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ES2302- Education: Social and Political Thought
II
Sigmund Freud - an overview in relation to
the second assignment.
‘We have reason to assume that there is a primal
repression, a first phase of repression, which consists in
the psychical (ideational) representative of the instinct
being denied entrance to the conscious … .'
These are your 2nd. assignment resources for Freud:The essay itself – your primary text.
This week’s web-notes – offering an interpretative gloss
on selected sections, together with a reading guide for
sections not re-presented in the web-notes.
This overview, which tackles the issue of interpretation.
The web-notes relating to Freud’s Autobiography –
intended as a context reader for his work.
A related PowerPoint providing a brief summary and
selected discussion topics taken from the Autobiography.
With Freud it is impossible to avoid the issue of
interpretation. He inaugurated a new discourse
form, as did Marx. Subsequent writers on the
self have conducted projects of exploration in
the domain Freud first identified. So far, there
have been two broad pathways followed by these
writers and practitioners which Elizabeth Grosz
has characterised as ‘realist’ and ‘narcissistic’.
These notes follow her lead, ending with the
Oedipus Complex. Before starting, it will be
helpful to briefly indicate the consequences of
these ‘pathways’ for your reading of Civilisation
and its Discontents.
The Realist Pathway - assumes two fixed
and opposed components, separated by
a pre-existent structure – the sense of
self – which mediates between the two.
1) human nature in general, and
particularly the instincts and
physiological processes of the body, and
opposing them,
2) a naturalised and static conception of
the basic form of all social life.
The Narcissistic Pathway – produces
a sense of self that has neither a
fixed ‘biological’ nature deriving from
the realities of humanity’s ‘fight’ for
survival, nor any necessary features
of social structure. It is instead
amorphous and contingent – an everchanging artefact of personal sociobiological experience. For Freud, the
‘social’ essentially consists of moral
laws and cultural institutions.
The realist pathway leads to ‘therapies’
aimed at strengthening the individual’s
ability to keep opposing forces in balance
so that the self is not overwhelmed – the
basic aspects of this work never change.
The narcissistic pathway leads to a self that
is more tactical in its immediate responses,
and more self-serving in its over-arching
strategies. It is a product of circumstances
which may change fundamentally; and there
is no ‘cure’, only the ‘freeing up’ of desire.
In terms of your 2nd. assignment, these
consequences lead to a question which
you must answer for yourself: Do I
think that fundamental social change is
possible? Note that Freud’s ‘biologism’
leads him, via the Oedipus Complex, to
assert that social life is dominated by
issues relating to sexuality and gender,
and one consequence of this is
unsymmetrical social experience.
The realist pathway – adopted by most American
psychoanalysts – will entail that your reading of
Civilisation and its Discontents is understood as
a statement of what will always be the case so
long as human beings live in societies.
The narcissistic pathway, closer to the work of
Continental analysts and, particularly, Jacques
Lacan, entails that the same essay will be
understood as a description of the tensions
experienced by gendered subjectivities under
patriarchy in Western Europe during the 1930s.
For the following summary my
principal source has been Elizabeth
Grosz’s text: Jacques Lacan: a
feminist introduction. This was
published by Routledge in 1990, and
in some respects now shows its age.
Nevertheless, I still consider it one of
the best accounts of Freud and Lacan
in relation to the analysis of feministfocussed social change.
Freud’s essay addresses adulthood
and gendered relations within society.
However, as Freud himself said, ‘the
child is father to the man’.
This insight emphasises the
significance of two developmental
‘events’ in the lives of each of us as
part of our entry into adult social life.
The first of these events is the
formation of the ego – the sense of
self as separated from the world.
The second is the break away from
the typical mother-child dyad, and the
entry into adult social life. Both
Freud and Lacan call this event the
Oedipus Complex and connect the
primary repressions it produces with
the formation of the unconscious.
As we have seen, for the realist ego
matters are simple: it is formed as a
natural biological feature, like a
bodily organ or a mental capacity,
such as seeing or hearing.
The Realist Ego – rational compromise:• A pre-given, natural outcome of the interaction of
psychical (biology) and social (moral- cultural) relations;
• One agency amongst others competing for gratification
within the organism;
• The reasoning mediator between antagonistic forces,
arbitrating as an outsider between the pleasure-seeking
demands of the id and a hostile, repressive reality;
• As reasonable mediator, it is responsible for the
‘higher’ accomplishments of culture;
• Its role is to modify the urgency of demands and to
seek compromises.
Freud’s account of the narcissistic ego
solves a problem he faced in describing
human instincts. He understood these as
the subjective accompaniments to the
essential survival functions of the body,
i.e., drinking, fighting, defecating, etc.
The sexual instinct was different because
a) it was inessential for bodily survival,
and b) its object was said to be external to
the body. But on this definition narcissism
itself couldn’t exist because it entailed
that the subject also became the subject’s
object of desire.
Freud concluded that primary
narcissism must be different from
autoeroticism – some new psychic
action had to be added. Freud
therefore came to picture a
‘narcissistic’ ego – one which was a
dynamic store of libido – of psychic
‘energy’ – that could be projected onto
external objects or brought back
within the self.
The narcissistic ego – a sediment of images:• Primary narcissism is distinct from auto-eroticism in its
unpredictability;
• It is simply the boundary establishing the libidinal
reservoir – it may therefore take itself or a part of the
body as one of its libidinal objects;
•It is not a separate entity or agency within the subject;
•The contours of the ego are not fixed – they vary over
time and social relationships;
•The ego is inter-subjective – it depends on the subject’s
relations with the other (metaphor of the amoeba);
•The ego is governed by fantasy, making it amenable to
the desires of the other.
Clearly, the two ego-types have differing
consequences for your assignment. The realist
ego may strike you as being more consistent
with Foucault’s notion of ‘discipline’ and power,
while the narcissistic ego may appear more
consistent with his notion of ‘discourse’.
The second formative event to consider here is
the Oedipus Complex - the individual’s
‘gateway’ to society. The first account is
Freud’s own – essentially a realist version and,
strictly speaking, the only one you need.
However, a second, ‘narcissistic’ version is also
provided here based more on Lacan’s work –
and note - Foucault attended Lacan’s seminars!
Grosz sums up the changes brought about to the
pre-Oedipal Freudian child in the following way:• It introduces the sexually indifferent child to the
sexual/genital differences between the sexes; and it must
adopt one of these.
• It attempts to ‘match’ the child’s ‘biological’ sex with its
socially determined ‘gender’, and along with this the
assumptions of active or passive agency.
• It introduces the reality principle, social law, and
considerations of material existence – over-riding the
dominance of immediate gratification.
• It severs the constricting mutuality binding the child to
its parents, especially the mother, enabling the child to
establish relations, including sexual relations, with others
outside the family.
Lacan transcribes Freud’s sociobiological explanation into one of
language: the individual is said to enter
the symbolic order.
Prior to this entry the child has emerged
from two previous states: the Real, and
the Imaginary. The state of the Real
exists before language acquisition, and
for the purposes of your essay can be
taken as corresponding to a sense of
non-separation between itself and the
world, i.e., Freud’s ‘oceanic feeling’.
After its passage through the Real, the
child moves into a pre-social, familial set
of relations – principally with the mother
or primary carer; this Lacan calls the
order of the imaginary. This state is presocial in that the child’s sense of self is
dominated by its perception of significant
and/or ideal others which it attempts to
incorporate or repudiate as part of its
attempt to form a unitary self-conception.
Without this attachment to the m(other),
the child’s sense of self is fragmented.
In the closed-circuit of the mother-child
dyad, mutual identification is immediate
and satisfying to both, but incapable of
extension. In particular, it is incapable of
admitting the social, linguistic, and
economic exchanges which characterise
adult life. Lacan, following Freud, sees
this need being typically met by the
father – or a father substitute. However,
the imaginary father serves as a token of
its symbolic equivalent – Lacan uses the
phrase, ‘the law of the father’ and
symbolises it as the Other.
Like Freud, Lacan conflates patriarchy with
culture, and like Freud, Lacan has difficulties
in theorising the experience of girls relative
to this complex. However, he does assert
two different conclusions:1.The perception of female ‘castration’ does
not literally happen – instead the child comes
to recognise that women act through
delegated patriarchal authority.
2.The child becomes a subject only by
reference to ‘the name of the father’ – and
the sacrificed body of the mother – and this
perception of the Other is Lacan’s equivalent
to Freud’s super-ego – the moral law within.