Nellie Curtin : The narcissistic ego : functions and fallacies[1]

Freud's paper "On Narcissism" (1914) is considered to be one of his most important writings. He had developed his ideas over a decade prior to this publication and he continued to refine them during the subsequent decade. His paper is interesting because it includes the hesitations and ambiguities of a theory in its beginnings. This is also true of what he says about the ego which is so closely linked with Narcissism.

The paper on Narcissism highlights the ego and its functions which play such a central role in the psyche. In analytic work, the ego therapies are considered "inauspicious". If we do not wish to pursue the "orthopaedics of the ego" as Lacan calls it, how do we deal with the ego in psychoanalysis? Ego's place as outlined by Freud appears in neurosis, in repression, in sleep and dreams, in melancholia, in psychoses, in everyday living. In face of this, how do we understand and work with it if we are not to go the route of ego therapies?

These were some of the questions raised in our cartel. We read Lacan's Seminar I (1953-54)[2] which provides a major contribution to understanding the origins and complexity of the ego. This early seminar includes comments from those in attendance. And though our cartel comprised only three of us we figured Leclaire and Manoni were "virtual guests", imaginary members expanding our group as they too questioned Lacan and grappled with his ideas, though in a different fashion than we might.

The first basic question then is what is the Ego? For Freud the ego developed in "an estrangement from primary narcissism", which he says gives rise to a vigorous attempt to recover that state"[3]. He says something new appears in the psyche which brings about narcissism and that this new agency is the ego. It is significant that he emphasises that instincts are there from the beginning but the ego develops at a later stage. That later stage is when the individual has a capacity for identification. So the ego then develops with the formation of narcissism and also gives form to it.

Freud is led to the discovery of narcissism through the study of schizophrenia, where there is a regression to early narcissism in which a person's only sexual object is his ego. He postulates the existence of a primary narcissism in which the infant is totally self-absorbed and this in a corporeal sense. Patients with paraphrenia show similar traits: megalomania and withdrawal of libidinal interest from the outside world. In this state there is a cathexis of the ego at the expense of the object. This is a secondary narcissism which builds on the infantile one. There is a withdrawal from the outside world and the ego itself becomes the object of its own interest. Normally libido is transferred to objects outside of itself but some of it remains with the ego. It would seem then that the ego is the locus of a certain libido — transferring it to objects outside of itself or withdrawing it back to itself. Freud says the ego is the coherent organization of mental processes.

For Lacan too, the functions of the ego play a fundamental role in the structuring of reality but with the proviso that "they have to undergo the fundamental alienation constituted by the reflected image of himself"[4]. This reflected image or the classical mirror stage is described in several ways throughout Seminar I. Lacan situates the emergence of the ego at the mirror stage.

Firstly there are the early stages of recognition when the subject recognizes himself in the other and this also in a corporeal sense. It is through the body of the other that he gets a sense of his own body. This can be seen in the mothering experience. The body image provides a sense of unity for the subject.

The reflection in the mirror then is a representation of this initial body identification. The recognition of the image in the mirror marks a turning point. The child perceives his body as whole, the mirage of himself, outside himself, which gives rise to an illusion (or perhaps a hope) of mastery. This identification with the mirror image is characterized as fragmentary and at the level of the imaginary. Throughout life identifications build on each other like the layers of an onion. This gives a sense of wholeness which in fact continues to be precarious.

Is there a hint of desire in this imaginary phase? Lacan says yes but it is a desire "still in pieces"[5]. Desire, like the image, emerges through the body of the other. What the subject is drawn to in this body of the other, this image of the other is a fragmented desire. It is grasped in a confused fashion. It is as if a fragment of desire is experienced in the midst of complex psychic activity, through the body of the other, which is really through the image of the other. Significantly, it is at this moment that he can distinguish himself, that he becomes self-conscious. "It is in so far as his desire has gone over to the other side that he assimilates himself to the body of the other and recognizes himself as body"[6]. And Lacan adds that it is this self-consciousness that distinguishes him from the animal.

So this fragmented desire becomes confused within the more or less structured image which we carry with us and which our ego is based on. Desire appears, disappears, re-appears in a hide-and­go-seek sort of way.

There is a verbal dimension and a social dimension to the ego and Lacan adds "in so far as it introduces an element of mediation which leads to the level of the symbolic"[7]. Desire he says is only reintegrated in a verbal form. In particular the name of the person is what makes up the transition to the human stage. In this context as in many others the relation with the other is essential.

As mentioned earlier repression proceeds from the ego. It acts as a censor of a particular objectionable idea or impulse, excluding it from consciousness, thus submitting to cultural or ethical demands. This has a normalizing effect.

It is at this juncture that the ego-ideal comes into being. Freud says "For the ego, the formation of an ideal would be the conditioning factor of repression"[8]. There is "a displacement of libido on to an ego-ideal imposed from without and satisfaction is brought about from fulfilling this ideal[9]. "What he projects before him as his ideal is the substitute for the lost narcissism of his childhood in which he was his own ideal[10]. It constitutes a model for the subject which he attempts to live up to.

Lacan attributes special significance to the ego-ideal which he says is on the plane of the symbolic — "since the ego ideal takes up its place within the totality of demands of the Law"[11]. These include parental and cultural ideals. Furthermore, he talks about the need for a guide beyond the imaginary and says that "this guide governing the subject is the ego ideal"[12]. This presupposes speech which links humans to each other and which makes it possible to Identity the subject. There are overlaps here between ego, ego-ideal and ideal ego.

When our cartel plus one suggested that we focus on what we don't understand, I wondered how many times I have to read this material before I fully understand it. However, I take assurance from Lacan's comment "If you think you've understood it, you are bound to be wrong"[13]. Understanding is piece-meal and ongoing: hence the gaps ! However we can continue to look at the application of the theory to practise, even if it is "as through a mirror dimly"[14].

So what are the implications of all this for practise? In the psycho-analytic setting how does one receive the ego in its complex mutations and multiple identifications? Analysis of resistances is not the answer and neither is the "orthopaedics of the ego".

Within the analytic relation, Lacan emphasizes the task of "untying the moorings of speech"[15]. This allows for the subject a way of speaking that is free-floating, sometimes childish, incoherent, and unpredictable. This in turn causes the image of his ego to fluctuate, renders it complex and incomplete. Within this "see-saw" he recognizes stages of his desire, all the "objects" that have given consistency to his image. And he can perceive it in its completeness to which he has never had access. This free-floating speech will produce the images and identifications which constitute his ego, and also its history. lt is as if the layers of the onion are peeled off, recognized and then fall into place.

This process brings about for the subject what Lacan describes as an imaginary relation with himself beyond his everyday experience — another kind of mirage. This he says is a necessary condition for love, for transference, for desire.

Reflecting on the Dora case history we can see the multiple identifications that constituted her ego, as well as her fragmented desire. She doesn't know whether she loves only herself or her image as reflected in Frau K or whether she desires Frau K. She is caught in an endless see-saw which she can't get out of. Freud's premature intervention is at the level of ego, of the imaginary and he missed the point in relation to her desire (Something he learned from and which we too have learned from)

Lacan is critical of those therapies that see integration of the ego as the objective of psychoanalysis. Again he emphasizes that it is the act of speech that is constitutive and he continues "The progress of an analysis does not consist in the enlarging of the field of the ego, it is not the re-conquest by the ego of its margin of the unknown, rather it is a genuine inversion, a displacement like a minuet executed by the ego and id"[16].

In the myth which provides the name for Narcissism, Narcissus is in love with his own image.

The other player in this drama is Echo. She has lost the gift of speech — as a punishment for her endless babble. The only words she can speak are those of the other — she echoes the last words she has heard. She is captivated by Narcissus but he doesn't recognize her interest. She follows him to the pool where he is spellbound by his own reflection. Looking at the image of the handsome face in the water he says "I love you". Echo hears it and.... echoes "I love you". But he doesn't hear her. The echo is to words what the image is to the perceived object. For Narcissus there is no mediator, no relation to the other or to the image of the other. This seems like primary narcissism as described by Freud. Echo on the other hand, sees herself in a reflection in relation to the other. And there is an echo of a fragmented desire. A narcissistic object choice perhaps.

In his transfixed narcissistic state, Narcissus is doomed to die and Echo pines away following him to death.

In analysis something else takes place. Describing the end of analysis Lacan quotes a 17th century Polish physician and poet, Angelus Silesius "When the world fails at last, the contingent falls away but essence stands fast"[17]. Lacan applies this to the end of an analysis: "That really is what is at issue... a twilight, an imaginary decline of the world and even an experience at the limit of depersonalization. That is when the contingent falls away — the accidental, the trauma, the hitches of history — and it is being which then comes to be constituted"[18].

 

Nellie Curtin






[1] This paper was presented at an Intercartel Study Day, organized by the Irish School for Lacanian Psychotherapy, held at the Milltown Institute, Dublin. 11'h June 2016.

[2] Lacan, J. Freud's Papers on Technique Book I. (1953-1954). Edited by Miller, J.A. Translation by Forrester, J.

[3] Freud, S. On the History of the Psychoanalytic Movement, Paper on Metapsychology and Other Works. (1914­1916). Standard Edition XIV, London, Vintage Books. P. 100.

[4] Lacan, J. op. cit. p. 126.

[5] Ibid. p. 148.

[6] Ibid. p. 147.

[7] Ibid. p. 174.

[8] Freud, S. op. cit.p94

[9] Ibid. p. 100.

[10] Ibid. p. 94.

[11] Lacan, J. op. cit. p. 134.

[12] Ibid. p. 141.

[13] Ibid. p 158.

[14] I Corinthians: 13, 12.

[15] Lacan, J. op. cit. p. 181.

[16] Ibid. p. 232.

[17] Silesius, A. The Cherubinic Wanderer. Translation: Flitch, J. 1932. P. 166.

[18] Lacan, J. op. cit. p. 232.