would not be
one of putative scientists who avoid relationships with their subjects,
and who try to observe behavior in a "neutral" cage-laboratory.
But I do not know how you would observe me, or where. Would you know my
parents, brothers, and sisters well? And if so, how would you know
them, familiarly or clinically? Would they tell you more than parts of
the truth? It would be hard to imagine that they would or could, unless
they wanted to be analyzed. If they wanted that enough to do it, it is
doubtful that they would spend very much of their time talking about me!
Where would we see each other -- at home, in a nursery, in the garden?
And how often and for how long? And what would you learn about me? If we
had a relationship which allow me to take you seriously and be interested
in you, and could allow you to empathize with me, a great deal could be
learned. Unfortunately, you would have difficulty putting your insight
into words. As soon as you got away from those words used with a baby or
little child, the language would become adult and "rational."
You would shift to considering your adult self relating to a little one,
not the little one's self. Whatever language you used would tend to make
me out to be a little adult, not the little one's self. Whatever language
you used would tend to make me out to be a little adult.
On the other hand, you might make very valuable observations if you saw
a number of children, some like me, some not like me at all. But as far
as what might have been revealed about me as a little boy, it is hard to
know. You certainly would have "known" me and sensed my development
-- you would have known a lot more about what kind of little boy I was
externally that we have reconstructed from an adult analysis. Perhaps you
have detected a certain solemnity, concealing quite a lot of playfulness.
You would have noted a variety of character traits; it is hard to know
how similar these would be to my adult traits. I do not believe, however,
that you would have penetrated very far into the intimate world that I
know something about: the intimacies which produced strengths and weaknesses,
conflicts, fixations, distortions and curiosities, incredible terrors and
satisfactions. Looking backward, we can see that these intimacies preceded
and lent a special character to the Oedipal and post-oedipal organizations
which followed them. But could we have looked forward?
The fact that I doubt that you, as an observer, could have made very accurate
predictions about me is no denigration of the clinical values of infant
observation. To the contrary, such cumulative observations are finally
providing a framework (and time-table) in which to study the development
of the ego and all its relations. They cannot, however, tell us
much about the development of the personal, individual self as I am using
that word.
If we play the other game, in which I am an older child or an adolescent,
and you are the analyst, we have an easier time. Even though for a long
period, even as an older child, I could not or would not tell you much
of value about myself in words, I did indicate a great deal by way of the
games we played. Many of the same things happened that would happen with
me as a grown-up. Others were different: we interacted much more directly;
you were thereby more subject to the excesses of over-identification or
withdrawal, or other counter transference phenomena; I was still developing
rapidly; my parents were very much a part of my contemporary life; and
other, less important differences existed. Nevertheless, many of the same
things happened as they would in an adult analysis. As for my own self,
you very likely came to know a great deal about what it was like to be
me. If you were only an "objective" observer, however, not an
analyst, you would come to know practically nothing: of the important matters,
I wouldn't tell you anything. But from analytic experiences with me and
other people -- and above all, your own self -- you are capable of writing
about the private, inner lives children and adolescents. Perhaps you have.
If not -- you should!
V
The problem with any discussion of "self" is that, if kept within
strict limits, it amounts to very little, and if left unchecked, it gets
into practically everything. I have specifically avoided philosophical
questions concerning the nature of self, not only because I am not a philosopher,
but because such questions in turn become involved with problems of materialism,
symbolism, the ancient problems of mind and body, causality, determinism
versus free will, induction, etc. Not that we should, or can safely, avoid
philosophical concerns: we have contradictory assumptions embedded in some
of our ways of thinking; conversely, our very science amounts to evidence
that no self-respecting philosopher can easily ignore. Psychoanalysis is
a more isolated discipline than it should be. Nor have I attempted to discuss
the theories concerning the self held by some sociologists, or the activities
of information theorists, or those Pygmalions who aim to create Artificial
Intelligence. Even within the discipline of psychoanalysis, I have not
been able to deal with the concepts of the French authors or the followers
of Klein or Bion because I do not feel competent to criticize them.
I have argued that within the framework of classical psychoanalysis, self
has always been assumed, experimentally, by the word translated in English
as ego. At first, the topographical system subsumed the abstract, complementary
concepts; later, the ego as a coherent organization took that place. When
"self" is used as an ordinary abstraction of daily life, as Beres
(1976) pointed out, "... we usually find ourselves adding a prefix
or a suffix ... to give it substance something has to be added. So in our
psychoanalytic discussion we have self-esteem, self-consciousness, self-awareness,
self-image, self-presentation, and many others." All of these can
be discussed under the heading of ego.
Classical psychoanalysis has evolved since Freud's time, of course, clinically
as well as theoretically. But not all development represents progress.
While the mainstream has progressed, there are eddies of theory which have
departed from it. Glover, in 1966, wrote a searing review of Jacobson's
1964 book, The Self and the Object World. Calling the "self"
a "journalistic term," he said that her book should have been
entitled The Relations of some Ego formations to the Objects of Some
Instinctual Drives. Jacobson's work is an approach to the criticism
of theories which he thought were more matters of metaphysics than metapsychology,
in that they were developed on the basis of terms like self, identity,
and narcissism. Abstract structures were built on hypothetical, unverifiable,
and fundamentally unsound premises. Since the time of Glover's paper, there
has been an acceleration of these tendencies.
Heinz Hartmann would no doubt have shared the distress of many clinical
analysts as they contemplate the global theories which have sprouted. Many
of them are subtly or not so subtly antithetical to any definition of Freudian
psychoanalysis. Inevitably, their clinical applications have led to therapies
which should not bear the label of psychoanalysis. One part of the problem
lies in the eager need to accept premature systemization, often followed
by a need to rebel against it, replacing it with new, supposedly "hard-edged"
theories. Witness the turn of many of the followers of Rapaport (Gill,
1967), who seek to reject the ideas of metapsychology entirely replacing
it, for example, with concepts derived from information theory (Gill and
Holzman, 1976), or with the "action language" of Schafer (1976).
There seems almost a frenzy to announce that metaphor speaks inexactly
and therefore ought to be exposed and rooted out wherever found. Certainly
this puritanical aversion to metaphor is alien to Freud's thought and,
in fact, is alien to scientific thinking in general (Arlow, 1979, Pederson-Krag,
1956).
Another part of the problem lies in the over-emphasis of attention to pathological
antecedents of very early preoedipal phenomena. While there is no doubt
that developmental studies have demonstrated the importance of very primitive
forms of preoedipal pathology, the words "preoedipal" and "narcissistic"
should not be thought to be interchangeable. And sometimes it is claimed
that analyzable patients do not even have oedipal conflicts. Yet
developmental research has also made it clear that the origins, or precursors,
of oedipal conflicts also extend back to the same periods that preoedipal
conflicts exist. In analyzable individuals, at least, even those who have
had serious calamities very early in infancy, there seems to be a coexistence,
or a mutual inter-penetration of both oedipal and preoedipal levels of
organization. It is preposterous to think that an individual could grow
up and become analyzable as an out-patient and never have experienced such
early precursors of oedipal conflicts -- at least by the time the child
is distinguishing the mother from other familiar adults.
Still another part of the problem lies in the confusions to which concepts
of narcissism are still heir. It will be remembered that Hartmann's effort
to systematize the concepts of ego and narcissism led to some of the later
conundrums. He tried to equate narcissism and self, and others followed
him (even while differing sharply with his theories in general). Later,
he replaced his earlier idiosyncratic economic concepts (a qualitatively
enormously expanded economic system) of narcissism (1971) with a new "self
psychology," which subsumed the previous ideas (1977).
In one effort to reexamine the question, I proposed that we attempt to
disentangle, rather than separate, notions about narcissism from notions
about the ego and object relations -- and certainly not conflate them (see
Three Strands ..., vs75a).
If then we returned to clinical observations, three distinguishable, developmental
elements of narcissism can be teased out: the evolution, omnipotence, and
the regulation of self-esteem. At one time or another, each of these had
been identified by some analysts with the whole of narcissism. In
fact, they are related, but originate in separate processes at different
times of development. They become intertwined during the oedipal period
and even more during adolescence. In some disturbed people they may seem
to be separated, individually stunted, or compensatorily augmented. Thus
a theory would approach the clinical fact that there is not one
kind of narcissistic pathology, or two, but a variety. In 1975 (vs75b)
and 1979 (vs79d), I also
discussed these vicissitudes in normal adolescence.
Whether my particular efforts are useful is not the point of this essay.
The point is that there have been all kinds of assumptions made about narcissism
and the ego with little to back them up except for the prestige of the
innovators. While there have been attempts to criticize the new ideas,
for example by Glover, mostly there has been a hardening of attitudes by
the various camps, or "schools" of psychoanalysis, and a widening
gap of dialogues. Perhaps it is this that is the major problem. It leads
to the freezing of thought in the respective, guild-like "schools,"
with an absence of legitimate dialogues among them, much less attempts
to mount scientific efforts to validate claims. With this "freezing,"
the trainees tend to follow the traditions of their own training analysts.
Even worse, although some of the original authors have been careful to
locate their observations in acceptable theoretical contexts, many of the
subsequent global theorists lift their observations, divest them of their
contexts, and use them as building blocks for still newer systems. The
fact that we have been taught so much about the ego, in so many detailed
ways, by Hartmann, Kris, Loewenstein, Rapaport, Ann Freud, Sandler, Joffe,
Mahler, Beres, Arlow, Brenner, Spitz, Loewald, Stone, and many others,
has not spared from the growth of theoretical shantytowns.6
There is a need to return to the clinical practice of psychoanalysis
for our theories. We need to hold to a sound grasp of basic concepts, treating
the highly abstract theories as superstructures rather than foundations,
as Freud (1914) cautioned us to do. Clinical practice is the best testing
ground for those necessary conjectures we call metapsychology. Central
and irreplaceable in this theory is that there is a psychoanalytic theory
of drives integrated with a psychoanalytic theory of object relationships
(see my vs88), integrated with a theory of the ego,
integrated with a theory of the id, integrated with some sorts of developmental
and economic theories (see vs79b). We cannot do without any of the parts,
nor can we evade the effort to integrate them.
VI
The word self, taken in its everyday sense in the English language, is
ubiquitous in psychoanalytic work. But an essential part of its nature
is its reflexivity; it is impossible to define validly, except as a set
or series of fantasies an individual has about himself -- which are, of
course, of extraordinary importance. But self has no place as a theoretical
word. What the analysand calls his self the analyst call his ego, which
is definable, a macro-structure that can be clearly distinguished from
the other macro-structures, the id and the superego, -- and correlated
either in the sense of what can be known of the analysand's experience
within the analytic situation, or, to a lesser degree, on the basis of
abstractions based on generalizations -- the collective generalizations
shared by most members of the discipline of psychoanalysis. The ego in
the latter sense is defined by its functions because these functions are
related in a coherent way, and because, in turn, they are related to what
can be known of the personal experience another person has of himself.
ENDNOTES
1. "Knowing" is used in its everyday
sense: knowing oneself, knowing another -- without carrying the implication
of certainty; rather, assuming that it is always partial, always subject
to some level of distortion, and always depends upon the perspectives of
both the knower and the known. This view implies a partial sense of incompletion,
an appreciation of the inevitable appearance of imperfection. But it does
not imply total relativity.
2. As happened in the translation of Freud's works into
English, except that the "orotund" names were in Latin rather
than in Greek.
3. Loewenstein (1940) had pointed this out previously.
4. The concept of mental representation varies depending
upon the metapsychological position taken. According to Beres and Joseph
(1970), a working definition for a mental representation is that it is
a "postulated unconscious psychic organization capable of evocation
in consciousness as symbol, image, fantasy, thought, affect or action"
(p. 2). Their definition is in some respects similar to Freud's Reprasentant
or Reprasentanz, the words for psychic representation of instinct
or affect. This is the broad concept of representation: representations
are cathected varying instinctual drive energies, may conflict, and may
or may not result in conscious derivatives, depending on ego operations.
But self-representation from this point of view could hardly be the same
as self. The narrower view o representation as idea (Sandler and Rosenblatt,
1962; Schafer, 1968), following Freud's Vorstellung. It does not
logically allow for the idea being cathected (except in the sense of "attention
cathexis"). From this point of view, what is cathected are the motives,
which, of course, make use of the necessary psychic representations.
5. Lampl-de Groot (1963) defined character as "the
habitual way in which integration is achieved; this means: in which a person's
ego solves conflicts within the internal world (id and superego), conflicts
with the environment, and conflicts within its own organization (between
its various functions and capacities)" (p. 8).
6. After completion of this essay, I read a valuable paper
by Grossman (1980). In many ways, he follows the line of thought presented
here. However, he comes to different conclusions about the theoretical
use of the use of "self" as a theoretical term.
7. (Added in 1997.) Since 1981, when this paper was published,
theoretical standards, and parallel clinical standards have grown worse.
Some analysts seem to want to demolish principles of technique that, in
my opinion, are absolutely necessary if a psychoanalytic process
is to develop. The assault is based on ridiculing authority -- in the case
of the analyst, his expertise at his work: the central importance of special
kinds of framing of the analytic situation, largely by the analyst, but
with the patient's fundamental cooperation. All this is rationalized in
terms of the patients' supposed needs of egalitarianism, "closeness"
by the analyst, and "openness" to contrary opinions. While we
hope that nobody believes analysts should be authoritarian, or should
be "distant" with their patients, or should be dogmatic
about facts or abstractions, it is still a fact that patients of surgeons
prefer that they be expert at what they do.
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