Narcissism Philo

8/17/2019 Narcissism Philo

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/narcissism-philo 1/12



Traditional patterns of love, courting, and marriage have become lessmeaningful. #any people re(ect marriage in favor of less stable arrangements.The ensus Bureau reports a "dramatic increase over the past fifteen years inthe number of persons living alone. -ouseholds containing only one person

(umped /0 since 12/."1 The emphasis on intimacy maes for a 3uicer

re(ection when there is a lac of mutuality. *eople move from relationship torelationship. #illions are lonely and isolated. Those who do live in the old formsno longer identify fully with them.

%imilarly, people continue in the old forms of wor, but they aredisaffected. Inwardly , they pursue other interests. #any are leaving the

business world, and more would lie to leave. The old forms have weaened,but most situations are, at least outwardly, unchanged4 there are not very manynew forms 5and only a hint of a new kind of form6.

The critics of the &wareness #ovement point to a real problem. They see a

disintegration. 7ot that they approve of the old social forms, but disintegrationdoes not loo hopeful to them. They see it as a falling bac to something lessordered, and inherently asocial. In terms of the old social relations, this seemsto be the case.

To call the currently common introspective complexity "narcissistic" implies that

it is primitive and infantile, developmentally earlier than the ego. The fullydeveloped person is supposed to identify with the ego. The ego derives fromsocial reality. ith a traditional ego one identifies oneself with the socially givenroles and forms of bonding. Traditional individuals are said to feel that theyare their roles, routines, and social identities. "7arcissism" is the only

alternative. The critics assume that a failure to identify fully with the prevailingroles must be "narcissism," a regression to infantile experience, less orderedthan the external forms, and asocial.

e will as whether regression is the only alternative to full identification withprevailing forms. ould new patterns arise from experiential processes8 Thecritics consider that impossible. 7ew forms cannot come from individual

experience4 that is deeply written in Freud's concepts. The individual consistsof externally given forms. There are serious theoretical reasons for this view.Before I come to them, let me first show the povertyof this view. It has only this one concept, "narcissism," for anything and

everything that is not the traditional ego.

The NarcissismCriti!e #oo$s %nly &or the %l'( )anishe' Ty*e o& +erson

The critics of the &wareness #ovement see each change only in terms of what it

is not. Their diagnosis of each new change is always the same+ It is narcissismsince it isn't the traditional ego.

http://www.focusing.org/narcissism.html#1.




The change in ego$identification since Freud's time has involved four well$nowntypes. The first was the traditional type, people solidly identified with theirroles$$the "bourgeois ego." &dorno and -orheimer criticied these people forbelieving that they were their own 5sub(ective6 source of strength, when it wasactually the social system that formed their egos, and gave them their ego$

strength. That blindness was called "false sub(ectivity."

&fter orld ar II, prosperity and consumerism weaened the family, whichhad been most important in traditional life. %ocial mobility and greateropportunities let parents do more living outside the family. hildren spent theirtime with age$mates and T9. & second type of person emerged. But &dorno

found this development worse than the previous bourgeois self. 7ow he thoughthe saw inner emptiness, people lost in a vacuous consumer culture, having aneven shallower sub(ectivity, a selfish lac of family involvement, "narcissism."

The third type, the young people of 1:;, rebelled against this very

consumerism. They re(ected social forms that felt vacuous to them, using thewritings of &dorno, -orheimer, and #arcuse as their texts. But &dornoconsidered this third type even worse, and he argued that their refusal to live inthe social forms, their attempt at authenticity, could only be a delusion, a totalnarcissistic collapse of the ego.

Today a fourth type has appeared, but the students of &dorno can see onlynarcissism again. They call the current type "narcissistic" because conformity isnow often merely outward, divided off from 3uite different inner concerns.*eople are now living and woring in the old forms, again. !n the one handthey do not rebel openly against the old forms. !n the other hand, they do not

fully identify themselves in them. They identify themselves with an inwardcomplexity, even when there is no way to live from it.

But the previous, open rebellion was also called "narcissism," and the argumentwas that such a total refusal to live in the old forms could only be infantile andregressive. But, the type before that$$the 3uiet "consumerism" of the postwaryears$$was called "narcissism" too.

ith the concept of "narcissism" one ignores each new type, and loos only forthe old ego$identification with the prevailing social forms. &ny thing different isalways called "narcissism." It was true that the old ego

was weaened with each new development. *arents were, called "narcissistic"for being so involved in consumption. But when their children re(ected

consumerism, the same concept was applied, because the children could nottolerate the traditional forms at all. 7ow the outward conformity is also said tobe narcissism, because it is not the old, full ego$identification with the socialforms.



This criti3ue lumps all the changes together. It nows only a traditional ego thatexists in the prevailing social forms. hat is not that, loos all the same. henthese critics loo out the window, they see only the same thing, no matter whatcomes by.

"7arcissism" is a catch$all category. &nything other than the ego is narcissism.*sychoanalytic theory was always odd in reducing so much valuable humanexperience to infantile regression. For example, the theory analyed the greaterintricacy and sensitivity of poetry as nothing more than regression. But poetrycan exceed the ego. hat it says about the world is not always unrealistic,regressive, less developed, less organied$$"narcissistic." &ccording to

psychoanalytic theory, no experience can be realistic, adult, and interactionalexcept through the ego. hat is not the ego of the prevailing forms is bydefinition both primitive and autistic.

II. "UNC%NSCI%US +R%,RAMMIN,"

hat if some experiential processes are, on the face of them, more realistic andmore intricate than the ego8 hat if they are not always autistic, but caninclude a better sense of interpersonal contact or its absence8 hat if they

include more care for the intricacy of other people8

)oes such intricacy prove that there is an order other than that imposed by theprevailing social forms8 The greater order may simply be denied, if onecontinues to spea of experiential intricacy as "narcissistic" regression. But, the

theory of "narcissism" leads some critics to a second answer+ They grant theexperienced intricacy, but explain it as stemming from past and presentprogramming that is not being recognied. That is another version of the samecriti3ue. &gain it is assumed that order must come from external sources. It isargued that experienced intricacy and relational sensitivity are only a re$discovery of the social order imposed by history upon the human body.

-uman bodies are certainly social and cultural. !ur long infancy and ourlanguage$brain attest to that. The human brain had its second greatexpansion after culture. Brain and body changed physically in the context ofculture. <n3uestionably, the body and experience are cultural. But this fact is

mistaenly interpreted as mere imposition of social and political order. <ponwhat is this order imposed8 =xternal imposition assumes an original body

without order, and without interaction. The ego is the extant social order,imposed upon a purely individual, chaotic body consisting of mere autistic"desires." >ater I will 3uestion this theory of an unordered and asocial body.

The Two )ersions o& the Criti!e



=ach version of the psychoanalytically based criti3ue of the &wareness#ovement points to a problem we will tae up. <nstable interaction, regression,breadown, and loss of "self' have indeed become more common. e must alsorecognie ingrained conformity even when it seems to originate from deepinside.

The two versions of the criti3ue are often mixed together.2 The currentpsychological processes are said to be regression, chaos, autism4 then it isargued that their order and relational character merely reflect externalrepressive programming. e can see both lines of argument in the following3uotations.

In contrast to the 1:; movement which demanded ma(or social changes, thecritics see in the current &wareness #ovement+

& loss of the pro(ect of structural change ?in favor of a@ strategy of withdrawal

from society. ?There are@ ... loose associations of people with a private, eclecticreligiosity.A

The critic goes on to deprecate the inward processes, callingthem both "narcissistic" and nothing more than a new external programming.The passage continues+

?There are@ psychologistic doctrines with a veneer of scientific ideology. ?Fourlines of "brand names" are listed.@ These offer techni3ues for personal salvationand self$enhancing lifestyles based on the sacraliation of the narcissistic self.That any public philosophy ... could emerge from this is preposterous.

The new processes are understood as external "techni3ues" imposed on "thenarcissistic self. " Foucault argues similarly+

In the alifornia cult of the self one is supposed to discover one's true self ...thans to psychological and psychoanalytic science which is supposed to tell youwhat your true self is.C

The critics of the &wareness #ovement cannot imagine an inner emergencemore ordered than external programming. The body has no order of its own. ForFoucault the tas of his "genealogy" was

to expose a body totally imprinted by history and the process of history's

destruction of the body.:

For Foucault there is not even a primitive "narcissistic" body left over. &sidefrom external programming there is nothing at all. For others there is aprimitive narcissism. But all these thiners assume that any intricate andrelational experience can only reflect unconscious external programming.













Before we 3uestion that assumption, let us bring home to ourselves the realproblem of unconscious programming. >et us grant how deeply programmed ourbodies really are. -owever concerned we are with social change, we mightcreate conformity if we are not aware of being programmed.

For example, people used to live on farms or in small towns, but by 1:C mostof them led mobile urban lives. !n farms a family wors together all day4 incities we wor separately with strangers all day, so that family life could notpossibly have remained the same as on the farm. %ocioeconomic arrangementsstructure the family and daily life4 they affect the ind of individuals we can be.

The 3uestion of unconscious conformity applies also to our thining about thesematters. e cannot (ust call what we don't lie "conformity," and what we lie"a greater order in experience." %uch a distinction would reflect our ownprogrammed values.

Isn't it simply an illusion, if one seems to experience an inner individualfreedom in an unchanged society8 %ince we are all trained to thin of ourselvesas individualists, this very illusion mass itself e are stalled on the expresswayat the same hour in our individual cars.

There is considerable reason to worry about such unconsciousness, because

people do regard their psychological sophistication as "only inner" andunproblematic. -uman beings are inherently interactional. e live and feel with,and at, others. hy, today, does "the real self' seem only inner8

The current split 5inward freedomDoutward conformity6 accepts intricate

experience as cut off from the environment. That split comes largely fromhelplessness, the impossibility of affecting external arrangements so that onecould live from intricate experience. The self's new intricacy seems only innerbecause the external controls prevent it from being lived out. Therefore it canbe lived only in private self $responding. But if the intricacy is acceptedas inherently only something inner, then the social controls are acceptedwithout having been noticed. hat prevents one's outward efficacy is mased

and unseen.

The rebellious movement of 1:C$12E was made possible by the wealth of thetime. This movement disappeared, when the central bans of estern countries

drastically reduced the money circulating in the economy. In the name of curingthe 5then very slight6 inflation, economic policy since 12E again and again "cut

buying power," as it was officially called. obs were made scarce. That stoppedmillions of young people from living as they lied, traveling about, woring onlywhen they wanted. 7ow there is unemployment. <nions are giving up theirgains of sixty years. The change in the spirit of young people did not happenonly as a result of changes inside them. Today students are 3uiet and concernedto ensure that their education will lead to a good (ob. "Gelevance" otherwise is



not so important to them. They are able to go along with the "educational"system. They can also tolerate meaningless (obs. But "inwardly" they aresophisticated about experiential processes.

The misunderstanding of experience as "only inner" reflects and mass the

unchanged socioeconomic arrangements in which individuals must live. If wedon't see the effects on us of the social arrangements in which we live, then wedon't as the genuine political 3uestions that might lead to genuine structuralchanges.

The critics of the &wareness #ovement are correct in arguing that considering

intricacy as "only inner" hides the social controls that mae it seem only inner.But they are wrong in thining that the intricacy comes from those socialconditions. !nly its restriction to inwardness is due to social conditions. Theyprevent it from becoming externally real. Gather than re(ecting the intricacy asan illusion, we must consider how it could change the social conditions. e

must also consider why it has not, and why so many theorists have assumed soreadily that it cannot. &nd if such change is possible, we must also as how it isto be differentiated from mere unconscious conformity.

%ome thiners 5Foucault, for example6 have assumed that, except for imposedcontrols, the individual is only chaos. Freedom from control as such is therefore

an illusion and a mystification. !thers, critical theorists, lie #arcuse, hold outfor a liberating alternative, but search for it in a primitive, unrelational,narcissistic core. They have assumed that this hypothetical core is "therepressed." They all share the assumption I want to 3uestion+ that, except forchaos or autistic drives, the individual is only what the power system imposes.

III. THE USUA# +%#ITICA# REA-IN, % REU-

Before we revise the assumption we have been discussing, we can learn muchfrom #arcuse's refusal to revise it. #arcuse praised Freud for showing how

thesocial order is built into the very structure of individual personality. Thecentral part of Freud's individual, the ego, develops from the existing socialorder. Therefore no adult experience can transcend the social order. In Eros and Civiliation, #arcuse argues that any modification of this theoretical plan would

blind us to unconscious conformity and eep us from asing the political3uestions deeply enough. #arcuse writes+

Freud demonstrated that constraint, repression, and renunciation are the stufffrom which the "free personality" is made. . . . *sychoanalysis was a radicallycritical theory. . . . ?But@ its belief in the basic unchangeability of humannature appeared "reactionary". . . ?therefore@ revisions ?lie =rich Fromm's@began to gain momentum. 5#y italics6.2





%uch revisions must be superficial and conformist. They can only mas what#arcuse 5with Freud6 assumes, that individuals are the present society. #arcusecontended that,

hereas Freud, focusing on the vicissitudes of the primary instincts,

discovered society in the most concealed layer of the genus and individual man,the revisionists attempt to free Freud's theory from its identification withpresent day society ... to indicate the possibility of progress.;

&ccording to #arcuse, what we might thin of as "progress" is necessarilydefined by standards that are still "compatible with the prevailing values." To

thin we could change the prevailing values is to miss how deeply they havemodified our instincts. The best we can do is to now that we cannot changethis deep programming by our present day society. "*rogress" is always inunconscious alliance with the controls implicit in the individual. %uch "progress"is only 3uiescent "productivity," and hides the controls Freud brought to view.

*eople sometimes say that Freud should not be read so literally, when he saysthat any experienced opposition to the prevailing social forms can only beregression$$narcissism. But it isn't a 3uestion of taing Freud too literally. Thisassumption inheres in most of the theories proposed during the last hundredyears. It is not pedantic to tae this assumption seriously. e can see how

seriously #arcuse too it. -e wanted to side with what society represses, and sohechampioned narcissism as the only alternative to imposed control. -e calledhis own view "aesthetic narcissism." -e assumed with Freud, that since mythand art exceed the social forms, they can only be narcissism. -e looed to mythand art for an alternative to the given social order, but granted that it would be

narcissism.

#arcuse did not say, as I say, that what is called "narcissism" 5anything otherthan the imposed order6 is much more, and very different from what the termimplies. Gather, he assumed exactly what the term implies. -e assumed withFreud, that the body consists only of autistic needs. "?The@ instinctual needs ...must be 'broen' so that the human being can function in interpersonal

relations."1/ #arcuse said that narcissism is lie sleep and death, a self$enclosedautism, selfishness, and autoeroticism. -e assumed this about any experiencethat would not be social conformity. Therefore, his only hope was that"7arcissism may contain the germ of a different reality principle ... transforming

this world into a new mode of being."11 -e does not find that new reality,because he looed for it in the original body Freud posited. That concept of the

body is too poor. The repressed drives are only chaotic and autistic. Behaviorand interaction come only through the ego derived from the existing socialnorms. Therefore no adult experience can oppose the prevailing forms.!nly regression can avoid unconscious conformity. #arcuse chose narcissismover unconscious conformity.











<nlie &dorno, #arcuse supported the 1:; movement+ the youngpeople's experienced re(ection of common social behavior and their preferencefor experiential realness. By 12E #arcuse's position had changed a little.In Counter!evolution and evolt he no longer calls nonconformist experience"narcissism." -e sought, even more than before, an experience

of reality from which society could be criticised+ "a new sensibility.1E

But henever 3uite found it, because he continued to loo for it only in myth and art.

hy loo for an alternative to the imposed system in myth and in art8 %incethey exceed the ego, it was falsely assumed that myth and art are narcissisticand cannot be about this world. In an invented world a narcissistic regression

could be enacted. It was falsely assumed that the real world is all of one piece,all formed by one common, imposed order. Geason was considered to beuniversal concepts, i.e., the commonalities that define classes. Thesecommonalities were taen to be the meanings of all words. ommonalities werealso the shared forms of social interaction, and "reality" was assumed to be

socially defined. #ne single imposed system was considered to encompassreason, commonalities, common language, social interaction, $ociety, andreality . If that is all one system of commonalities, an alternative can come onlyfrom what that system leaves over$$autism in an unreal world. That assumptionhas dominated estern thining for a long time. It was still compelling for#arcuse.

hen so much is granted to the system of commonality$categories, what can beleft8 !nly Freud's chaotic, unrelational "primary" instincts. But my criticism ofhim, here, applies only to his theory . I must point out that even psychosis and"primary process" are not described as unrelational discharges. In

theInterpretation of %reams Freud describes "metaphorical," "condensational,""over detemined" experience. hy is such experience put in a class with mereunordered drives8 That comes about because all order is thought of as thecategorial order. &ll that his order excludes falls together as having no order atall.

But, throughout recent centuries the nature of language has not been

understood. >anguage is not a system of commonality$categories and fixedforms. It is more "condensational" and "metaphorical", and more intricate thanit is "rational."

%imilarly, interpersonal interaction has been misunderstood in estern thought.>ie language, it involves more than commonality$patterns. >ater we will see

that the nonrational, noncategorical order is not necessarily asocial and not onlya negation of order. 7or is it necessarily about an unreal world.

Gecent thining still assumes that all order and all interaction is externallyprogrammed. For example, )eleue and Huattari 51;A61A argue that in order toovercome social control, a body would have to be "without organs", since it is







through organs that it interacts with others. The assumption is that interactionis externally programmed4 the body could be free only if it could give up allpoints of contact with other people. 5The boo has a laudatory preface byFoucault.6

e can honor #arcuse's and )eleue's courage in siding with the body againstthe social controls. e should heed their warning that unconsciousprogramming will be reinstated, if we don't penetrate the depth at whichrepression has modified the body. But let us study the body. >et us not assumethat the body is as Freud hypothesied with his reductive model$$unorganied,unrelational tensions. The body might have an order other than what repression

has created. But if we find more, how can we now it is not (ust the result ofexternal programming8 e cannot drop that 3uestion.

#arcuse assumed that there could be only an aesthetic alternative in the worldof myth and art. But now, throughout estern society, people are discovering a

more intricate order$$and not (ust in myth or art. #ight #arcuse's search for agreater "sensibility" now succeed8 -as experience now become a possiblesource of social criticism8 To thin theoretically about whether that is possible,we must first modify the assumption that covertly defines nonego experience as"narcissism."

The second 3uestion is important. It taes us beyond #arcuse+ =ven if there isan experiential order that is not imposed, can it be distinguished fromunconscious conformity8 I will propose a process$strategy with which that3uestion can at least be studied.

Tracin/ the Assm*tion in re'

To modify the assumption that "narcissism" is the only alternative to the ego, letus examine how Freud defined these two concepts. -e defined the ego in

relation to an "id" which has very little order, and no interaction at all. Itconsists in merely individual, chemical drives, tension$increases or decreases. Itgets order only from interactions which are patterned by the existing societythrough the ego.

Freud's metapsychology has room only for this unordered id$$and, of course,

the ego. But elsewhere, Freud discussed many id$experiences which are neither

of these. The complexities of "primary process" 5as in psychosis6, theoverdetermined, "condensational," "metaphorical" character of dreams andpathology are much more organied than mere tensions, and much of theirorganiation does not come from the ego.

This gap in the metapsychology has not been sufficiently noticed, because, inestern science, "metaphor" and "condensation" are evaluated in terms of thefixity of "rational" logic. From this viewpoint they have appeared primitive, and



as derivative from logic. &lthough such experience is more intricate than logic, ithas been considered to be less, and could therefore be safely ignored.

In Freud's metapsychology, the "metaphorical" and "condensational" intricacy of our experience does not appear at all. -e wrote only of id and ego, and held

that the "id" has no order and no environmental relations at all. -e writes+

The core of our being, then, is formed by the obscure id , which has no relationswith the outside world , and is accessible even to our nowledge only throughthe medium of another agency of the mind. 5#y italics.61 -e continues+

The id, which is cut off from the external world, has its own world of perception.It detects ... changes ... in the tensions of its instinctual needs.1C

The ego is ... a specifically differentiated portion of... the id ... the ego is anorganied entity, whereas the id is not 4 in fact, the ego is the organied part of

the id. 5#y italics6.1:

%tarting from conscious experience, it ?the ego@ has brought under its influenceever larger regions and ever deeper layers of the id4 and, in the persistencewith which it maintains its dependence on the external world, it bears theindelible stamp of its origin, ?as it might be "#ade in Hermany".@12

?The ego's@ function is ... to transform freely mobile energy into bound energy.1;

ithout the ego, the id has no connection to the environment, no modes ofbehavior, no channels of discharge. By repression and modification, one part of

the id does develop such channels, and that part is the ego. The ego is formedunder the influence of external reality$$mostly social reality. Therefore there isno separate "social psychology"+

%ocial phenomena ... may be contrasted with certain other processes describedby us as "narcissistic," in which the satisfaction of the instincts is partially ortotally withdrawn from the influence of other people. The contrast between

social and narcissistic ... falls wholly within the domain of individualpsychology.1

$uch passages leave individuals no experience other than autism with which to

oppose the prevailing forms of interaction patterned by their society. It is truethat Freud's wor can be read in other ways. -ere I am concerned, not with

various readings of Freud, but with the reading that has been adopted by mostphilosophers and political thiners. <sing chiefly his metapsychology, they taefrom Freud the assumption that order and interaction must be externallyimposed upon an inherently autistic body.















-ow did Freud come to assume this originally unordered, autistic body of mere"tensions"8 &nd, where he discussed the "metaphorical" intricacy, why did heconsider it only infantile regression8

Documents

Narcissism Philo