"We perceive that the self reproaches [that appear so often as a symptom of melancholia] are reproaches against a loved object which has been shifted away from the patients own ego" writes Freud in 'Mourning and Melancholia'.
I believe that Jekels and Bergler in their 1933 article 'Transference and Love' offer an interesting perspective on what it could possible mean that reproaches against a loved object are transformed into self reproaches.
In this article these authors conceptualise the 'super ego' as consisting of the 'ego ideal' on one hand, and what they call the 'daemonion' on the other.
The daemonion is to be understood as an intrapsychical construct of thanatic energy directed against the ego, of which the purpose consists of the coercion of the ego into adherence to the ego ideal. It differs from the other, older constituent of the super ego, the 'ego ideal', in that is purely 'malicious' and aggressive. The daemonion employs the other super ego constituent, namely the 'ego ideal', to confront the ego with its own inadequacy.
A love object is used, according to Jekels and Bergler, to neutralize the daemonion. The love object furnishes proof that the subject is worthy. In other words, the love object takes the place of the ego ideal. The authors write that the ego ideal is projected onto the love object and then reintrojected: 'In love, the ego ideal is then, projected on the object, and thus "strengthened", is reintrojected - the daimon is thereby disarmed'.
And I believe this can offer an interesting perspective on how reproaches against a loved objectseemingly are transformed into reproaches against the self.
What actually happens intrapsychically is:
1) The ego is under attack from daemonion, which uses the ego ideal, to accuse the ego of inadequacy
2) In order to defend itself, the ego seeks an external witness, a love object, which solves the problem of the ego ideal
3) When the love object dissappears or becomes threatened, this proof becomes threatened as well.
4) The daemonion (which is a function in the ego) reprises its relentless accusation of the ego ("the self accusations").
Analysis shows, according to Freud, that these 'self accusations' do in fact have their origins in an accusation 'against a loved object'.
Would it not be possible, however, that two different phenomena are confounded here (and indeed appear to the observer/interlocutor/analyst of the melancholic as a confused mixture)?
On one hand, there is a 'self accusation', which is in fact an accusation of a function of the ego ('daemonion') against another function of the ego (the subject of experience).
On the other hand, we can imagine that the 'subject of experience' in its desperate situation starts accusing the loved object in order to discredit it in the figurative 'eyes' of the daemonion, in order to neutralize the reality of having failed to live up to the ego ideal which was invested with the content of the loved object?
And this 'accusation against the loved object' can be associated with my own concept of "envious hatred": "the object reminds the subject of its inferiority to the object. The subject wishes to cancel this feeling of inferiority by destroying or humiliating (reversing roles) the irritating object."
07-07-2015, 14:33 geschreven door The witty quipper
Hatred is sorrow
'Hatred is sorrow accompanied by the awareness of an external cause' - Spinoza
'Hate is belief that an external object will decrease one's perpetuation.' - Spinoza
I can think of three motives for hatred
1) Expulsive hatred: one feels the object has qualities which justify its dissappearance or inhibition. One hates the object because of certain qualities it has. One hates the qualities before any object is known. These qualities could be linked with a 'decrease of one's perpetuation', but they don't have to. In other words, the criteria for hatred can be irrational as well. I can hate blonde people, but maybe I hate them because they remind me of someone, or because it is a tradition in my family to hate the quality 'blonde'. The quality 'blonde' does not necessarily pertain to a 'decrease of my perpetuation'.
2) Envious hatred: the object reminds the subject of its inferiority to the object. The subject wishes to cancel this feeling of inferiority by destroying or humiliating (reversing roles) the irritating object. In this case, I believe there is indeed a necessary connection to a belief that the object will decrease my own perpetuation. 'My perpetuation' need not exclusively be conceived in a material sense, it can also pertain to my honour, for example, my self regard, or to the regard others have of me.
3) Hatred as counter formation: One can imagine an intrapsychic situation in which a subjective tendency towards submission or passivity meets with an accusation by the self critical faculty. In order to prove to this self critical faculty that one is not submissive or passive, one develops as a counter formation, a secondary hatred for the object towards which one originally tended to wish to submit themselves. Only secondarily is there a connection to any warding off of a 'decrease of my perpetuation'.
To some, it might seem that 'envious hatred' (2) and 'hatred as counter formation' (3) might actually pertain to the same phenomenon, even though a different route is followed, the end result is the same. I think there is a difference. In (2) the subject has admired the object and taken him for a model. In (3) there was a feminine love for the object and a desire to become this object's object of love.
We could imagine complicated scenarios such as:
Subject (a) feels an envious hatred towards subject (b)
He has admired him, but has failed to live up to the model which subject (b) 'held up'.
In desperation, subject (a) feels hatred for subject (b).
Suppose subject (b) possesses love object (c).
Subject (a) will envy subject (b) the possession of (c).
Subject (a) will fall in love with (c), because by obtaining (c) he can prove that he is in fact not inferior to subject (b).
Object (c) rejects subject (a).
Object (c) will once again be reminded of his inferiority to (a). However, now it will seem to him that what proves his inferiority is his failure to possess (c).
In desperation, (a) will feel hatred for (c).
In this situation, the object of possession (c) has 'inherited' the hatred felt for the object of admiration (a) to which it referred. The shift is barely conscious, the reference to (a) might be half forgotten.
Another possible scenario:
Subject (a) admires subject (b).
He admires him so much that he excludes himself from any possession of love objects that (b) possesses.
In other words, he submits himself to (b), he becomes feminine towards (b).
The self critical faculty forbids this submission.
Subject (a) develops the reaction formation of hatred towards (b).
This is a scenario in which admiration has led to hatred as a reaction formation.
Here the inability to live up to a model has degraded one from subject to designated object of possession, which in turn has provoked a reaction formation of pseudo-aggression.
07-07-2015, 12:43 geschreven door The witty quipper
At first the subject admires an object. Admiration necessarily implies that the object will hold up an ideal to the subject. The object will be a model for the subject.
However, for some reason, the ideal is overly frustrating to the subject.
To deny himself the narcissistic injury this entails, the subject will then start constructing a 'counter ideal' in order to deny his original admiration for the original object.
The 'counter ideal' will contain qualities that the original object does not possess. For example, the original object was intellectually gifted. The 'counter ideal' formed to counter the narcissistic injury when the subject finds that he can not live up to this original ideal, will contain the quality 'non-intellectual', or the quality that will be understood as most contrary to 'intellectually gifted'.
By making the qualities of the original object undesirable (the counter ideal designates them as such), these qualities become the object of expulsive hatred.
This is how a mimetic rival can be transformed into a scapegoat.
Let's imagine two etnicities who share a territory. Etnicitiy (a) is a minority, but is regarded by etnicity (b) as privileged. Etnicity (a) thus holds up for an "ideal" to which etnicity (b) can not live up to. Etnicity (b) will resent (a). They will develop a "counter ideal" which is defined by the attribution of quality to the absence of the very qualities that typify etnicity (a).
When the counter ideal finds sufficient support, when it is 'crystallized' among etnicity (b), the quality that typifies (a) will therefore be subject to expulsory impulses in the psyche of individuals of etnicity (b). In other words, the object of envy has become a scapegoat. Applicable to historical genocides? Applicable to the advent of anti-western, anti-shiite, antisemite salafism?
Perhaps this is also why the jewish assimilation has 'failed' in Germany. By becoming more and more like the gentiles, the gentiles suffered under competition, from an alien, who, embarassingly, not only could become like what was hitherto regarded by the majority as the superior norm, but who could even better the example and prove successfull. To resist against the painful slights to the Herrenvolk's narcissist assumptions, a counter ideal had to grow and become crystallized so that it would become strong enough to act as the instigator of expulsory impulses.
07-07-2015, 00:00 geschreven door The witty quipper
06-07-2015
Democracy needs secularism
Religion insists that truth is not something that is negotiable. This is why democracy essentially needs secularism. It essentially needs secularism because democracy implies that there is no fixed truth, that there are no eternal values, and that whatever someone posits as truth is always finally open to negotiation. Ideally, democracy is opposed to any use of 'argument from authority'.
06-07-2015, 13:39 geschreven door The witty quipper
A powerful comfort
1) "The thought of suicide is a powerful comfort: it helps one through many a dreadful night.", writes Nietzsche.
2) In his text on "Mourning and Melancholia" (1916) Freud typifies sleep as a state wherein the object cathexes of the waking state are withdrawn.:"The sleeplessness in melancholia testifies to the rigidity of the condition, the impossibility of effecting the general drawing-in of cathexes necessary for sleep"
3) The concept of the "ego ideal" is introduced in Freud's text "An Introduction To Narcissism" (1914). In this article, he writes:
"For what prompted the subject to form an ego ideal, on whose behalf his conscience acts as watchman, arose from the critical influence of his parents (conveyed to him by the medium of the voice), to whom were added, as time went on, those who trained and taught him and· the innumerable and indefinable host to all the other people in his environment his fellowmen- and public opinion."
The advent of the "ego ideal" is thus dependent on the experience by the ego of the demands made by other people. Its contents are interpretations of the demands that parents and other significant persons (parents, peers,...) from the environment of the subject make on the subject.
To connect the apparently comforting 'thought of suicide' which Nietzsche talks about with the 'drawing in of cathexes' which Freud talks about is the object of this entry.
People need to be loved. This is a fact. But why is this so?
When the love they crave is felt to be absent, or under threat, people become anxious.
Jekels and Bergler (1933) write:
"Freud, in 'The Problem of Anxiety', describes anxiety as the reaction to a loss, to a separation. According to Freud, the anxiety of infants, and young children no less, has as its sole condition the missing or loss of the object."
The infant abandons the exclusive investment of libido onto the self, because it is forced to recognize that the self is, unlike previously thought, dependent on other people. Consequently, the infant is unable to experience the self as 'whole' anymore, a part of the egohas split off to form the 'ego ideal'. Jekels and Bergler:
"The child's feeling of omnipotence is undermined by the demands of external reality, such as hunger, weaning, toilet training. After a series of unsuccessful attempts to restore its feeling of omnipotence, the child is faced with the alternative of relinquishing it or of maintaining it at the price of a compromise. Such a compromise is described by Freud : "We may say that the one . . . has set up an ideal in himself ... To this ideal ego is now directed the self-love which the real ego enjoyed in childhood. The narcissism seems to be now displaced on to this new ideal ego, which, like the infantile ego, deems itself the possessor of all perfections."
The self love that once was an automatic evidence, now can only be achieved through the condition that one is trying to live up to the ideal. The psyche of the child has established an "inner critic", who demands proof that one lives up to the ideal. One of the ways to "prove" this is the validation of others, of witnesses, i.e. the aforementioned significant objects (parents, peers, ...). The withholding of approval and validation from these important others, is painful and will make self love impossible.
The conformity to the ideal is therefore essentially related to object cathexes.
What happens during phantasies about suicide? In this phantasy the object cathexes which provide the painful reminder of inadequacy are annulled, since the ego to which the judgements of these objects pertain is itself annulled. Consequently, the subject can find rest and become ready for sleep.
Other methods for bringing about the cessation of self criticism so that one can get to sleep: reading novels (taking one's mind off oneself, onto others), erotic gratification (temporary annulment of existential incompleteness, validation, or a phantasy of these things), alcohol (which numbs everything including the self critical faculty), certain alimentary rituals (unconsciously associated with reunification with mother/nurturer) ...
06-07-2015, 00:00 geschreven door The witty quipper
