Life Narcissism, Death Narcissism 9781853435300, 1853435309, 9781853435317, 1853435317

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Life Narcissism Death Narcissism Andre Green Translated by Andrew Weller

FREE ASSOCIATION BOOKS / LONDON / NEW YORK

Published in 2001 by FREE ASSOCIATION BOOKS 57 Warren Street London W IT 5NR © 2001 Les Editions de M inuit Translation © 2001 Andrew Weller The right of Andre Green to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN 1 85343 530 9 pbk; 1 85343 531 7 hbk Designed and produced for the publisher by Chase Publishing Services Printed in the European Union by TJ International; Padstow, England

Contents Translator's Acknowledgements

vi

Preface

ix

Narcissism: Past and Present

Part One : The Theory of Narcissism 1 One, Other, Neuter: Narcissistic Values of Sameness

3

2 Primary Narcissism: Structure or State?

48

3 Anxiety and Narcissism

91

Part Two: Narcissistic Forms 4 Moral Narcissism

131

5 The Neuter Gender

158

6 The Dead Mother

170

Postscript The Ego, Mortal-Immortal

201

Notes

225

References o f the Original Publication in French

243

Bibliography

244

Index

249

Translator's Acknowledgements There are several people who I should like to thank very warmly for their assistance to me with this translation. First and foremost, Monique Zerbib, who has very generously given me a great deal of time and help over the past six months with this work. I am also indebted to Andre Green himself for the time he has given me to go over problems met with in the translation. My thanks also go to Ian Snowball for reading through parts of the translation in English and giving me the benefit of his very pertinent comments. Steven Pewsey has kindly given me assistance with searching for references. Andrew Weller Paris 30 October 2000

Give me that glass, and therein shall I read. Thus I play in one person many people And none contented ...

(IV, 1, 276)

(V, 5, 31)

... But whate'er shall I be Nor I, nor any man that but man is, W ith nothing shall be pleased, till he be eased W ith being nothing ... (V, 5, 38) Mount, m ount my soul! Thy seat is up on high W hilst m y gross flesh sinks downward, here to die (V, 5, III) Shakespeare, Richard II.

Now, since one's ego lives by thinking incessantly of all sorts of things, since it is no more than the thought of those things, if by chance, instead of being preoccupied with those things, it suddenly thinks of itself, it finds only an empty apparatus, something which it does not recognise and to which, in order to give it some reality, it adds the memory of a face seen in a mirror. That peculiar smile, that untidy moustache - they are what would disappear from the face of the earth ... And my ego seemed to me even more null when I saw it as something that no longer exists. Proust, In Search o f Lost Time (Vol. 5 (The Fugitive), p. 803. Trans. Scott Moncrieff and Kilmartin. London: Vintage Classics, 1996).

Preface Narcissism and Psychoanalysis: Past and Present Aux heures du verger.1

Doing analysis involves subjecting a dense and often confused body of facts - particularly as the analyst will have given up any attempt to understand them in terms of the outward unity of the discourse - to the test of differentiation; and, according to principles that should reveal a different composition of the object, which this time is not apparent, thereby allowing its real nature to emerge. This ideal goal is all the more difficult to attain since one is moving away from the object in the physical world in order to come closer to the psychical object. Whereas objects of the world of nature only respond passively to examination, hum an objects put up active resistance as well to their disclosure; if it is fair to use this term to describe the result of the investigation. One of the major reasons for such tenacious resistance, when it is the ego that is being analysed, is narcissism. The cement which preserves the ego's constituted unity has bound together its compo­ nent parts, giving it a formal identity which is vital both to its sense of existence and to the way in which it apprehends its own being. In this respect, narcissism is one of the fiercest forms of resistance to analysis. Is it not true that defending the One involves, ipso facto, rejecting the unconscious; since the latter implies that a part of the psyche exists which is acting in its own interests, thwarting the empire of the ego? But before it can be apprehended, its existence and function have to be particularised by means of the analytic process. Herein lies another obstacle to the analysis of hum an objects - the axes and components they are comprised of cannot be observed or deduced directly by the mind. It has even been denied that psycho­ analytic theory is derived from experience, since a grid of interpretation seemed to be a sine qua non of any form of under­ standing, however partial it might be, of psychical events; and, even more so, of the subject's structure. In a way, narcissism was a parenthesis in Freud's thinking. Although sexuality remains the unassailable constant of the entire theory of the inventor of psychoanalysis, its power has always been contested by an

opposing force which, for its part, has been subject to variation over the years. Before narcissism, there were the drives of self-preservation; after, there were the death drives. In the interregnum between the first and last theory of the drives, narcissism was the result of the libidinalisation of the ego drives, hitherto devoted to self-preservation. Freud undoubtedly made a decisive leap by integrating sexuality within the core of the ego which, at first sight, seemed to escape its control. W ith narcissism, Freud thought he had discovered the reason why certain patients were inaccessible to psychoanalysis. Once the libido had turned away from objects, flowing back towards the ego, it prevented any kind of transference, in all senses of the term, and thus any elab­ oration of the psycho-sexuality which had found refuge in an inviolable sanctuary. At the time, Freud thought that the fundamental disorder of psychosis arose from this withdrawal of libido which found more satisfaction in its chosen place of asylum than in object-libido experience - a source of other satisfactions, but also of many disap­ pointments, dangers and uncertainties. Narcissism, then, had to be discovered as a subset of the psyche before its role in the topography, dynamics and economy of the libido could be accounted for. This dimension of psychical life did not make its mark in psychoanalysis from the outset. It took almost twenty years of reflection and experience for Freud to decide to formulate a hypothesis about it in his key paper 'O n Narcissism: An Introduction' (1914). Analysts found this theoretical acquisition pertinent and enlightening; how astonished they were, then, when, seven years later, Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920) asserted that this pertinence was illusory, since it led to a monistic conception of the libido. In short, narcissism was particularly enticing because it subjected psychoanalytic theory to the same seduction which it was itself the expression of, that is, the illusion of unity; this time with regard to the libido. Freud decided, therefore, to put an end to these ruminar tions by proposing the final theory of the drives in which the life drives and the death drives were opposed. The hypothesis of the death drives became a source of controversy. Sexuality, in its turn, underwent a change of status. It was not the sexual drives but the life drives which would be set in opposition to the death drives. W hat appeared to be a mere nuance was to have momentous consequences. Faced with the spectre of death, the only adversary equal to it was Eros, the metaphorical figure of the life drives. W hat was subsumed under this new denomination? The sum of the drives I have already described, which henceforth were gathered under one heading: the drives of self-preservation, the sexual drives, object-libido and narcis­ sism. In other words, all the constituents of earlier drive theories were now merely subsets united by the same function, that is, the defence

and accomplishment of life by Eros faced with the devastating effects of the death drives. It can be seen how love, which seems to be straightforward and perfectly 'natural', is in fact thwarted on all sides. Not only does it have to confront a formidable adversary which always gets the upper hand, but it also suffers from internal dissensions; each of the subsets being in conflict with the others at the very centre of the life drives. Thus in life, certain forces - the pleasure principle itself! - collaborate unwittingly with the death drives. It required considerable boldness to ask psychoanalysts, still intoxicated with a thirst for conquest, to accept the need to recognise this implacable army of shadows - the forces of death - which were undermining their therapeutic efforts. What, at the outset, was a mere speculation which psychoanalysts were not obliged to accept, would, over the years, and as a result of clinical experience as well as social phenomena, become a firm conviction, at least where Freud was concerned; for it cannot be said that he received unanimous support on this point.2 Be that as it may, it seems that the psychoanalytic com m unity attached more impor­ tance to discussing Freud's theoretical innovations than to defending the theory they had ousted, in which narcissism occupied the central position. Another reason why Freud, as well as his disciples, forgot narcis­ sism, may have been the creation of the second topography which entailed a re-evaluation of the ego - an innovation which received a more positive reception than the death drive. It seems Freud wanted to sap the morale of his troops, since the enemy which was ruining their therapeutic hopes proved to be practically invincible. One might have expected, therefore, that thanks to the new conception of the ego, the problems set by narcissism would have been reconsidered in the light of the second topography and the last drive theory, in a bid to integrate past acquisitions and present discoveries. But this did not happen. Was Freud, who undoubtedly reproached himself for having made too many concessions to Jung's ideas, trying deliberately to shed his earlier views? It is quite possible. W hat is certain is that narcissism increasingly lost ground in his writings to the destructive drives. Evidence of this may be found in the revision of his nosographical views which restricted the field of the narcissistic neuroses to melancholia alone; or, if you prefer, to manic-depressive psychosis, schizophrenia and paranoia, which thenceforth belonged to a separate etiopathogeny. Although melancholia remained within the jurisdiction of narcissism, it was nonetheless described as an expres­ sion of a pure culture of the death drive. There is therefore a necessary link to be found between narcissism and the death drive, a task Freud scarcely concerned himself with, leaving it for us to discover. The

large majority of the papers collected in this volume are concerned, implicitly or explicitly, with reflecting on the relations between narcissism and the death drive - which I have proposed to call negative narcissism. After Freud, narcissism evolved in two different directions. In Europe, the work of Melanie Klein, based entirely on Freud's final drive theory - she was perhaps the only author who really took the hypothesis of the destructive drives seriously, even if the content she assigned to them was quite different - overlooked narcissism. Among the Kleinians, only H. Rosenfeld attempted to integrate it with Kleinian conceptions; neither H. Segal, Meltzer nor Bion found a place for it in their theoretical contributions. Winnicott's work, which differs so profoundly from Kleinian theories, but is no less dependent on them for it, scarcely gives it more attention. On the other hand, narcissism was to rise from its ashes on the other side of the Atlantic; initially, in Hartmann's work, albeit in a relatively incidental way. But it was with Kohut that it returned to psychoanalysis in force. His work, The Analysis o f the Self, enjoyed wide popularity. In a short time Kohut gathered a following, though not without arousing resistance. This initially came from those who claimed to be 'classical Freudians' - in fact, they were Hartmannians - although the reasons for their opposition are not really clear, since reading Kohut shows that he has a filiation with Freud and Hartmann; or, to be more exact, with Freud interpreted by Hartmann. Certainly, his way of understanding material communicated by analysands and of responding to it, if needs be, may be open to discussion. But opposition was also to come from other quarters; in particular, from Kernberg who defended a concep­ tion of object relations which owed something to Melanie Klein - in spite of the criticisms contesting her theories - and much to Edith Jacobson whose work has not been sufficiently appreciated. Both Kohut and Kernberg came in for a lot of criticism from the English school, whose basic postulates are very different. All \his did not prevent Kohut from passing for the theoretician who had succeeded in resurrecting narcissism. Mistakenly, however; for had the psychoanalytic com m unity not professed ignorance, sometimes tainted with scorn, of French psychoanalytic works, it would have seen that, in France, Kohut had been preceded in this field by Grunberger. Moreover, if Lacan had not been subjected to ostracism for many years - though this has recently been lifted - it might have been noticed that narcissism was a principal piece in his theoretical apparatus. The post-war French psychoanalytic movement has always given narcissism the closest attention; even if, in this area, as in others, diverging conceptions, of varying degree, have been put forward. Thus, if I may be permitted to m ention my own contribu­

tions, the informed reader will have no difficulty in recognising that my own opinions differ from both those of Lacan and Grunberger. Rather than deploring the absence of consensus on such a central issue, we should, on the contrary, be glad that the theoretical devel­ opments inspired by different interpretations have rekindled the controversy; since it is only through a confrontation of ideas that we shall gain in understanding. Today, the debates on narcissism remain centred, as far as central issues are concerned, on a problem that I believe to be poorly stated. The whole question is to know whether narcissism can be attributed with autonomy; or, whether the problems it raises should be consid­ ered as belonging to the singular vicissitudes of one group of drives which need to be regarded as being closely connected with the others. Personally, I do not see any need to choose between one or the other of these theoretical strategies. Indeed, clinical experience gives us reason to suppose that there are narcissistic structures and narcissistic transferences; that is, where narcissism is at the heart of the conflict. But neither of them can be thought about and interpreted in isolation while neglecting object relations and the general problem of the ego's relations with the erotic and destructive libido. Everything comes down to a question of judgement - a judgement which the analyst is obliged to make alone, without being able to rely in the analytic situ­ ation on anyone else's opinion, however enlightened it may be. In most cases this judgement will be intuitive, not to say imaginative. The prevalence of narcissism in certain aspects of clinical work lends credence to the idea that, at the heart of the psychical apparatus, there must be an agency which is sufficiently strong to attract cathexes of the same nature, all of which possess characteristics that are suffi­ ciently differentiated to deserve particular mention. This does not necessarily imply that the formation of narcissistic structures follows a quite separate course of development, propelled by intrinsic forces, independently of the object-oriented drives. A concern for clarity should prompt us to decide which comes first, and which is a deriva­ tive in the relations between ego-libido and object-libido, particularly in the light of the last drive theory. It may be that this causal preoc­ cupation is at the basis of a certain confusion in the discussion; for unless one is obsessed with a developmental point of view, which is supposed to reconstitute the elements in the evolutionary scheme of the psychical apparatus, and to identify the stumbling points, it is much more fruitful to determine how the different clinical configura­ tions are organised, and to recognise the nature of their internal coherence, so as to be able to infer the organising axes of the psyche. As for the need to decide - in the name of a scientific attitude which refuses to accept the highly conjectural character of any construction

or reconstruction of the infantile psyche - whether the manifestations observed are of primitive or secondary origin, more often than not this turns out to be a struggle leading nowhere, particularly where narcis­ sism is concerned. There is nothing to be learnt here from claiming validity on the grounds of observation, since the phenomena in question concern the subject's innermost world. As things stand, the heuristic value of the contradictory theories is assessed in terms of the body of clinical facts they cover and claim to give account of. Although the clinical forms which one would like to link up with archaic functions are often confused, so that it is not always possible to have a clear sense of the distinctions that are postulated in metapsy­ chology, it is unlikely that the combination of phenomena’associated with narcissism are the products of drive transformations which are regarded as extraneous to it. There is reason to suppose - although even here the picture is not very clear - that the lineaments already exist of what may, at a later stage, blossom with all the features gener­ ally considered as narcissistic. W hile recognising that narcissism should rightly be considered as a concept in its own right, one cannot avoid posing the problem of its relationship with homosexuality (conscious or unconscious), and with hate (of another person or of oneself). It is clear, however, that in mentioning its most immediate neighbours, one has to take into account all the other theoretical concepts of psychoanalysis, whether they relate to the objectal drives, the ego, the super-ego, the ego ideal, reality, or the object. Similarly, while there is a very close link between narcissism and depression, as Freud himself noticed, it seems to me equally true that the problems of narcissism occupy the foreground in character neuroses - which is only to be expected, and not only in those cases where there is a marked schizoid tendency - in psychosomatic pathology, and, last but not least,3 in borderline cases. Too clear a distinction between narcissistic structures and borderline cases simply results in an artificial compartmentalisation which is soon contra­ dicted by the complexity of clinical problems; not to mention the inevitable narcissistic element, ever present in transference neuroses. In fact, as soon as the conflictual organisation touches upon regres­ sive layers situated beyond the classical fixations observed in the transference neuroses, the role played by narcissism proves to be more important, even in conflicts where it is not the dom inant feature. A question often discussed in the literature is the relationship between narcissistic structure and borderline cases, both of which seem to vie for the interest of contemporary psychoanalytic authors. It is worth noting that Kohut, who advocates the autonomy of narcis­ sism, distinguishes carefully between borderline cases and narcissistic

structures, and has devoted the last years of his life to the exclusive study of the latter. O n the other hand, Kernberg, while accepting the need for a clinical distinction, is against viewing narcissism as autonomous and writes about both. Those who defend the entity 'Narcissism' seem inclined to render it the homage due to a neglected divinity in the psychoanalytic pantheon. As far as I am concerned, I adopt the same position in regard to clinical work as I have taken theoretically. I think there is little doubt that certain structures should be particularised in the name of narcis­ sism; but, in my opinion, it would be a mistake to exaggerate the differences between narcissistic structures and borderline cases. If, as I believe, the border should be considered as a concept and not simply empirically by situating the borderlines4 on the frontiers of psychosis, how can narcissism be left out of the picture?5 I realise that these nosographical remarks will not go down well with everyone. If I continue to refer to them, it is not only for reasons of clinical stenography, so to speak, but because I believe that there is a closer relationship between metapsychology and nosography than is generally recognised. The sole aim of nosography is to demonstrate the coherence of certain psychical constellations whose structures have crystallised in a particular way, without paying attention to the degree of frequency observed, but with a concern to grasp the struc­ tural intelligibility of the organising models. Similarly, the aim of metapsychology, in the broad sense of the term, is to define principles of functioning, determining factors and functionally separate subsets which act either in synergy with, or in opposition to, each other. Nosography has been criticised for having the drawback of rigidifying structures and so not allowing sufficient space for the psychical dynamism which is the basis of the analyst's hope that he will be able to modify the analysand's mental functioning. Where psychiatric nosography is concerned, the reproach may be justified, but it certainly does not apply to psychoanalytic nosography. For although the latter does indeed identify the coherence of psychopathological organisation, and distinguishes between various modalities, it is just as concerned with understanding how these various modalities are interlinked; and how the analysand, with the help of transference analysis, can pass from one to the other regressively or progressively. Mistrustful of nosography, analysts prefer to think about what makes their analysands unique, a necessary attitude for anyone undertaking someone's analysis. To think of the analysand's unconscious conflicts purely in terms of categories and classes would be depersonalising. Such protest is thus well-founded and legitimate. But even though we endeavour to analyse the specificity of the Oedipus complex in this or that analysand, is there any denying that it is necessary to speak of

the Oedipus complex in terms of a supra-individual structure? The objection may be easier to explain in the case of narcissism. It has been pointed out that narcissism has a bad press. Narcissistic is rarely a laudatory description. Narcissistic patients irritate us perhaps even more than perverts. This is perhaps because we can dream of being the object of a pervert's desire, whereas the narcissistic subject's only object of desire is himself. Narcissus ignores Echo, just as analysands 'who do not develop a transference' ignore us supremely. It would be useful to remind ourselves here of some obvious facts: narcissistic patients are wounded subjects - in fact, they are narcissism tically deprived. Often their disappointment, which has left them with open wounds, concerns not just one parent but both. W hat other object can they love but themselves? Of course, the narcissistic wound inflicted on infantile omnipotence directly, or projected on to the parents, is our common lot; but clearly some people never get over it, even after analysis. They remain vulnerable, but analysis allows them to make better use of their defence mechanisms to avoid getting hurt, since they have not acquired the leather that others seem to have for skin. No one suffers more than the narcissistic subject from being cata­ logued under a general rubric; his concern, therefore, is not merely to be one, but unique; that is, without ancestors or successors. It would be easy to apply the same criticism which has been made of nosography to psychoanalytic concepts and to deny that both narcissistic structures and narcissism as an autonomous entity can exist. But in that case the same would apply to masochism and many other concepts. There is never any difficulty in demonstrating that the strongest expression of erotism comprises disguised aggressive designs just as much as the contrary. W hat will remain, then, of the analytic requirement to separate, distinguish and undo muddled complexity in order to reconstruct it from its invisible elements? Metapsychology does not have direct clinical and technical appli­ cations. Everyone knows excellent analysts who ignore it; more or less deliberately. This does not prevent their clinical work from being based on unconscious metapsychology which guides their m ind in its associative activity when it seems to be 'floating' more or less atten­ tively. Metapsychology is merely a useful tool for thinking, and always retrospectively; that is, not when the analyst is in his armchair but later when he is sitting in front of the blank page stimulating or inhibiting his intellect. I have pointed out above that we cannot think usefully about the issues raised by narcissism if we isolate the concept completely and study it on its own. W hile it is useful, at certain times in our thinking, if we wish to understand the nature of narcissism as closely as possible, to shut ourselves away with it, to be alone with it, deeply

within ourselves - for it is the very core of our ego - the centripetal movement, in which the sole object of knowledge is oneself, only reveals its meaning by opposing the object and ego. The relationship between them is complex since, for some authors, the concept of object relations includes the ego's narcissistic relations to itself. The most classical theory recognised the existence of narcissistic objectcathexes well before Kohut had put forward the hypothesis of Self­ objects, which are simply products of narcissism. Be that as it may, there is a consensus between those who defend opposing theoretical positions. The completion of the development of the ego and of the libido is manifested, in particular, by the ego's capacity to recognise the object as it is and no longer simply as a projection of the ego. Does psychoanalytic ideology once again have to be associated with a normative aim, as was true of the genital rela­ tionship? Is this a goal which the psychical apparatus is capable of attaining and which falls within the scope of psychoanalytic treat­ ment? In these matters, excessive dogmatism - one way or the other soon verges on incoherence. Asserting that desire is totally, definitively and incurably alienated by one's narcissism - which is no less ideolog­ ical - is no more coherent than maintaining that the object will one day appear in its true light. In any case, a comparative study of the ego (narcissistic) and the object is unavoidable; it reveals all the variations of the spectrum from subjective blindness to genuine encounter. It has occurred to me that a new metapsychology, a sort of third topography, may have slipped surreptitiously into psychoanalytic thinking without our noticing it, the theoretical poles of which would be the Self and the object. The explanation for this would be that, under the pressure of experience, psychoanalysts have felt the need for a theoretical construct that is more deeply rooted in clinical practice. In other words, what we have is not praxis, on the one hand, and theory on the other, but a theory that is purely - which is not the case with Freud - a theory o f clinical experience. Transference is therefore no longer just one psychoanalytic concept among others which needs to be thought about; it is the necessary condition for thinking about the others. Similarly, counter­ transference is no longer confined to exploring unresolved - or unanalysed - conflicts in the analyst that are apt to interfere with his listening; it is the correlate of transference, following a parallel course, sometimes inducing it, and, in certain cases, preceding it. If anything new has occurred in psychoanalysis in recent decades, it is to be found in its thinking on the couple, which has enabled us to free Freudian theory of a whiff of solipsism. For it has to be said that re-reading Freud too often gives the impression that everything he describes unfolds independently of his own stance or, in the

clinical cases he presents, of his own actions. When, for instance, he traces the trajectory of an imaginary child's psychical development whether in regard of sexuality or the ego - it seems to take a course laid down in advance: arrests, blockages and diversions owing little, in the final analysis, to the child's relations with his parental objects. In short, Freud minimised the role played by his own narcissism as well as the object's. Formulating things in this way does not necessarily make them any clearer; revering clinical work is all very well, but we need to know which kind of clinical work we are talking about. If the silent meta­ psychology of Self-object relations has established itself progressively, it is undoubtedly because it gives a better account of clinical aspects of contemporary analysis which were inadequately elucidated by the classical models of Freudian theory. In other words, Freud's psychology is too restricted by its referent, neurosis, and especially transference neurosis. It is as if the problematics of Self-object relations were in a better position to shed light not only on borderline cases but also on narcissistic structures; in particular the latter, since what has to be contrasted with narcissism is precisely the object's irreducibility. But it would be regrettable, to say the least, if a rift were to be created in psychoanalysis between the old and the new, without there being any attempt to grasp the conceptual continuity underlying the outward change. W hile it is easy to point out that there is nothing new under the sun, it would be truer to say that all change is only half as new as those who proclaim it would have us believe. Theory which is grounded in the experience of analysing transfer­ ence neurosis situates the object at the centre of its thinking as a fantasmatic object, or an object of desire. Theory based on the analysis of borderline cases continues, for its part, to be based on the fantasmatic object but cannot disregard its relations with the real object. One often notices that real objects have played a part in the subject's psychopathology; or, if one wished to be more cautious from an etibpathogenic point of view, one would simply say that the subject's psychical structure reveals singular links between the real object and the fantasmatic object. It is as if the fantasmatic object in spite of the fact that its quality as an object of psychical reality is recognised - coexisted with the real object, without the latter possessing the power to assert its supremacy over the former; as if a double inscription of psychical events ascribed the same reality to fantasmatic objects and real objects.6 As far as narcissism is concerned, the object, whether fantasmatic or real, enters into conflictual relations with the ego. The ego's sexualisation has the effect of transforming desire for the object into desire for the ego. I have called this the desire for the One, in which

all trace of desire for the Other is erased. Desire has thus changed its object; for it is the ego itself that has become its own object of desire. It is this movement that needs clarifying. W hat is desire? Going beyond the well-known definitions which do not need restating, I would say that desire is the movement by which the subject is de-centred.7 That is to say, the quest for the satis­ fying object, the lacking object, makes the subject feel that his centre is no longer within himself. Instead he feels that it is outside himself, in an object from which he is separated, but with whom he desires to be reunited in order to reconstitute his centre through the unity - re­ found identity - of well-being subsequent to the experience of satisfaction. Desire, therefore, is that which induces awareness of spatial sepa­ ration from, and temporal dyschrony with the object, created by the necessary delay in obtaining satisfaction. After this primary symbolic matrix, which is a source of psychical development, multiple factors later stand in the way of desire being fully satisfied. Among others, the following may be mentioned: the defusion of the drives, bisexu­ ality, the reality principle and, lastly, narcissism. This group of factors is governed by fundamental taboos: fantasies of parricide, incest and cannibalism. Apart from this observation, what interests us is to identify the means which have been employed to fend against the fact that desire can never be fulfilled completely. W hen the 'first' experience of lack occurs, a solution is found through hallucinatory wish-fulfilment, functioning as an illusion compensating for the lacking object. This model is enlarged when later frustrations occur, which are no longer linked to the search for the breast alone. It has rightly been pointed out that this solution is far from perfect and that it calls for others that are more likely to bring actual satisfaction. But, as such, it is nonetheless a psychical achievement which is all the more valuable in that the child attrib­ utes it with the power of having made the object-breast reappear. He is not in a position to know that it was his cries and tears that alerted his mother to come to his rescue; but he establishes a relationship of cause and effect between hallucinatory wish-fulfilment and the expe­ rience of satisfaction. As long as vital needs continue to be met in other situations in which the object is found to be lacking, other solutions will be found: identification being the most fundamental of them. It does away with object representation; the ego becomes this object itself, merging with it. The modalities of identification differ according to age. At the outset, primary identification is called narcissistic, the ego merging with an object which is much more an emanation of itself than a separate entity recognised in its otherness. If this mode of narcissistic

identification persists beyond the stage of fusion with the object, when the ego differentiates from non-ego and accepts the object's separate existence, it will be exposed to countless experiences of disil­ lusionment. When otherness is not recognised, the ego's sense of what the object is supposed to be like is constantly belied, with the result that its expectations of it are repeatedly disappointed. So much so that the ego can never rely on the object in its quest to re-find the unityidentity permitting it to re-centre during an experience of satisfaction which is never complete. The triangular nature of relationships complicates the situation further; for it is often the case that both the narcissistically cathected parental objects - each for different reasons disappoint the ego. All this is damaging for the ego because, as the fundamental experience of displacement in search of a substitute object, capable of repairing the wounds caused by the original object, has failed, all subsequent displacements on to substitute objects - from the most personal to the most impersonal - repeat the initial failure.8 Any contact with the object exacerbates the feeling of being de­ centred, whether in relation to spatial separation or to temporal dyschrony. Ego-syntony can only be achieved if the ego is cathected by its own drives: this is positive narcissism resulting from the object's neutralisation. The independence the ego thus acquires from the object is valuable, but precarious, because the ego can never totally replace the object. Even if it should wish to entertain illusions in this respect by finding pleasure in living in solitude, the limits of the oper­ ation will soon make themselves felt. The ego's cathexes (or investments) therefore need enriching by making another cathexis in a wholly idealised object with which it can merge, as was the case with the primary object. This is how serenity may ultimately be found in the bosom of God, devaluing all ordinary hum an joys in the process. One could leave things there. Clinical experience shows, however, that these accomplishments of life narcissism are never completely successful. In certain cases, the combined effect of unbridgeable spatial distance and interminable temporal dyschrony turn the expe­ rience of being de-centred into an ordeal of resentment, hate and despair. Consequently, withdrawal towards unity, or the merging of the ego with an idealised object, are no longer possible. W hat is then actively sought after is not unity but nothingness; that is, a lowering of tensions to the level zero, which is tantam ount to psychical death. Narcissism thus creates the opportunity for a mimesis of desire through a solution which makes it possible to avoid a situation in which de-centring compels the ego to cathect the object which controls access to the centre. The ego has acquired a certain degree of independence by transferring desire for the Other on to desire for the One. This mimesis can even be inverted, cancelling out the constraints

of the model of desire when the unitary accomplishment of narcissism is lacking. It thus becomes mimesis of non-desire, desire for n on ­ desire. Here the quest for the centre is abandoned by suppressing it. The centre, as a goal of plenitude, has become an empty centre, an absence of centre. The quest for satisfaction continues beyond any form of satisfaction - as if it had already been obtained - as if it had got what it wanted by abandoning the search for satisfaction. It is here that death takes on the aspect of absolute Being. Life becomes equivalent to death because it is a release from all desire. Could it be that this psychical death conceals a death wish towards the object? It would be a mistake to think so, for the object has already been killed at the outset of this process which should be attributed to death narcissism. Negative hallucinatory wish-fulfilment has become the model governing psychical activity. It is not unpleasure which has substi­ tuted itself for pleasure, but the Neuter. It is not depression one should think of here but aphanisis, asceticism and anorexia of living. This is the true meaning of Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920). The metaphor of returning to inanimate matter is more powerful than it seems, since the goal of this petrifaction of the ego is anaesthesia and inertia in psychical death. It is only an aporia, but one that enables us to understand the purpose and meaning of death narcissism. Narcissus Janus is thus mimetic of life, as well as of death, adopting the illusory solution of making life or death an absolutely closed couple. It is now easier to understand why Freud turned away from narcissism which he saw as a source of misunderstandings. But replacing one concept with another only changes the word, not the thing itself. The Neuter thus towers up before us, defying thought. The moment everything gets more complicated is when we are obliged to realise that the Neuter is also a reality that is indifferent to the stirring of hum an passions. The Neuter is the area of intellectual impartiality which Freud referred to when he postulated the existence of the death drive. Narcissism is a concept, not a reality; for even when the latter assumes the name of clinical reality, it is always of a complexity which is barely graspable. Hyper-complex, in today's language. One inescapable aporia of psychoanalytic theory is the permanent overlapping that can be observed, when reading psychoanalytic works, between the descriptive and conceptual levels. There is not a single piece of analytic writing in which one does not sense a constant shifting from one level to the other. Pure description is impossible, since it remains more or less organised by concepts that are mute, if not unconscious. It is scarcely any easier to conceive of pure conceptualisation; for the reader is only interested in it if it

evokes reminiscences of analyses he has conducted, or of his own analysis. The pious wish which theoreticians may entertain of being aware, at any given moment, of the level at which their thinking is taking place, and of being sensitive to the shift from description to concept or vice versa, often escapes their control. While a concern for rigour - which is nonetheless beset by many preconceptions - requires the analyst to take the exact sciences as a model, I do not believe he can go any further than physics, and will always fall short of pure mathematics owing to the very nature of the conditions of his practice. But although the pseudo-scientific preten­ sions of some analysts need denouncing - North Americans readily refer to the science o f psychoanalysis,9 which is curiously reminiscent of the guidelines Lacan imposed on his disciples - one should not jump too quickly to the conclusion that psychoanalysis is pure poetry/ It is true that there is something in the analyst's psychical functioning that is not unlike the mythopoetic approach; and it is no coincidence that Freud and psychoanalysts have always found the poetry of myth and literature to be one of the sources of psychoanalysis, the other being the field of biology. After all, the myth of Narcissus played no small part in the invention of narcissism; its evocative power serving to reinforce the clinical descriptions of Nacke. It may be that biology is more poetic than it gives itself credit for and that poetry is more closely linked to the 'nature' of man than it supposes. However, as soon as one tries to think about psychoanalysis metascientificaily, beyond the realms of biology, psychology or sociology - and without giving way to the combined temptations of pseudo­ science and pseudo-poetry - theoretical work, which admittedly is always provisional, takes place and encounters the limits imposed by the reciprocal infringement of the descriptive and conceptual levels. More than any other aspect of theory, there is a risk with narcissism of description and concept becoming confused. This is, if I may say so, because narcissism is a mirror concept dealing with the unity of the ego, its fine form and the desire for the One which, by definition, contradicts - perhaps even to the extent of denying them - the exis­ tence of the unconscious and the splitting of the ego, that is, the subject's divided status. As such, narcissism is simply waiting for this individuality, singularity and totality to be recognised. This is why the concept of the One, which leaves its stamp on narcissism, has to be given tension. This unity which is present from the outset in the feeling that one exists as a separate entity is, as we know, the outcome of a long process extending from absolute primary narcissism to the sexualisation of the ego drives. It is one of the accomplishments of Eros to have achieved this unification of a psyche which was fragmented, dispersed and anarchic, dominated by the organ pleasure of the component

drives, before being in a position, at least to some extent, to conceive of itself as a whole, limited and separate entity. But the price which has to be paid for this achievement of being no more than ego is very high. More than psychoanalysts, it was Borges who understood better than anyone else the nature of the wound which is inflicted by the impossi­ bility of being the Other. W hat needs to be understood, however, is that during the period extending from the primitive mother-child dyad to the existence of the unified ego a series of operations have occurred: the separation of the two elements of this dyad exposing the child to sepa­ ration anxiety; the threat of disintegration; and the overcoming of Hilflosigkeit through the constitution of the object and the 'narcissised' ego. The latter finds compensation, in the love it has for itself, for the loss of fusional love, the expression of its relationship with a consubstantial object. Narcissism is thus not so much an effect of binding as of re-binding. Harbouring illusions of self-sufficiency, the ego now forms a couple with itself, through its own image. The One is therefore not a simple concept. If it has to be given tension; it will not be enough to introduce its antagonist, the Other, or even the Neuter. W ith the One it is necessary to think not only about the Double, but particularly about the Infinity of chaos and the Zero of nothingness. The One arises, perhaps, out of the Infinite and the Zero, in as far as they may ... only be One. But it is in the oscilla­ tions from One to Zero that we shall have to understand the intrinsic problematics of narcissism, without being put off by the fact that, while the One can be grasped immediately by phenomenological apperception, the Zero, for its part, can never be conceived of when it is oneself that is involved, in the same way that death is unrepre­ sentable for the unconscious. The concept does not always elude metaphor and we shall have to treat it metaphorically when we are obliged to speak of Zero. The curve, however, will be asymptotic, since we will only ever be able to speak of a 'tendency' towards the lowering of excitation, that is, of life, towards the level zero. That will be the moment to introduce the difference between descriptive and conceptual approaches. It is on a conceptual level, and only conceptual, detached from description, that I shall speak of the aspiration for psychical death in order to shed light on clinical manifestations which others will interpret differ­ ently. The fact that this zero point borders on immortality merely gives an inkling of the complexity of the problem. I feel somewhat uncomfortable referring to the Far Eastern philoso­ phies which are currently in fashion because I am very unfamiliar with them, but the little information I possess has drawn my attention to one obvious fact. Without wishing to make any claims for universality, which would be difficult to defend, the fact is that many people on this

earth live by the basic principles of a philosophy which they only have scanty knowledge of, but which informs their way of living and under­ standing existence. While remaining within a Western-centrist outlook, but obliging us, nonetheless, to re-examine some of its most well-estab­ lished concepts, Freud may have got a glimpse of this limitation when he decided to take into account the principle of Nirvana which he came across in Barbara Low's work. It would not be difficult to demonstrate that the theoretical deductions he drew from it are far removed from the teachings of Oriental metaphysics, which is so different from Western philosophy that it has been contested whether it is philosophy at all. In any case, I am speaking in the name of psychoanalysis and not philosophy, which is not my domain. If I mention it in passing, it is merely to point out that certain developments which are to be found in this volume under the name of negative narcissism have already been the object of philosophical reflection in cultural traditions very different from our own. These philosophical reflections obey the requirements of their frame of reference, which are not those of psychoanalysis. But they certainly arose from something; for instance, from paying attention to certain aspects of psychical life which have been largely eclipsed in Western thought, or which, when they have been observed, have only given rise to timid reflection. It is as though a certain lack of freedom of thought was operative here, restrained by an obscure fear, causing those who might have got carried away to retreat, and dissuading those who would have been tempted to take these aspects up again, and to dwell on them at length, from doing so. As for me, it seems hardly debatable that psychoanalytic reflection and practice confront the analyst with the tensions between the One and the Zero, and not always in the clearest fashion. I should perhaps have waited until I was in a better position to formulate my observations more adequately before having them published for the first time. It is not entirely satisfying for an author to offer the public a collec­ tion of articles of which the earliest date back more than fifteen years, even if'he still nourishes the hope that they have not lost all their interest. I shall not repeat here the usual warnings to the reader which one finds in volumes of this kind, as they tend to be so stereotyped. It strikes me, however, that not enough attention is given to one of the observations that can be made when reading previously published works that have been brought together in the form of a book. A strange phenomenon, characteristic of analysts who write, is often noticeable. I am referring to the theoretical process which is so visible in Freud, and to a lesser extent in other psychoanalytic authors. Namely, the evolution over a number of years of a conceptual development which occurs in rather a similar way to that which is called the psycho­ analytic process in clinical work. It has quite rightly been pointed out

that it is better not to make too sharp a distinction between the analytic process and transference. Consequently, the theoretical process should be considered as an effect of transference which the psychoanalytic process has on the analyst's psychic functioning when he is writing. Is this theoretical process very different, then, from the analyst's ongoing self-analysis resulting from his experience of psycho­ analysis? W hile we may think so, and while it is scarcely possible to think otherwise, we should be wary of adopting a fundamentally subjectivist theoretical approach leading to the radical scepticism which it is fashionable to give way to today. It is doubtful whether psychoanalytic theory can ever attain objec­ tivity without passing through a subjective stage, but we should not go so far as to taint it with the suspicion that it is no more than a defence against madness, since the same could be said of any system of thought. It is rather the originality of the movement towards greater objectivity in psychoanalysis that needs stressing; this is what we must hold on to rather than concluding too hastily that any attempt to achieve it is vain, remaining unaware, in so doing, that we are merely following the Zeitgeist W hile all psychoanalytic theory results from analysing transference, it is clear that the formulation of it will necessarily have been conveyed, if not unconsciously coded, by counter-transference. But alongside the analysis of transferences (of analysands) and of counter­ transferences, there is also a place for the analyst to transfer his 'analysability' on to psychoanalysis, considered, at the time of writing, as something impersonal. This is all the more true in that his writing is addressed to an impersonal analyst, known or unknown, in the past or in the future. If one looks for comparisons within the heart of analytic theory itself, one will recall that the id and the super-ego are characterised by this same impersonality: at the beginning, for the first, and at the end for the second. Objectivising subjectivity should not be connected with the analyst's most personal characteristics; or, if such is the case, with the way in which this 'personality' may speak to others. There is nothing astonishing about this, since the swaying of this subjectivity towards objectivisation is always the work of another person's words. If, moreover, it is the subject who is seeking to be heard by another subject, the subjectivity of listening never loses sight of the fact - even if it never succeeds in doing him complete justice - that it is another person's voice that is expressing itself. However much he may be a captive of his own voice, the analyst still endeavours not to hear this other voice as an echo. And while it is true that he often finds himself caught in this trap, it would be wrong to suggest that he always does so. There is more to it than mere narcissism. August 1982

Part One The Theory of Narcissism

1 One, Other, Neuter: Narcissistic Values of Sameness (1976)

The way in which he modelled men was this. He took a lum p of earth and said to himself, T will make man, but he must be able to walk and run and go out into the fields, so I will give him two long legs, like the flamingo'. Having done so, he thought again, The man must be able to cultivate his millet, so I will give him two arms, one to hold the hoe, and the other to tear up the weeds'. So he gave him two arms. Then he thought again, The man must be able to see his millet, so I will give him two eyes'. So two eyes he gave him. Next he thought to himself, The man must be able to eat his millet, so I will give h im a mouth'. So a m outh he gave him. After that he thought within himself, The m an must be able to dance and speak and sing and shout, and for these purposes he must have a tongue'. And a tongue he gave him accordingly. Lastly the deity said to himself, The man must be able to hear the noise of the dance and the speech of great men, and for that he needs two ears'. So two ears he gave him , and sent him out into the world a perfect man. J.G. Frazer, The Worship of Nature.1 Then God said, 'Let us make man in our image, after our likeness;2 and let them have dom inion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.' So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.

Semantic Shifts The two sources of psychoanalytic concepts are psychoanalytic practice, on the one hand, and the epistemological point of view, on the other. Once they have been adopted, psychoanalytic concepts modify the psychoanalyst's listening, which leads him to call into question the theoretical instruments of psychoanalysis. Perhaps more than of any other concept, this has been true in the case of narcis­ sism, a concept Freud invented under the influence of various pressures. Throughout his work, his approach was supported by an unshakeable certitude with regard to the role played by sexuality. But he was equally certain that an anti-sexual factor lay at the root of conflictuality w ithin the psychical apparatus. This was the role origi­ nally assigned to the so-called drives (SE, 'instincts') of self-preservation. Allocating this role to them did not require a great effort of originality on Freud's part, for he needed urgently to devote all his attention to that which had been so obstinately excluded from the picture, that is, the sexual dimension. As a first step, it was there­ fore sufficient to establish, albeit on a provisional basis, the opposite pole of self-preservation, even if it might have to be revised at a later stage. This Freud was forced to do as much due to difficulties arising from experience as to the criticisms of opponents from within and without. Among these, but the first of them, was Jung, whose main interest was dementia praecox. The ego, which had been awaiting theoretical explication, now occupied centre stage. Nevertheless, as far back as the Project (1895b), Freud's definitions of it suggested that its cathexes were of a specific nature and of endogenous origin. This organisation is called the 'Ego'; it can easily be depicted if we consider that the regularly repeated reception of endogenous quantities in certain neurones (of the nucleus) and the facilitating effect proceeding thence will produce a group of neurones which is constantly cathected and thus corresponds to the vehicle o f the slore required by the secondary function.3 Admittedly, Freud primarily had the secondary function in view, but the idea of a particular cathexis, a kind of energy store specific to the ego, was already confirmed. The very last sentences of the Project bear this out. Freud was pondering, without going any further than this the manuscript ends at this point - on the relations between auto­ erotism and the primal ego. It was, as you will recall, through his study of the psychogenic disturbances of vision (1910) that Freud came to formulate the hypothesis of narcissism. But the second edition of the Three Essays (1905) already shows how much attention

he was devoting to the problem. 'Leonardo da Vinci and a Memory of his Childhood', which dates from the same period, refers explicitly to the myth of Narcissus (SE, XI, p. 100). And we should note that the opposition of two types of object-choice as well as the material under­ lying the theory of narcissism, are both connected with the activity of looking, that is, Leonardo's conflict between his activity as a painter, linked to scopophilia, and his extraordinary intellectual curiosity deriving from epistemophilia, itself an offshoot of the former. Mona Lisa's strange gaze may therefore be of much more importance than the misleading vulture (which, moreover, was not discovered by Freud). Argos' eyes follow one everywhere from above the mysterious smile. It was thus no coincidence that once he had returned to the more serious - even the most serious, since it concerned ocular medicine - terrain of clinical experience, Freud again made use of vision to introduce the idea of a libidinal investment of the so-called drives of self-preservation. But, up to that point, we were still in the familiar waters of the castration complex. The Psycho-Analytic View of Psychogenic Disturbance of Vision' (1910b)4 afforded Freud with a late consolation for having missed out on the discovery of cocaine. However, if the act of looking directs its rays towards the external world and can become libidinised to the point that it can no longer see anything in its state of hysterical blind­ ness, it is because it has become the victim of excessive erotisation. It turns towards the internal world where other adventures await it. The validity of the relation Freud established between scopophilia and epistemophilia, the latter involving the erotisation of thought processes, is still recognised today. This is why I maintain that the most neglected precursory text on narcissism is The Rat Man' (1909). W hen discussing the relations between narcissism and omnipotent thinking it is customary to cite Totem and Taboo (1912-13). But then one is forgetting that everything that Freud says on this subject was discovered through analysing the Rat Man. There are good grounds for thinking this, since in the last lines of his essay, Freud makes an allusion to a triple psychical organisation, an unconscious personality and two preconscious ones; the third psychical organisation showing the patient to be 'superstitious and ascetic' (my italics). He even adds that this third organisation would have swallowed up the normal personality had the illness lasted much longer. Thus by taking the activity of looking as his starting point, Freud tied narcissism to the domain of the visible. But there were theoretical difficulties from the outset. W hat had been involved up till then? The closed-circuit cathexis of the ego; the primal ego and its relations with auto-erotism, foreshadowing the emergence of primary narcissism in

the theory; and, finally, the auto-erotic object-choice secondary to repression. In 'Leonardo7(1910a) he wrote: The boy represses his love for his mother: he puts himself in her place, identifies himself with her and takes his own person as a model in whose likeness he chooses the new objects of his love. (SE, XI, p. 100) He thus draws on the love his mother has given him in order to love boys as she loved him , thereby reviving her image, while at the same time taking his mother's place. He finds the objects of his love along the path of narcissism, as we say; for Narcissus, according to the Greek legend, was a youth who preferred his own reflection to everything else and who was changed into the lovely flower of that name. (SE, XI, p. 100) Incidentally, Freud forged a neologism, Narzissmus, for reasons of ... narcissistic euphony!5 He passed from the self-image as an object of love to the flower of the resurrection, leaving out the narcissistic m oment par excellence; that is, the fusion of the object and its image in the fascinating and mortifying liquid element, going back to a period before birth. Before birth, after birth: here, primal narcissism is literally scotomised in favour of the attraction of outward appearance, of the beauty of form in search of its double, which will never be complementary but a duplicate. But all this was still too simple. He pursued his study of Leonardo, a curious Narcissus who was much more fascinated by the form of the Other and by the riddles of the World than by his own image (there were few self-portraits, if one compares h im with Rembrandt, although the latter did come later, it is true), and pointed out that the deceptive appearance of Leonardo pursuing beautiful young men with his assiduous attentions served to ma^k his indelible, unwavering and incomparable love for his mother. Freud thus enables us to see that narcissism is itself merely appearance, and that, behind it, the shadow of the invisible object is always to be found. Initially it was the model of perversion that justified the theoret­ ical recasting of 'O n Narcissism: An Introduction' (1914). This was a call to order for those who had been attracted by the Jungian siren call of 'beyond sex'. No, sexuality has not gone away and, although there are non-sexual elements in self-esteem, we need to get it into our heads that adult self-esteem is rooted in the love - diverted from objects - which the child appropriates for its own benefit. Freudian reasoning is prototypical here. It runs as follows:

1.

2.

3.

There are perverts who love their bodies just as one loves the body of the Other. I was not the first to say this; P. Nacke said it in 1899 - he was not even an analyst and so can hardly be suspected of giving a partisan clinical description! If there is perversion in the adult, it means there is a fixation on one of the features of the constellation of the child's poly­ morphous perversion. If one characteristic is capable of being sufficiently attractive to monopolise the libido as a whole, it is an indication that it should be isolated and introduced into the theory as a concept, thus throwing light in a much more general way on the vicissitudes of the drives. Moreover, can it not be said that sublimation calls for such a neutralisation and therefore an apparent desexualisation?

It is worth pointing out that the type of conflict Freud was speaking about in 'The Psychogenic Disturbance of Vision', far from involving a non-libidinal factor in the ego, in the exercise of its somatic func­ tions, reveals on the contrary an impingement, an invasion of the ego by the libido. Hysterical fits revealed a similar invasion in the motor sphere through conversion. The obsessional subject's omnipotent way of thinking showed that thought had been sexualised. The more Freud thought about it, the more he was inclined to find Jung's argu­ ments unacceptable, but he did not yield in the slightest. He laid more stress on sexuality and annexed the ego. From then on, the libido was to be found everywhere, even in the deepest recesses of the organic body: in the cavity of an unhealthy tooth; in the hidden organ of the hypochondriac; and elsewhere. The protagonists in the conflict had changed; henceforth it was the object and the ego that were opposed, and the conflict was essentially one of distribution and therefore economic. This was true as much for the ego as for the object. It was a question of cathexis or investment, a need to balance the budgets of the Home Office and the Foreign Office. We know what followed. The question which now arose was the origin of cathexes. I shall come on to this later6 but, for the time being, there are three problems which need distinguishing: (I) Primary 'Narcissism: what is meant by this? (a) The organisation of the ego's component drives into a unitary ego-cathexis. (b) Absolute primary narcissism as an expression of the tendency to reduce cathexes to the level zero. In the first case, we mean the narcissistic ego as One, stemming from n component drives - through the activity of Eros.

In the second case, I mean the expression of the principle of inertia, already a major referent in the Project and later to be called the Nirvana principle, which strives towards absolute primary narcissism. Freud never resolved the question. A dialectical solution might be suggested here. Whether the ego achieves a unitary cathexis emerging from fragmentation or whether it appears to attain absolute zero, the effect obtained is similar (which does not mean identical). In both cases, the ego finds satisfaction in itself; it has the illusion of self-suffi­ ciency and frees itself of vicissitudes and dependence on an object which is eminently variable in what it grants or withholds at will. This progress leads towards the ego One - which sometimes allows it to rediscover this quietude through regression, when it is compelled to by frustration, the other defences proving inefficient. Regression sometimes leads even further: that is, towards the zero of the illusion of no cathexis; but the zero is then cathected, turning regressive with­ drawal into a positive aspiration, an achievement. This is the aim of asceticism: to return to the divine breast. (II) The Origin ofCathexes: the Ego and the Id Economic issues are related to topographical issues. The question: 'how much?' (quantity), can only be understood if one knows what the starting-point is. Where do the resources originate? Freud's answer to this question varied constantly. Looking for the 'reservoir' is like looking for the sources of the Nile or the Amazon. It was a question, among others, which was to lead to the answer which Hartmann gave. To the Byzantine question of whether the ego emerged from the id or whether there existed an id and an ego from the outset (a question on which the possibility of locating the reser­ voir depends) Freud did not in fact have an answer. Remarkably enough, no one is interested in it today. The real question is more to know whether the origin is in the id-ego (is this our self?) or in the object. If Freud posed the question in this way, it was, I think, because he was still dependent on the problem of 'looking'. Because it was necessary first of all to look, he needed to stand back, to exclude himself from the relation 'looking - being looked at', and to stop being a voyeur. Had he been a voyeur, it would have led h im to becoming personally involved in the process of looking, but also, perhaps, to taking up a position in its blind spot. It is better to be able to see even if through a filter or prism. Or better still, to position oneself outside the field of vision, avoiding looking and replacing it with listening. Jean Gillibert has proposed the felicitous term of 'listenerism' (ecouteurism). Hearing what is unheard-of and extraordi­ nary means moving towards the invisible, beyond the visible. Listening does not simply mean listening to the unheard-of/extraor­

dinary but to the inaudible; that is, to the dull groans of the body, even as far as the voices of silence. (Ill) The Destiny o f Narcissism following the Last Drive Theory We know that narcissism, which was supposedly abandoned by Freud for theoretical reasons, was left high and dry after Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920). An Outline of Psycho-Analysis (1940a [1938]) scarcely mentions it. Such is the fate of concepts. Like fleeting love affairs, they are dropped when more attractive ones beckon. Yet narcissism has not disappeared from psychoanalytic literature. It has even returned in strength; but as a concept dressed in keeping with the style of the day, that is, in the form of the 'self'. Psychoanalysts are divided into two camps according to the position that they take on the autonomy of narcissism. One group feels that defending its autonomy is justified. This implies accepting the hypothesis of primary narcissism; either as an autonomous agency (Grunberger),7 an antenatal psychical mode of functioning; or, in the sense of the ego's unitary goal (Kohut). Grunberger opposes narcis­ sism to the drives, whereas Kohut, who does not believe that opposition towards the ego or the object is relevant, sees the main characteristic of narcissism in its peculiar mode of cathexis or invest­ ment (grandiose Self, idealisation, 'mirror' transference). Finally, some would see it as the origin of the Self (Hartmann), or the support of identity (Lichtenstein).8 For the other group, primary narcissism is a myth, an illusion of Freud's. Balint's position of primary object love easily won favour with the English school. Jean Laplanche,9 an author who can hardly be suspected of being modernist, accepts it, while giving it a different theoretical interpretation (with regard to masochism). Melanie Klein, who defended simultaneously the hypothesis of the death drive (although she had a different view of it to Freud) and that of object relations (inherited from Abraham, but reshaped; there is no objectless stage), found it easy to do without narcissism. H. Rosenfeld10 was the only one to reintroduce it; he nonetheless subordinated it to the death drive and did not challenge the thesis that object relations are present from the beginning,n Bion remained silent on the question of narcissism. The economic was related to the topographical; the dynamic to the genetic or the generic. Kernberg,12 crossing swords with Kohut, supports those who trace narcissism back to the vicissitudes of pregenital drives. As for Pasche,13 he postulates the existence alongside narcissism, 'agonistically' and antagonistically, of an anti-narcissism which he couples with the former. And Winnicott? He did not know; perhaps ... There remains Lacan.14 He started with the mirror stage (looking, once again),

progressing towards language and the locus of the Other - 'the treasure of the signifier', and guardian of structure. These few words fall far short of doing justice to the importance and influence of this theory. In this outline I am simply placing markers, but what we need to bear in m ind is that narcissism is the cornerstone of the Lacanian system. I have attempted to defend the idea that one cannot legitimately accept the second topography while leaving the final drive theory to one side. Unfortunately, however, I cannot expand on this important point here.15 Moreover, it seems to me that, on the grounds of theo­ retical coherence, as well as clinical experience, we are justified in postulating the existence of a negative narcissism, the dark double of the unitary Eros of positive narcissism; all object or ego-cathexis containing w ithin it its inverted double which aims at slipping back regressively towards the point zero. P. Castoriadis-Aulagnier (1975) has confirmed this opinion.16 Negative narcissism strikes me as being different from masochism, notwithstanding the observations of numerous authors. The difference is that masochism - albeit primal is a painful state which treats pain and its continuation as the only possible form of existence, life and sensibility. Conversely, negative narcissism tends towards non-existence, anaesthesia, emptiness, the blanc (from the English 'blank' which refers to the category neuter); whether this blank cathects affect (indifference), representation, (negative hallucination) or thought (blank psychosis). To sum up this 'conceptual drifting', then, Freud started from 'looking' and discovered the One. After him, analysts gave the key role to the Other (whether by this we mean the sense that was given to it by English object relations theory or the quite different sense given to it by Lacan). I propose to complete this series by the category Neuter (neither the One nor the Other).

The Corpus and its Limits: Overlapping and Coherence The semantic shifts and fluctuations in psychoanalytic literature give us an inkling of the multifaceted nature of the concept of narcissism, which, to be honest, remains undefinable. It is curious that the idea of a unifying whole, with which the denomination of narcissism is linked, itself has difficulty in bringing together a clearly defined corpus. A more systematic reading of Freud's work, to confine ourselves to that, reveals a host of themes which I will just mention in passing, without going into them all in depth, endeavouring instead to examine the cohesion of the elements brought together in the attempt. 1. Under the heading libidinal ego-cathexis, we can differentiate the positive, unifying action of narcissism starting with auto-erotism;

that is, the transition from auto-erotism (mentioned for the first time in the letter to Fliess dated 9 December 1899),17 - an instinctual state which 'dispenses with any psycho-sexual aim' and seeks only locally gratifying sensations - to the stage at which the ego is itself experi­ enced and apprehended as a total form. Later we shall see how Freud understood the dialectic - for that is what it is - of this transforma­ tion. However, among the component drives, a special place must be reserved for scopophilia, even though sadism also plays its part in the drive for mastery which has a part to play in the process of appropri­ ating the body. The ego, Freud reminds us, is first and foremost a bodily ego, but he adds: 'it is not merely a surface entity; it is itself the projection of a surface' (SE, XIX, p. 26). This clarification helps us to understand the role of looking and of the mirror. A two-sided mirror, no doubt; forming its surface out of bodily sensations and, at the same time, creating its image; but only under the auspices of looking, which enables it to see the form of the similar other. This necessarily introduces the concept of identification, the first form of which is narcissistic ('Mourning and Melancholia', 1917 [1915]). The narcis­ sistic organisation was described by Freud in 'Instincts and their Vicissitudes' (1915a). It was assumed to intervene before repression, and was defined by two instinctual vicissitudes: the turning round of the instinct on the subject's own ego and its reversal into its opposite, the combination of which produces a model of double reversal. Identification (secondary identification) favours desexualisation, bringing about the transformation of object-libido into narcissisticlibido in order to save narcissistic integrity threatened by castration anxiety. The links Freud had established with the antenatal narcis­ sistic state, prior to Rank's work in this area, show how the problematics of narcissism can be traced back to birth. Whether this lost paradise is displaced from intrauterine life to the period of the relationship prior to oral weaning, or to the loss of the breast, is of considerable importance in certain modern formulations of narcis­ sism but changes nothing concerning the essential problem. Narcissistic integrity is a constant preoccupation, even if it varies according to circumstances; it is problematic because it is difficult to see how one can speak about the integrity of that which has no limits. Later, character formation reveals the tenacity of narcissistic defences which are bent on m aintaining an inalienable individuality. In this respect, it seems to me that at least a part of what used to be discussed in psychoanalytic literature from the point of view of character is today treated under the auspices of identity. This is no doubt because, under closer examination, the solidity of character defences proves to be vulnerable. The often repeated tautological statement, 'I am as I am' reveals that there is a further question underlying it; that of 'W ho

am I?', which cannot be formulated without running the risk of undermining the most fundamental of our 'raisons d'etre'. Identity is not a state; it is an ego quest which can only have its response reflected by the object and reality. 2. Secondly, we find ourselves faced with the narcissistic mode of relating to reality. In principle, reality and narcissism are opposed, if not mutually exclusive. The major contradiction of the ego is that it is the agency which has to entertain relations with reality as well as to invest itself narcissistically, while ignoring reality in order to know only itself. The link Freud established between the repression of reality and the narcissistic neuroses, first, and the psychoses thereafter, bore witness to this. He undoubtedly understood that more than a fixation or narcissistic regression was needed to make a psychosis; which brings us back to the links between narcissism and the destructive drives, a subject I will turn to later. The domain covered by the narcis­ sistic mode of relating to reality extends between two poles: thought and action. Om nipotent thinking, which was one of the first aspects of narcissism Freud observed, is the expression of a twofold cathexis; namely, overestimating the powers of an impotent ego (in fact, the reversal of its impotence into omnipotence) and the sexualisation of thinking. Far from disappearing into highly evolved forms, the latter still persists in certain unconscious formations, of which fantasy and jokes are the most eloquent forms. It even infiltrates the most sophis­ ticated elaborations of the ego. In my judgement, rationalisation, which plays such a large part in the passionate logic of delusion, should be considered from this angle. At this point, I wish to add a comment whose importance will become apparent in due course. If the ego, as Laplanche maintains, is a metaphor for the organism, language is arguably a double-entry metaphor for the ego and thought. Freud had already pointed out the extent to which the ego's activity is based on omnipotent thinking. By the same token, the omnipotence of language may be mentioned here both with regard to creation - the verb existed in the beginning, did it not? - and to mastering the world, that is, intellectualisation. The fact remains that it is language that makes the subject aware of how narcissistic he is: the wish to be eloquent is hampered by the lack of words. At the other pole, that is, of action, the narcissistic mode of relating reveals the same contradiction: on the one hand, the schizoid attitude is to take flight from the world, withdrawing into the internal world, cut off from reality - solitary isolation being preferred to any form of activity with another person or several people. But, on the other hand, in another type of narcissistic cathexis, social action is seen as valuable. This was something Freud had understood ever since his analysis of the Schreber case. In his description of narcissistic

personalities ('Libidinal Types', 1931) the portrait he sketches of these personalities represents them as having a large amount of aggressive­ ness at their disposal and of being ... especially suited to act as a support for others, to take on the role of leaders and to a give a fresh stimulus to cultural development or to damage the established state of affairs. (SE, XXI, p. 218) According to Freud, all this indicates that there is no tension between the ego and the super-ego since, he adds, there is scarcely any evidence of a developed ego and equally little preponderance of erotic needs. Once again, emphasis is placed on self-preservation, inde­ pendence, and the unwillingness to be intimidated. 3. The aforementioned characteristics raise the question of the defusion o f narcissism from the object drives. Although it offends the requirement for conceptual coherence, the eternal discussion about the irrelevant distinction between narcissism and the drives is nonetheless reminiscent of a clinical reality perceived in analytic practice. Sexuality, then, is far from playing a negligible role in narcis­ sistic structures, and it would be a mistake to think that sexual enjoyment (jouissance) is in any way impeded by auto-erotic tenden­ cies where they are concerned. Similarly, the narcissistic object-choice is not mutually exclusive with obtaining great satisfactions from the object, which are not solely of a narcissistic order. W hat needs to be said is that sexuality is sometimes experienced as being in rivalry with narcissism, as if narcissistic libido were in danger of being impover­ ished due to the leaking of object-cathexes, and sometimes - and this is undoubtedly the most frequent case rr-it only has meaning to the extent that it nourishes the subject's narcissism: the capacity to enjoy sexual activity is proof that narcissistic integrity has been preserved. Just like guilt, which is never absent but is of less consequence, the feeling of shame at not being able to enjoy sexuality supplants castra­ tion anxiety. By the same token, sexual failure exposes the subject to the danger of being abandoned or rejected by the object. This is not so much a sign of a loss of love as a loss of worth, and of the unsatis­ fied need to be recognised by the object. Worse still, narcissistic suffering has increased beyond the failure of unsatisfied desire to the extent that the latter is a mark of the subject's dependence on the object for the satisfaction of his drives - or to be more precise, for silencing the desires which only the object can satisfy. Envy of the object is at its most intense when the latter is imagined to be having pleasure w ithout conflict. The projected narcissistic penis (of whichever sex) is one which can enjoy uninhibited pleasure, devoid of guilt and shame. Its worth does not reside in its capacity for sexual

enjoyment, but in its aptitude for getting rid of its tensions by satisfying its drives, while all pleasure is converted into narcissistic ego-cathexis. Aggressivity is subject to the same defusion. Much has been said about the need for narcissistic domination; the example of leaders, which Freud gave, is a good illustration of this. W ithout wishing to deny the satisfactions the object derives from its position of mastery, what matters in a situation such as this is to ensure that power remains in one's own hands. This is just as important as taking the place of whoever is exercising it in order to prevent them from exer­ cising it over oneself. In other words the important thing is freeing oneself from the other person's tutelage. It is not just the need to make the other person suffer that motivates the quest for power; nor is it simply the wish to be loved and admired that gives narcissism its wings. Above all, it is the need to avoid the scorn which is projected on to the master for an essential reason that Freud mentions in Group Psychology and the Analysis o f the Ego (1921). The father of the primi­ tive horde, the leader, who, as a result of transference, has become the object who takes the place of the ego ideal of the individuals in the group, lives apart in solitude; they need him , but he himself is assumed not to have any needs. In principle these have already been satisfied. Like Moses, he is God's intercessor and, as such, is closer to God than men. He is not subject to any desires, except perhaps to that of the sovereign good. By the same logic, he can only feel scorn for ordinary mortals who remain trapped by their desires; that is, their childhood or infantile wishes. Thus exercising mastery over the drives serves complex aims. W hen he renounces instinctual satisfaction, narcissistic pride provides him with compensation at a high price. W hen, on the contrary, this mastery occurs when there is an oppor­ tunity for instinctual satisfaction, the pleasure derived is only justifiable on the condition that he subordinates himself to the ego ideal* This is equally true of the aggressive and erotic impulses. The impossibility of satisfying the need for mastery results in narcissistic rage. Reality, or the other's desire, are certainly hindrances here; but the real reason for rage is that lack of satisfaction does not deprive the subject of satisfaction itself, in as far as this involves the quest for a particular pleasure, but of the possibility of freeing himself from desire. The narcissistic penis is an object, the possession of which is a guarantee that satisfaction will always be found and expe­ rienced without impediment. Appeasement is obtained without restriction, without delay, and without asking. It is therefore more a desire for satisfaction than a satisfaction of desire. The notion of the ideal ego (Nunberg, Lagache) could be applied to this configuration as it is not unrelated to Freud's 'purified pleasure ego'. That the ideal ego

is one of the ego's aspirations, one of its values, is obvious. But one still needs to show why this aspiration is unrealisable. It is certainly not endorsed by reality, but even less so by the defusion of the drives. In a structure like this where unification is achieved to the detriment of id satisfactions, the ego can only seek in the object its own narcis­ sistic projection, or a truth that is perfectly adapted to the subject's requirements. This is the first stumbling block. Secondly, the object's 'unreality' necessarily induces regression to pregenital sexuality. This may serve as an illustration for the assumption that sexuality is by nature traumatic (Laplanche). Sexuality intrudes upon the ego and is experienced all the more disturbingly because it is in its crudest forms: a wild sexuality in which the need to possess the object - to have a guarantee of exclusivity - is infiltrated by perverse positions (insofar as it is the satisfaction of the component drives which is at stake), particularly sado-masochistic ones. In this sense, it may be said that sexuality slips back into auto-erotism, the object's function now being to satisfy this objectal auto-erotism. 4. The function o f the ideal is described by Freud as one of the ego's major institutions. This amounts to saying that, although narcissism was scarcely mentioned after the final theory of the drives, and the second topography, it at least survived under the auspices of the ideal. The fact that Freud's work closes with Moses and Monotheism (1939), in which the role played by instinctual renunciation is idealised as favouring the victories of intellect, is revealing. It is not difficult to imagine the fears that the founder of psychoanalysis may have had for the future of his cause. And although he was prepared to be 'assassinated', as he imagined Moses to have been, it was of no importance provided we valued his written work and turned away from the idle satisfactions of oedipal rivalry and the incestuous wishes lurking w ithin it! The Future o f an Illusion (1927), Civilisation and its Discontents (1930) and the Weltanschauung (1932) accom­ plished the contradictory twofold task of analysing the function of ideals and of placing hope in the future of a veracious science freed of all ideology, which is itself a new ideology. I have suggested that ideological productions as a whole be called 'idealogy\18 Freud distin­ guished between sublimating the drives and idealising the object. He was in favour of the former and struggled against the disastrous consequences of the latter, even though he was obliged to recognise that love was not possible w ithout such idealisation. Love? Fortunately, a passing folly. The overestimation of parental figures, reflecting the parents' idealisation of the child himself, creates an indestructible narcissistic circuit. But we should not forget that the destiny of ideals is to bring about complete instinctual renunciation, including the renunciation o f narcissistic satisfactions. W hile pride is the

reward for renunciation as we 'grow up', the wish to be grown up also requires a good deal of humility. In 'O n Narcissism: An Introduction' (1914) he wrote: To be their own ideal once more, in regard to sexual no less than other trends, as they were in childhood - this is what people strive to attain as their happiness.19 Asceticism is the serf of the ideal. Servants of the ideal are capable of subjecting themselves to extreme forms of purification, some of which are performed for the masochistic satisfactions obtained. In my opinion, these satisfactions do not go beyond the secondary benefits or the inevitable resulting ills; for it has to be recognised that pleasure can be taken on board as a clandestine passenger. In this respect, the ascetic is not always a martyr. Moral narcissism,20 nourished by ideal­ isation, is thus exalted. Self-effacement is the goal of all messianism, and, as a reward for its troubles, narcissism receives the spin-off benefits of the sacrifice made on behalf of the chosen one whose image provides further food for negative narcissism. If I am placing more emphasis than is customary on collective forms of idealisation, it is because I feel that this is where projected narcissism operates most fully: narcissistic deprivation on an individual level, thanks to its backlash effects, is transferred to the missionary group and justifies the abnegation that it requires. W hen the group lacks mystique (Bion), there will always be the narcissism of small differences. The psychoanalytic movement has not escaped this fate. 5. This contradictory situation - exaltation and sacrifice - is indica­ tive of the twofold movement of expansion and narcissistic withdrawal. Freud undoubtedly placed much more emphasis on narcissistic libidinal withdrawal than on expansion. Although at the end of his work, in Civilisation and its Discontents, his analysis of the oceanic feeling draws attention to the coexistence of the sense of identity, which suggests the idea of the ego's territorial boundaries, and the tendency to fusion, which he explains by the longing for a protective om nipo­ tent paternal image. This expansionist tendency, which makes narcissism a territory without frontiers,21 can be observed without there being any fusional regression. There are grounds for speaking of the existence in some patients of a fam ilial narcissistic ego where, through a process of idealising intrafamilial relationships, in which fraternal complicity often plays a dom inant part, the family is thought of as an extension of the ego. It comes as no surprise, therefore, that even larger groups may experience the same need for a sense of identity; and even more so when the latter claims to be altruistic. There is no need to add that such an attitude, which is capable of

engendering both the best and the worst, cannot be described as morbid. Narcissistic withdrawal does not call for any particular commentary, except that one must always remember that it is the response to suffering, to a sense of ill-being. But one must also bear in mind that it is one of the most natural tendencies of the ego, which, each night, withdraws its investments from the world to find refresh­ ment in sleep; and not just to dream. Increasing interest has been paid in recent years to the clinical approach to states of emptiness, to forms of aspiration for objectal nothingness, to the category neuter. This tendency towards with­ drawing cathexes (or disinvesting), the quest for indifference, is not limited to Eastern philosophies.22 It would seem logical to assume that any investment contains w ithin it the disinvestment which is its shadow projected backwards, conjuring up the mythical state prior to desire; and forwards, anticipating the neutralising appeasement following the satisfaction of a desire that is felt to have been completely satisfied. A plausible explanation may be found in negative narcissism, the ramifications of which, in my opinion, include all the ways in which narcissistic satisfaction is enhanced by the non-satis­ faction of desire for the object. This is considered more desirable than satisfaction which involves dependence on the object, on its unpre­ dictable changeableness, and on its responses which always fall short of the expectations it is supposed to fulfil: vox ch'entrate ... 6. All these ambiguities can be found in the concepts of narcissistic object and narcissistic investment. The enemy of narcissism is the reality of the object; and, conversely, the object of reality, namely, its function in the ego's economy. The object is a particularly useful tool for examining this issue because it is both outside and inside the ego; and, because it is necessary for founding the ego as well as elaborating narcissism. The assumption of primary object love is based on a misunderstanding which needs clearing up. It is true that from the beginning the baby's existence is marked by primary object love. This fact notwithstanding, from the point of view o f the infans, the object is included from its narcissistic organisation, which Winnicott justifi­ ably called the subjective object, and Kohut the self-object. The confusion arises from the fact that, in place of the monistic perspec­ tive - it has even been called 'monadological' - of imaginary identification with the baby, a dualistic outlook has been substituted, stemming from the perception of a third party observing the innocent paradisiacal scene of infantile love. There is no reason, therefore, to deny the existence of primary narcissism in favour of primary object love; they are two complementary perspectives seen from two different points of view. W hat certainly can be contested is the adult's imaginary identification with the infans, which is always

more or less adultomorphic. But it is an unsurmountable obstacle. At least it is better to know it and not to let oneself be trapped by the charms of the visible, in which adultomorphic imagination is advan­ tageously replaced by the 'objective perception' of direct observation, a rationalisation that is more scientist than scientific. As for the observing third party, it should be included in the picture; but one must not forget that, although it is not part of the mother-baby rela­ tionship, it is nonetheless present in one form or another. That is to say, in the baby which is half made by the father - not only in its chromosomes, but in its features, and, at a very early stage, in its way of being and acting - and, in the mother who united with the father to create it. The object is, therefore, both there and not there at the same time. W hat is inevitable is that the auto-erotic mode of functioning according to the pleasure principle (which includes maternal care) is followed by the paradox of losing the object - the inaugural condi­ tion for finding the object (or of re-finding it, if you prefer). Let us remember that according to the Freudian model: ... at a time at which the first beginnings of sexual satisfaction are still linked with the taking of nourishment, the sexual instinct has a sexual object outside23 the infant's own body in the shape of his mother's breast. It is only later that the instinct loses that object, just at the time, perhaps, when the child is able to form a total idea of the person to whom the organ that is giving him satisfaction belongs. As a rule the sexual instinct then becomes auto-erotic. (SE, VII, p. 222) This development links auto-erotism to perceiving the Other in his or her totality, but there is no question of narcissism as yet. In short, if we take the reformulation of the Outline into account, things may be represented as follows: Stage 1: infant-breast body, oral instinctual impulse. Stage 2: losing the breast; localising the breast; narcissistic object; outside; perception of the whole of the mother's body; linking the breast with the mother's body; auto-erotism (pleasure of sucking). Furthermore, (see 'Negation', 1925), it is said that object-loss is the ■motor for establishing the reality-principle. The origins of narcissism are described in the case history of Schreber (1911): There comes a time in the development of the individual at which he unifies his sexual instincts (which have hitherto been engaged in auto-erotic activities) in order to obtain a love-object; and he

begins by taking himself, his own body, as his love-object, and only subsequently proceeds from this to the choice of some person other than himself as his object. (SE, XII, p. 60) Stage 3: Narcissism arises from the unification of the sexual drives in order to constitute an object based on the model (see Stage 2) of the object perceived in its totality. And that is not all. In its choice of object, ego development makes a division isolating a part-object. This is evident from the continua­ tion of the passage quoted earlier, which is clearly inspired by Leonardo's case history: 'W hat is of chief importance in the subject's self thus chosen as a love-object may already be the genitals/ And thus to Stage 4: Homo-erotic object-choice in which the homo-erotic signifier is represented by the genitals which stand for the whole object. Just one remark: Freud seems to deny (insofar as he is clearly thinking about men) the sexual difference which he has introduced. In fact, here the penis belongs to both sexes. The mother is credited with a penis. Stage 5: Allo-erotic object-choice based on sexual difference (phallic-castrated, double identification); the Oedipus complex evolving towards the creation of the super-ego in order to save narcis­ sistic integrity. The super-ego is the heir of the Oedipus complex and the ego ideal an offshoot of narcissism. Stage 6: Discovery or rediscovery of the vagina. The reality of sexual difference in the antithesis penis-vagina. Continuity of the narcissistic thread, beyond this discovery-rediscovery. Later, in Civilisation and its Discontents (1930), Freud admitted that the ego's feeling of unity is very fragile, if not illusory. His analysis of the oceanic feeling bears this out. But Freud's explanation leaves us wondering. He sees in it the reappearance of the need for the protec­ tion of an all-powerful father. Although God is written in the masculine form, we do say mother nature. At the same time, the phantasy of devouring, which it is tempting to link up with the mother's breast, through the cannibalistic oral relationship, receives the same interpretation in the Cronian myth - the father who is jealous of his sons - right up to the end of Freud's work.24 It is worth noting, too, that the version Freud gave of the birth of the object should probably be related to its loss. In 'Instincts and their Vicissitudes' (1915a) he states that the object is known through hate. W hat better way is there of pointing out that the ego's perception of the object's independent existence makes it hate the object because it undermines its narcissistic omnipotence? But a few papers later, he compared the dreamer's narcissism (the dreamer's heroic narcissism

connected with his oneiric exploits of which the dream itself is not the least) with the narcissism of dreams.25 Further on still, in 'Mourning and Melancholia' (1917a [1915]),26 it is object-loss which, so to speak, makes the subject aware of it. This revelation, which really deserves a capital letter, discloses the narcissistic structure: oral relating, ambivalence and narcissistic cathexis characteristic of primary identification. At the same period, but elsewhere, in Thoughts for the Times on War and Death' (1915c) Freud analysed our reactions to the death of other people. The death of someone we love is a testing experience because it faces us with the limitations of our investment in others: These loved ones are on the one hand an inner possession, compo­ nents of our own ego; but on the other hand they are partly strangers, even enemies. (SE, XIV, p. 298) The effect of castration anxiety may represent a victory of narcissism which gives up organ pleasure in the interests of preserving bodily identity. The following statement could be added to Stage 5: 'narcis­ sism robs objects of their cathexes'. This leads us to speak of narcissistic object-cathexis. The term arouses objections in that the meaning of the word narcissistic is rarely free of pejorative undertones. The altruistic super-ego can express its demands out loud. Privately, it is reduced to silence - to a certain extent, at least, since it is not easy to do without others. We are condemned to love. Love, says Freud, involves narcissistic impover­ ishment. But C. David has rightly pointed out that the state of being in love exalts narcissism.27 In his description of 'libidinal types' Freud writes: 'In erotic life loving is preferred above being loved', though one would have expected the contrary. An explanation for this, however, may lie in the refusal to be dependent on the object's love and in the desire to preserve a freedom of manoeuvre regarding the mobility of cathexes. Making an opposition between object-choice through attachment (anaclitic) and narcissistic object-choice is over­ simplifying things as well as being phallocentric. W hile the symmetry Freud established is questionable, the existence of the narcissistic object-choice is not. We are familiar with the characteristics of these cathexes: the projection onto the object of one's self-image - as one was in the past, or as one would like to be, or an image based on the idealised parental figures. The descriptions waver between fusional cathexis, the cathexis of an 'impoverished' self-image, mirror-cathexis and cathexis that might be called solipsistic. Narcissistic structure reacts with remarkable hypersensitivity to any intrusion in the space of the Self, while at the same time retaining a nostalgia for fusion and

a fear of separation which is anxiety provoking. This is true even if it longs for independence; and, above all, if it wishes to avoid being devalued by the object's scorn, as well as its own scorn for itself for being incomplete, unfulfilled and dependent. Narcissism cannot achieve this selflessness with the other. Such self-abandonment is equivalent to the threat of being abandoned by the object. Narcissism thus serves as a substitute internal object for the subject which watches over the ego just as the mother watches over her baby. It shields the subject and protects it. How are the object's vicissitudes to be coped with if one does not protect oneself narcissistically? It would seem to me that artistic creativity (even on a m inor or m inim al scale) has a role to play here. The narcissistically invested object of creation serves as an object of projection - even though the creator, while vigorously asserting that he is the author of it, rejects equally force­ fully that it reflects his own life in any way. He wants to ensure that it has its own life, an independence equal to that which he himself aspires to. He values highly what he has created but finds any evalu­ ation of it hurtful, even though he welcomes such evaluation at the same time. Analysts' writings are their creation; which is why nothing grieves them more than the judgement of others who do not recog­ nise their hidden virtues or contest their value. The function of the created object is to serve as a mediation - a transaction - with the other person who finds pleasure (when ambivalence does not get in the way) by identifying with the creator. Father Freud is thus a refer­ ence for every psychoanalyst. W hat I am saying then is that the object and the investment of it are trans-narcissistic objects. Outside the creative realm, other objects have been credited with the same function: drugs, alcohol, or more significantly, the fetish. But in the final analysis it is the phallus that is the Cause. At the same time it is the Mother of all our motivations for living, the Father of all our hopes, and the Child-King saviour of the world. Here is a portrait of Narcissus: he is a unique figure who is om nipo­ tent because his body and m ind are incarnated in his speech; he is independent and autonomous whenever he chooses to be, but others depend on him although he feels no desire for them. Yet, dwelling amongst his own people, that is, his family, clan or race, he is chosen because of his obvious signs of Divinity, fashioned in his own image. He is their leader, master of the Universe, Time and Death, full of his own dialogue, without witnesses, with the one God who bestows His favours upon him - until the fall when he is the chosen object of sacrifice - as the intercessor between God and m an who lives in the isolation of the shadow cast by His light. This shadow of God is a figure of the Same, the immutable, the intangible, the immortal and the timeless.

W ho, in the secret world of his fantasies, would not recognise this figure, whether he serves it or entertains the mad idea of incarnating it? But we are now a long way from the innocent flower resuscitating the ephebe who is in love with his own reflection to the point of merging into the still, bottomless waters. Narcissism belongs less to the world of aesthetic myths than to the world of religious myths, which is why it never ceases to flower again. 7. Narcissism and the dualistic drive organisation. There are successive drive theories in Freud's work. The contrast between narcissistic-libido and object-libido occupies a halfway position between the first of the antitheses postulated, distinguishing the drives of self-preservation and the sexual drives, and the last, opposing the life drives and the death drives. It has often been said that Freud changed direction in this final elaboration. But this is not so. W hile the link between the drives of self-preservation and narcissistic-libido can, so to speak, be taken for granted, the redistribution of the connotations of the drives in the final drive theory seems to me to be consistent with Freud's theoretical logic. W hat is happening here? As I have already pointed out, sexuality is a constant factor throughout Freud's work. Given its eminently conflictual position, Freud was trying to feel his way towards something that could resist it; in other words, the anti-sexual drive. Initially, biology seemed to offer a way forward, since the 'instinct' of self-preservation is unanimously recognised: hunger and love govern the appetites of living entities. The second stage, in which Freud libidinised the ego, set up a rivalry between the libidinal cathexes of the object and those of the ego. Weismann had his say in this choice. And yet Freud, remaining faithful to his own referent, the species, saw the ego as being in the service of the perpetuation of life. For him the individual never attains the status of a concept. In 'On Narcissism: An Introduction' (1914), with reference once again to biology, he wrote: The individual does actually carry on a twofold existence: one to serve his own purposes and the other as a link in a chain, which he serves against his will, or at least involuntarily. The individual himself regards sexuality as one of his own ends; whereas from another point of view he is an appendage to his germ-plasm, at whose disposal he puts his energies in return for a bonus of pleasure. He is the mortal vehicle of a (possibly) immortal substance - like the inheritor of an entailed property, who is only the temporary holder of an estate which survives him. The separa­ tion of the sexual instincts from the ego-instincts would simply reflect this twofold function of the individual.28

Let us note here how the ego in turn can be cathected with the feeling of immortality, as Rank shows in connection with the double. The ego not only has a double existence but also a double structure: mortal and immortal. That is, it identifies with the part of itself that it passes on to its descendants, but also includes it in the present by constituting the phantasmatic twin for whom death does not exist. The introduction of the death drives in Beyond the Pleasure Principle and the reappearance of the inertia principle from the 'Project' in the form of the principle of Nirvana, postulated by Barbara Low, indicate a dialectical reversal. The aims of the immortal ego are inverted here: the exaltation of living leads to the appeasement of dying. There is thus a thanatophilic ego or, to stay within Keats' poetic universe, an ego h alf in love with death.29 But the object is an 'excitement monger', as is the external world. The reflexive relations established between the ego's narcissistic organisation and the object make it very clear that the object's destruction can take the reflexive form of self­ destruction. W hich comes first? It is a vain question, because the idea of successiveness in an organisation of this kind is beside the point; the idea of simultaneity is prevalent here and should lead us to think about the coexistence of the object's destruction (the founder of narcissism and narcissistically cathected) and the destruction of the ego which longs to rediscover a state of indifference. Is it to rediscover a sense of well-being or to take flight from a sense of ill-being? Here again the two movements 'flight from' and 'aspiration for' occur simultaneously. This passionately longed for indifference is, of course, intolerance towards the indifference of others - which Freud rightly sees as the root of paranoia. The point of equilibrium in these tensions, which aims at cancelling them out reciprocally, is im m obil­ isation at the point 'zero', insensible to the oscillations of the other and of the ego in its immobile state. Difference is lacking between good and bad, inside and outside, ego and object, masculine and feminine (or castrated). The narcissist's sense of plenitude comes both from the ego's fusion with the object as well as from the disappear­ ance of the object and the ego into the neuter, ne-uter. Freudian logic now proceeds to make a new separation between Eros and the destructive drives. If these mythical entities seem to hamper our epistemology, it is sufficient to compare them with binding and unbinding, conjunction and disjunction, which are re­ assuringly logical categories. But the logic still needs to be dialectical. I mean that the relations should be conceived of as being interde­ pendent. There can be no effective binding without unbinding which works in favour of individuation; no binding without recombining. Conjunction and disjunction constitute a major axe; this is related to its complement: Same and Other. Their relations as a whole define

what are known as the object relationship and the narcissistic rela­ tionship (W innicott's ego-relatedness30). The entire history of development is involved here: the primitive scene (the uniting of parents); the separation of partners (breaking up of the couple); preg­ nancy (the baby's inclusion within the mother's body); giving birth (disjunction from the mother's body); relationship to the breast (rebinding due to prematurity); the constitution of the ego (individual separation); pregenital fixations in connection with the object (frag­ m enting plural auto-erotism); oedipal triangulation (bringing together the relations between separating prohibition and union through identification with the rival); access to the world of culture (as distinct from the family space); sublimation (union with the world of culture, even if in protest); adolescence (mourning the separation from parents); object-choice (derivative union) and once again the primitive scene. This depiction may seem normative but it is in fact simply the path of repetition. Seen from a distance, the variations (cultural or individual) are negligible. In any case, death is at the end of the road, which has been said to be inconceivable for the uncon­ scious. This needs rethinking. Negative narcissism is the logical complement of positive narcissism, rendering intelligible the shift from the theory of the drives in which narcissistic-libido and objectlibido were opposed, to the final drive theory of the life drives and the death drives. Death: is it V'drive'? Is it possible? My only response to this question, here and now, is one of silence. If narcissism Was abandoned by Freud en route, on the pretext that his theory of it was too close to Jung's - whom he had regarded as his heir, before discovering that he was a dissident who preferred to be his own ideal rather than the chosen one of Freud's ideal - it was perhaps because Freud discovered too late that his theoretical solution was open to the same criticisms that he himself was making, thus putting its originality in danger. Further, if he preferred to intro­ duce the destructive drives as a counterpoint to Eros, it was because he realised that even those illusions which seem the most indestruc­ tible are capable of disappearing. Defending the death drive implied admitting that psychoanalysis, like civilisations, is mortal. This was the real point at which he surpassed his own narcissism, even if he could not help believing in an unidealogical science.31 At the beginning, there was a scientific ideal which consisted in discovering the laws of the unconscious. A hero: Oedipus, and his Jewish double, Joseph, who was less conquering but more thoughtful; he did not attain royalty but obtained much greater power since he interpreted Pharaoh's dreams. In the course of Freud's work three pairs emerge.32 Leonardo, who preferred knowledge to representa­ tion; Shakespeare, who recreated the world's stage; and lastly, Moses,

who handed down the Tables of the Law while controlling his anger, but who was assassinated by the people who were incapable of renun­ ciation. Perhaps this was already a forewarning of the end of what has been called the Jewish science. The last posthumous note, dated 22 August 1938, reads: 'Mysticism is the obscure self^perception of the realm outside the ego, of the id.' Where id was ... But the ego is too narcissistic to give it up. The ego's immortality ... However, death is keeping watch.

Numbers and Figures in Narcissism While narcissism inevitably forces us to think about the most unthinkable concept in psychoanalysis, namely, the One, this concept cannot be said to be univocal. Narcissism is Desire for the One. A unitary utopia, an ideal totalisation which is challenged from all sides and, first and foremost, by the unconscious. In fact the scope of the corpus is such that three different values need to be distinguished. In the name of primary narcissism let us consider the unitary entity. This, however, can already be divided into the One and the Unique. The One is in principle the indivisible entity, but it is capable of duplicating, multiplying itself. W hen it is part of a chain, it is subject to operations of adding and subtracting. One more or one less; multiplied or divided; this is how the operation of the successor, and thus of the predecessor, is defined. W hat is the One bound to and what does it seek to unbind itself from? To another and from another One, or from the Other. Addition and subtraction can be transformed into multiplication and division. 1-1 = 0. Zero is both a number and a concept (Frege33). 1 + 1 = 2. But, psychoanalytically speaking, 1 does not exist from the outset. 1 only becomes 1 through the separation of what Nicolas Abraham used to call the dual unity. The One arises, then, from the sexion (sexuality) which requires the genetic linking up (of two halves) to form a biolog­ ical unity. Psychical development starts from this Two in One' which, after separation from, and loss of, the object, gives birth to the One: the One of the Other precedes the One Same. Let us stay with the Unity 1 x 1 = 1. By multiplying itself 1 only produces the unity. Idem for division. 1 must at least be combined with 2 (1 + 1) in the m ulti­ plication in order to create a series of equal numbers. From the second multiplication on, 2 is multiplied by itself. This is the series of numbers divisible by two: doubles. The One thus relates to the double. Conversely the double implies division by two. Applied to the One, it gives us the fraction known as half. Half has a unique status. If the One is made up of two halves, each of the two halves consists of a divided

and incomplete status; and yet, each half is a component of the unity formed by uniting the two halves. See the myths of twins.34 This is precisely the classical definition of the symbol of the tessera. In fact each half has a twofold identity: it is in itself a half, and also a compo­ nent of the unity. A fundamental split which is inclined to cancel itself out in fusion. It is understandable then that the narcissistic mode of relating can only conceive of the Other in terms of the One. For the real unity is that of the couple. This is what we find in psychoanalysis; that is, when practising psychoanalysis. Nevertheless, primary narcissism itself follows two paths: towards the choice of an object, choice of the Other. Alter ego, then without ego: alter. In the double, the difference was reduced to zero, although, in fact, the difference never really disappears. Myths of twins re-establish it in a minimal, discreet form, or maximally (when one is mortal, the other is immortal35). W ith the double, symmetry becomes dissymmetry,36 similitude (similar is not the same as identical) becomes difference. However, secondary narcissism makes it possible to rediscover one's reserve by recuperating, 'robbing', Freud says, from objects the cathexes that are tied up with it. The One returns to itself; towards absolute primary narcissism in which excitation tends towards zero, that is, negative narcissism. I have already pointed out that the negative has two senses (at least): the reverse of the positive (for example, hate in contrast with love, where love is found in an inverted form, as love cannot cancel out hate). Lacan speaks of hainamoration (Seminar XX). But negative relates to the pure concept of nothingness. For a long time confusion in psychoanalysis resulted in the second meaning being mistaken for the first, doing away with the concept 0. Hence zero's ambiguity as both a concept and a number (Frege). Principles - thus Nirvana as well - tend towards ... without ever reaching their aim ... Otherwise, they would not be principles. The asymptotic curve strives for 0 without ever reaching it. Absolute pleasure or absolute reality do not exist either. Zero - an unstable point of equilibrium - underpins the category Neuter. I have conceptualised this category under the auspices of the blanc,37 from the English blank. Blank rhyme = rime neutre. Giving you carte blanche = abdicating my own wishes. Signing a blank cheque = taking the risk of being dispossessed of everything. There is no need to remind you of the difference between a white wedding (un manage en blanc) and an unconsummated wedding {un mariage blanc). Blank psychosis is for us the realm of radical decathexis (or disinvestment), a canvas on which the picture of delusional neo-reality is inscribed.38 Bion proposed the concept of 0 as the state of the unknowable. W hen questioned as to whether 0 was the equivalent of zero, he rejected this interpretation, saying that he was speaking of the object in terms of

divinity, of absolute, infinite truth.39 Might it be compared with Lacan's concept of the Other, allowing for the difference that the latter is the treasure of the signifier? It is unlikely that he would have endorsed this. I propose the solution of the zero object Neuter. All these operations involve the concepts of binding and unbinding, for which Freud produces the figures, the superb and indefinite myths, of Eros and the destructive drives. The Neuter is untenable, it falls either on One side or the Other. This being so, it binds itself and/or unbinds itself in the Same or in the Other. These three types of narcissistic values form different geometrical figures. It is impossible to think about narcissism without spatial refer­ ence points. In the central position I would place the sphere, which Freud called the vesicle. This sphere is enclosed by its external envelope with variable limits or boundaries (pseudopodes). It is a spatial enclosure which gives the individual the feeling that he exists in himself. In fact the sphere shelters the Self and may constitute Winnicott's false self at its periphery, fashioned in the image of the mother's desire. One is related to the other. In the interaction, W innicott has demonstrated the mirroring role of the mother's face; in fact, her gaze. The baby has to be able to see himself in it before he can see her, in order to form his subjective, that is, narcissistic objects. Subsequently the mirror is a plane, a surface of reflection, an area of projection on which the double and the Other are inscribed. Lacan has given a good description of the role played by the image of the Other in giving the ego recognition through the lure of a totally unifying narcissism. This presupposes, of course, being recognised by the Other. Projection can just as easily form an idealising image (of the One or of the Other) or a persecuting image (of what is the same). Their combi­ nation is at the root of delusion; their antagonism is psychic death. Once again various directions are possible here, amongst which is the double reversal40 of the narcissistic organisation, creator of the Mobius strip which we have come to recognise with Lacan's help. Lacanian topology will not be taken into consideration here. But we also know that the sphere and the projected image are expansible and retractable. By providing us with the concept of the intermediate zone, Winnicott has enabled us to understand the role of the intersection in the sharing of mother-baby relations. The separating out of the united spheres gives birth to the potential space where cultural experience occurs. This is a primary form of sublimated creativity; sublimation and creation constituting trans-narcissistic objects. The aim of the optimal intersection is to create the affect of exis­ tence; that is, the sense of coherence and consistency underlying the pleasure of existing which cannot be taken for granted - it has to be instilled by the object (a purely female element for Winnicott) - and

which shows that it is able to tolerate acceptance of the Other and separation from it. The destiny of the One is to live in conjunction with and/or separation from the other: the capacity to be alone in the presence of someone is a mark of this favourable development. The T loses itself and finds itself again in playing. Conversely, other outcomes are also possible. For instance, being invaded by the Other, something that is both desired and feared, is illustrated by states of fusion. The danger here is explosion and implo­ sion (Laing41), which are both equally catastrophic. This is what Bouvet called the rapprocher de rapprochement and the rapprocher de rejection,42 observable in states of depersonalisation.43 Fusion leads to absolute dependence on the object. Passivation44 presupposes having confidence in the object; having confidence that the object will not take advantage of the power which has been given to it. Beyond that, the fear of inertia, of psychical death, is a terrible spectre which is fought against with active and reactive defences. This wards off the dangers of the two spheres being merged into one, in which one is swallowed up by the other: there is a projection of the narcissism of cannibalistic oral rela­ tionship in which the first figure of duality soon appears: eating-being eaten. In place of the third element in Bertram Lewin's triad, 'the wish to devour, to be devoured and the wish to go to sleep', it is disappear­ ance which is feared: the disappearance of the One, of the Other, or of their unity, merged and reconstituted as a result of devouring the Other or of being devoured by the Other. However, being able to tolerate fusion is just as necessary as the need to exist separately. Here, we have the distinction between the unintegrated state, which is beneficial, and the disintegrated state, which is harmful (Winnicott). Finally, self-withdrawal is the ultimate defence. Hounded into a corner, selective shrinking is the only alternative the self has, bringing in its wake psychical death and perhaps even death itself. It has been shown45 that total withdrawal represents the collapse of the ego following the failure of ordinary or exceptional defence mechanisms which attempt to fend against psychotic anxieties, that is, traumatic anxiety resulting from unbound energies; binding allowing for the solution of signal anxiety. The point becomes the final solution. Point zero. Numbers relate to figures and figures to numbers; all of them narcissistic. W hat is being bound? A body (volume), an image (surface), a point (m inim um level)? Perhaps a language.

Elementary Grammatical Functions in Narcissistic Discourse One of the functions of language is to constitute a representation of the unitary subject as well as his thought. I shall not go over again here the rules of Lacanian language (lalangue46 included). Analysis shows

that words tend to be lacking. Expressing oneself through the effect of what is not said, or by what is said badly, or by saying 'that's not what I mean' results in denial: 'How does one take back what one's just said?' Analytic discourse presupposes two forms of articulation. Free association, the injunction to 'say everything', involves a syntagmatic drifting, illogical in terms of meaning, while each syntagma must continue to obey grammatical logic. However, what I am thinking of here is the narcissistic investment of the basic elements of a sentence: subject, auxiliaries, verb and complement. 1. The subject In psychoanalytic literature of recent years there is a sense that the terminology of narcissism is incomplete. Various terms have been proposed to make up for this deficiency. The Freudian concept of the ego has been completed by lexical variants of the subject The Self, which differs depending on the author (Hartmann, Jacobson, Kohut or Winnicott), is the most widely accepted term, but not without resistance from some quarters (Pontalis47). Many regard it as a global ego containing the narcissistic investments which are at the root of the feeling of identity (Lichtenstein). Others prefer to stress the difference between the ego and the 'I' (le Je), whether it be from an existential perspective (Pasche), from a linguistic perspective (Lacan), or in terms of knowledge about the 'I' (P. CastoriadisAulagnier). Finally, the subject has been interpreted in various ways: Lacan's structuralist understanding of it stands apart from other uses which are generally descriptive. The ambiguity of the concept of the total ego or of the ego as an agency has been clarified by J. Laplanche, who thinks of the ego as a metaphor for the organism: an ego-system functioning according to a particular, if not autonomous, endoge­ nous regime. Apart from these designations, there is also a concern for identity, for individuation (Mahler) and for personalisation. While all these forms of ipseity have found their place, they nonetheless carry with them a risk of conceptual displacement which can prove to be serious insofar as they involve making phenomenological, and even existential concessions. Consequently, however justified refer­ ences to clinical work may be, it is preferable that experience is not translated into a metapsychological paraphrase of a system of thought which will remain more descriptive than theoretical. Translation is responsible for this induction. In endeavouring to tackle narcissism it is likely, if not certain, that one will be drawn into a theoretical tautology. The unconscious ego should make us wary, but the 'fine form' or 'noble nature' of the narcissistic ego tends to seduce us in the theory which makes the reflections of its outward appearance shimmer before us. Terminological habits will no doubt ^vin through in the end. The terms themselves are less important than the use that is made of them. The unconscious structure of narcissism

perhaps still needs to be unveiled; it is a structure which is easier to identify in the dom ain of the object-related drives. W hat has produced this overabundance of adjacent or vicarious conceptions of the Freudian ego is probably the question of the differ­ ence between ego and T, which Freud, perhaps deliberately, overlooked. In French we often say, 4Moi, je ...' as if to illustrate the split and the difference. According to language and communication special­ ists, one of the particularities, and not the least of them, of hum an language is that it is a self-referential system (T wish t h a t ... ', 'I think that') in which the problematics of narcissism are involved. 'I, myself, don't think that narcissism is what people say it is ... .' Here we come across the distinction made by R. Jakobson between the subject within the utterance and the subject who makes the utterance (sujet de Venonce/sujet de Venonciation). W hat I want to draw attention to is that, in contrast with other modes of communication, language as a whole has this twofold function in analytic treatment. Thus slips of the tongue and jokes are and are not 'pure utterances'. Language is singular-plural: not only in the sense of the royal 'we' but because the plurality of first person pronouns necessarily makes it plural, whereas the first person plural refers to the singular. 'In Paris, we don't think that narcissism is what it is said to be elsewhere.' A statement which in fact conceals two persons, the author of the statement and the partic­ ular person he is addressing. Finally, this leads us to locate the personal pronoun in the field of affirmation and negation which ensures the converging functions of narcissistic cohesion and discriminative rele­ vance. However, it is clear that what is repudiated by negation makes its return through affirmation and what is affirmed continues to deny that it is related to what is denied. In any case, this difference emerges in relation to 'the third person'. 'He (Freud) would certainly have agreed with me.' In the final analysis, one always has to put oneself in the position of a representative of a function of representation. 2< The question of auxiliaries is essential. The reference to being comes naturally to m ind and Winnicott, suspected of complicity with Jung, did not hesitate to tackle the issue, even if he aroused reserva­ tions. Freud, in his posthumous notes, clearly pointed out the confusion between 'having the breast' and 'being the breast'.48 We should perhaps invent a formula to replace the ordinary 'I am'. 'I have-am the breast' would be more appropriate if we bear in mind that, in this case, 'have' has the sense of incorporating and introjecting, which makes being possible. The subject's assets, his possessions, as W innicott says, are subject to quantitative variations, the effects of which are familiar to us. But it is the qualitative varia­ tion that matters if we are to explain what is at stake. We speak of anxiety in the face of the vicissitudes of object relations and the

wounding, suffering and pain when narcissism is undermined; that is, when the subject feels his very being is affected. But while being is the feeling that one exists, and underpins the logic of self-belonging, it is also the process of becoming, that is, being subject, whether one likes it or not, to time. Even the most narcissistic affection does not prevent time from passing, the body from ageing, the world from changing, and being from undergoing changes (yet remaining the same being). There is good reason therefore to create, through the verb becoming which is the equivalent of the German auxiliary werden (Wo es war soli ich werden). Having been (in the past) - having to become (in the future). 3. The vehicle for expressing action is the verb which, for the psychoanalyst, is only an instinctual verb (verbe pulsionnel). Narcissism is present here in the reflexivity expressed by the split 'I-me'. Turning round upon the subject's own self and reversal into its opposite, from activity to passivity. It is not always clear what the connection of the passive form with narcissism is. Whether I love myself (or hate myself) passivation is involved, but it is not the same when I say, T am loved' or T am hated'. The second of these involves the object; the first merges with it in imaginary fusion. In fact, what is occurring is an objectless 'love attraction'. It is when there is trusting passivation that the double reversal, constitutive of I, can occur. W hat we have here is a pathway, a circuit, which, under certain circumstances, can become a short-circuit, a shunt49 of the object-system. Thus one can write: 'In the beginning was the verb', dissociating the verb of language and the verb of the drive. But how are they related? The ego's expanding and retracting movements bear witness to this reflex­ ivity: 'I'm master of myself (= I am in control of myself) as of the world (= as I am in control of the world).'50 In any case, dissociation is still operating. Speaking about his feelings of depersonalisation, one of Bouvet's patients said: 'I am the world and the world is me.' Clearly, fusion can put an end here to dissociation, leading to a complete reversal, to the narcissistic equation. One could contrast this with the statement: 'Because it was him, because it was me', which bases union on the recognition of difference. Yet the verb is still active, and it is through reversal that it acquires the passive form. This is the origin of Freud's idea that the libido is always masculine. The corollary of this is that passivity takes second place. There are no passive instincts but instincts with a passive aim ('Instincts and their Vicissitudes', 1915a). However, we know that the child, on the contrary, is passivated, is dependent on the object for maternal care. Hence the controversy: Freud sees things from the point of view of the baby who actively experiences its drives, whereas Balint looks at the scene and notes the passivity of the baby in need of maternal

love. The complementarity of their two positions conjures up the idea of the mother adapted to her baby's needs, that is to say, dyadic unity. Nonetheless, Diatkine has rightly drawn attention to the mother's inadequacy for the original displacement. We might wonder here about the relevance of pronouns. Can one say T? Sooner or later this would imply 'You'. In fact, as J.-L. Donnet, drawing on Benveniste, has pointed out, what is important is Tt', the concept of the excluded third party.51 The indefinite French pronoun 'On' includes everybody, except I. The proliferation of works based on the model o f 'On bat un enfant ('A Child is Being Beaten'), ‘On tue un enfant ('A Child is Being Killed') by S. Leclaire, ‘On parle d'un enfant ('A Child is Being Talked About') by J.-L. Donnet, makes a reduction necessary: 'On fait un enfant ('A Child is Being Conceived'). The shepherd answers the shepherdess by saying, ‘On ne me la fait pas’ (T can't be taken in so easily'), for narcissism is acutely sensitive to deception. Here entice­ ment can never be anything but deceptive. Illusion has no positive function. 'It doesn't exist.' In other words, 'you are only an analyst'. 4. Finally, we come to the object as complement W hich object? That is the whole question. Here, once again, we have to go back to the different types of object-cathexis or narcissistic-cathexis, primary or secondary, since absolute primary narcissism is objectless. The type of narcissistic-cathexis which is described by Freud in primary identifi­ cation comes to m ind here, and with it, dependence on the object. Object-loss in mourning or merely disappointment in the object results in narcissistic wounding which in its severe forms leads to depression. Self-deprecation, or a lack of a sense of worth, are the specific signs of it. Apparently the object is contingent; the narcissist either regards its existence as dubious or, on the contrary, makes it his raison d'etre. But, in both cases, object-loss reawakens dependency, bringing out the hate underlying sadness and reveals scarcely veiled desires to devour and expel. The object is a complement o f being. We are familiar with the discussions which revolve around the object in psychoanalysis and the object of psychoanalysis.52 The question of the relations between part-object and whole-object is raised here. Contrary to Lacan, who states that the object can only be a partobject, I think that the situation is more complicated. Either the drive expresses itself without inhibition of aim and can only be partial or, there is an inhibition of aim in which case the object is perceived as whole, b u t with a drive that ceases to be fully deployed. W hat is impossible is the relation: drive with uninhibited aim - whole object. There is perhaps one exception: the passionate sexual relationship. Hence the function of the narcissistic object and the programmed dialectic I have just outlined. Once narcissistic object-cathexis has been overcome, the next stage is not, as is often thought, the objectal

or objective object but the potential object of the transitional area. In this way any identification with the normative model of the analyst is avoided. Identification with the analytic function is made clearer if one adds that, in the etymological sense of the word, the analyst is a hypocrite, someone who remains above the crisis 50 that he can play his role - this was how actors used to be called. The analytic role conforms to the requirements of intrigue: tragic, dramatic or comic, or all three at once. The analyst's repertoire and his capacity to make use of it - a different role for each patient - to be the patient's object in a floating identity, is only valid in the context of the 'Other stage', that is, the analyst's consulting room. The analyst is able to act thanks to secondary, primary or narcissistic identification. The latter is different from primary identification in that fusion gives birth to figures of duality. It is when narcissistic identification enables positive narcis­ sism to establish itself that playing can emerge in the capacity to be alone in somebody's presence. It is a complement that one may be unaware of, but which has to be there in order to be misrecognised. It is a very particular form of sharing. In the case of Schreber and, in particular, in connection with narcissism, Freud demonstrated the transformations which the subject, the verb and the complement undergo in delusion. He did not refer to the auxiliaries. However, it may be that they are the implicit referents of the system. At any rate, the fact that language underpins narcissistic structure to the extent that the transformations of the internal relations between its elements afford us a picture of the drive economy, suggests that it may be the most inexpungible narcis­ sistic refuge, in the hope of creating closed forms which can salvage even the most patent failings of the discourse. In any case, what is essential is the production of a syntagma; that is, a self-sufficient linguistic unit. In French the imperative requires just one word: 'Parlons' or 'Partons'. The syntagma is not a unit but a metaphor for unity, in which we can find G. Rosolato's notion of metaphorometonymic oscillation. But in order to speak about narcissism, that is, a mark of individuation, a style is needed. There are a thousand and one ways of saying: T love myself.' But is that all there is to it?

The Style of Transference Narcissism The analysis of narcissistic transferences has led Kohut and Kernberg to adopt opposing points of view in their interpretation of the autonomy of narcissism or of its indissociability from the pregenital drives - first and foremost, aggressivity. I do not intend to take sides in this controversy, preferring to approach the theme of narcissism in the transference from the angle of the discursive style that is characteristic

of narcissism and specific to each patient. There is no notable diver­ gence between the authors as far as content is concerned. On the other hand, few authors have had the idea that narcissism could be consid­ ered from the point of view of mental functioning, and, specifically, from the angle of the style of the transference discourse. Here we are faced with two situations, one of which is perhaps merely a caricature of the other, although quantitative modification always translates itself into qualitative modifications. In the transference of structures which are not particularly narcissistic, not only is it possible to speak of a narcis­ sistic vertex as a constant feature, but it can also be argued that all material may be understood in terms of the narcissistic vertex and the objectal vertex, which explains the reluctance of some analysts to adopt the concept of narcissism. In this respect transference experi­ ence is troubling. Even the fact that interpretation links the analyst's person with the message, which in principle is not directed at him, means that the analyst himself can be accused of narcissism! Furthermore, he is the one who assumes that the analysand is only able to talk about the analyst or about himself. These axioms are neces­ sary to the analytic frame of reference. If we insist on the necessity of the pair, free association-floating attention, it is so that a circuit of exchanges between the Self and the object can be observed; which in turn will be redefined in a second duplication. Thus the object is divided into objectal object-cathexis and narcissistic object-cathexis, just as the Self comprises narcissistic and object cathexes when the Self becomes its own object. A permanent oscillation of narcissistic and object cathexes, as much of oneself as of thg object, can be witnessed. This relational instability depends, of course, on the exchanges taking place between the analysand and the analyst. It is probably affected by technical variations, whether these induce, not to say exalt, narcissistic expres­ sion, or whether, on the contrary, narcissism becomes the persecuted object of the analyst who cannot free himself from its pejorative connotations, thus forcing 'objectalisation' in return. The debate between 'narcissism' and 'anti-narcissism' is based on different inter­ pretations of clinical facts and genetic assumptions, none of which prevails over the others. The debate remains confined to their heuristic value, but nonetheless leads to different technical attitudes. To my m ind, these discussions are only of relative interest; for what is important is to study the relationship between narcissistic transfer­ ence and object transference and their intersections. To be more exact, let us say that we need to distinguish between the narcissistic vertex and the object vertex in any analytical relationship; to take into account the particular features of narcissistic transferences marked by narcissistic structures - neurotic, unstable, perverse,

depressive or psychotic - and finally, to circumscribe a basic narcis­ sistic organisation in the light of the worth placed on this or that feature of the narcissistic corpus as we have defined it. Approaching mental functioning from this perspective is more interesting. I have defended the concept of the signifier's hetero­ geneity:53 bodily states, affects, thing- and word-presentations, and acts, are the constitutive elements. The interest of these distinctions lies in their economic, topographical and dynamic interplay. But while these differences can be found in any discourse, whatever form it may take, they counterbalance each other in a striking way in narcissistic discourse. Articulating them may serve different, but ulti­ mately converging aims. The utterances as a whole constitute a narcissistic cover, a 'protective shield' if you like, sheltering the body. This shield is both aesthetic and moral: the discourse complies with the requirement of forming an attractive totality. Such is the function of the narrative-recitative discourse which binds the elements of mental functioning, thereby forming a screen between the analysand and the analyst. Silence operates symmetrically. It might be said, then, that in their own way discourse and silence have the same task. Dense, heavy silence, creating a feeling of opacity and impenetra­ bility, without a crack in it. The breach of transference or the associative thread is masked by the discursive development of the stream of words. The analyst feels as if he is watching a film of which he can only be the spectator. In other forms the narrative-recitative discourse does not simply act as a screen. To passive resistance, an active function is added: the discourse pushes back - might one say represses? - the analyst's presence, an object which is perceived as being intrusive. The narcis­ sistic movement does more than just resist listening; it secures the analysand's boundaries; but, as these cannot take the risk of estab­ lishing themselves at the outposts on the frontiers, they have to avert narcissistic danger by penetrating the object's territory in order to neutralise it. The analysand is willing to experience whatever analysis makes h im experience, but it is his business. 'Something' is happening to him and, however unpleasant invasions in the sphere of the Self may be, they can be tolerated as long as they are not perceived to be effects of the object who, as a result, would take on too much importance for narcissism. Different forms of resistance, linked to external reality and the role played by the social milieu, are used to counter the extreme narcissistic tonality of the perception of reality, particularly social reality. It should not be forgotten that Freud observed how social relations in paranoia are sexualised. In fact, a thorough analysis leads one to conclude that the recognition of external reality in childhood is the source of an acute conflict whose

consequences still make themselves noticeable in spells of deperson­ alisation. In addition to this effect we need to add the role that is played by the accentuation of sexual difference in the objectal aspect of transference. Should it be called a projection? It would be a misin­ terpretation to believe that the analysand wishes to project something on to or into the analyst. In fact, what he asks of the object is simply to occupy the status that he agrees to give him, that is, as witness, image, reflection or vanishing point; but in any case without having any existence in the flesh - a status that is less fantasmatic than ghostly, a shadow of the object. Finally, the third possibility: narcissistic object-cathexis and, reflex­ ively, the narcissistic cathexis of language, that is, the way one speaks about the object. The language of analysts, their style of interpreting, their writing, makes them identifiable. Whether it is dry (pseudo­ scientific), abrupt (deceptively simple), lyrical (the chant of desire), precious (Ah! In what gallant terms ...), confused (nothing is simple), or Gongoric (trying to imitate the genius of the unconscious), the list, far from being exhaustive, gives the picture of a failure in conceptual­ ising narcissism, a danger which Freud was one of the few to escape. Exerting fascination over the reader in the absence of the analysand (if only one could tell him ...) is how the analyst takes his revenge; he is a hypnotist who has had to give up fascinating for analysing. But to be able to analyse there has to be a discourse that is analysable. The narrative-recitative discourse excludes the object as soon as the latter ceases to be a witness. Only the associative discourse is analysable if one hopes to go beyond an interpretation in the form of a paraphrase; which can nonetheless be useful by echoing the words of the analysand who needs to be heard, not analysed, strictly speaking, but heard by someone. Yet this kind of analysis is not what is meant by psychoanalysis. Once the censor is lifted, the associative discourse is the product of a process of unbinding which is capable of rebinding itself differently. The narcissistic subject cannot take the risk of unbinding his discourse, as if the unbinding of language alone had the power to destroy his self-image haunted by fragmentation. This is why he tries to m aintain a cohesive and adhesive discourse. It could be argued that what underlies the associative discourse is the component drives; not those of the auto-erotic type, but those which are related to the object. In the trusting relationship with the object, the analyst gathers together the shattered bits with the aim of giving them new coherence. On the other hand, the narrative-recitative discourse only aspires to be recognised as such, en soi, averting any eventual unbinding and aim ing to preserve its form. A discourse that is eminently 'gestaltist', in which background and figure tend towards unity.

The danger of analysing narcissistic organisations is that alongside the desire for change expressed in the request for analysis before it has begun, there is also a certain self-fidelity, the guardian of narcissism, which would prefer the analysis to fail rather than risking the change that is involved in being open to the object. And this is true quite apart from any so-called adaptive reference. The discourse of the narcissistic vertex of transference or of the narcissistic transference both oblige us to consider the role of speech in psychoanalysis. If one considers that speech mediates between body and language, in a psychical hand-to-hand, speech is psyche. It is a mirror, or rather an interplay of prismatic mirrors, breaking up the light of bodies or recomposing the spectrum of luminous rays. But it is also the link between one body and another, one language and another, One and Other. In truth, it is not only a relation but the representation of relations. As such, it strives for autonomy while remaining dependent; interdependent because intersubjective. In this sense, it is not narcissistic speech, although it can represent narcis­ sism or the object. It may nonetheless be objectal or even objective speech. Even in this case, it retains its function of relating and medi­ ating. Being interpsychical and intrapsychical, it creates a milieu of language between objective worlds, between objective and subjective worlds, and between subjective worlds. Its function is to unite but also to divide; by virtue of its properties, it symbolises Sameness and Alterity. In any case it is plural speech, tending beyond the One and the Other towards the Neuter in which everyone can recognise them­ selves. Speech is therefore neither narcissistic nor objectal, and less still objective, but it is all this at once in its aspiration for neutrality. The Law claims to be the law of the unbegotten God, who is what he is. But, in the last resort, everyone knows that it is only human, fallible speech, originating in mother and father. It is still the speech of an infans. Crying. But the cry is ambiguity itself, that is of jouissance or pain; or, in terms of the median values of man, of pleasure and unpleasure. Even silence, which itself does not escape ambiguity: the silence of quietude, of despair or of impotence. Only the silence of God is different. W hich is why, for the analyst, discourse, that is, speech and silence, is always deferred. Language serves all these ends which aim, all of them, at trans­ forming the Other into Neuter in favour of the One. That is where the paradox emerges. The One needs the Other to feel it exists; yet it has to make it Neuter. Consequently, the One, in turn, is only Neuter. The narcissistic subject uses language to make the subject within the utterance and the subject making the utterance coincide as far as possible, to reduce them to a single point which, in fact, is a high point or a climax. Silence and speech are ultimately the same. One

might say that the double T loses its function in a metaphorical 'third person' in which the famous word play on Nobody54 lends weight to the function of the excluded third: 'the third person' is neuter. This is the paradox of Narcissus: the extreme affirmation of subjectivity goes hand in hand with his extreme negation and finds its scansion, or its punctuation, in the neuter. An essential instability, as a result of which the structure, forever in search of a new point of stability, will be weakened by oscillations between the One and the Other. Stance understood as rest, sojourn, dwelling place, and stasis as arrest, imm obility and stagnation, alternate in narcissistic figures. The Greeks had already noticed the unique character of language which speaks simultaneously of the world and of itself. Incidentally this is precisely the characteristic of analytic language. The moderns have again taken up the distinction between 'language-object' and 'metalanguage'. Whatever the relevance of Lacan's opposition to the concept of metalanguage, it has to be recognised that the languageobject cannot in itself explain what is subsumed under the term metalanguage, even by splitting itself. Although poetic language is the linguistic aspect that is closest in spirit to analytic discourse, one cannot help recalling, along with W innicott, that no one would accept to be someone else's poem. If, then, the word 'meta' disturbs us - but why should it be any more disturbing than 'metapsy­ chology'? - it is undoubtedly because we are wary of any reference to the beyond. And it will be recalled just to what extent 'Beyond' the pleasure principle provoked disarray amongst analysts and continues to do so even today. W hat is certain is that we are dealing with a system of interlocking antitheses in which the pair, language (about the) object - reflexive language (language speaking about itself), overlaps the distinction between objectal discourse and narcissistic discourse without becoming confused with it. Narcissistic discourse and reflexive discourse duplicate each other unconsciously. That is to say, narrative discourse 'forgets' that it only speaks about language itself, that it is an object-less language; that is, reflexive language which is itself its own object. In analysis, the recitative-narrative discourse is object-less, or holds its object at a distance while being hypnotically fascinated by it. The ultimate aim of this rapport is to subject the latter to its own pleasure: subjugating so as not to be subjugated, even by language. Such is the oracular word of Masters. It only suffers consent and responds to what the other says by casting it into outer darkness. There is no possibility here of circumventing the difficulty of the relations between message and code: is it not true that the oracle aims to bring about their coincidence? In this case, it is more reminiscent of the vocation of an apostle than that of a psychoanalyst.

The essence of the fantasy of self-mastery or of mastering the object is that it can only be guaranteed expression by negating itself as such. The Master says he himself is subjugated. But he is the only one who can say so. Totalisation is denied in reference to a truth which declares itself to be indefinable: a mutilated statue whose complete form is reconstituted by those to whom it is revealed. This brings us to another feature of narcissistic transference; namely, its relations with metonymy and metaphor. It is supposed at the outset that all language is metonymic since it cannot adm it any concept of closed unity. But this metonymy becomes metaphor. Here again we come across the metaphoro-metonymic oscillation which G. Rosolato regards as an organising concept. In relation to the theme I am discussing, I would prefer to speak of a metaphorical substitution of metonymy. Thus language is metonymic, not only in the eyes of the world but in analytic discourse; for it is accepted, at least, that language is not lalangue. On the other hand, language becomes the metaphor of lalangue. The effects of language cease to be syntagmatic, becoming paradigmatic instead. And, if it is true that inconsistent multiplicity (J.-A. Miller55) could be called the central notion of lalangue, the consistent unity of Lacanian theory is certainly found in the concept of the signifier. J.-A. Miller says: The Ucs. is One in Two. It is made up of parts which are incompatible and inseparable at the same time. It is an entity which can neither be shared nor reassembled, a vortex or a commutation' (my italics). How then is analysis possible except by placing the analyst in the eye of the vortex, a narcissistic position par excellence? Lack cannot be unified under one concept alone since, as J. Derrida has said, 'Something is not where it should be [castration-truth] but lack is never missing/56 It is easier now to appreciate why The Purloined Letter' functions as a session. It is a narrative discourse. Analysis, as we have to practise it, leaves narrative as such to one side, which is certainly the feature of this text because narrative is the basis of narcissism. Unity, as I have said elsewhere,57 appears again in the concept of the signifier. If lalangue is not language (la langue), then its constitutive element cannot be the signi­ fier. Assuming that the signifier is what constitutes lalangue, necessarily results, not in creating an effect of meaning, even if it is a vortex, but in causing a 'confusion of tongues' (Ferenczi) to emerge from listening. The response of narcissistic language to trauma-catastrophe is the closure of the isolated system. Language (langue) 'before the signifier'? Rather than falling into the traps of a genetism that is open to all imaginable confusions, I would prefer, along with P. Castoriadis-Aulagnier, to use the term representa­ tive, taking up the idea that the psyche cannot represent without representing itself and that its representation can never be one or

unifiable; or again, is never inseparable from knowledge about the T that is being violent. The difference between the signifier and the representative is that the representative is a representative of transfer­ ence (of desire for meaning), whereas the signifier is the transference of a representative. And if it is true that 'the signifier is that which represents a subject for another signifier' (Lacan), it could be said that the representative is what a subject signifies for another representa­ tive. It is not the signified that is unrepresentable (it is fairly polysemic), but that which is represented; that is, in psychoanalytic theory, the unconscious which always has to be inferred from trans­ ference. If the symbolic does indeed govern the psyche, it can only do so by linking the unconscious and reality by recognising their irre­ ducible difference. We therefore need to resort to a more general model such as Heinz von Foerster's, which quite rightly points out that the logical properties of 'invariance' and 'change' are the proper­ ties of first, second or third degree representation.58 He further adds that a 'necessary and adequate formalism for a theory of communication should not contain primary symbols representing communicabiliae (symbols, words, messages, etc.).' From this point of view, it may be said that, if language and lalangue are metaphorical, it is because they necessarily refer to something other than themselves. But narcissism represents a lim it here, in as far as all description involves the one who is doing the describing. This lim it is neither surpassable nor unsur­ passable; if one means that it can or cannot be crossed. But, by its very nature as a limit, it assumes that something else is: the object which has allowed it to constitute itself as such. The characteristic of this lim it is that it is an obstacle or wall against which cathexis or invest­ ment turns round upon the subject's own self and reverses into its opposite in the narcissistic space where the work of language awaits it. Investment acts as transference. Language is the reflective effect of the impossible act. Although language represents it, it is not the image of it, but rather the fascination of having said it. From then on, it no longer speaks about it; it speaks it as much as it is spoken by it. However much this is where the lack of saying or speaking can be identified, the result is fine enough that one tries to make up for this lack rather than the lack of being, living and doing. And for all this to take place there have to be at least two: one with the other. Assigning these terms with capitals when one is referring to the third party only makes sense for Scripture. Transference, which is the representative of the third party, that is, the relationship, has no need of it. Representation is bound and unbound. In the same movement it binds the world, discourse and the subject who does not differ in essence from the structure of the world; but, at best, it will only be an unbound representation.

Analysis oscillates between two illusions: on the one hand, of a discourse which is wholly transmittable, which can be integrated with the discourse itself, which is transcendental speech - this is in line with the ambition of linguists for unequivocal language - and, on the other, of a non-communicable, non-transmittable discourse in which the inexpressible eludes the nature of language: the transcendental unsaid. Between two: representation and affect, that is, the uncon­ scious between words and things. Narcissism aspires to ego unity, to the alter ego, to the Neuter, as a means of reconciling the opposition between One and the Other.

Listening to Narcissism and Counter-Transference The basis of any code is that it has first been broken down by the transmitter into more or less polysemic messages (only the genetic code is rigorously monosemic). This implies that there are messengers to transfer the message, and that its representation is recognised by a mediator who transmits it to a receiver whose code should preserve an effective rapport of difference with the transmitter. Psychoanalytic transference fits such a model and is caught between the vertex of an absolutely singular narcissistic framework - which may ultimately be non-transferable - and the objectal vertex making transference neces­ sary to m aintain the existence of a relationship between the transmitter and receiver as well as within each of them. Quantitative and qualitative aspects are linked here, as are the economic, topo­ graphical and dynamic points of view. Their axial referents are binding and unbinding, the Same and the Other, united in a network of interdependent relations. This necessarily leads us to counter-transference as listening and as an effect of transference. The latter itself is conceived of as an effect induced by counter-transference - in the broad sense of the term59 insofar as the analyst determines the forms of communication; that is, speaking from the lying position, the receiver's invisibility, the appeal to unconscious messages, the analyst's making use of his own psychical activity to decode them and surrendering himself to his own psychical apparatus which is in tune with the patient's. From this point on, the analysis is marked by a twofold movement: the narcissistic transformation of the analyst who relates the entire discourse to himself in as far as he is, in the final analysis, the receiver; and, the objectalisation of this discourse by the interpreta­ tion that he gives to it. Thus a prerequisite for this circuit is that the analyst has an analogous position to the analysand; he is both the same (by identification) and the other (by difference).

Narcissistic discourse induces a counter-transference which depends on the exclusive, inclusive or replicate form that it takes in transference. The analyst's response to a discourse excluding the object, is to feel isolated: feeling cut off from the patient, from his affects, his body, he may react with aggressivity, even rage (narcis­ sistic), with boredom or sleepiness. The analysand seems to be experiencing a dream in which he is at once the dreamer and the dream narrator. This is represented in the painting of the prisoner by Schwind60 in which the analysand is lying in his prison, isolated from the world like Plato's prisoner in his cave. However, instead of noticing the gaoler's shadow, the dream characters represent helping agents; that is, gnomes, one of whom is sawing through the prison bars and has the same features as the dreamer (Freud, dixit), clam­ bering on their king's back, while a winged feminine character is pouring these kind liberators something to drink. Absent from the painting, the analyst is undoubtedly the spectator witnessing the scene. But as a result of feeling cut off from the dream world, it may very well be that he has no other solution than to become the equiv­ alent of sleep for his dreamer. To the invasive, inclusive form of narcissistic discourse, the analyst responds either by passively accepting being devoured, or, if he defends against it, by repression: Noli me tangere. By so doing, and probably without realising it, he repeats the rejecting maternal care or the ice-cold distance of an inaccessible father. Lastly, in reaction to the transferences described by Kohut, the analyst is tempted to take the analysand's megalomaniac transference literally. A situation of complicity evolves in which the analyst becomes the sole guarantor of the analysand's desire; the most favourable conditions for this are created in a training analysis. Or he feels his otherness is being attacked because he finds he is only perceived as the patient's double. He would prefer an image of himself that was more modest, yet more respectful of his individuality. Counter-transference requires the analyst - 1 am speaking here of situ­ ations in which narcissistic discourse does not dominate analytic speech - to narcissistically transform the fragmented bits of the patient's discourse; that is, he gathers them so that they may acquire a different form. A closed narcissistic discourse obliges him to renounce this task since there is nothing to gather; this kind of discourse always being more or less shut in on itself. It thus leads to the analytic situation becoming disinvested and, after the vigorous reaction to analytic frustration, to a more or less extensive narcissistic withdrawal. Counter-transference which does not resist the unfolding of the analytic process, formed out of the narrative-recitative discourse and the associative discourse which alternate in any treat­

ment, depending on the requirements of the moment, in search of a point of equilibrium between narcissistic-cathexes and objectcathexes, can successively and simultaneously play the role of the whole-object and the part-object. This is an unsurmountable contra­ diction in the constitution of the subject in the relationship. It is not possible to think about the analytic situation if one does not bear in mind that the analyst, far from only recognising himself by his desire, is himself subject to the analytic process: he is there to serve it and not to make use of it for his own benefit. Counter-transference cannot be dissociated from the analyst's ego ideal; that is, from his professional goal. In other words, from the goal the analyst has for his patient, whether he admits it or denies it. Today the psychoanalytic diaspora presents us with different cultural choices. For Freud, the result or aim of analysis was sublimation (which concerns the drives), unlike idealisation (which is linked to the object). But in Freud there is an idealisation of sublimation which smacks of his elitism. Hartmann moved this referent towards adapta­ tion. It has to be one thing or the other: either adaptation is de facto and it loses all theoretical interest, or it is de jure and it poses the familiar problems of analytic normativeness which, in fact, are never transcended; for, whatever the referent is, be it the most revolu­ tionary, it is nonetheless normative. The English school prefers growth. But although it is clear in practice what is meant by that, it is more difficult to develop a theory of it. At the heart of the English school, Melanie Klein's approach culminates in reparation, making a permanent mourner of each individual who beats his breast following the ravages of destruction for which he accepts responsibility. Winnicott, more humbly, chooses play. Perhaps this is where he comes closest to the other implicit referent in Freud: humour. Finally, Lacan positions himself in the contradictory couple jouissance-castration (truth). Contradiction, yes, but for what end? Two imperatives alternate: 'Enjoy yourself', says the super-ego, defying castration, but the latter proves to be the stronger of the two, resulting in a new quest for jouissance. A vicious circle is set up which, paradoxically, fits in with adaptation to modern cultural trends and submission to the castrating power of paternal Law. Reich said: 'Let's change the world'; for it is true that changing oneself does not make the world's cruelty any more tolerable. O n the other hand, the displacement means turning away from psychical reality. G oing beyond the narcissistic-object dilemma (changing oneself-changing others), I believe the psychoanalytic referent is the representation of internal psychical reality and external physical reality, with social reality effecting the transition between them. But here there is a danger of being dependent on our cultural prejudices:

the narcissism of small or great differences. All culture is in essence paranoia. It only ensures its narcissistic identity by negating others. Replacing national culture with belonging to a class does not change the problem in any essential way. Representation, in my view, is the only solution which comes near to a truth of which we are the subjects. That it has to be constructed does not alter its referential status. W hat is meant by representation? W hat is the model for it? Four elements need to be associated here, all of which are linked by bi­ univocal relations: binding, unbinding, the Same and the Other. Finally, tied in with this, we find Freud's successive drive theories, and especially the last two: narcissism (positive and negative) and the destructive drives. The Neuter occupies the centre, which in life is always out of true, since the Neuter is foreign to it.

Myth and Tragedy: Dictionary and Folio At last, the myth of Narcissus! Myths, I should say, since the dictionary of mythology records three versions, and a fourth in which the legend's vitality is exhausted.61 Ovid recounts the legend that is most well known. Narcissus is the son of a river-god, Cephissus, and of a nymph, Liriope: origins that were to weigh heavily on his destiny. Tiresias, who the psychoanalyst is constantly coming across, utters an oracle at his birth: Narcissus would live to a well-ripened age provided he did not know himself. The association with Oedipus is almost inevitable. This blind m an is undoubtedly the priest of psychical and physical blindness. As Narcissus is very good-looking, numerous maidens fall in love with him. Their love is met with indifference, for he spurns love. The nymph, Echo, does not give up hope. She pines for him, withdraws from the world and stops eating until the time comes when she is a mere voice. W hen an incomplete form can no longer nourish itself on the form it desires, the only trace of life that remains is the voice; the visible is erased. This scornful hubris leads the nymphs to call for Nemesis, that is, the return of the foreclosed. One very hot day, Narcissus is thirsty after hunting, a masculine activity patronised by the virile Artemis. First, there is Echo's anorexia and now Narcissus' thirst. But for what? He is thirsty for the river paternal - and not for the woman who is an echo of the mother. The spring (the origin) reflects an image he does not recognise and he falls in love with it: Tf you don't love me, you will love yourself to death without knowing yourself, Echo must have said to herself. Thus, just like Echo, Narcissus grows insensitive to the world - identifying vengefully with the mother's double. Leaning forward over his image - would it be fair to say that it is supporting him? - he lets himself

die. It is not suicide but a renunciation of life. The Cephissus is now the Styx into which Narcissus gazes frantically trying to recognise his features. Resurrection: the flower whose only connection with the hero of the legend is its name. To the psychoanalyst's ear, the Beotian version says something different and yet the same thing. Narcissus' origins are only specified in relation to geography. He comes from Helicon, the favourite dwelling place of the Muses who liked to gather around a fountain near Thespiae. This time it is a young boy who loves him: Ameinias (homo-erotic object choice). Weary of this irksome courting, Narcissus (who does not love him) offers him a sword in order to get rid of him . Although polysemic, the symbol is so transparent that it does not call for any commentary. Understanding the message, Ameinias turns the object on himself and dies in front of Narcissus' door while cursing his contemptuous object. Malediction replaces the oracle - a psychological turning point. The rest is the same: the spring and the self-image taken for an object of love. But here it is said that Narcissus commits suicide: identification with the object driven to its death. Consequently, the inhabitants, that is, the Thespians, worship love. At the end of the myth, the oracle is replaced by the cult - retro­ spectively. A red flower - the colour of life, or of castration - emerges from Narcissus' blood. Lastly, Pausanias, too, says the Same and the Other. He gives Narcissus a twin sister - now at last we have bisexuality. The young girl dies - death is no longer the fruit of passion. Narcissus mourns for her inconsolably. Seeing his own reflection in a spring, he imagines he sees the likeness of the dead girl. 'Although he knew very well that it was not his sister, he became accustomed to looking at himself in springs to console himself for his loss.' But who did he see then? Pausanias rationalises the legend, prompted by euhemeristic inspiration. The fourth version is absolutely incomprehensible. The variations have affected the core of semantic intelligibility preserved in the others. Narcissus is killed by a certain Epops (or Eupo) and from his blood a flower emerges. Narcissus thus has three objects: two are repulsive, Echo and Ameinias, and the third is attractive, his twin sister. In the first two versions, he spurns love (heterosexual as much as homosexual); in the third, he loves his other half as himself. He loves himself or he loves her-him. His demise is different: in the first version, he lets himself die; in the second, he commits suicide like the boy who loves him but whom he does not love. In the first version, he drowns; in the second, he wounds himself; in the third, nothing is said about his ultimate fate. In the initial version and the one following it, there is resurrection. Let me point out in passing the resemblance between

the myth of Narcissus and that of Hermaphrodite.62 It cannot be said that Ovid's version is the genuine one but it is the richest on account of its allusion to the oracle (it is destiny), the opposition of the visible body and the voice, the reference to parental images and the absence of mourning, that is, the work of narcissism. This is why it spoke to Freud. Narcissus was young and beautiful: all the versions say so (except the last which says nothing at all). Narcissism is an illness of youth. This mythical vision needs completing with a symmetrical and inverse tragic vision. The figure of the narcissistic father, Lear, comes to m ind here. Shakespeare, the greatest author on narcissism (Richard III, Hamlet, Othello), illustrates this mercilessly. Lear wants to be loved for himself. The quest for love comes up against Cordelia's 'Nothing'. Echoing her, he retorts: 'Nothing?' Then imitating her, 'Nothing will come of nothing: speak again' (I, 1, 91).63 But his daughter keeps her love secret and, above all, reserves the share of love destined for the husband whom she has been promised. W hat happens thereafter is well known. W hen his wicked daughters combine their efforts to silence his rowdy retinue, the downward bidding makes him desperate. In vain he cries: 'I gave you all.' The hundred knights become fifty, twenty-five, ten, five. Finally, one of his daughters says: 'W hat need you one?' This is too m uch for Lear, who cries out: 'Allow not nature more than nature needs, Man's life is cheap as beast's' (II, 4, 269). His despair culminates on the deserted heath amidst hostile nature, the black sky rent asunder by the storm during which the God of mountains - the action is supposed to take place in Biblical times - thunders. Malediction on his daughters and the whole of hum ankind. But let's get to the essential point,64 for everything is worth quoting here on the destructive narcissism of a man of whom one of his evil daughters would say: 'He never knew himself.' In front of poor Tom, who, like a real schizo, is simulating madness in order to escape the persecuting curse of the other father, Lear, gripped with fright and pity, cries out: W hy thou wert better in thy grave than to answer with thy uncov­ ered body this extremity of the skies. Is m an no more than this? Consider him well. Thou owest the worm no silk, the beast no hide, the sheep no wool, the cat no perfume. Ha! Here's three on's are sophisticated;65 thou art the thing itself; unaccommodated

man is no more but such a poor, bare, forked animal as thou art. Off, off, you lendings! Come; unbutton here. (Ill, 4, 103-12) There are no more objects, the uncovered body is the thing itself. But once the loved daughter has been found again, his reason is governed by illusion until the end. His hope of re-conquering the throne is defeated by the lost battle; his daughter is murdered, none of which makes any difference. 'Look on her, look, her lips, Look there, look there!' (V, 3, 312). W hile looking for signs of life coming from this silent m outh, he takes leave of the world's stage. Shakespeare makes us think of Freud, the man obsessed by death, who secretly called his fiancee Cordelia,66 and was the author of the The Theme of the Three Caskets' (1913). The major absence in this tragedy is the mother, the purely feminine element (Winnicott), the founder of primal narcissism. She is represented by three figures: the parent, the companion and death. In the image of the old man carrying his dead daughter, Freud sees the inverse of reality, that is, the old m an being carried off by death in its indifference. This image reveals the limits to narcissism, in which narcissism survives death through filiation and affiliation.

2

Primary Narcissism: Structure or State? (1966-1967) In memory o f J.M.

No concept in the theoretical apparatus of psychoanalysis has under­ gone so many modern reappraisals as the ego. Its complexity, not to mention the contradictions which seem unavoidable when one attempts to formulate a theory of it, has been such that a good many post-Freudian authors, emphasising one particular aspect of the func­ tions it is supposed to fulfil, have given very different versions of it. Furthermore, many other authors have claimed that it was necessary to complete the Freudian theory of the ego and to add to it the concept of the Self (the Anglo-Saxon concept) as the agency repre­ senting narcissistic cathexes. Of the post-Freudian authors, Hartmann was probably the one who most vigorously defended the need for a complement to ego metapsychology. Hartmann was followed by Kohut, who became the most eminent herald of a line of thought to which he himself made an important contribution. However, in France, Grunberger had already preceded him in this field, arousing a certain am ount of surprise, and a good deal of controversy, when he suggested that narcissism should be considered as an agency, in the same way as the ego, the id and the super-ego. Many analysts, following in Hartmann's steps, or sometimes adopting a quite different perspective, included the Self in their conceptual framework. Thus, authors as different from one another in their outlook as Spitz, W innicott, Lebovici, and even the Kleinians, prefer to refer to the Self rather than the ego. Edith Jacobson introduced the notion of a psychophysiological primary Self. Related concepts, such as identity, which one finds in the writings of Erikson, Lichtenstein and Spiegel, /or person­ ation (Racamier), are also closer to the Self than the ego. It is true that, after giving up his earlier hypotheses on the antithesis between ego-libido and object-libido in favour of the fundamental conflict between Eros and the destructive drives, or

between the life drives and the death drives, Freud did not devote much attention to the study of narcissism, and particularly to its future in the theory. 'O n Narcissism: An Introduction' (1914) nonetheless remains one of Freud's most important texts. Whatever the reasons for Freud's eventual loss of interest in narcissism - for instance, the polemic with Jung - it is nevertheless astonishing that the inventor of the concept did not even consider it useful to explain why what he had so convincingly described at an earlier juncture should now be re-evaluated and incorporated within another theor­ etical ensemble. He had not failed to do this, for instance, with the unconscious, when he replaced the first topography with the second. This is all the more surprising in that the role of the ego was to be given more importance with the elaboration of the second topog­ raphy. Freud's readers, psychoanalysts, first and foremost, had more than one reason therefore to expect a re-evaluation of narcissism, which in fact never occurred. It is not surprising that this half-forgotten concept returned in force to haunt the works of psychoanalysts; for the clinical reality of narcissism is a fact, even if the way it is interpreted may vary from one author to another. Of all the questions relating to narcissism, primary narcissism is the most muddled and controversial. Furthermore, there is no other issue which calls the ego's status into question more. How can one adhere to a line of development which goes from non-differentiation or primitive fragmentation to a unified image of the ego, whereas the epistemological revolution, based on the concept unconscious, postu­ lates an unsurmountable split, as the title of one of Freud's last articles, The Splitting of the Ego in the Process of Defence' (1940b [1938]) indicates? This is all the more true since, after 1923, the ego was said to be largely unconscious, especially of its defence mecha­ nisms. Linking narcissism to the accomplishment of Eros alone, an essential characteristic of which is to carry out increasingly extensive syntheses - which implies in particular a synthesis of the ego drives leads us to wonder what the effect of the destructive drives on narcis­ sistic cathexes and primary narcissism might be. This will be the main focus of the discussion that is to follow and it will often lead us far away from this central issue. The point of view that I shall adopt chal­ lenges a certain idea of primary narcissism which regards it as a mere stage or state of psychical development. I shall endeavour to go beyond the level of mythical description - as is the case in any recon­ struction based on genetic assumptions - in order to understand a structure of the psychical apparatus based on a theoretical model. In Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920) Freud wrote:

I do not think a large part is played by what is called 'intuition' in work of this kind. From what I have seen of intuition, it seems to me to be the product of a kind of intellectual impartiality.1 Trying to make one synthetic interpretation of all the figures or states described by Freud under the denom ination of narcissism is not necessarily a feasible task. The contradictions one comes across in so doing leave narcissism in a state of open inquiry.

Absolute Primary Narcissism: Narcissism of Dreams or Narcissism of Sleep? The condition dominating all the other aspects of narcissism, and which seems to govern the configuration that has been given to these forms as a whole, is primary narcissism. W hen Freud used this term for the last time, he added a qualifier which gives the impression that he was trying to radicalise the notion. He spoke of absolute, primary narcissism.2 But let there be no mistake; narcissism is cited here not in the sense of an experience but in the sense of a concept, or perhaps as part of a concept. In any case there is nothing which resembles a positive quality of an experiential order. Sleep might stand such a comparison, but not dreams. Sleep requires the subject to lay aside his wrappings, which Freud light-heartedly compares with leaving behind in the dream's antechamber the accessories (for instance, spectacles and other prostheses) used to compensate for organ defi­ ciencies. Although Freud compared this with returning to the beginnings of life, the period spent in the maternal womb does not take place in an atmosphere of victory or blossoming of any sort. The conditions fulfilled there, just as in intrauterine existence, are 'repose, warmth and exclusion of stimulus'.3 Entering the condition of sleep can only occur if the ego leaves behind its attachments, acquisitions and possessions, drawing in its cathexes or investments. Consequently, if primary narcissism is indeed an absolute state, it is because it represents the lim it of what we can imagine about a state totally free of excitation. But this notion of lim it is itself open to confusion. By resorting to it, one immediately introduces a quality, an affective tonality, the presence of which is explained by arguing that the experience that is specific to it is encountered on the way towards primary narcissism, before there is any possibility of it being accomplished. Unless one is prepared to give up the idea that the lifting of tensions is the m ain purpose of narcissism, these states, which are described by using terms denoting a state of bliss, cannot be amalgamated without destroying the principle of quietude postu­ lated by absolute primary narcissism. Freud does not consider dreams

as a manifestation on the path towards sleep as such but, on the contrary, as the expression of that which refuses to be silenced, and which sleep has to integrate if it is not to be interrupted (a breach of narcissism: this is what Freud has to say about the unconscious thoughts which are the origin of dreams, showing the sleeping ego that its capacity to impose its will is limited). In the same way, for Freud, narcissistic elation or expansion, connoting narcissistic regres­ sion are, so to speak, extraneous, and a sign of the subject's reluctance to let himself slip away into silence. For when the analysand has the feeling that the analyst is no longer present in the session, one has to explain why he does not remain silent and why he does not stop talking. Is it not precisely when there is a danger that his own discourse results in his no longer being seen or heard by the analyst that he swallows him like an egg, incorporating him, so that the discourse is not interrupted but continues after the threat of an absence - which could very well be his own - has been warded off? Even when this feeling is experienced during a pause, the aware­ ness and expression of it are the signs that such a moment has been ruptured. Freud seemed to want to distinguish clearly between the narcissism of dreams and the narcissism of sleep. If we read the text4 carefully, we realise that two very similar formulations should be understood more as reflecting two different modalities than as the orientations of a single process for which Freud does not supply a theory. In fact the narcissism of dreams is the same as the narcissism of the dreamer. The latter is unmistakably the principal dream character who, as it were, always glorifies the dreamer - a point of view which is by no means undermined by dreams of self-punishment or nightmares. Whereas the narcissism of sleep surpasses, so to speak, the dreamer's wishes; it supports the movement of the dream and withdraws from it into a region that is out of reach, in which the dreamer himself vanishes. When, in a dream, there is an unrecognisable character or an unknown face or, one whose features are not even recognisable, it represents the dreamer or his mother. I shall come back to this later. This blank face which is only present in outline, or which is only marked by its location in space, is perhaps the leitmotif that will guide us in constructing the theory left in abeyance by Freud.

The Principle of Constancy or the Principle of Inertia? The separation I have just referred to between the narcissism aimed at removing tension, of which sleep is not an illustration (how can one speak of sleep without dreams?) but an abstract model, and the narcissism of dreams, or of the dreamer who experiences states of bliss

or states in which his bodily limits are overwhelmed during waking life, was never completely explained by Freud. It is customary to link Freud's loss of interest in narcissism to the theoretical reformulation which led to the final drive theory and, above all, to the introduction of the death drive; a point of view that is no doubt justified. But redis­ tributing the connotations of the drive according to a different configuration, and in terms of the drive orientation, was not the only innovation as far as narcissism was concerned. The aspiration for a state of zero excitation - the insusceptibility to excitation of uncathected systems already alluded to in the 'Project' is a constant element in Freud's thinking. This is how he described the organism's tendency, which thereby ensures its mastery over stimuli, in his first formulations, inspired by psychobiology. Focusing there­ after on the vicissitudes of desire, he likened pleasure to the cessation of sexual tension, to the removal of the pressure of desire by its satis­ faction causing a pleasant state of relaxation. But experience probably taught him that the longing for a lowering of tension was, so to speak, independent of it. It was no longer to be seen merely as a m ani­ festation of the mastery of the psychical apparatus but perhaps, or even probably, as a state, even if there was no way of telling whether it was a consequence of its functioning, one of its aims, or if it itself had to obey it as though it were an exigency. In An Outline of Psycho­ Analysis (1940a [1938]) he says: The consideration that the pleasure principle demands a reduc­ tion, at bottom the extinction perhaps,5 of the tensions of instinctual needs (that is, Nirvana) leads to the still unassessed relations between the pleasure principle and the two primal forces, Eros and the death instinct.6 The modern versions of primary narcissism which have been put forward provide us with many partial images of these relations, particularly where the links between the state of Nirvana and Eros are concerned; but they tell us nothing about the relationship between Nirvana and the death drive. Either it is completely ignored, or the states described - which can only be interpreted as resulting from the fusion of Nirvana and Eros - are only thought of as being stages on the way to complete Nirvana when the death drive would take over from Eros but would not be its antagonist. As was often the case, Freud forgot that he had already begun to examine and even to resolve these questions which had escaped eval­ uation. The idea of a state free of excitation had haunted Freud from the time of his neurological formulations on neuronic inertia to his search for backing in Fechner's psychology (.Beyond the Pleasure

Principle, 1920). He paid for his allegiance to the banner of his illus­ trious elder by renouncing an original point of view which he was only to rediscover many years later; for in the 'Project' there was already tendency to make an absolute of that which, later, would be known as absolute primary narcissism. The principle of inertia - and not the principle of constancy - was the first to be stated by Freud. The 'original trend' of the nervous system to inertia is to 'bring the level of tension to zero'. For Freud, this original trend was the primary function, whose aim was to keep the system in a state free of excita­ tion. Constancy obeys secondary processes which are governed by the necessity of maintaining a m in im um level of cathexis.7 It is impor­ tant to realise that Freud only used the word principle in the case of the principle of inertia; maintaining excitation at a constant level was not raised to the same rank. The principle of constancy was, however, frequently mentioned by Freud in the Letters to Fliess (Manuscript D, May 1894, letters dated 29 November 1895 and 8 December 1895; Manuscript K, the letter of 1 January 1895) at the time when he was elaborating the 'Project'. Moreover, the first mention of it comes even earlier, in the Studies on Hysteria (1895c [1893-5]).8 But although the principle of constancy was attributed to Fechner, the principle of inertia was purely Freudian. W hich means that, in the cursive allu­ sions or correspondence, the only reference is to maintaining excitation at a constant level, as low as possible; whereas, in the 'Project', where Freud was trying to systematise his ideas, his wish to make a theory of it led him to pursue his assumptions to their logical limit and to give preference to the principle whose purpose is to attain the level zero, and not merely the 'lowest level possible'. Here we can see the origin of a duality of principles whose order of prece­ dence was to fluctuate in Freud's writings thereafter. But if we are to understand their permutations or their later fusion properly, it is first necessary to notice in what ways they are different. For Freud, the principle of inertia was fundamental,9 belonging to the order of primary aims (characteristic of the primary neuronal system). It owes its existence to the neuronal system's attribute of totally suppressing excitation by means of flight which, on the other hand, is totally impossible in the case of internal stimuli. In the light of this impossi­ bility the only solution is to keep tension at its lowest possible level. Freud describes this function as secondary.10 This is a good opportunity for noting the liberties that Freud took with the genetic point of view, while he endeavoured to make a division between primary and secondary functions. It is perfectly clear that the possibilities of suppressing excitation by means of flight in a young organism are strictly limited; and, that the most intense and frequent stimuli unquestionably come from the major needs which,

logically, should be in a position of primarity. But Freud did not stop there. W hat was important for him was to focus on the efficiency or success of the operation of taking flight from disturbing stimuli and to establish the configuration unexcitability - tension - flight - abol­ ishing tension - unexcitability as a model; that is, as a fundamental aspiration, within a psychological perspective, even if it was unrealisable in practice. This is why keeping tension as low as possible and guarding against any increase of it was, at this stage in his thinking, a second choice, as the English say; that is, a secondary function. It is this difference that Freud apparently gave up in Beyond the Pleasure Principle when he merged the two principles into one. Taking refuge behind the authority of Fechner, just when he was at his most auda­ cious, was rather characteristic of him. By making Fechner's principle of constancy the organising principle of which lowering tension to the level zero was only one special case, he increased his under­ standing of primary-secondary relations. Primarity was granted to the principle of constancy from which he inferred the pleasure prin­ ciple,11 and secondarity to the reality principle. It is understandable, therefore, that this change has been a source of confusion. There is a temptation to regard the lifting of tension, accompanied by a return to calm produced by the satisfaction of a drive which had hitherto generated unpleasure, as equivalent to the state of absolute elimination of tension in the initial model, where non-excitation, a state in which the system is out of action, was the absolute criterion. At first sight, the difference between inertia and calm is clear; just as it is between night and obscurity. This transposi­ tion is all the more significant in that Freud recast the relations between the principle of constancy and the pleasure principle in terms of the relations between an abstract theoretical model and its concrete illustration.12 Apparently, however, he was overlooking the fact that he had already applied the notion of the relativity of pleasure to that of m aintaining excitation at a constant level when faced with the total extinction of stimuli towards which the inertia principle tends. Let us recall, however, that this apparent retreat coin­ cided with the introduction of the death drive.13 And yet there is an indication of uncertainty surrounding this relegation of the inertia principle to a position of secondary importance. In the penultimate chapter of Beyond the Pleasure Principle - and one might have thought that since Freud no longer felt the need for backing, and had now expressed his opinion on the death drive, he would now be able to return to it - he wrote: ' The dom inating tendency of mental life, and perhaps of nervous life in general, is the effort to reduce, to keep constant or to remove

internal tension due to stimuli (the Nirvana principle, to borrow a term from Barbara Low [1920, 73]) - a tendency which finds expression in the pleasure principle; and our recognition of that fact is one of our strongest reasons for believing in the existence of death instincts.14

A Theory of States and a Theory of Structures So the order of things had now been restored: the ultimate tendency of the Nirvana principle was to eliminate excitation and the pleasure principle was simply derived from it. The first theory of the 'Project' was thus legitimised and was to be reinforced even more indisputably a few years later in the first paragraphs of 'The Economic Problem of Masochism' (1924), where Freud went a considerable way towards clarifying his ideas. He proclaimed the divorce between the Nirvana principle and the pleasure principle and warned against any further confusion between them .15 Their respective characteristics were described as follows: The Nirvana principle expresses the trend of the death instinct; the pleasure principle represents the demands of the libido; and the modification of the latter principle, the reality principle, represents the influence of the external world. (SE, XIX, p. 160) The task of reducing tension no longer fell to the pleasure principle the notion of constancy disappeared from this theoretical reorganisa­ tion - and remained the exclusive task of the Nirvana principle, whereas the function of the pleasure principle was very closely connected with the 'qualitative characteristics of stimuli'. We are therefore justified in postulating that all states comprising an affec­ tive characteristic, or pleasure and its derivative forms (elation, expansion, or any other manifestation of the same order), are foreign to absolute primary narcissism. Let me point out right away that proposing this trinity does not infringe upon Freud's epistemological rule, which keeps all the antitheses within a context of duality. The reality principle is merely a modified pleasure principle. In fact, there is no other solution than to consider that the problem has two aspects to it: first, there is a primary antithesis between Nirvana and the pleasure principle; and second, between the pleasure principle and the reality principle, the latter of the two being more common. For although Freud uses the same terms to describe the transformation of the Nirvana principle into the pleasure principle and the relation between the pleasure principle and the reality principle,16 he does not connect the two

operations. We have no other choice but to assume that Freud could not connect these two modifications because they belong to funda­ mentally different registers or spheres and do not tolerate being mixed or amalgamated. In his first text on narcissism in 1914 Freud gave an indication of how the two aspects of this problem might be explained: The individual does actually carry on a twofold existence: one to serve his own purposes and the other as a link in a chain, which he serves against his will, or at least involuntarily. The individual himself regards sexuality as one of his own ends, whereas from another point of view he is an appendage to his germ-plasm, at whose disposal he puts his energies in return for a bonus of pleasure. He is the mortal vehicle of a (possibly) immortal substance - like the inheritor of an entailed property, who is only the temporary holder of an estate which survives h im .17 Is it fair to suppose that the role Freud attributes to the legacy of the species can be sacrificed with impunity, on the basis that this elabo­ ration stems from a metabiological romanticism which a healthy scientific reflex requires us to shun? It may be felt that Freud's state­ ment is outdated and that his assumptions with regard to this part of the theory are clumsy and debatable. But there is m uch less justifica­ tion for refusing to examine the fundamental problem, which is neither the role of the species, nor the heritage of acquired character­ istics. It is a two-sided problem: the current general trend in psychoanalysis is resolutely ontogenetic; if anything, its error is that it is not enough so. Freud was more ontogenetic in that he did not allow himself to be paralysed by a linear conception of time. But he was constantly having to navigate between a theory of states, which continued to retain the descriptive aspect of clinical forms, and a theory o f structures which created models, if not as pure conventions, at least as the development of these states to the point at which their function and their meaning was revealed in the most abstract terms. The antithesis between the pleasure principle and the Nirvana principle is, I think, a good example. If Freud took a wrong turning with the principle of constancy, surely it was because this notion was halfway between a theory of states - in this case the state of pleasure - and a theory of structures, the constant level of excitation holding the middle ground between the extinction of excitation and the heightening of internal tension. If one gives the matter careful thought, it will be noticed that the theory of states which- gave rise to the hybrid monster of psychoanalytic phenomenology is, in the

last resort, a theory of the subject's manifestations, but not a theory of the subject. And while the conflict has not gone away, it has, as one says today, been 'personalised'. In the end the subject is always a volitional being who wants something or cannot do something, who allows himself, or does not allow himself something, who longs for, or is frightened by something. This being the case, it is difficult to understand why an analysis conducted along these lines would not remove the obstacles when the invisible hindrances have been brought to light and identified. It is easy to see that, even when the analyst's good will is accompanied by lucidity and vigilance, it has little mutative effect. Although there is some consistency in the concept of the subject's Entzweiung, it is not to be understood as the antithesis and reconciliation of two wills, but as a conflict between two systems, inspired by two antithetical and obstinate ways of thinking, which can be noticed even in the effects produced by the way the discourse is constituted, or in the utterance itself (in the suture and cutting of the elements of a section of the enunciation and in what follows them), in which the signs of the work of this division are reflected. The theory of structures seeks to establish the conditions under which discourse is possible; the organisation of the latter being such that the subject can only be apprehended in terms of his life trajectory whose functioning is the mark of its reality. The subject is therefore not in a position of m odality18 in which the index at the origin of the utterance designates the operation of thinking as being distinct from the representation it is aiming at; neither is he at the end of the sentence at which point, once the utterance is over, one may be able to throw light on everything that has preceded it by looking backwards. He is the vehicle by means of which there is an utterance. It should not be thought that we repudiate wholesale everything in psychoanalysis pertaining to the theory of states. It represents a first level of psychoanalytic epistemology; and, in their silent com m unication with their analysands, or with other analysts, psychoanalysts cannot avoid expressing themselves as follows: in fact he wants this or that; at bottom he is saying this or that; he is again reliving, and so on. But this inevitable stage cannot be considered as the degree of organisation which accounts for the analytic process. W hat guarantees the functioning of this process is the analyst's silence which, in the last resort, has no other justification. The great merit of the impetus Lacan gave to this kind of research was to show how the results of our psychoanalytic investigations, notw ith­ standing the fact that their structural intent is respected, refer to organisations that are already structured.

The Psychical Apparatus and the Drives Let us turn our attention for a m om ent to the psychical apparatus. There can be no doubt that this construction is linked in Freud's thinking with a theoretical model situated off the path between the brain and conscious thought, creating an essential discontinuity between them. But Freud gives this model a space19 and a time (since he speaks of the relations of seniority between the agencies). He does not take the trouble to say which space and which time are involved but, since it is space and time that are at stake, the psychical appa­ ratus has been reintegrated w ithin a pre-Freudian universe of representation by treating it as one of the multiple organisms defined by our conscious space and time. This indicates the beginnings of an attempt to look for a structure within an ontogenetic framework. The psychical apparatus becomes a kind of self-codification in which the subject constructs himself. As one might well suspect, this shift tends to shrink and, ulti­ mately, to superimpose the dimensions of the psychical apparatus on the ego, and flouts Freud's remark that individual experience, as it is registered by the ego, only determines 'accidental and contemporary events'.20 It is logical to assume that the effect of structuring has to come from elsewhere if the ego is thus involved in the instantaneity of the present.21 In order to preserve the metaphorical value of this apparatus, the question needs to be turned round the other way; rather than trying to find out what kind of apparatus psychic life may relate to, the question we should ask ourselves is: what is an apparatus from the point of view of the psyche which is assumed to be its function? Can the principles which we have examined at length be considered as original first causes or as regulators of functioning? In the latter case, all 'governing' power would be taken away from them and there would be no further reason to use the word principle. Regarding them as first^causes or, at least, as that which conceptualises such causes, is to see in them the ultimate foundation of any kind of psychical organisation. However, a careful examination of the last systematic dogmatic, even, Freud says - theoretical work, that is, the Outline, shows that it accords equal status to the theory of the drives and the principles of mental functioning, that is, the same conceptual worth. Even the values of the first topography (conscious, preconscious, unconscious) are confined to psychical qualities whose status can only be explained by the structure of the psychical apparatus, in the same way that the development of the sexual function - albeit the origin of everything we know about Eros - is subordinated to the theory of the drives.22 Freud shows in the seventh chapter of Beyond the Pleasure

Principle that he was aware of the difficulties involved in these rela­ tions, when he turned to the question - m uch too briefly, unfortunately - of the differences between function and tendency. Notably he says there that the pleasure principle is a tendency oper­ ating in the service of a function ... whose business it is to free the mental apparatus entirely from excitation or to keep the amount of excitation in it constant or to keep it as low as possible. We cannot yet decide with certainty in favour of any of these ways of putting it; but it is clear that the function thus described would be concerned with the most universal endeavour of all living substance - namely to return to the quiescence of the inorganic world.23 In addition to this assertion, he announced an entirely fresh series of investigations which, for lack of time, he was never able to carry out fully, in which the relations between principle and drive can be inferred; and, he maintained that there was a contradiction, if not between the particular and the universal, at least between the personal and impersonal. At this point, we can say that the principles are at the crossroads of the relations between the psychical apparatus and the theory of the drives.24 At the core of a drive there is a principle which enables us to gain an understanding of the equipment that governs its functioning in a way that on no account should be understood as the impact of a force that is external to it, but rather as a process within the constituents of the drive. As a result, the latter is deployed, distributed, and ampli­ fied, the structure of the apparatus allowing its elements to be linked up and primitively condensed, quasi-tautologically, within a system of relations. This could not, for example, be an act of repression, an operation that is itself subject to the pleasure-unpleasure principle. The 'universal' function of the drive is particularised in an individual, but on the condition that the individual acquiesces to it, which can only happen if there is a 'tendency'. Nonetheless, this word should not lead us astray; it is not a synonym for an 'attempt' (tentative) but of a 'tension towards' (tension vers). And if the aim here is the inac­ cessible absolute, the absolute is displaced on to the effort of tension. Now, the relations between the psychical apparatus and the drives have rarely been examined in detail. It is quite usual to talk about the situation of the drives in the id25 (the id as the seat or reservoir of the instinctual drives). W hat is less frequently discussed is the articula­ tion between the theory of the drives and the psychical apparatus. It is generally acknowledged that the theory of the psychical appa­ ratus represents the last stage of psychoanalytic theorisation and, in a

certain sense, this is true. It is true at this first level of the theory, that which Freud calls the part of the individual whose type of organisa­ tion is reflected in this construction. But for Freud, drive theory brings into play what is already-structured, a notion I referred to earlier, the structure of which organises the possible conditions of func­ tioning in which a subject reveals himself. While, like Freud, one is reluctant to see in this a manifestation of the species, one needs at least to recognise this dimension of depuis-toujours-deja-la; this montage which is never immediately accessible but to which all organisation refers. It is not possible to say whether the drives are always for the psychical apparatus or if the psychical apparatus is for the drives. 'Already structured' does not mean that the structural mode is identical in all cases. Indeed, the interest of the system resides in its heterogeneity. The psychical apparatus represents the construction that drive activity would be capable of if its mode of functioning were other than agonistic and antagonistic. But conversely, one would have no idea what the fundamental nature of such agonism and antagonism might be if there was no psychical apparatus to represent it for us. A better idea of these relations can perhaps be obtained by recalling Freud's view that the drives act essentially within dynamic and economic dimensions. They do not have any localisation, even within the frame­ work of a conventional abstract model.26 Whereas, the psychical apparatus has the characteristic of being extended in space, that is, of converting modes of transformation originating from the dynamic economic system - and we will see in due course which ones - into an interdependent system of surfaces and spaces (or locations) capable of receiving qualitative and quantitative modes of varied inscriptions, filtering and retaining them in forms that are appropriate for them. Between the undifferentiated drive, which some authors present variously as a current of force, a tide or as a tachist painting, and Freud's elegant and precise montage, which nonetheless seems to many td'be too restrictive today, the final theory of the drives may provide a point of mediation. Here the functions of Eros and the destructive drives converge with the major categories of the tendency towards union and the tendency towards division, of fusion and defusion. Using more modern vocabulary one might speak of conjunc­ tion and disjunction, of suture and cutting.27 But Freud was not content with bringing together, in the manner of classical antitheses, two terms of equal value in order, through the repetition and setting up of new relations, to end up with an organising, ordering power. Eros and the destructive drive do not form a pair of equal terms. An indication of this is that Freud always refrained from nam ing the death drive in any other way than this (except by the related formula

of the destructive drives). For if the compulsion to repeat is the mode of activity characteristic of any drive - which, as F. Pasche puts it aptly, would be like the instinct of the instinct - it can be said that something of the essence of the death drive has passed over to Eros; or, that Eros has tapped into it for its own benefit, which disqualifies the death drive and means that one can no longer speak of it merely as the invisible and silent term of a couple whose difference can only be determined by a shadow cast over the sparkling light of Eros. Recasting the antithesis would enable Freud to say - a first duplication - that the two drives could operate against each other or combine with each other. W hile drive defusion - in the case of discordant work, examples of which can be found in pathological states such as melancholia or paranoia - may give an idea of it in love-hate rela­ tions, the collaboration of the two drives is of course puzzling if one does not accept the idea of hate being neutralised by love, and, if one is not satisfied with employing arguments of a quantitative nature to suppress the issue. The internalisation of this contradiction led to the rediscovery of a duality in Eros which was to be a second duplication; namely the division of Eros between ego-love and object-love and the division between self-preservation and the preservation of the species. Although, at first sight, it is tempting to put ego-love and self-preser­ vation together on one side, and object-love and the preservation of the species on the other, one soon realises that, by so doing, one is doing away with the antithesis between personal erotism, of which object-love is a part, and impersonal erotism whose heuristic value is of such importance. This perhaps offers a way of exploring further the richness of the Lacanian theory of the subject as a structure. W hen Lacan writes: 'Only the signifier can tolerate coexistence; only the disorder consisting (in synchrony) of elements deployed (in diachrony) in the most indestructible order. This associative rigour of which it is capable, in the second dimension, even merges with the commutability which it shows is interchangeable in the first',28 one may wonder whether such commutability does not have a bearing on the two double registers that I have just mentioned. We should there­ fore not overlook the troubling expression used by Freud in the 'Project' - so skilfully interpreted by Jacques Derrida29 - according to which, the processes uncovered in the study of neuroses, which only differ from the normal in their intensity, are quantities in motion. The question of primary narcissism appears to have been overshadowed by the problems involved in the theory of the drives. We shall see that this is not in fact the case when we come back to the question from another angle, by examining the following problem: is narcissism merely a consequence of the orientation of cathexes?

The Origin and Vicissitudes of Primary Cathexes Our thinking on the first forms of exchange is dominated by the paradigm of the amoeba. However, although Freud only made use of this analogy to compare the movements of cathexes being sent out and withdrawn, the peripheral phenomena, which were the main reason for resorting to this image, have themselves become peripheral in our thinking, thus making room for the idea that the general form of amoebas should be taken as a model for the first forms of psychical organisation, and particularly of the ego. Nevertheless, while this analogy may, at a pinch, be congruent with the ego Freud described before the last topography, contradic­ tions inevitably arise from continuing to make use of the comparison after the final conception of the ego. The vesicle, a small self-enclosed sphere, suggests the existence of a mode of functioning which does not fit in easily with Freud's ambi­ guities or imprecise observations on the earliest relations between the ego and the id ... Another paradigm, that of the reservoir, may be regarded as consubstantial with it, and Freud even condenses the two of them in some texts. It required all of Strachey's penetrating vigi­ lance to analyse this image.30 Yet is it not enough to distinguish between the storage function and the source of supply; or to note that the contradictory versions Freud gives of the origin of the first cathexes - alternately in the ego (before its differentiation in the last topography), then in the id and finally, paradoxically, in the ego again - are resolved in the conception of the undifferentiated ego and id? This provides a useful clarification but needs examining more closely. The primitive, undifferentiated ego-id 'originally' serves two functions at once: as a source of supply and a storage tank. As a source of supply, it sends its cathexes out in two directions: towards objects (centrifugal orientation) and towards the future ego (centripetal orientation), thus contributing to the second function. As it develops, the undifferentiated ego, is basically a storage tank. And while the ego unquestionably plays a role as a source of energy supply for objectcathexes, it also watches over the reserves of narcissistic libido. In other words, ego-id differentiation introduces a functional separa­ tion. But the ego recuperates part of the function it gave up in the id's favour in order to secure in priority a store of narcissistic cathexis. It therefore acts upon the object-cathexes originating in the id in such a way that they do not compromise too much the narcissistic cathexis under its control. However, it is the detail of this differentiation that needs clarifying. W hat cannot be doubted is that Freud, as I have already shown, linked the state of absolute primary narcissism with the lifting of tension and an ego-relationship. Although he fully

insisted on the possibility of a conversion in the exchanges between narcissistic-libido and object-libido, he equally stressed the durability of a narcissistic organisation which never disappears. The libido cathects the ego and in this way provides itself with a love-object, a process that can be observed throughout life. But Freud never associ­ ates the state of absolute primary narcissism with the id. Freud quite frequently employs the term ego to designate either the ego stricto sensu or the primitive undifferentiated ego-id. But the opposite is not true. Freud never associates the id with functions or processes belonging exclusively to the ego. Now, to define narcissism in terms of the qualities of elation or expansion or any other affect of the same order, even when one is referring to the undifferentiated ego-id, is to refer to properties which are only meaningful within the system of the id.31 This means that, in order to define their relation to narcissism, they are being intro­ duced in a context which is not appropriate to ego-cathexes. It is not enough to liken them to omnipotence; for elation and expansion are consequences of omnipotence and not the process by which om nipo­ tence sets in. This consists in suppressing the object's power of resistance or the power of reality by denying dependence on them and not by merging with them. Such fusion, if it occurred, would only be possible once the ego had assured itself that it had the upper hand over the object's powers which it appropriates to this end. The Nirvana principle - which, as I have pointed out, has its place in a theory of structures, but is in fact absent from a theory of states in which only signs of a lessening of tensions are perceptible - has undergone a modification in living organisms. It is true that it is often necessary to turn to the pleasure principle (which is fundamentally different, however, as it is tied up with qualities of pleasure) in order to find a trace of it. In the Freudian system, where modifications never completely erase the state they modify, we perhaps need to see whether a displacement of values makes it possible to rediscover what appears to have disappeared. And since we feel condemned by the death drive to seeing nothing but the invisible, and to questioning only that which is silent, we have to explore that aspect of Eros which resembles it. It is clear, I think, that the love the ego has for itself (ensuring its independence from the external world and saving it from expending cathexes on the object), the flowing back of object-libido towards the ego, and the absence of conflict - provided that the quality of this ego-love compensates for the libidinal quality intended for the object and that it protects against the disappointments that the latter can inflict - succeeds in creating an enclosed system, and comes very close to the condition which the ego strives for in dreamless sleep. A border

situation is created here in which the 'clamour of life7of Eros, and the struggle against Eros, manage against all odds to introduce that which is at the origin of death into the very heart of love, settling their debts at the object's expense. But how does this come about? We shall have to take a roundabout route before being in a position to answer this question.

The Aim-Inhibited Drive Even though the current state of psychoanalytic research only sees the drives of self-preservation at work in the ego (libidinalised since the introduction of narcissism), the repeated observation32 that other drives may be operating in it has gone unheeded. As Freud tied the relations of the ego to reality to safeguard the pleasure principle, without saying more about the forms of this non-libidinal drive activity, the conclusion has been drawn that this silence must have covered one of Freud's mysterious assertions, the secret of which he took with him to the grave. Between those drives that were not libidinal, 'which seem to be operating in the ego', and the elusive work of the death drive, Freud was to introduce an intermediary series which he regarded as belonging to the constituents of Eros. Alongside the uninhibited sexual drive proper and the drive of self-preservation, Freud set the instinctual impulses of an aim-inhibited or sublimated nature derived from the sexual instinct.33 He would undoubtedly have resisted any inter­ pretation which gave this contingent autonomy under the umbrella of the 'social instincts', which were very much in vogue in the psychology of the period. But after further examination he distin­ guished the aim-inhibited drives. The best description Freud gives of them can be found in the thirty-second lecture in which he likens them to sublimation.

s

Besides this, we have grounds for distinguishing instincts which are 'inhibited in their aim' - instinctual impulses from sources well known to us with an unambiguous aim, but which come to a stop on their way to satisfaction, so that a durable object-cathexis comes about and a permanent trend [of feeling]. Such, for instance, is the relation of tenderness, which undoubtedly originates from the sources of sexual need and invariably renounces its satisfaction.34 In the end it was the idea of restriction, of holding back, of the non­ development of the cathexis which won through, justifying a special denomination. By proposing to give a special place to this type of drive, Freud was pursuing a postulate which he had already had a

glimpse of in 1912.35 W hen he credited the affectionate current of infantile sexuality with the power of carrying the primitive sexual cathexes of the component drives along with it, he was raising the question of where the affectionate current gets so much power from. And although in his Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (1905), instinctual inhibitions result from the latency period, sexual impulses being held back by dams impeding the full development of sexual activity, Freud was then led to distinguish the effect of the action of the dams - unquestionably repression - and an inhibition internal to the instinct, as becomes increasingly clear in each of the passages in which he approaches the question. It is not repression that is the cause of the aim-inhibited drive, since it is precisely the manner in which the drive avoids repression that is the particular feature of this drive vicissitude. And it is thanks to this status of the drive, which is not dismantled but simply arrested in its development, that it can assume the power to carry others along with it which are more attached to component functions. It should not be thought either that the aim-inhibited drives can always be placed alongside the pregenital drives with which they are at variance. The characteristic of the pregenital drives is to aim for organ pleasure. Later, as a result of the new sexual aim of union with the object, the genital erotic components carry out transformations denouncing the orientation of the pregenital drives towards organ pleasure and subordinating them to ends which confine them to preliminary pleasure. Some of them will even be excluded. In other words, the drives which have undergone an inhibition of aim will be those whose activity has been best preserved. They will be combined in equal parts with the erotic cathexes proper of the genital phase, whereas those whose tendency to satisfaction has not been able, like the ones just mentioned, to make do with an 'approximation', will be left behind. They will contribute, by exchanging their aims and their objects, to the complexity of the wish-organisation. Nevertheless, their time will be limited. As they have not undergone an inhibition of aim, they will simply facilitate union with the object. One can see the difference: on the one hand, there is an inhibition of drive activity which maintains the object by sacrificing the complete satis­ faction of the wish for erotic union with it, yet conserves a form of attachment which fixes the investment of it; and, on the other, an unrestrained development of drive activity on the sole condition that aims and objects enter into the operations of permutation and substi­ tution, the only limitation being the influence of repression and other drives. The first type of activity, which ultimately dominates, makes use of the drives of the second type which are compatible with its purpose and rejects the others. It is evident that the fate of this

contingent of drives with uninhibited aim is necessarily the most vulnerable and the most suited to supporting the insubordination of the ego-drives. Paradoxically, the aim-inhibited drives are those which should, first and foremost, be characterised by their link with the object. W ithout saying so in so many words, Freud seemed to consider that what might be called the genital vocation towards the object, in its quality as the definitive libidinal object, that is, of sexual union, was present from the outset. It is in order to safeguard this purpose, thereby avoiding that the scene is not completely aban­ doned to the pregenital drives which give primacy to organ pleasure before all else, that the inhibition of the aim of the drive occurs.36 The Oedipus complex involves relations of affection and hostility. Yet there exists a relative independence between the relations of affec­ tion or hostility and the phallic organisation under whose aegis the Oedipus complex comes. The affectionate relationship towards parents is tied up with everything involved in the sensual relationship, censored by the threat of castration. But there is no confusion between the two. Evidence for this may be found in the fact that maintaining an affectionate cathexis can be the best way of getting round the fear of castration, as in the situation described in the article 'On the Universal Tendency to Debasement in the Sphere of Love' (1912). If Freud linked the maternal object-cathexes in the Oedipus complex with those which originally were related to the mother's breast,37 then it is perhaps at this level that the inhibition of aim needs to be under­ stood; that is, at the moment when the loss of the object-breast goes hand in hand with perceiving the mother as a whole object.38

The Function of the Ideal: Desexualisation and the Death Drive W hen one considers the fact that the drive is in contention with itself, and that this is not due to an evolving process, as well as the fact that this restriction exists without the intervention of an extra­ neous force, it is difficult not to see at work here the group of drives that are antagonistic to Eros, that is, the destructive drives. Instead of the two groups of drives expressing their antagonism in their rela­ tions to the object through defusion, the forces of separation act, on the contrary, by modifying the erotic drives in an intrinsic manner. Already in 1912, Freud suspected that a solution of this kind would ultimately be necessary when, at the end of the second article on the psychology of love, he maintained that the sexual drive was divided into components which work against its own satisfaction.39 It is not the pregenital drives that impede such satisfaction but a factor that Freud attributes to civilisation and that has become an integral part of hereditary history.

Our task would probably be easier if we could assume that an influ­ ence of this order - which, to Freud's way of thinking, is not to be attributed to any form of transcendence - was a product acquired in the progressive acculturation of each of us. But such a simplification is scarcely acceptable here. From The Ego and the Id (1923) onwards, Freud seems to have attributed psychical life with three centres of develop­ ment. Perception seemed to him to be so closely tied up with the ego's activity that, on two occasions, he compared it with the relation of the drive to the id.40 Of course, it is not a crude opposition but a confrontation between different types of hyper-cathexes, the dialec­ tical outcome of which will be the unconscious representation of the drive, that is, the ideational representative. A corresponding function necessarily exists for the super-ego, a role that is fulfilled by the function of the ideal. Moreover, Freud said that he could not localise the ego ideal, as he had tried to do for the relations between the ego and the id. In trying to follow the course of Freud's metapsychological approach, one might think that the dispersed distribution of the ego ideal, its quasi-ubiquitous presence in the field of psychical processes, is a consequence of the topographical relations of the ego and the id. It is as though the spatial limitation imposed on the id, at least by the frontier which brings it into relation with the ego, were paid for in turn by the clear field left to the function of the ideal. For although the ego has been successful through the binding of psychical processes in gagging - even if only partially - the id, the latter can only go along with this by masking its defeat. Consequently, the id now imposes a new exigency, just as pressing as instinctual satisfaction obeying the pleasure principle, which is the copy of it or the negative double. This new exigency will not rest until it has achieved illusory emancipation from the former. The ego ideal, in terms of which the ego evaluates itself and tries to achieve perfection, is calibrated according to the demand made by the body on the mind. The pretensions of the function of the ideal do not represent any consolation or compensa­ tion. In the very place where instinctual satisfaction occurred, it sets up its contrary. It accords an even greater value to renunciation. Pride has become a higher aim than satisfaction; the ideal ego has been replaced by the ego ideal. There is nothing here that deserves autonomy de jure or de facto, since this graft can only take root in the drive and reflect the latter negatively. It is not so much a question of making a virtue of necessity as of making a necessity of virtue. Even though this function of the ideal actually originated 'from the experiences that led to totemism' (from the experiences ... and not totemism itself), and contains 'the germ from which all religions have evolved',41 Freud only connects it with the primordial identifi­ cation with the father insofar as the latter is a dead father. This makes

death a necessary condition so that the aggrandisement of the defunct occurs through signs which do not so much restore his presence as they ensure his perpetuation in this absence for ever, thus conferring him with eternal power. It is now necessary to return once again to the death drive for which death represents the final outcome of its tendency. The death drive repudiates actual death and restores cathexis of the father, while endeavouring to eliminate all possible tension by celebrating renunciation through the function of the ideal. W hat is the meaning of this reference to the dead father in the period of ontogenesis? It means that paternity cannot be transmitted wholly from parent to child, because the father is only one link in the chain, the succession of ancestors having become the property of culture of which he is only a representative, the traces of which the child will have to discover for ‘himself. These traces are written in a different ink from the one in which experience is recorded. This process is at the root of the primordial identification with the father. Let us stop quibbling over the text42 with regard to the mother's chronological anteriority and recognise once and for all what this means from a Freudian perspective. Pointing out, as Freud does in an adjoining note, that it may, perhaps, be safer to speak of the parents rather than the father, does not mean that this experience is under­ gone twice, first with the mother and then with the father, but that the motor of this inaugural identification is a principle of kinship, the condition of being a parent to which the child will be called. Two requirements will have to be met: the intangible preservation of the attachment and the no less inevitable emancipation from the object. It may be that this identification is the sole condition under which the id can give up its objects ... From another point of view it may be said that this transformation of an erotic object-choice into an alteration of the ego is also a method by which the ego can obtain control over the id and deepen its relations with it - at the cost, it is thie, of acquiescing to a large extent in the id's experiences.43 One cannot help comparing the two types of phenomenon. They are not equivalent, but reveal two possible destinies in which the condi­ tions are met allowing relations with the object to be maintained at the cost of a sacrifice. Renunciation becomes the condition for the survival of the most essential attachment; at the same time, it shows that this relation takes precedence over all other considerations and that there can be no question of replacing it solely by permuting the object or aim. Renunciation or inhibition of aim furnish the best evidence that nothing can replace the object and that no sequence of actions is conceivable outside the ongoing relations linking it with

the ego. It is therefore no coincidence that, after these considerations, Freud introduced the notions of desexualisation and sublimation, although he had just spoken in the preceding paragraphs of the earliest cathexes, those of the oral phase, and wondered whether all forms of sublimation - a question that he was to ask himself three times in The Ego and the Id44 - originated through the mediation of the ego, or if it was possible that they resulted from the defusion of the drives. In fact, we should recognise in this capacity to create durable and permanent cathexes, the existence of a structural justifica­ tion that is always perceived as such, though never completely clarified conceptually, which has its roots in the defusion of the drives, that is, in the operation of the death drive upon the erotic life drives, which include the drives of self-preservation.45 Linking these processes to operations governed by the pleasure principle and the Nirvana principle would most likely provide evidence of the pre-eminence of the latter. In the chapter of The Ego and the Id devoted to the two classes of drives, Freud pursues his hypotheses to their logical conclusion: sublimation and identification are merely forms of transformation of erotic libido into ego-libido which involve a desexualisation, an abandoning of object-cathexes, which can even result in an undifferentiated neutral energy, a hybrid form between the libido of Eros and the libido of the destructive drives, that is, a 'mortified' libido. A libido, in any case, which is more vulnerable to the effect of the death drive. Freud seems to have assigned desexualisation with a very general function capable of affecting the first object-cathexes: By thus getting hold of the libido from the object-cathexes, setting itself up as sole love-object, and desexualizing or sublimating the libido of the id, the ego is working in opposition to the purposes of Eros and placing itself at the service of the opposing instinctual impulses. The work thus accomplished was attributed by Freud to defusion.46 And if we take into account Freud's next statement describing the ego's narcissism as secondary narcissism, the course of the investiga­ tion that led Freud to circumscribe, with increasing precision, the death drive within narcissism, will enable us to trace it back to its earliest origins.

The Protective Shield and Repression How does such a stable, durable and permanent cathexis find its way into the register of dynamic and economic processes? Freud only gave

examples of this by referring to states which analysts will have no diffi­ culty in recognising. The operations which govern the formation of their structure continue to intrigue us. Now on each occasion that Freud was pressed to give an explanation of the means by which dura­ bility and even permanence, as against mobility and change, are acquired, he resorted to the metaphor of the transition from unbound energy to bound energy. As we do not have an alternative solution to propose, it is difficult to see how this metaphor can be avoided. It should be possible to describe everything that has just been said about the relations between the aim-inhibited drive and the object in the language Freud used when he endeavoured to describe these processes. Let it be said without further ado that there is no reason to think that the inhibition of the drive aim only works in favour of the erotic drives involving an object-choice - although it is only in those cases that Freud speaks of it - and it is not clear why it should be excluded in the case of the erotic drives of self-preservation. As soon as we assume that the drives of self-preservation also have an antagonist in the drives which are connected with preserving the species, and which are accomplished by fusing with the object in the genital rela­ tionship, it can be seen that here, too, the inhibition of aim protects the object against being completely assimilated into the ego, which would result in the dissolution of the ego's organisation. The mechanisms for converting unbound energy into bound energy, described by Freud, show how the organism protects itself against excessive amounts of external stimulation by offering a surface of resistance which has been subject to a neutralisation of cathexes but is capable of receiving, absorbing and conveying external stimuli. One can see, then, that this barrier or 'protective shield' has the twofold function of prohibiting, at its level, all trans­ formation of the reception of stimuli involving alterations in the register of expression, mutation, combination, and so on. It is simply a question of absorbing: that is, of transmitting, without deforming, the Weakened result of what has been recorded. Its functions are therefore those of blocking - reception and binding - and of trans­ mission by means of circulation. Protection takes precedence over the capacity for reception. A similar surface receives the impression of internal stimuli and also seeks to avoid too great an afflux or an exces­ sive am ount of excitation. But it is obvious that, however homologous they appear to be, the two operations are not equivalent. For the force resisting the external stimuli eliminates them, whereas the repudiation of internal stimuli merely results in their returning towards unconscious processes, that is, in a new charge, leading to a new thrust towards consciousness, in the face of which the possibili­ ties for repudiation will be limited. A device comparable to the

protective shield can therefore not function here. The link between the two modes of activity, that which has the function of dealing with external stimuli and that which protects against internal stimuli, is thus not conclusive. Once again, Freud made use here of the metaphor comparing the organism with a living vesicle. The initial reality ego allows a distinction to be made, it is true, between the origins of the two sources of excitation, but its action is not without shortcomings since projection remains a possibility. Furthermore, the intervention of this projective mechanism occurs on a scale which is much too great for us to be able to imagine - think, for a moment, of the case of pain - that a breach of the system could lead to an osmosis such that what comes from the inside is in fact treated as if it came from the outside. This operation does not merely involve a rejection; it has the advantage of creating the possibility of mustering the means necessary to defend itself - once the externalisation has occurred - against the source of the projection. Freud himself expresses some reservations about this way of picturing things in the Outline.47 The relations between the two layers, inner and outer, might perhaps offer a better solution. The special feature of the outer layer of the metaphorical organism is that it has been 'worked on' to such an extent that it has succeeded in lowering all the organic processes to a m inim um . It contents itself with knowing the source and nature of the excitations, which is possible due to its orientation. In fact, such an achievement is not unrelated to the types of processes which, under the effect of the Nirvana principle, make it their aim to abolish all tension. Freud even says that the death of this outer layer seems to have saved from a similar fate all the deeper ones which shelter the sense organs, the latter dealing only with very small and selected quantities of external stimulation. My conclusion, then, is that such a system cannot be applied to the internal barrier. But although Freud compares them, he does not see a similitude between them - which is impossible - but an analogy. It is as though the model provided by the protective shield provided a tempting solution for the internal stimuli. The stimuli are thus treated as quantities of excitation to be reduced, bound, rendered 'inanimate' or mortified. And although some tensions continue to break through the dams and to produce effects comparable to an external trauma, this does not occur frequently. The force of binding will depend on the quantitative level of the cathexes of the system. As this quiescent force no longer has the function of neutralising or disqualifying excitations, as the protective shield does, it offers an equivalent of it: a mirror in which the lure of the removal of tensions is reflected. The id becomes, to use Freud's felicitous expression, the ego's 'second external world'.48 In certain circumstances the terminal

organs receiving external excitations also transmit sensations and feelings such as pain. The work of the internal force of binding is to render internal stimuli perceptible and to master them (by reducing tensions). But it has less capacity to discern the source of the excita­ tions so that what it experiences as coming from everywhere - and Freud, whose statements are never vague, speaks here of 'something' which corresponds to sensations and enters consciousness - is subject to all manner of confusion with regard to its localisation. However, the result of this is that the comparison with the terminal organs which receive the external excitations makes an analogy possible and Freud says that 'as regards the terminal organs of sensation and feeling, the body itself would take the place of the external world'.49 This does not mean that we are justified in speaking of a confusion between them but simply of a duplication of the latter, which can also be understood as a division. Yet by interposing a 'second external world' in the relations between the id and the ego, Freud was re-eval­ uating the relations between the three agencies. The process of mortifying inertia, established within the envelope which serves as an intermediary with the outside, corresponds to the system (repression) which protects against exigencies and pressures. Liberation from the latter poses more problems than dealing with external stimuli. As we have seen this initial evaluation is complicated by the action of the function of the ideal.

Auto-Erotism A comparable process can be observed here to that which occurs when the erotic drive is subject to an inhibition of aim, though not all of its characteristics are the same. Of course, auto-erotism does not have the durability and imm utability of the affectionate relations to which Freud refers, but it is quite clear that auto-erotism and narcis­ sism are not only stages. The ego - or, initially, the ego drives - can present itself as a source of satisfaction by means of mechanisms which will last throughout life. It is legitimate to want to assign a beginning, a point of departure for auto-erotism, as Laplanche and Pontalis do,50 when they insist on the fact that the drive becomes auto-erotic when it has lost the object. Freud's own statement on this point is too important for me not to cite it in full: At a time at which the first beginnings of sexual satisfaction are still linked with the taking of nourishment, the sexual instinct has a sexual object outside the infant's own body in the shape of his mother's breast. It is only later that the instinct loses that object, just at the time, perhaps, when the child is able to form a total idea

of the person to whom the organ that is giving him satisfaction belongs. As a rule the sexual instinct then becomes auto-erotic ... (SE, VII, p. 222) W hen Laplanche and Pontalis point out in another passage that the object does not have to be absent for the auto-erotic condition to come about, their argument is indisputable. But in that case we should probably attempt to define auto-erotism more closely.51 One cannot take Freud's remark out of context, and the interesting point here is that this process is tied up with introjection. W hat needs accounting for is the transition from the object of satisfaction 'outside' to the search for satisfaction, if not 'inside', then at least in the infant's own body, at its surface of contact, thus concretising in a remarkable way the proposition that the body takes the place of the external world. I agree with Laplanche and Pontalis who maintain, following Freud, that the ideal of auto-erotism is 'lips kissing themselves'. The signifi­ cance of this image needs to be understood in a much wider sense; that is, as a movement of a more general and fundamental value. It is not so m uch that the distribution between infant and object has been abolished but that, before acceding to the status of a subject, that is, at the moment when the object, which had hitherto been 'outside', was lost, the 'subject' was still only a centrifugal movement of inves­ tigation. Separation reconstitutes this couple in the subject's own body, since the image of lips kissing themselves suggests the idea of a replication followed by a re-gluing which, in this new unity, traces the line of partition which has enabled the 'subject' to fall back on his own resources. Auto-erotism occurs during this retreat; it represents a kind of stopping place on the frontier, and in this respect may be compared to the inhibition of aim described in relation to the libidinal erotic drives.52 We have seen that the inhibition of aim is closely tied up with retaining the object. Now what is striking in this auto­ erotic situation is the particular status of the drive, with regard to its aim and object. It is not possible - and, on this point, I agree with Laplanche and Pontalis - to link auto-erotism with the object's absence. But on no account can what is happening here be likened to a substitution of the object, or even to a change of aim, since the latter remains unchanged; that is, the pleasure connected with sucking, for which thumb-sucking is not the equivalent but the quintessence. This is why auto-erotism is, to a certain extent, organ-pleasure; but only to a certain extent. Saying that the auto-erotic character of the drive is 'an anarchic product of the component drives'53 is perhaps abusing the theory slightly, since it means situating the said drive on the same side as the so-called drives with an inhibited aim, characterised by constant displacement, transformations of energy and repeated

permutations of aims and objects. Primordially, the auto-erotic drive is a drive capable of satisfying itself, either in the object's absence or presence, but independently of it We can only understand the issue clearly if we assume, as Freud did, that there are two categories of drives: those capable of finding satisfaction in the subject's own body, and those which cannot do without the object. Consequently, there is no longer any reason to link auto-erotism to the emergence of desire,54 as Laplanche and Pontalis do, since the latter is in fact desire for contact with the object. Moreover, their conception neglects the role of the drives which require the object's participation. By the same token, it is not necessary, as Pasche maintains, to postulate an anti­ narcissism,55 since this is implicit in this latter category of drives. This differentiation in Freud's* work occurs in the context of a remarkable continuity of thought. For if one does not wish to regard auto-erotism merely as a stage, then one must exploit fully all the theoretical poten­ tial that the notion contains - not always explicitly - in order to justify rejecting a genetic position which is over-simplified, incom­ plete and rather unsatisfactory. Let us pause a m om ent over the following passage taken from 'Instincts and their Vicissitudes': Originally, at the very beginning of mental life, the ego is cathected with instincts and is to some extent capable of satisfying them on itself. We call this condition 'narcissism' and this way of obtaining satisfaction 'auto-erotic'.56 It was when he wrote these lines, which at first sight seem to reinforce the genetic point of view, that Freud added a note which has caught the attention of many authors, including W innicott. Freud recognises here that the group of sexual drives and the drives of self-preservation are not homogeneous, and that it is still necessary to differentiate between drives that are capable of finding satisfaction, without neces­ sarily involving the object, and drives which cannot economise on the link with the object. W hat makes the functioning of auto-erotic drives possible is the vicariousness of the mother's care. But this does not am ount to saying, however, that the latter is subordinated to the drives which require a relationship with the object. It is not because the mother ensures that the infant's needs are satisfied and makes up for his immaturity that she has the absolute function of a primordial object. The latter would deprive the infant's own organisation of all reality; an organisation which acquires its value not on a biological level, of course, since without the mother's care the infant would die, but in the dom ain of desire and of the signifier. The mother shields the infant's auto-erotism.

These remarks throw light on the question I was discussing earlier of the origin of primary cathexes which, depending on the version of Freud one follows, arise either from the ego or the id. Strachey was right to define the parameters of the debate by reminding us of the primitive undifferentiated state of the id and the ego. Would we not come even closer to the truth if, in an attempt to understand these relations, we pictured an id which partly included the mother, cathected primitively and directly, and an ego forming itself around its own possibilities for satisfaction. The latter are essential for their founding role but are called into question by the drives which can only find satisfaction in the object.

Repression and the Ego Perhaps you can see more clearly now the parallel that I am drawing between drives with an inhibited aim and auto-erotic drives. Is it a coincidence that the most common signs of affection, caresses and kisses, belong to both categories? Auto-erotism is thus one of the succession of phenomena through which the body takes the place of the external world. W hat we need to consider now is how we should conceive of the protective barrier w ithin the perspective of a structural theory, while distancing ourselves as much as possible from an approach based on archaeological reconstitution. Modelled on the protective shield, the protective barrier makes it possible to register the stimuli coming from the body, this second external world, on a screen, so to speak. In some recent metapsychological conceptions this role has been attributed to repression (Laplanche and Pontalis, Stein), which is regarded as having the property of founding the conscious and unconscious registers as well as separating primary and secondary processes.57 W hile this point of view has the advantage of centring the distinctions on a founding act, thereby allowing the various kinds of facts and phenomena to be articulated more easily, it seems to run the risk of postulating the existence, beyond repression, of an un in ­ telligible chaos that is opposed to the primordial order from which intelligible structure emerges. The protective shield, which has the capacity of localising the external source of the stimuli, sees its action strengthened by the reality principle,58 which makes the distinction between the ego and the external world quite clear. Repression could be thought of as its stand-in. From this point of view, some investi­ gators would place primary narcissism in this area beyond repression - in a world which is without order or limits, in which the ego would be merged with the cosmos; hence the description ego-cosmic. In my judgement, this situation pertains more to the id than to narcissism.

Now as L have already pointed out, the characteristic of absolute primary narcissism is that it strives towards a zero level of excitation. Doing away with all motion, protecting oneself from all tension, does not necessarily generate the feeling of expansion, although it may do so sometimes. It is important to remember that on numerous occasions Freud refused to give repression the status of an inaugural function, even after an interval of nearly twenty years: Originally, to be sure, everything was id; the ego was developed out of the id by the continual influence of the external world. In the course of this slow development certain of the contents of the id were transformed into the preconscious state and so taken into the ego; others of its contents remained in the id unchanged, as its scarcely accessible nucleus. During this development, however, the young and feeble ego put back into the unconscious state some of the material it had already taken in, dropped it, and behaved in the same way to some fresh impressions which it might have taken in, so that these, having been rejected, could leave a trace only in the id. In consideration of its origin we speak of this latter portion of the id as the repressed,59 From this passage it emerges that: 1. 2.

3. 4. 5.

the ego is not constituted by repression, but is pre-existent to it; if these traces are only left in an id separated from the ego, the form in which the primitive contents of the id have been accepted and admitted nonetheless remains a problem; repression does not carry out a primal separation, but rejects that which has already been admitted once; the division into unconscious-preconscious is necessary for acti­ vating repression; finally, repression is linked to a mechanism involving the re­ passage, the re-turn, of the re-pressed.

An unavoidable question arises here: why is it that what has been admitted once is later rejected? Even when one attaches great impor­ tance to counter-cathexis - involving a considerable expenditure of energy - one should not lose sight of the fact that repression is also 'a preliminary stage of condemnation'. Linking these two aspects is undoubtedly interesting from a heuristic perspective. The advantage is that it makes the processes of judgement consubstantial with those of energetic energy. But this is perhaps being a bit hasty. Not that there is any reason to question the connection between the order of

the signifier and the energetic order. But in my opinion, this link requires further mediation. Freud seemed to have a reason of this sort in m ind when he wrote: It has consequently become a condition for repression that the motive force of unpleasure shall have acquired more strength than the pleasure obtained from satisfaction.60 Now the only type of pleasure we know of that has claimed to safe­ guard - under the cover of maternal care - such a possibility of satisfaction, without incurring unpleasure, is auto-erotism.61 The period of separation from the mother and the period of repression may come together again afterwards, but they are not merged from the start, since this conjunction of periods is inferred retrospectively through the search for the lost object which unites the actual loss of the object at the time of separation and the loss suffered through repression. I believe it would be more coherent to account for this search in a different way. The loss of the breast, occurring when the mother is perceived as a whole object, which implies that the process of separation between them has been completed, results in the creation of a mediation that is necessary to compensate for the effects of her absence and integration into the psychical apparatus. The latter occurs independently of the action of repression, whose aim is different. This mediation represents the constitution in the ego of the maternal setting as a framing structure. The continuation of Freud's text helps us to see more clearly: Psychoanalytic observation of the transference neuroses, moreover, leads us to conclude that repression is not a defensive mechanism which is present from the very beginning, and that it cannot arise until a sharp cleavage has occurred between conscious and unconscious mental activity - that the essence of repression lies simply in turning something away, and keeping it at a distance, from the conscious.62 To say that the essence of repression resides simply in repudiating a psychical content is not to diminish its importance; it is merely to specify its function without in any way ignoring its privileged position. Certain passages in Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety (1926 [1925])63 go to great lengths to draw a comparison between the defence offered by the protective shield against external stimuli and that which resists internal stimuli. We need to be very attentive to the idea that it is flight, more than repudiation, that is the fundamental

mechanism in the second case. Here linguistic connections are lacking, for there is the notion of a turning away, of a dismissal in the Freudian term which, when all is said and done, implies an active attitude of counter-cathexis, whereas flight is an attitude which, so to speak, is actively passive.64 The two modes of defence might be compared - although this can only be expressed partially through images - to tactics whose very principles are opposed. The first, the protective shield, m ight be compared to tactics of withdrawal whereby, depending on the size of one's forces, one periodically turns and faces the enemy, taking advantage of each engagement to consol­ idate one's defences, so that they are in a position to hold their ground when the moment comes to thwart the enemy's thrust. The second, which could be compared to internal stimuli, exercises a withdrawal using all resources available to carry out a scorched earth policy until a fortified place is reached where better times are awaited.

The Double Reversal and Primary Decussation There is no denying that repression partakes of these two forms. In the same passage, Freud adds that 'repression is an equivalent for this attempt at flight', but he does not recognise the primary flight itself.65 The correction of the interpretative error which tends to confuse the two can be found in one of the addenda of Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety. The concept of defence covers the general category of the ego's measures of protection against instinctual demands and provides good grounds 'for subsuming repression under it as a special case'. Freud thus reneges on the earlier solution he had adopted in which repression seemed to illustrate the process of defence in general. But he also adds: In addition we may look forward to the possible discovery of yet another important correlation.66 It may well be that before its sharp cleavage into an ego and an id, and before the formation of a super-ego, the mental apparatus makes use of different methods of defence from those which it employs after it has reached these stages of organisation.67 Once again, one could simply put a question mark here against the text, regretting that the author did not explain himself more fully. And yet it is practically the same sentence as we find written, eleven years before, in the text 'Repression' (1915b): This view of repression would be made more complete by assuming that, before the mental organisation reaches this stage, the task of fending off instinctual impulses is dealt with by the

other vicissitudes which instincts may undergo - e.g. reversal into the opposite or turning round upon the subject's own self.68 This echoes a similar passage in Tnstincts and their Vicissitudes'.69 In fact, here Freud described a single process involving two operations. This concerns, firstly, the orientation - the change of which indicates that the centrifugal orientation has become centripetal - and, secondly, the mode of reversal which is not just a reversal of direc­ tion, nor a mere change of sign, but should be thought of as a decussation. The direct confusion of the two mechanisms would result in withdrawal which would in no way resolve the problem posed by the instinctual demand; the only solution for which is a modification inscribed in the body which leaves a trace of satisfaction. In this reversal through decussation, it is rather as if the response expected from the object were carried along by this movement in which the extreme positions of internal and external in the instinctual current change places. An overlapping thus occurs between that which, on a surface, can be localised on the left and right of a hypothetical frontier. This movement of return permits the drive to reach the bodily zone which is awaiting satisfaction as if it were the object itself that had provided the satisfaction there; for, as with the inhibition of aim, the object has been retained and not exchanged. But this preser­ vation has been paid for by limited satisfaction - something I regard as the negative of a metonymical operation, since it resists the suturing of the subject and the object. At the same time such a lim i­ tation preserves it, because this union would exclude any follow-up to this first and last sequence. W hat is created, then, is a circuit which does not concern the properties of the object but its response. While preserving the object in its absence, the circuit delegates the object's function to the subject in such a way that the subject experiences the realisation (implied by the response) as if it had been provided by the object. It is clear that a metaphorical process is at work here. This may throw light on the mutation that occurs between the relation to the breast - which can equally well be described as 'the mother suckling the baby or as her being sucked by it'70 - and the reversion of lips kissing themselves. Between the undifferentiated state of ego-id and mother-infant and the emergence of repression, a mediating process occurs involving a regulation of the drives, on the basis of which repression is possible. In other words, between the 'biological' process at work in the protective shield and the psychological process of repression which Freud refers to, there is no correspondence as between outside and inside; but there is an intersection between them, so that what is inside may be treated in the same way as that which comes from the

outside, provided that the inside is perceived as if it were the outside, and without there being any fusion between the two. This is exactly what Freud affirms in Beyond the Pleasure Principle, which links the forma­ tion of an internal barrier to projection. The double reversal allows us to think about this mediation structurally. If we read the passage on the double reversal it shows that Freud was describing the work which prevents a drive from attaining direct satisfaction, not by means of a force that is alien to it - repression as a psychological process - but by an internal modification of its own nature. W hen Freud considered that it was necessary to distinguish two processes in the reversal of the drive into its opposite: namely, the change from activity to passivity, and the reversal of its content (lovehate), nobody seemed to be concerned that, in so doing, he had introduced a new characteristic of the drive, that is, its content, which was never mentioned in later descriptions, or, only with respect to the id. A problem arises here that is closely related to that of auto-erotism and the relation to the object. Freud denies that the antithesis between loving and hating can fit into the scheme of the reversal of a drive into its opposite in the same way as the change from activity to passivity can, these affects only being applicable to a whole object. Narcissism, a state in which one loves oneself, appears to represent the form, at this last level, of the equivalent of it in the transformation from activity to passivity. There is therefore justification for saying that it is when drive activity is understood as the ego's relation to sources of pleasure related to the object, considered as independent of the ego, that the reversal from activity into passivity assumes the form of the love that the ego can have for itself. And if we ask ourselves what the preparation of this structural stage corresponds to, we need to bear in m ind a distinction Freud considered to be imperative, which led him to separate the oper­ ation of reversing the aims of the drives from the turning-around upon the subject's own self. He was right to separate them but the situations which he encountered (sadism-masochism, scopophilia-exhibitionism) soon led him to make the following observation: We cannot fail to notice, however, that in these examples the turning round upon the subject's self and the transformation from activity to passivity converge or coincide.71 Retaining the object, and maintaining certain cathexes in a lasting and unchanged mode, are closely tied up with the aim-inhibited drive. Auto-erotism spares the object and does not lose it entirely; since it is just when the subject is able to apprehend the mother as a whole that the drive becomes auto-erotic. And if the subject seems to change object, it is only to turn towards the object o f the object (the

subject's body) in order to create there a second erotogenic zone, though 'of an inferior kind',72 thereby vouching for its fidelity. On the other hand, the fact that the loss of the object coincides with the moment when the organ which was the source of the infant's satis­ faction, that is, the breast, and the mother, to whom it belongs, are united, as well as the fact that this loss paves the way for the onset of auto-erotism, suggests that the infant's apprehension of the link between organ and person may also have been internalised. This internalisation does not lead to awareness of a bodily form; but, because the circular mode of cathexis has been closed down, it gives rise to feelings of autonomy, perfection and of being delivered from desire through the symmetrical creation, almost simultaneously, of the global and unifying apprehension that is characteristic of the infant's ego, as it was described by Lacan in the mirror stage.

The Ego and its Ideal In this context, inferiority and independence are associated terms. The sense of inferiority exists because the persistence of a lack with regard to the object is not abolished by auto-erotism; independence shows how the tutelage of desire is a most formidable yoke, and, though it is undoubtedly necessary to psychical organisation, it needs to be overcome if structure is to be acquired. Once again what we are faced with here, as was the case with the inhibition of aim, is the work of the death drive. The mark of the death drive is to be seen not in its impossibility of attaining a goal but rather in the choice of this zone 'of an inferior kind', with a special vocation. The lowering of tension to the level zero and the immediate suppression of all differ­ ence abolishing the object's absence are both hallowed in the temples of self-sufficiency. The impression this leaves is indelible and it will persist, if not at each moment of life, at least throughout the whole of life. 'To be their own ideal once more, in regard to sexual no less than other trends, as they were in childhood - this is what people strive to attain as their happiness.'73 But can we be certain that this mediatory stage between the lack of ego-id differentiation and repression is to be connected with narcis­ sism through auto-erotism? Is there any other way of seeing things that offers a convincing alternative? Either narcissism is cast out into the chaos prior to repression or it is specified as a field of illusion; but, in any case, it lacks its own structure. Freud appears to have had a solution: We shall be approaching a more general realisation - namely, that the instinctual vicissitudes which consist in the instinct being

turned round upon the subject's own ego and undergoing reversal from activity to passivity are dependent on the narcissistic organi­ sation of the ego and bear the stamp of that phase. They perhaps correspond to the attempts at defence which at higher stages of the development of the ego are effected by other means.74 Narcissism is founded on the ego drives. But it would be wrong to think that, because I have based my interpretation of auto-erotism on the drive contingent that is capable of obtaining satisfaction without the object's assistance, I therefore consider that this mechanism alone can provide a solution for all the unanswered questions. But I still want to tackle the problem of the ego's unity which Freud associated with narcissism. There is a big difference between 'the energy of the ego drives' and narcissism. For this expression, which Freud took as his point of departure, needs to be related to the highly indeterminate character of the primitive drives. The drive finds its vocation during the course of its actual functioning, which is set in m otion by its aim, but only discovered in the course of effective action directed at a specific goal. Inferring the drive's activity does not am ount to intro­ ducing a teleological point of view into Freudian theory, since the innate spontaneity of the way it is activated is enriched by the discovery of the aim that motivates the very process of its activation. By taking the energy of the ego drives as my starting-point, I do not mean to attribute any sort of biological character to this pre-form; but I am trying to picture in the most convenient way a current of cathexes between two limits separated by a difference of potential, without which it would be impossible to identify specifically any current whatsoever. In short, I regard it as the prerequisite state for the formation of a chain. A suitable means of expressing this needs to be found if we are to understand how Freud could maintain that the infant is unable to distinguish between its body and the breast, yet is able to localise the latter when it is absent - although a lack of differ­ entiation persists - 'outside' itself. I share the view of Laplanche and Pontalis that this whole process is dominated by anaclitic object rela­ tions; but I am tempted to liken this mechanism, in which the activity of need coincides with the emergence of pleasure at the points where need is appeased, with the difference between the 'locus' of the satisfaction of pleasure and that which makes its satis­ faction possible. If their association constitutes a demand, I would be inclined to think that the demand and its circuit are separable. The circuit is cathected before demand. W hich does not amount to saying as Lebovici argues - that the object is cathected before it is perceived, but rather that cathexis is cathected before the object is. Just as the repressed does not simply remain banished from consciousness, but is

attracted by the pre-existing repressed and moves towards that which is ready to take possession of it, similarly, the pathway of cathexis only exists because it is cathected by the mother. But it is important to understand that the function of the two currents is placed under opposite signs. For the mother only unites with her child insofar as she has consented to separate from him in the future; and to the extent that the child, in his encounter with her, is forced to recognise the limitations of self-preservation. By trying to preserve himself, he endeavours to m aintain the link that has been established, though, in another sense of this term, he has to appropriate the condition of his satisfaction along with the source of pleasure.

The First Difference We cannot go any further without examining the antagonism between Eros and the death drives. In the initial state of affairs, the id and the ego, each indistinct, thwart the action of the destructive drives which were working in the child towards a return to the earlier situation; whereas, in the mother, the movement of Eros finds an ally in the desire to reintegrate the product of creation.75 A genuine reversal of drive values needs to occur in order that decisive change can come about. As far as the mother is concerned, the forces that are pushing for separation must succeed in making themselves heard,76 whereas the child needs to hold together the portion of the mother's id which serves these aims and everything that has sided with the individual's clamour of life. And so what, in the initial 'stage', had no other purpose than the suspen­ sion of all disturbance, now has another meaning in this new context which is to lead the individual to himself, towards submission and the binding of the ego. Its purpose is not only to muzzle or reduce the chaotic id to a state of impotence, but also to seal the mark of self­ belonging and belonging to the other. One can see that this reversal of values necessitates a de-centring of drive polarities from the mother to the child, and of their common id, so that an ego may be born. The id has created object-cathexes which the ego takes possession of. This is the first transgression. But these are not the ego's only origins for it can also make use of the portion of cathexes that do not necessarily involve the object. It can be seen that this alliance between the ego and the id can only come about through a relative synergy; for, although the ego's action is that of 'binding', this can only be carried out to the extent that the ego has agreed to support, within itself, the pursuit of the removal of tension which prevailed in the work of the death drive. 'The pleasure principle seems to be in the service of the death instinct.'77 It is clearly difficult to maintain a strict opposition between the two types of antagonistic drives, but each time one of them seems to

have gained the upper hand over the other, the force which got the better of it in the conflict between them has to be internalised into this new state of things. Freud's thought does not lend itself to simpli­ fication. In certain places, therefore, the id is conceived of as an antagonist of the libido. Pleasure, which has become the character­ istic of the libido, is used by the id against the libido. It should not be thought that the id supplants it, but rather that their aims converge, provided that pleasure is the beneficiary. Moreover, when I speak of the forces of union, nothing is further from my m ind than to present them as the equivalent of physical forces; they should be considered more as orientations and aims, impersonal and personal. Ulysses' ruse was to make use of the polysemy of language; the same word desig­ nating both nobody and a particular person. The overlapping of operations does not always allow us to see what is involved in them. W hen I allude to the contradiction between preservation and appro­ priation, it will be clear that I do not in any way picture this reversal in favour of the ego as a monopolisation or a seizure of assets in favour of the purchaser, so to speak. And although separation from the mother is what is implied, it would be wrong to imagine that she has been abandoned or that the cathexes of which she was the object have been transfused.

Negative Hallucination of the Mother Let us return now to Freud's assertion that the perception of the object is linked with its absence. It is against the backcloth of this absence that signs have to be created which will be inscribed where there is a lack, as an exchange value and not as a substitute object. But, as this perception of absence goes hand in hand with an aware­ ness of loss, the two tend to become merged; or, auto-erotism is considered as the new form that is capable of resolving the problems raised by these two observations. Although Freud saw the loss of the breast and the moment when the infant apprehends the mother as a whole person as contemporaneous, what precedes this apprehension must potentially include the content of the later appropriation. Not in the form of a perception because, if this were the case, the object would be outside, and the representation of this perception would only be a copy, whose function of replication would not be congruent with the reversal of polarities which focuses the effort of unification on the ego itself. O n the contrary, it would take the form of a negative hallucination of this global apprehension. Auto-erotism at the body's door is a hallmark of independence from the object; negative halluci­ nation signals, with the total perception of the object, that the latter has been put 'outside-of-I', which is succeeded by the I-not-I on which

identification is based. While such negative hallucination cannot, by definition, be represented by an image of any kind, it can be observed in the constitution of the circuit of double reversal of which auto­ erotism represents only the mark of the function or suture, and is carried out - and here the operation of reversing activity into passivity is more fundamental than the reversal against the self through the inversion of the polarities between mother and infant. He treats himself as she treats him once she is no longer merely an excentric part of himself. The mother is caught in the empty frame of negative hallucination and becomes a framing structure for the subject himself. The subject constructs himself in the place where the object's investiture has been consecrated to the locus o f its investment. Everything is then in place so that the infant's body can take the place of the external world. By resorting to the example of the wooden reel Freud not only represented the creation of the status of absence. To say that what mattered to him above all was to stress the aspect of mastery involved in this activity would be doing violence to his thought. The phonetic opposition accompanying the game is indeed linked to the signifier. However, it cannot be separated from the circuit supporting it.78 It goes without saying that the child is not the creator of this circuit; otherwise the concepts of the division of the subject and of the subject of the unconscious would be reduced to nothing. The entire Freudian system of interpretation is based on the following device: the wooden reel, the piece of string for pulling it in again, the curtained cot, the active movement of throwing away and reeling in again. At this stage, the child makes use of his hands but it is the mother who plays the active role by returning. The reversal of the subject's polarity is indicated by the link Freud established between this game and the appearance-disappearance of the baby's image in the mirror, as if he had been seen by someone else, even though he was the one to make the movements allowing an image of himself to be formed, just where the mother was expected to appear. The child says: 'Baby o-o-o-o!', providing a further reason for linking the negative hallucination of the mother with identification. But let there be no misunderstanding. Not all the cathexes have suffered this fate but precisely those that are susceptible to binding through auto-satis­ faction. Nothing is detracted from the cathexes of the component drives which continue, in their mobile, changing, fragmentary form to enter into contact with the object of those cathexes which the loss of the object cannot compensate for by means of identification. It is this contingent of drives that is subject to repression. This throws light on Freud's idea that what is repressed has already been admitted into the ego. Such is the lot of the homologous portion of cathexes

capable of auto-satisfaction, which are in no way different from the others, in as much as they are object-cathexes, before this outcome is offered to them. Freud always thought that repression affected the forms of repre­ sentation (the affects which are subjected to this fate are only those w hich have been linked at one time or another to Vorstellungsreprasentanz). Are we not justified in inferring that the negative hallucination of the mother, without in any way repre­ senting anything, has made the conditions for representation possible? That is, the creation of a memory without content, the transition from repetition to the suture preceding the presence of the elements of the suturing which the chain they form will presuppose.

Desire for the One Narcissism erases the trace of the Other in its Desire for the One. The difference inaugurated by the separation between mother and child is compensated for by narcissistic investiture. This is the term which, in all respects, founded difference on the place that the child occupied in the mother's desire. W hen difference has not been established, another difference is created owing to the fact that the mother is caught in the framing structure. The partial cathexes which were destined for her, nonetheless enter into the series of exchanges and transformations which occur between them, of which the forms of representation will be both the product and the witness. It is at this point that the barrier of repression, which is the stand-in for this circuit, forms the wall on which the component drives will be reflected, facilitating the dissociation that allows representation to occur. Repression is now able to carry out its task of repudiating the drive which is considered undesirable. This is a stage which opens the way towards other forms of exchange in which these intersecting conversions between object-cathexes and secondary narcissisticcathexes 'stolen from objects' occur, the economy of which is regulated by the structure I have just described. Once this process has been completed, the ego, making use of the closure for which the contours of negative hallucination provided the model, will be able to offer itself as a love-object to the portion of the id which it has taken possession of by assuming the object's features: 'Look, you can love me too - I am so like the object.'79 This way of seeing things might account for Freud's remarks on the indestructible character of early identifications and the ego's narcis­ sism as secondary narcissism. During the first stage, the primitive stamp left by the object inspires the ego in its endeavours to offer, not its resemblance with it, but the self-sufficient quality of its own

imprint. The features borrowed from the object can be diversified, selected and isolated one by one, but they should be able to give the subject the feeling that they make him independent of desire. It is possible to imagine here a new form of anaclitic object relations, between two forms of narcissism. Once the process is completed, negative hallucination will have established the boundaries of an empty space, as in a Mobius strip. This is what Freud repeatedly pointed out when he introduced the final theory of the drives. The division between ego drives and sexual drives amounts to replacing a qualitative distinction by a topograph­ ical one,80 which involves a great deal more than simply assigning a direction to cathexes and lays down the same foundations of a psychical apparatus as I have postulated in my description. The struc­ ture of the Mobius strip provides the equivalent of this double reversal and circumscribes the two parts of the empty space I have just referred to.81 They will be occupied respectively by the objectcathexes and the ego-cathexes which are denied auto-satisfaction as the latter depends on the libidinal erotic drives. Circumscribed spaces, then, with different orientations and contrasting directions; but it is possible to pass alternately from one to the other by making a detour along the external and internal surface, the dividing surfaces of each space allowing the exchange of these two types of cathexes.

Introjection and Projection It is of course impossible to make links between all these mechanisms without referring to the fundamental role played by introjection. When Freud was commenting on the process of introjection during the phase that bears the stamp of narcissistic organisation, and declared that the object is consumed, incorporated into the subject but also destroyed, his remarks are unintelligible if the entire cathexis takes the path of destructivity; for, how can something be preserved if there has been total destruction? A satisfactory answer might be that introjection becomes merged with the inscription of the framing circuit, thereby consti­ tuting the matrix of identifications and coinciding with the object's disappearance. Introjection is dependent on the closure of the circuit which, as I have said, results in the abolition of tensions. The emer­ gence of auto-erotism, which proceeds along similar lines to the satisfaction of drives independently of the object, completes the process. Later introjections will be dismantled in the same way as the identifications I have just mentioned, constituting the group of objectcathexes. It will come as no surprise, then, that projection has a part to play here, since the whole effect of the reversal of activity into passivity is to make the subject responsible for what apparently takes place

outside him. The mother's excentric position is invalidated by the forming of a circuit which re-includes in the individual the polarity he tends towards, in such a way that it becomes an integral part of himself. The formation of the Mobius strip no longer allows us to speak of a wrong side and a right side, of an interior and an exterior, though they should not become merged in a universe without limits.82 It is a mistake always to situate projection beyond the subject's limits, as hypochondria provides us with a contrary example. Hypochondria is often regarded today as the result of an introjection. Following Tausk, who understood the essence, if not the structure, of narcissism so clearly, it should be seen as an example of projection from a distance into the body, the discovery of the lost object. The hypochondriacal object is 'cut out' of the body by the bodily libido of the psychical cathexis allotted to the ego. The body has taken the place of the external world, thus allowing psychical cathexes to be formed. The hypochondriacal organ represents the negative of auto­ erotism, the point at which the negative hallucination of the mother is ruptured; a moment when the body (which had taken the place she occupied primitively), undoing the internalisation of this exteriority, restores her presence, or rather the presence of the object, whose absence was a sign that it had been localised outside the infant. But the hypochondriacal organ is more than this; it is also a source of scanning, investigation and listening. It is the eye in the body which feels, senses, guesses and warns.

The Eye of Narcissus Freud thought certain structures of narcissistic origin had the role of evaluating the ego, measuring themselves against it, competing with it and striving for ever greater perfection in relation to it. I link these structures with secondary narcissism. The struggle in question, which sustains the ego, occurs between satisfaction and the renunciation of libidinal satisfactions. The sacrifices it makes seem negligible in comparison with the sense of pride it derives from doing so. We know from many examples that the ego ideal can prove to be intransigent to such a degree that the ego is driven to the very brink of what it can tolerate. Myths, artistic creations and personal fantasies have made the theme of the double familiar to us.83 Romantic and expressionist liter­ ature has drawn deeply on this source of 'uncanniness'. Freud pointed out that one of the most frequent characteristics of the double is that of being immortal.84 Here we are bound to recognise a trace of primary narcissism which leads us to suspect that it plays a part in these occurrences.

Strachey noted that Freud wavered between different formulations of the ego ideal. Sometimes the ego ideal is presented as that which restores the perfection of the lost narcissism of childhood and, in this case, another structure guarantees the ego functions of self-observa­ tion, vigilance and evaluation. Sometimes all this merges into a single unity, the super-ego. Most writers accept there is a link between narcissism and the ego ideal in order to distinguish it from the super-ego. But it may be necessary to make a clearer distinction between the function of censoring which is primarily the task of the super-ego and that of keeping watch, called self-observation. That which has the role of looking does not arise from a function analo­ gous to the visual function85 but from the detachment of a part of the ego from the rest. If one bears in m ind that the double is immortal, it will be seen that the ego aspires to nothing less than complete invulnerability. As for primary narcissism it admits of no division and the veil cast over dreamless sleep remains a mystery. This division enables us to get a clearer idea of the most extreme purposes of primary narcissism. There is no contradiction in thinking of it simultaneously as the state of absolute quiescence from which all tension is removed; the prior condition for the independence of satisfaction; the closure of the circuit by means of which the negative hallucination of the mother is fixed, paving the way for identifica­ tion; and the process of appropriating the ideal so as to be able to attain the highest degree of perfection in which invulnerability is the final aim. The stage which would necessarily follow this invulnera­ bility would undoubtedly be that of self-begetting abolishing sexual difference.

The Phoenix, Narcissus and Death It will come as no surprise, therefore, that in her analysis of the myths and rites of bisexuality in ancient times Marie Delcourt86 finds a synthesis of the raw materials Mind-Body, Sky-Earth and, in the last analysis, immortality. The legend of the Phoenix is the most striking example, combining effective androgynous bisexuality and eternal rejuvenescence which is oblivious to death. In many ways the legend of Narcissus extends and completes the legend of the Phoenix. Our reflections on Freud's work help us to understand why, after his brilliant introduction of narcissism in 1914, he felt obliged to abandon it for fear of leading us along false paths - just as he felt impelled to introduce the death drive (1921), which resulted in a more coherent redistribution of the values of psychoanalytic theory which he upheld until his death (1939) with ever increasing vigi­ lance. And although he was not explicit about the future of narcissism

after the final drive theory, he said enough for us to be able to develop his reflections on the matter. Primary narcissism cannot be understood as a state, but should be understood as a structure. Most writers on the subject not only treat it as a state, but also only speak of it as life narcissism, observing a silence - the very silence that dwells within it - with regard to the death narcissism that is present in the reduction of tensions to the level zero. Some themes of Freudian metapsychology demonstrate the work of the death drive in certain aspects of psychical life: aim-inhib­ ited drives, sublimation, identification and the function of the ideal. The problem of primary narcissism cannot bypass the question of the origin and vicissitudes of primary cathexes, of the separation of the ego and the id, which calls for an examination of the concepts of repression and defence. On the basis of Freudian theory, I have defended the existence of defences prior to repression: the reversal against the self and the reversal into its opposite, which I call the double reversal. In developing the structure which emerges from this study we have seen that there is an inversion of drive polarities, an exchange of aims which culminates in the primary difference between the mother and child, in which several registers of drives can be distinguished: the component drives whose object is the breast, and the aim-inhibited drives whose object is the mother, whose destiny will be separate until the definitive object-choice has been made. During the period of primary difference, the loss of the breast is the equivalent in one register of what the negative hallucination of the mother is in the other. Ego narcissism is, then, as Freud said, secondary narcissism stolen from objects - it implies the division of the subject following upon auto-erotism as a situation of self-suffi­ ciency. From this point of view primary narcissism is Desire for the One, a longing for a self-sufficient and immortal totality, for which self-begetting is the condition, death and negation of death at the same time.

3 Anxiety and Narcissism (1979)

There is always an element of risk involved in emerging from silence to engage in discourse. In the Book o f the Yellow Emperor it is said: W hen a shape stirs, it begets not a shape but a shadow. When a sound stirs, it begets not a sound but an echo. W hen Nothing stirs, it begets not nothing but something. These lines are taken from The Book ofLieh Tzu} an author who is said by some never to have existed. How does one communicate with others? We know that the main obstacle to such communication is narcissism. Anxiety is often said to be incommunicable. How are they related? In this chapter I shall be discussing: (a) Anxiety linked to the One: that is, to the unity which is threatened, reconstituted and bound up with the Other, against a background of emptiness, in which the form unites part-object and whole-object. (b) Anxiety linked to the couple, where the figures of symmetry, complementarity and opposition, in the difference between the One and the Other, in which bisexuality has a part to play, are related to the fantasy of the total unity of the couple - always sought after, and always impossible. (c) Anxiety linked to the ensemble: having evoked the figures of the One and of the Two, I want to use this concept to tackle the question, not of the third, but of the diasparagmos, of dispersion, fragmen­ tation; a finite or infinite ensemble providing a meeting point for the infans’ anxiety and anxiety linked to the super-ego, insofar as the latter, arising from the id, becomes a Tower of Destiny’ (once the category of the Impersonal has been instituted).

These three forms of anxiety raise the problem of limits, of form, of substance, or consistency, where what is at stake is the coexistence of different egos.

Internal and External: The Birth of the Ego To say, once again, that re-reading Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety (1926 [1925]) gives one a real sense of the extent of Freud's genius, does not take away the fact that this admirable piece of writing nonetheless ends abruptly. One senses this as one progresses through the work, and particularly when Freud approaches the question of the relations between anxiety, on the one hand, and mourning and pain, on the other. It therefore comes as no surprise to see that Freud was obliged a rather rare occurrence in his work - to add addenda to the body of the work, the last of which takes up the theme of these relations. Freud puts forward a certain number of hypotheses which I think are worth retaining, but they fall a long way short of solving the problems he is quite rightly posing. The work was undertaken, as we know, in response to Rank's hypotheses - which, in my judgement, Freud gave too much credit to - on the birth trauma. Freud refutes Rank's idea that birth institutes the separation between mother and child: ... birth is not experienced subjectively as a separation from the mother, since the foetus, being a completely narcissistic creature, is totally unaware of her existence as an object.2 Moreover, Freud points out that the affective reactions to separation are pain and mourning, and not anxiety. Anxiety is linked to the notion of danger; it is different from pain and mourning which belong more to the category of narcissistic injury. In his exposition, Freud links anxiety to excessive instinctual excitation. There is too much libido: either it is automatic anxiety, in which case no help can be expected from the object; or, it is signal anxiety in anticipation of the danger of losing the object, whose protective function against the upsurge of libido beyond a certain level is lacking; or again, it is anxiety linked to the danger of allowing excitation to accumulate, the satisfaction of which would be reprehensible; or, finally, it is anxiety arising from the danger of increasing tension owing to the reproaches of the super-ego, where there is a risk of being abandoned by the 'protective Powers of Destiny'. The question that arises, then, is that of the transition from the 'completely narcissistic' foetus, which is totally unaware of the mother as an object, to the conflicting desires between erotic libido and

aggressive libido in the oedipal phase. It is this whole development that the text evades, that is, the destiny of absolute primary narcissism. The genesis of the super-ego does not account for it and the ego ideal is its outcome or term. Such is the destiny of narcissistic figures which develop in parallel to the drive vicissitudes linked to the object. As for the destiny of the drives, we know that it is necessary to distinguish between idealisations of the object as an expression of narcissistic cathexis and sublimations as transformations of the drives. All these operations require a subject, in the structural sense, which is not an existential I, but a working of displaced condensations or circulations. This subject experiences himself existentially in his affects, and especially in the anxiety felt by the ego. Anxiety is the epiphany o f the subject; an epiphany that is obtained by means of the ego, but for which the symbolic subject is a necessity. Freud's reasoning is both sound and false at the same time. It is sound insofar as he rejects an explanation based on origins, that is, birth as the zero point, and the trauma of birth as an economy of the treatment; first and foremost, because it would shorten analyses to nine months! It is also right to say that to stop a fire it is not enough to put out the match that started it. But it is false in that birth is indeed a catastrophe in the modern theoretical sense of the word. A catastrophe which is overcome by reconstituting as closely as possible the conditions of intrauterine life in the outside world. This is the really profound and often unrecognised meaning of Winnicott's important concept of holding, which is nothing other than an external nidification of the child. Although birth, more than original sin, is the origin of all our troubles, harking back to it does not help us much in resolving our problems.3 W hat we need to bear in m ind concerning this situation is the following series of dialectical rever­ sals: birth as catastrophe (separation from the uterus; severing the umbilical cord; the transition to normal respiration and digestive feeding; the beginnings of a relationship to the mother) and its negation by the mother's adaptation to the infant's needs during the first weeks when the initial drive functioning is establishing itself in a narcissistic mode. The effect of anaclitic object relations, as Laplanche has rightly pointed out, is to give birth to hum an sexuality. The second birth, which is in fact the first for Freud, is the loss of the breast allowing the ego to come into existence; that is, to accede to the status of a reality-ego ensuring its distinction from the object. The problem of limits has its rightful place here.4 It is therefore not surprising to see that Freud comes to the conclusion that the factors causing neuroses are merely anachronisms, that is, reactions to danger stemming from an adapted infantile attitude persisting without due reason into the age of adulthood as a result of fixation

and repression. Three kinds of causes may be identified: biological, the child's incomplete development (hence his dependence on the object); phylogenetic, that is, diphasic sexuality (thus the compulsion to repeat infantile sexuality in adult sexuality); and finally, psycholog­ ical, id-ego differentiation (the fact that the ego, which is struggling against the id, is obliged to struggle against itself as well, since it is simply an emanation of it). All this implies the reproduction, the replication of external-internal relations. It is true that the^internal danger was formerly external; the struggle against the internal danger is a vain imitation of the method used against the external danger. These struggles the ego wages against the id, as if it were external to it, backfire on the ego itself, in that the ego is merely a portion of the id that has been modified by contact with the external world. There is thus a correspondence between the drive-object dichotomy and the distinction between narcissistic-libido and objectlibido. Here again object-libido arises from narcissistic-libido, at least in part; secondarily, narcissistic-libido will be stolen from objects. To the above points I would like to add a personal hypothesis: narcissism is grounded in object-libido and its relative autonomy. Further, one consequence among others of the agonistic and antago­ nistic relations between narcissistic-libido and object-libido is the creation of the narcissistic object which eludes the limitations imposed by the boundaries between subject and object, ego and id. The theoretical argument I have just advanced, drawing on Freud's work, is intended to underscore the importance of the problem of limits in external-internal relations, and w ithin the psychical appa­ ratus, from a metapsychological rather than phenomenological perspective. Federn's theories, on the other hand, are more inspired by psychoanalytic phenomenology.

The Ego and its Representation As'I was re-reading Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety (1926 [1925]), it seemed to me that there was one point which had been neglected. The work begins with a study of inhibitions which Freud attempts to distinguish from symptoms (later, Freud says inhibition may be a symptom as well). Inhibition is defined as a restriction o f an egofunction for the purpose of avoiding coming into conflict either with the id or with the super-ego. But in this single chapter devoted to inhibition, it is noteworthy that Freud never speaks of representations or affects. From this I draw the following conclusions: •

that the functional restriction short-circuits the intervention of representations or affects at the level of the ego. I am not saying

•

•

Freud was right on this point, but am simply drawing out the implications of his analysis; that this way of understanding the functional limitations of the ego in relation to the sexual, nutritive, locomotive and work function (inhibition in work) raises the corollary question of the relation of the ego to representation and affect. Although, as far as affect is concerned, it seems certain that the ego, the seat of anxiety, is the seat of affects - so much so that there has been a long debate in contemporary psychoanalytic literature on the existence of unconscious affects - where representations are concerned, on the other hand, Freud only ever speaks of objectrepresentations (SE, 'presentations'). My conclusion thus runs as follows: either Freud purposely passes over the problem of ego-representations (representations which the ego is presumed to have of itself) or, and this is the supposi­ tion I incline towards, the ego has no representation of itself Under these circumstances, speaking of ego-representations makes no sense from a theoretical point of view, even if this notion has a phenomenological echo to it. Moreover, in The Ego and the Id (1923), Freud defines the ego as a surface, or that which corre­ sponds to the projection of a surface; and, I would add, a surface intended to receive object representations and affects.5

I will now give an example taken from Proust's In Search of Lost Time which I have already made use of in a work of applied psycho­ analysis.6 Albertine has left Marcel after a night during which he sensed their relationship was coming to an end. He is imagining every possible way of getting her back: I was going to buy, in addition to the motor cars, the finest yacht which then existed. It was for sale, but at so high a price that no buyer could be found. Moreover, once bought, even if we confined ourselves to four-month cruises, it would cost two hundred thousand francs a year in upkeep. We should be living at the rate of half a m illion francs a year. Would I be able to sustain it for more than seven or eight years? But never mind; when I had only an income of fifty thousand francs left, I could leave it to Albertine and kill myself. This was the decision I made. It made me think of myself Now, since one's ego lives by thinking incessantly of all sorts of things, since it is no more the thought of those things, if by chance, instead of being preoccupied with those things, it suddenly thinks of itself, it finds only an empty apparatus, some­ thing which it does not recognise and to which, in order to give it

some reality, it adds the memory of a face seen in a mirror. That peculiar smile, that untidy moustache - they are what would disap­ pear from the face of the earth. W hen I killed myself five years hence, I would no longer be able to think all those things which passed through my m ind unceasingly, I would no longer exist on the face of the earth and would never come back to it; my thought would stop for ever. And my ego seemed to me even more null when I saw it as something that no longer exists. How could it be difficult to sacrifice, for the sake of the person to whom one's thought is constantly straining (the person we love), that other person of whom we never think: ourselves? Accordingly, this thought of my death, like the notion of my ego, seemed to me most strange, but I did not find it at all disagreeable. Then suddenly it struck me as being terribly sad; this was because, reflecting that if I did not have more money at my disposal it was because my parents were still alive, I suddenly thought of my mother. And I could not bear the idea of what she would suffer after my death.7 In the light of this passage, I would like to add that a confusion has often been made between body image and ego-representation. If the ego is a surface, or that which corresponds to the projection of a surface, body image and ego-representation belong to different theo­ retical levels. Body image is connected with a phenomenology of appearance. W hen one speaks of an unconscious ego-representation, one is usually referring to what can be deduced from the projection of an unconscious fantasy concerning the object patched (in the sense of an item of patched clothing) on to the ego. As for the ego itself, it is a theoretical concept and not a phenomenological description; it is an agency. Just as it would be absurd to speak of a representation of the id or of the super-ego, it is absurd to speak of an ego-representa­ tion. It is fair enough to speak of representatives of the id, super-ego or eg6, that is, of mandated emanations, offshoots, or derivatives of an agency. But the representation of an agency is theoretically untenable. The ego works on representations and is worked on by representa­ tions, but it cannot be represented. It can, and indeed this is all it can do, have object-representations. It is through affects that the ego gives an unrepresentable representation of itself.

Affects and the Object: The Trauma-Object It will be seen, then, that the problem of representations only concerns the object, whereas the structure of affect has a double aspect to it. It is both affect for the object and an ego-related affect,

the two sometimes becoming confused without the ego being able to tell the difference. A few years ago, on reading M. Bouvet's paper on 'Depersonnalisation et relations d'objet',8 I was led to think about the question of narcissistic relations and I proposed that they be given a place apart. Since then I have changed my mind. Although there is justification for defining a notion of the ego's relation to itself, which W innicott was to call ego-relatedness, it is evident that this auto-egotic relation with narcissistic connotations comes within the general framework of object relations. To be more specific the object rela­ tionship comprises: • •

object-representations and the affects that correspond to them; ego-related affects without ego-representation (which does not exclude body representations).

This means that when one speaks of ego-representations, one has to realise that this licence stops precisely where the theory begins. Egorepresentations are in fact object-representations dressed up as ego-representations by virtue of narcissistic cathexis. This is in keeping with Freud's phrase in which the ego, addressing the id, says: 'Look, you can love me too - I am so like the object.' The question of narcissistic anxiety, which is so important, now takes on a different light: phenomenologically, there is justification for describing its manifestations; theoretically, narcissistic anxiety is anxiety linked to objects dressed up as narcissistic objects; for strictly speaking, narcis­ sism is only aware of the affects - in the order of unpleasure - of pain, mourning and hypochondria. Although it would be interesting to do so, it is not possible here for me to review the list of ego-functions in order to demonstrate that there can be no question of there being ego-representations, but, on the other hand, I would like to see if there is nothing but object-repre­ sentations in the ego. In Thoughts for the Times on War and Death' (1915c) Freud considers the consequences of the loss of loved ones. These loved ones are on the one hand an inner possession, compo­ nents of our own ego; but on the other hand they are partly strangers, even enemies.'9 It seems to me to be much more interesting to draw out the implications of these remarks, not in terms of ambivalence as Freud does, but rather in terms of the relations between narcissism and the object. From this perspective, the object, which is originally the aim of the id's satisfactions, is in certain respects always a cause of disequilibrium for the ego - in fact, it is a trauma. While it is true that the ego longs for unification and that this internal unification extends to unification with the object, total union with the object results in a loss of ego-organisation. Moreover, when such reunifica­

tion is impossible, it disorganises the ego when the latter cannot tolerate this separation. The trauma-object (for narcissism) thus leads us to consider the ego not only as the seat of the effects of trauma but also as the seat of reactions against this dependence on the object, reactions which constitute an important part of the ego's defences, not against anxiety, but against the object whose independent varia­ tions release anxiety. So in the series: early traumatism - defence (both together constituting fixation) - latency - the explosion of neurosis - partial return of the repressed, I would like to underscore the confusion between the drive (represented by affect) and the object; for danger comes just as much from the eruption of sexuality in the ego as from the impingement of the object. It is now clear, then, that the problem of the relations between ego and object is one that concerns their limits, their coexistence. These limits or boundaries are as much internal as external. I mean that the limits between the ego and the object resonate or reverberate with the limits between the ego and the id. The problem does not arise for the super-ego, which, it will be remembered, extends from the id (its source) to the ego (its object) in the schema Freud gives of the agencies. That is to say that the super-ego's impingement of the ego is in fact a disguised impingement by the id modified by the ego's development. I must now point out what I am going to exclude from my expo­ sition: that is, the relations of the ego to psychosomatic syndromes, which concern the relations between ego and soma through the inter­ mediary of the id (anchored in soma but distinct from it), and to delusion, which is a product of the relations between ego, super-ego and reality. O n the other hand, I will give particular attention to the case of mourning. For it is in m ourning that the ego's relation to itself materialises, since a part of the ego identifies with the lost object and enters into conflict with the rest of the ego; regression occurs in melancholia both at the twin levels of the id (oral cannibalistic fixation) and of the super-ego (self-reproaches and feelings of a lack of faorth). Nevertheless, even though these extremes are not included in my argument, I shall not overlook the intermediate positions as I defined them in the model I presented for borderline cases in my London Congress paper of 1975.10

The Conflict between the Ego and the Trauma-Object The psychoanalytic theory of the ego is particularly muddled since, as we all know, it wavers constantly between viewing the ego as a partial agency of the psychical apparatus and as a unitary entity, considered as the whole of the psychical personality. I shall concern myself with the first of these two acceptations because, even if this ambiguity is

integral to ego theory in psychoanalysis, it is nonetheless true that the idea of a totalising unitary structure remains inconceivable for psychoanalytic thought. W hich is why I believe it is necessary to remain cautious in regard of psychoanalytic conceptions of the Self or identity which are phenomenologically inspired. If the ego is a part-agency - I am modelling this expression on that of the part-object - we need to picture it as Freud did at the beginning in the 'Project'; that is, as a system of constantly - or relatively constant - cathected neurones. In my judgement, this is the meaning that should be attributed to Freud's idea that the ego is the product of the differentiation of a part of the id under the influence of the external world. The apprehension of reality, even if selectively and oriented by projective mechanisms, necessitates a relatively stable level of cathexis. This explains why Freud regards the ego as resulting from the inhibi­ tion of unconscious representation. It would seem to me that it is even arguable that, in addition to the idea that the ego has no representa­ tion of itself, the ego is the means by which representation can occur. Indeed, regarding the ego as the functioning of a network of operations - without any representation of itself - allows us to understand the logical coherence of the set of operations: perception, representation and identification. The latter, insofar as it is unconscious, has an inte­ grating effect, owing to the disappearance of the sensory dimension in the first, or the imaginary dimension in the second.11 In identification, the imaginary quality is eclipsed in favour of being-like-the-object; that is, identification does away with the distance separating the object (perceived or represented) and the ego. Identification is not only alienating but structuring as well, in that the object of the identification is supposed to have attained its stability of functioning thanks to a relatively constant level of cathexis. This is what characterises the mother-child relationship in the metaphor of maternal care. It is also what transference reveals when our analysands see our lives as being ordered and peaceful, without instinctual torments, just as the child imagines that the adult has no difficulty whatsoever in living in peace with his drives, or that he has the power to satisfy them completely, so that he is not subject to frustration and is oblivious to the pangs of desire. Now this ideal vision of the ego - that of an ideal ego - is demolished by desire for the object. It is the lack of an object that will upset this fragile success of the ego-organisation functioning as a network of cathexes at a relatively constant level. The object's presence: never more present than in the absence when it is found to be lacking, the object is a 'mischief maker' as Freud says. Here we need to bear in m ind its intermediate - in fact, dual - position. The object represents a cross­ roads. It is .the quest of the desires of the id which lacks an object to

satisfy it, and thus generates necessarily contradictory libidinal tensions of love and hate. It is part of the external world, since it is there, outside the subject, that the object is located. We have learnt from Winnicott how the function of the transitional object partially overcomes this twofold source of tensions. But there is yet another solution we know of for resolving this problem: narcissism. Through the libidinal cathexis of the ego, the latter gives itself the possibility of finding an object of love in itself, constituted on the model of the object, and capable, owing to the resources of auto-erotism, of obtaining the instinctual satisfaction it is seeking. It is narcissism that makes the unitary outcome possible, or rather the lure of a unitary outcome, via the path of imaginary identification. This 'narcissising' process will be all the more intense in that the invested object will prove disappointing. Disappointment more than frustration; for it is disappointment that is at the root of depression. Disappointment brings the depressive movement in its wake all the more easily in that the two objects (internal and external, maternal and paternal) have been disillusioning too early on; they have been unreliable and deceiving. The subject has lost his faith in them. They have become 'too real' prematurely. Nothing remains but to rely on the resources of confidence - illusory that he places by way of compensation in his omnipotence. These rather lengthy preliminary remarks were indispensable to back up my hypothesis of the trauma-object. On the one hand, it has been maintained, not without justification, that the trauma was not necessarily of an external origin, that the irruption of sexuality into the ego was a traumatism; and, on the other hand, that the introjection of instinctual impulses into the ego was a way of resolving conflicts connected with incorporating the object. The point of view I am putting forward here reflects a different but complementary perspective. In speaking of the trauma-object, I mainly have in mind the danger that the object represents for the ego insofar as its very existence obliges the ego to modify its regime. As the object is internal to the drive assembly, it is charged with all the instinctual energy and fantasy there, and so tries to penetrate the ego from the inside. O n the other hand, insofar as it is external to the drive assembly, the object is not at the ego's disposition and so, while conciliating the other agencies (the id, super-ego and reality), the latter is driven to violate itself in order to emerge from its quietude and go towards the object, just as one speaks of going to work. What's more, and this is the most important point, the object is neither fixed nor permanent. It is aleatory, both in time and space. Its moods, states and desires are changing and therefore it forces the ego to make considerable efforts to adjust. Lastly, the object has its own desires which only partly coincide with those of the ego. It has its aim and

its object which do not necessarily tally with the sense of reciprocity the ego wishes for. All these are sources of traumatisms, as can be seen from the ego's incapacity to control the object. To these difficulties may be added quantitative (and thus qualitative) problems; a sense of 'too m uch' and 'too little' surrounds the object: too present, not present enough; too absent or not absent enough. Now while fusion with the object is desirable, it can never be entirely achieved as the ego disappears completely in the fusion. And although separation allows the ego to 'breathe', the object should not be too far away nor out of reach for too long. O n top of this there are the object's parallel exigencies towards the ego, and the latter senses this, except in moments of grace that are always too short, always insufficient, in the face of these expectations. It now becomes understandable that the object is both desirable and undesirable at the same time - lovable and hateful - and that the narcissistic pole prefers 'being' to 'having', although having reinforces the sense of being. Less need for having should prepare for the uncer­ tainties involved in having; less being may provide security against the dangers of the vicissitudes of being; narcissistic illusion being able to make up for this suppression of provisions by 'drawing on' egocathexes taken from its reserves - its 'narcissistic supplies' as they are called.12 But narcissistic withdrawal is yet another lure; Freud showed he was aware of this in his description of 'Libidinal Types' (1931). The narcis­ sistic character type is more independent, but also more vulnerable. When the ego is disappointed with itself in face of the ego ideal which becomes its object, the ideal ego loses its fragile equilibrium. Two outcomes are possible. The first possibility is depression, owing to disappointment in the object and, more regressively, to the ego's sense of bankruptcy in the face of the exigencies of the ego ideal which has taken the place of the object. The second possibility is fragmentation, where disappointment in the object gives way to a feeling of being persecuted by it - resulting from projective identification - in which the ego identifies with the parts of itself that are projected, the bad ego being identified with the object. One can see, then, that conflict between the ego and the trauma-object is inevitable and that the disinvestment of the object and narcissistic withdrawal expose the subject's ego to a very threatening type of anxiety: narcissistic anxiety.

Narcissistic Anxieties and Psychotic Anxieties As I have said, I shall not be dealing with the question of delusion but, within the context of the relations between narcissism and psychosis, I want to clarify the relations between narcissistic anxieties

and psychotic anxieties. This theme arises particularly in relation to the trauma-object. Insofar as the object is the object of the drive it is necessarily a trauma-object. However, that is not all it is. As an external object (that is to say, external to the drive assembly) the object has the role of remedying the suffering it causes. A troublemaker, an alien agent, disturbing the ego's tranquillity, the internal object can also, of course, insofar as it is a good object, be used as a consoling, soothing object, a 'holding-object', in the sense of Winnicott's holding. This internal object, which may give birth to the transitional object, is grounded in the object of the maternal care of the so-called 'goodenough' mother, in Winnicott's terminology. The role of the external object linked with object-love means that the object acquires an oscillating function. W hat I mean by this is that object-love is a transitive function in which the object is alter­ nately either the mother or the child. The child becomes the object of the object in the illusory relation of the mother-child unity. This continues until the day comes when this illusion makes way for the disillusion created by awareness of the presence of the third party, the father. He has always been there; but he has only been present in absentia, in the mother's psyche. The new awareness of his separate existence, which needs relating to the emerging awareness of the mother and the child as separate beings, whose wishes no longer completely coincide in the relation of mutual omnipotence, opens the area of early triangulation (much earlier than the oedipal phase proper). However, this evolution is only possible for the child if the goodenough mother has made full use of object-love. It is not easy to say what object-love consists of, but anyone observing an ordinary mother-child relationship knows what it is about. To express it in psychoanalytic language, I would say that object-love consists in the child investing the mother as a guarantor of well-being at a time when the drives are activated in search of the gratification they expect from an object situated outside the sphere of the drives. We know that the immediate satisfaction of the drives is impossible, that frustration is inevitable, that perfect adaptation between mother and child is a moment of grace that does not last, if it ever existed, and that it should rather be understood as a retroactive fantasy of an idealisation of the past: the golden age between a speaking mother and her infans. Everything that follows, everything that can be remembered, or that is memorable, involves the series drive-desire-demand-frustra­ tion-postponed satisfaction, which is necessarily incomplete and more or less adapted to desire activated by the drive. Consequently, as far as the external object is concerned, object-love can only have

one aim and one result, except for the case which Freud called the specific action (instinctual satisfaction); that is, rendering the drives tolerable for the ego. It is the specific action that gives the child the feeling that it is loved and, at the same time, constitutes positive narcissism and a belief in object-love. Any premature satisfaction (before the child has even become conscious of his desire), any satis­ faction given without love or delayed beyond the baby's capacities to wait, and any diffusion of the mother's anxieties, transform this specifically good action into a specifically bad action. W hat are the consequences of this for the psychical apparatus? W hen the specific action remains specifically good, the ego can constitute the system which is specific to it, which aims to set up the network of cathexes at a constant level and to acquire a relatively stable organisation. The external object has played the role of a mirror, a container, an auxiliary ego. In this case, all that remains for the ego to do is to try and defend itself against the somewhat excessive char­ acter of certain instinctual demands. It can count on the help and assistance of the object (external and internal) in this conflict with the drives. If, afterwards, disappointment in the object, or in the two objects in the oedipal configuration, forces it into narcissistic with­ drawal, it will find refuge there which is precarious, but also protective through self-idealisation. And when this shelter, this selfnidification, is threatened, it will experience narcissistic anxieties. Regressive anxieties, no doubt, but regression which is not funda­ mentally destructive for psychical reality and external, material reality. O n the contrary, when the specific action becomes specifically bad and the object does not fulfil its role as a mirror, container or auxil­ iary ego, a second source of conflict will be set up instead. That is to say, instead of merely having to defend itself against the drives and their derivatives (fantasmatic objects), the ego will have to engage in a struggle on two fronts. On the one hand, it will continue to struggle against the drives and, on the other, it will have to struggle against the object. Caught in a pincer movement, it knows neither which way to turn nor which front presents the most pressing danger, so it employs the resources it has at its disposal; that is, it brings the destructive drives into play. The destructive drives will act in turn on the external object, the internal object, and even on the ego itself. Projective identification will now be excessive. Both external reality and internal reality will be hated (Bion). It is at this point that not only the narcissistic anxieties of private madness but the psychotic anxieties of public madness, that is, psychosis, will appear. The trauma-object thus becomes a mad-object; both driven mad and maddening, which the destructive drives will endeavour to

neutralise. In this case, narcissistic withdrawal will no longer be able to sustain so efficiently the illusion of the ego's megalomania. That is, narcissism, which was positive, now becomes negative. Negative in all senses of the term. Negative in the sense of being the opposite of positive: the good becomes bad and negative in the sense of a process of nihilation, in which the ego and object tend towards mutual nulli­ fication. Here we are dealing with the extreme possibilities of the psychical apparatus in the psychical sphere. Other remaining possi­ bilities are either psychosomatic regression, that is, somatic dementia, or psychical disintegration through mental deterioration. In both cases, the psychical dimension is overwhelmed by the somaticphysical dim ension. Reversibility is conjectural: possible or impossible. Destructive regression can be temporary or definitive. W hat is probable is that reversibility will depend on the physical and psychical care of an object which has never existed. The object in question will not be a perfect object - perhaps only a trauma-object which will lim it the inevitable traumatism to its imperfect adaptation to the ego,13 without permitting anxiety, arising from its own drives, to get mixed up in its interventions. Having pursued my theoretical argument to its logical conclusion, it is now time to return to less hypothetical ground by examining Freud's text of 1926.

Affective Mnemic Signs and Symbols The fact that Freud begins his work Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety by making a study of the functional restrictions of the ego, in order to distinguish them from symptoms and anxiety, shows that he was aware of their differences. A symptom cannot be described as taking place within the ego is the conclusion he comes to at the end of the first chapter. Later, the ego reappears in the text as the agency which releases anxiety when object-cathexes represent a danger for it. But what about the case where the ego releases anxiety at the level not o f objectcathexes but of its own cathexes? This is a case Freud did not envisage in Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety, at least in the text itself. It is only in the last pages of the work, in the addenda, that the differences between anxiety, pain and m ourning appear. These are essential distinctions in that they take narcissism into account. In fact, Freud concludes that physical pain is narcissistic in nature, whereas psychical pain results from the change of narcissistic cathexis to object-cathexis (S£, XX, p. 171). Freud was at least being consistent, for he had maintained since 1914 that hypochondria was the 'actual' neurosis preliminary to the narcissistic neurosis of psychosis. This idea was corrected by the distinction he made in 1924, in which

melancholia alone deserved the name of narcissistic neurosis, whereas paranoia and schizophrenia were called psychoses. Nonetheless, Freud's conclusion in 1926 that psychical pain is linked to object-cathexis calls for further comment. Although Freud's position is not at variance with that of 'Mourning and Melancholia' (1917a [1915]) - and there is nothing to suggest that he wished to modify his theory on this point - the object-cathexis of psychical pain can only logically be the cathexis o f a narcissistic object. So we have the pair 'physical pain - psychical pain' in which the transition from narcissistic cathexis to object-cathexis (narcissistic) locates narcissism first at the level of the body - that is, of the bodily ego - and then at the level of the psychical ego, in a relation in which object and ego mirror each other. But the important thing is that, in contradistinction to anxiety, which is a signal, pain is a wound. We have passed from the semantics of signs to a metaphorical semiology of the narcissistic haemorrhage oozing out through the open sore of wounded, gashed narcissism. W hich means that narcissistic unity is compromised. From the point of view of form, the wound creates a gaping hole; from the point of view of consistency, the ego suffers a loss or even a depletion of its consistency. The ego's substance, if I may say so, takes a knock. Lastly, mourning - and here we should follow Melanie Klein - is mourning of an object, if not a whole object, or apprehended as whole, at least one which is becoming whole. Here again the mirror reactions between the structure of the destroyed object and its symmetrical reparation by the ego, which identifies with it, are remarkable. One cannot insist enough on the differences that exist between affect and identification. Identification, especially when it is primary identification, is above all affective: empathetic or sympathetic, in any case, 'pathetic'. We can understand, then, the difference between primary identification and secondary identification. Whereas the former belongs to the world of affect, the latter is above all the product of representations related to desire. The desire is no longer experienced as in the former case; it is reduced to specific features which become features of identification in a semantic mode. An explanation for this transition may be that the diffuse mode of iden­ tification, in the case of so-called primary identification, is substituted for a structured mode of identification, in the case of so-called secondary identification. In this second case, it is understandable that language may have an appropriate part to play, since there is a certain structure, whereas, in the first case, the massive, affective identifica­ tions have only a limited choice, the oppositions being governed by the dual relation of pleasure-unpleasure or jouissance-pain, in symmetrical, opposing, or complementary modes.

This reference to semantics, to semiology, and even linguistics may be surprising. Yet Freud's writing itself provides the justification for it. He defines a symptom as 'a sign of, and a substitute for, an instinctual satisfaction which has remained in abeyance' (SE, XX, p. 91). A bit further on, he repeats his view that affective states have become incorporated in the m ind 'as precipitates of primaeval traumatic expe­ riences, and when a similar situation occurs they are revived like mnemic symbols' (p. 93). There is no need here to raise the question of phylogenesis, as the ontogenetic precipitate suffices as an explana­ tion. W hat is more important is the idea of incorporation into psychical life; precipitates of traumas from the beginnings of life are incorporated into psychical life and serve the signal function as mnemic symbols. Sign and symbol: Freud's writing neglects none of the resources of a semiology which preserves semantic unity which is sometimes based on representations and sometimes on affects. Freud's expression 'affective symbol' (p. 94) seems to me to be highly significant. A few years after, in the New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis (1933 [1932]), he pursued, in the same vein of inspiration, the comparison which I have just suggested, when he made a correlation between signal anxiety, with the emission of small quantities of energy, and' thought, used to explore the external world. Thus, from affect to thought the mnemic-semantic function is at work. What distinguishes the different manifestations is the material which the function mobilises, its nature and its quantity; for it is clear that the most m inim al affect mobilises a quantity of energy which is not of the same order as that which is used for cathecting or decathecting representations, and, even more so, it goes without saying, the thought that is actualised through language. At all events, it should be noted how the ego participates in all these operations, whether by releasing anxiety, or as the agent of thought processes (which are the apanage of the preconscious); the ego is at the centre of things. I should add that it is not the same func­ tions which are activated in the different cases, even though they are united by analogical relations. But the question which we cannot avoid asking ourselves, to the extent that the ego and narcissism are so tightly related, not to say consubstantial, is whether, apart from the cases described by Freud (physical pain or hypochondria, mental pain, narcissistic injury, depression, and let us add splitting and fragmentation), it is not possible to complete these descriptions, or to refine them; and, above all, to give them a theoretical formulation that is more in line with clinical experience and post-Freudian theoretical elaborations.

We shall have to take into consideration the vicissitudes of narcis­ sistic drive motions (that is to say, oriented towards the ego), and narcissistic drive representatives, in order to understand the clinical and theoretical aspects of narcissistic anxieties, as well as the way in which they manifest themselves in analysis. This will involve exam­ ining, from the same point of view, the narcissistic side of anxiety even if it is linked to object-cathexes - and the anxiety found in narcissistic structures (organisations or narcissistic personalities). I shall try to deal with those aspects which have been studied least, but whose importance has been recognised with a remarkable degree of unanim ity in modern clinical psychoanalysis. I shall propose, then, a definition of anxiety from a modern perspective: Anxiety is the noise which interrupts the silent continuum of the sense of existing through the exchange o f information with oneself or with others. This noise is a form of information belonging to a code which should be translated into the code governed by the relations o f language and thought in their relationship to desire; so as to increase the information of this latter system which, like any system, has functions, and therefore, limits. First and foremost, then, anxiety poses the problem of the lim it between the codes of one and the same subject or between two subjects. Two strategies are then possible: (a) either one can include all the unpleasant or distressing affective phenomena under the term 'anxiety7; or, (b) one can reserve a specific meaning for anxiety, distinguishing it, as Freud does, from other distressing affects. In the second case, there is a constant interaction between the two registers. For the time being, let us put this definition to one side and turn our attention to one of the most extreme forms of the relations between anxiety and narcissism, that is, psychical pain.

Psychical Pain At a Congress a few years ago, the British Psychoanalytic Society proposed as a subject of discussion: 'Psychical Pain7.14 As J.-B. Pontalis pointed out at the time, the experience of pain is one of a 'body-ego7,15 the psyche changing into body and the body into psyche. The circumstances in which I have been able to observe psychical pain enable me to describe the following constellation:

(a) Pain is caused by a disappointment experienced in a state o f unpre­ paredness, which makes it closer to traumatic neurosis than to frustration or privation. Saying that it is linked to object-loss is less important than emphasising the subject's unpreparedness, due to scomatisation and the denial of signs of change in the object up to the point when denial can no longer be maintained. It always comes like a clap of thunder in a clear sky, even if the sun has been obscured by clouds for weeks. W hat is intolerable is the change in the object which obliges the ego to change correspondingly. (b) Pain results from the object's sequestration, in a manner akin to hypochondria, except that it is a psychical object and not an organ that is involved. Or rather, the ego encysts itself with the object, m aintaining an algesic unity in which it seeks to imprison it. Pain is the result of the internal object's struggle to free itself, whereas the ego hounds it and is bruised by the contact with it. For in the last analysis, the ego merely injures itself since the sequestered object no longer exists; it is the shadow of an object. The ego is like a desperate child banging his head against a wall. Unlike in melancholy, there is no sense of unworthiness and selfberating, but a feeling of being wronged, and of injustice. (c) The object's sequestration and the internal pain which acts like a constant spur provides a picture of contrasts in which discreet external signs (owing to an affect of shame) are set against a perma­ nent internal storm. (d) There is a contradiction in the ego's structure between the remark­ able possibilities for sublimation accompanying an object relationship marked by idealisation as well as denial, and the cleavage o f drives in the primitive state. Narcissistic sensibility is refined; object sensi­ bility is brute. (e) A common defence against psychical pain is the moving o f spatial limits: wandering or travelling. The displacement is put into action, in a quest for an unknown space, whereas internal v displacement is impossible; psychical space being taken up by the sequestration of the phantom object. (f) Regressing to the past assumes a paradoxical form. Whereas a change in the object is unforeseeable, owing to the fact that time is denied, anticipation now dominates. For when all is said and done it is an intolerance of change both in the ego and in the object which is the main characteristic of psychical pain. The reason for this is that change goes against the permanence and continuity of the unitary narcissistic organisation in space as well as in time. (g) This state of psychical pain is the product of what Masud Khan called cumulative trauma. Owing to the ego's narcissistic structure,

this cumulative trauma is overcome through denial. W hen the most important narcissistic wound is reopened, the internal state is, as Freud described, one of a continuous internal traumatic experience. W innicott spoke of reactive behaviour. Following him, I shall speak of reactive internal psychic functioning. In fact this reactivity functions symmetrically, blow by blow. Defence takes the form, then, of a reactive primary identification or, in the most serious cases, of a more or less reactive confusional depersonalisation. An exploration of the past reveals that character formations stem less from precise drive orientations than from reactive formations to the object's drives. The reaction does not so much concern the drives of the subject, which there is an attempt to reduce to silence, as the drives of the object, which are hated for their new orientation or the change in their mode of expression. Likewise, the internal world is relatively uncathected, whereas external reality - a source of permanent dangers - is hyper-cathected. (h) Faced with the dangers provoked by the change in the object, attempts are made to control it. The contradiction is perhaps that it is a question of both controlling the object and of being controlled by it. In other words, the subject imprisons the object by making himself the object's prisoner too. The roles are inverted, as we have seen, once the narcissistic wound has become an open sore, making the object's sequestration indis­ pensable and creating 'psychical hypochondria'. The aim of this sequestration, which can be accompanied by projective identifi­ cation, is to reconstitute the lost unity with the object by creating an internal complementarity. The result of this feat is that one is dealing with subjects who appear on the face of it to be 'normal', insofar as this adjective has any meaning for a psychoanalyst, but who are living with an internal infirmity, a receptacle for traumaobjects which 'vamparise' the hypnotised ego. Hence the difficulty of determining the psychopathological structure. What is the metapsychological explanation for this structure? I will provide a hypothetical model. The narcissistic subject can never take the risk, for fear of exhaustion or 'impingement' by the object (Winnicott), of cathecting the object fully in self-abandonment. Abandoning oneself implies having confidence in the situation in which one is abandoning oneself to the object's love. The object can be loved; opening oneself to the object is perilous. If, under these conditions which are frustrating for the object, the latter turns away or leaves in search of another object (the object of the object), the ego experiences narcissistic rage (Kohut) and homosexual feelings towards the rival. All contact with the object, insofar as such contact

suggests a homosexual relationship with the rival (the object of the object) or a destructive contact through the disappointment inflicted, is suspended. As if this were not enough, a change in the orientation of cathexes takes the form of a reversal with a vacuum effect, 'returning' the cathexes towards the ego. Narcissistic withdrawal is the corollary of withdrawing cathexes from the object. Unknown to the subject, the next thing to happen in this deflection of cathexes, or this internal reorientation, is that, without realising it, the ego brings the object back into its net, but it is an empty object, a phantom object. Henceforth, the object's sequestration, which I have been discussing, becomes the focus of a merciless struggle in which the ego, believing it is bruising the object, merely succeeds in bruising itself. The object's narcissistic status, woven into the ego's web, simply results in making the tear in the web greater. This explains the negative cathexis, a cathexis of the hole left by the object, as if this hole were the only reality. W innicott expressed this by saying that the negative of one person is more real than the positive of another; that is to say, of any substitute object. The blindness of the paralysed and painful ego is all the more understandable insofar as it cannot see the object, since the object is not on the web, the surface on which it is inscribed, but is the very weft of this woven surface. Instead of an insight, we have a 'painsightJ. In French, instead of an introvision, we have an algovision. This investing of the 'negative side of relation­ ships' (Winnicott) shows a remarkable intolerance to mourning, since losing the object is equivalent to losing oneself, the object being the source of any esteem the ego has for itself. In these cases, the aim of analysis is to bring about a psychical rebirth - or perhaps even a birth - by means of 'growing pains' (Bion). This can only be accomplished by tolerance of the unintegrated state; that is, by abandoning narcis­ sistic mastery and control of the object. The unintegrated state is different from the disintegrated state (Winnicott). The ego struggles against this anti-unitary threat, since the object and the ego are but one. Pain is a kind of safeguard, a state of alert, a means of existence for survival, without real life, when the ego is faced with its contin­ gency, experienced as futility. These remarks give me serious reason to doubt Freud's assertion in Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety, according to which negative cathexis has no place in the unconscious. I am equally doubtful about his claim - and here he was personally concerned, because he himself was prone to it - that fainting leaves no trace in the unconscious. On the contrary, I believe that the decathexis involved in fainting is not confined to reliving an experience of fusion, but also creates an ex­ perience of a breach, of emptiness, which pierces a hole in the unconscious, whose counter-cathexes become active around the

edges of the gaping wound to prevent the return or the extension of such an affective experience. Negative hallucination is the equivalent of it at the level of representation. I must add that it is not only the experience of loss which is at the forefront here but also that of the unknown life of the changing object.16 If the object has changed without the ego noticing the change, it means that the object was, in fact, not known. It was unknowable, and thus unpredictable. W hich amounts to saying that it was an autonomous object and not a narcissistic object. And this is what is intolerable for the ego which considers it alternately as a part of itself and as an absolute stranger; that is, both Same and Other. This unknowability of the object forces the ego to confront its own unknown aspects, which its narcissism seals off. Various means are available: it can construct a neo-reality by means of projective identi­ fication: deluding itself; or, it can experience the pain of the unknown in itself which reflects what is unknown in the object and seek the soothing and re-fusioning end, that is, dying. The analyst therefore has to navigate between Scylla and Charybdis: he has to be the support for a delusional transference or of a deadly transference. It is not necessary for the analysand to go as far as committing suicide to achieve that. Psychical death, embalming the ego and the object in the inert, is quite enough to carry out this programme. The object of the analysis in the setting should neither be in the analysand or in the analyst, but in the potential space between them, in a new form of reunion which makes it possible to accede to the metaphor o f the object, which is simply the object of the link between them; neither mine nor yours but linking. The Blank In 1973, with Jean-Luc Donnet, I described 'blank psychosis' (la psychose blanche).17 At the time, I wondered if in analysing a case which would certainly come under the category of the 'exception' according to Freud (and the exception is always linked to a narcis­ sistic wound), I had not described a teratological singularity without general validity. But experience has delivered me of my scepticism. I would like to make a few points about the ambiguity of the French word blancheur. Blanche, in the sense in which I am using it, comes from the English 'blank',18 which means an unoccupied, empty space (not printed, for example, for the signature on a form or the sum on a blank cheque, carte blanche). The Anglo-Saxon term comes from the French blanc, which designates a colour.19 The French, for its part, comes from Occidental German: blank, which means clear, polished. Blank has supplanted the Latin word albus. Among the

derivatives are listed blanchir (to whiten), deblanchir (to remove the white) and reblanchir (to make something white again). The word aubin has become albumin, egg white; which brings us back to narcissism. Moreover the Dictionnaire erotique, by Pierre Guiraud, gives two meanings for white: (1) sperm, no doubt, says the author, in the sense of 'egg white', and (2) a woman's sexual organs, which links up with psychoanalytic conceptions on feminine castration and the vagina. W hat we have here, then, is a semantic bifurcation: the colour, the Latin word albus, and emptiness, the Anglo-Saxon word blank. How are these two senses associated? B. Lewin has described the blank screen in dreams and the blank dream. For Lewin, the blank screen is an oneiric representation of the breast after falling asleep following a satisfying feed. The blank dream is an empty dream; that is, without representation, but with affect. There is therefore a relation of symmetry, complementarity and opposition between the breast as a hallucinatory wish-fulfilment and the negative hallucination of the breast. This is the hypothesis I argued in favour of in The Fabric of Affect in the Psychoanalytic Discourse,20 prior to my description of 'blank psychosis', where I said that they are the two sides of the same coin. W hen the word blanc denotes the colour, it calls for black: 'the secret blackness of milk', the reverse of 'the sweet milk of human tenderness'. In Freudian theory, this black can be evocative of violence or sadism. But black also represents nocturnal space, the space of the disappearing object: breast, mother, mother's penis. In this way, the semantics of colour link up with the semantics of form: black represents depopulated, empty space. The primal scene in the darkness echoes this disappearance of forms - with the intrusion of noises. The word blanc represents, then, the invisible21 whereas its semantic opposite is the light of dawn, dissipating nocturnal anxieties but announcing the arrival of depressive feelings: 'Yet another day.' \Vhat happens in blank psychosis? The ego carries out a decathexis of representations which leaves it facing its constitutive emptiness. The ego disappears in face of the intrusion of the excess noise which needs to be reduced to silence. The stool which the Wolf Man passes during the primal scene is polysemic in nature. Alongside the anal erotic excitement procured by the onlooker, alongside the mother's expulsion, I want to add the subject's self-expulsion. 'I don't care because that drives me mad.' It is not possible to conceive o f the mother's jouissance without the child. Rather than developing this theoretically, I would prefer to relate the words of a patient - she is English and there is no chance of her having read my work - who said to me one day: 'All I know is that at

times I feel empty and I just have to be with someone at any cost'; then, after a pause, 'But maybe the emptiness can't be filled because it's w ithin me and because there's no object that can fill it.' A few months later she gave a precise description of her fear of nocturnal solitude. 'At night, when I am alone, I can't sleep; I sit down and I just can't stay there; my m ind is blank and I can't think. Then, I feel some­ thing in my stomach and I try desperately to make my m ind and my stomach meet and I bend forward to make them meet up and it doesn't work. As I can't work, I telephone somebody.' This impossibility of thinking, accompanied by a dual feeling of total separation, of intolerable solitude and bodily impulsion, is described in the theory at the end of Chapter II and the beginning of Chapter III of The Ego and the Id. Having considered the transition from the unconscious to the preconscious by the linking of mnemic residues of things with mnemic residues of words, Freud defines the ego as a bodily surface - and he stops there. Then, in the next chapter, he changes his theoretical register and tackles the problem of the object in relation to melancholy and the role played in it by incorporation. This theoretical leap between language and the object is precisely what occurs in narcissistic and borderline structures where the subject, lacking representation, and noticing his failure of words, carries out a mutation and switches over to the level of objects, in particular oral objects. The failure of phallic fixations which language upholds - and which also involves the m outh reduces the subject to a metaphorical orality materialised in the body. The breast invades the stomach occupying the empty space left by representation. It is noteworthy that anxiety does not manifest itself as such, but rather as a void. A void that is instituted to counter the desire to be invaded by the instinctual object which is in danger of making the ego disappear. The relation between the blank and the drive motion can thus be understood as the simultaneous interaction between a radical rupture with the object and a decathexis of representation, with the intrusion into the uncathected (unoccupied) space of a drive motion arising from the part of the id which is most firmly rooted in the somatic sphere. The two stages appear to be successive. In fact, the extreme rapidity of this circular process is such that it is not possible to speak of successiveness (it is only conceivable in the description made by the subject apres coup); but, on the contrary, everything suggests that there is a quasi-simultaneity, the blank operating against the intrusive motion, the latter being understood simply as the effect of filling the blank. The important thing is the disappearance of the mediation offered either by representation or by identification. In the cases I am describing, it is the movement which is essential.

Construction of the Ego and Narcissistic Structure The ego, says Freud, is an organisation; it is this feature which distin­ guishes it from the id, which has none. This organisation, a characteristic which is by no means negligible, is closely linked with the fact that its energy has been desexualised (Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety, (1926 [1925]) p .14). Now Freud often linked the differ­ ence between object-cathexis and narcissistic cathexis with desexualisation. In other words, the narcissistic process in which the drives are redirected towards the ego is only achieved by means of a relative desexualisation (as with sublimation), necessary for ego func­ tioning. It accounts for the corollary fact of the vulnerability of the ego which, when it becomes disorganised, collapses22 (cf. 'Libidinal Types', 1931). It would seem, then, that the energy converted by desexualisation serves to constitute the specific aspect of egocathexes: self-preservation, assuring its limits and its cohesion, reinforcing its consistency (in all senses of the word), and so on. Above all, this narcissistic process guarantees the ego's functioning through the love that it has for itself: its faith in itself, if I may put it like that. There are numerous parameters involved here: they include the notions of the constancy of cathexes; freely circulating energy; the sense of being distinct and separate from the object; the limited permeability of its frontiers; the capacity to resist intrusions by the object and its unpredictable variations; internal solidity and a toler­ ance of partial and temporary regressions, provided that the state prior to regression can be restored, and so on. This idyllic view of the ego is completely utopian. Counter­ balancing it is the narcissistic pride of autonomy with regard to the object: self-sufficiency, the necessity to be permanently in control, the tendency to megalomania and, finally, its 'captation' by imaginary identifications, as Lacan rightly pointed out. All of which leads us to conclude that the ego is characterised by an essential duplicity which is inherent to its functioning in its status of serving several masters: the id for which it has to provide real satisfactions; the super-ego to which it has to submit; and external reality to which it has to attach great importance. But these three masters, which require costly servitude, are perhaps a lesser evil than the most tyrannical of the agents of subjection which we have not discussed as yet; that is, the ego ideal, the heir of primary narcissism. For the ego's well-being, its ataraxy, its tranquillity for accomplishing its ideal tasks, are no longer states char­ acterised by a blessed sense of security, but imperatives. The ego has to feel at peace - a futile quest if ever there was one and, moreover, one that is dangerous, for nothing resembles peace more than the mortifi­ cation of sclerosis, a forewarning of psychical death.

The ego is thus caught between compulsion and synthesis which, notably, is a source of narcissism since it is responsible for the aspira­ tion to bind and unify itself and, owing to its dependence on the id, the desire to be but one with the object. W hen obstacles, wherever they may come from, stand in the way of the realisation of this unity of two in one, the ego is left with the solution of identification which achieves a compromise between ego and object. It is now that the ego's contradiction becomes apparent: it wants to be itself, but it can only achieve this project with the libidinal contribution of the object with which it wishes to be united. It becomes its captive. Imaginary 'captation' (Lacan) then alienates it in its ideal identifications, any questioning of which triggers a serious sense of failure, of transgression, or, rather, of a narcissistic flaw. The question I am going to approach now will lead us to consider the consequence of narcissistic scars. In fact, the word 'scar' is inap­ propriate. It is more a question of adhesions than scars; that is to say, of sensitive, vulnerable zones, insofar as they are likely to revive pain. When, in an acute and sub-acute state, a chronic form of organisation sets in, it tends to create a narcissistic, protective and preventative carapace against traumas; but at the price of a mortifying sclerosis which undermines the pleasure of living. Coldness, distance and indifference become efficient shields against the blows received from the object. This arrangement which constitutes a psychical protective shield, is not however without its shortcomings. Achilles had his heel, and Siegfried the area of skin where the sword could penetrate. I would even say that what characterises narcissistic structure is this weak point in the armour, or coat of arms; a weak point that is soon pinpointed by the object who suffers from being kept at a distance and excluded from a close relationship, which is frozen by the narcis­ sistic subject. That this relationship of deprivation forces the object to find the flaw, is merely the normal response of the shepherd to the shepherdess. Taking vengeance is tempting for the object, especially as the subject, contrary to what he believes, exhibits his weak point in a provocative manner, as if he were appealing unconsciously for this blow aimed at injuring him. A dilemma arises here between narcissistic castration anxiety and anxiety linked to penetrating the fantasmatic vagina. But it has to be realised that the fantasmatic gaping hole is in no way a cul-de-sac, but rather a bottomless chasm. Driven back on to his extreme defences, the subject is then caught between separation anxiety, which signifies the loss of the object, and intrusion anxiety, that is, the danger of being invaded by it, where the desire for fusion is synonymous with being devoured by the object. In other words the object is either lost, that is, dead, as far as the subject

is concerned, or phantom-like, that is, transformed into a vampire thirsty for blood. Subjected to these dangers, the narcissistic carapace, on the one hand, protects the ego and feeds its omnipotent illusion of being free of the object, thus bolstering its sense of ideal self-sufficiency, and, on the other, has to deal with both separation and intrusion anxiety. Intermediate measures are necessary in order to carry out the tasks acquired by the signal function. However, the tendency to function in an all-or-nothing mode will always be there. To counter this way of functioning, there is only one possibility: the constitution in the unconscious of a complex of object representations and affects (fantasy) accompanied by the function of signal anxiety. On the basis of this matrix a possibility emerges for the world of representation to acquire autonomy through the formation of a singular language with a twofold function: language, as 'translation', in the widest sense of the word (dependent on objects), and language as an object which speaks only of itself and represents thought.

Useful Distance and Effective Difference W hat I have just been saying seems to me to provide a foundation for Bouvet's theory of object relations in which he introduced the concept of distance. Time did not allow Bouvet the chance to explore this concept in more depth; a concept that goes much further than the point to which he had developed it when he left it to us. Further, in Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety Freud wrote that faced with an im pending external danger 'all that the subject is doing is to increase the distance between himself and what is threatening him ' (SE, XX, p. 146). But he adds that repression does something more than this when faced with a threatening instinctual process: 'it somehow suppresses it or deflects it from its aims and thus renders it innocuous' (ibid.). This does not, however, resolve the issue. There are two remarks I wish to make at this point: everything depends on the rela­ tions of internal distance between the elements which have been subject to the process of defence, the distance of which governs the intelligibility of the analysand's discourse. M inim al distance creates an effect of compression (Bion) which is very different from conden­ sation; maximal distance creates a laxity in the discursive fabric such that the analytic material becomes very difficult to understand. Furthermore, when we observe certain borderline structures we frequently see that the spatial distance from the object has to be established materially, that is to say, put into effect in reality. I remember a young woman who had got herself appointed to the Diplomatic Corps in order to be sent away as far as possible from her

father, to whom she was bound by fantasmatic incestuous relations, and from her mother, with* whom she had a fusional relationship. Needless to say, a few months after her posting, she became depressed, was repatriated and had to go into a clinic. After falling in love with a colleague, a period of erotomania, bouts of delusion and recurrent psychiatric consultations followed. More than absolute distancing, it was the idea of materialising events which was the dom inant factor in her defence against anxiety. Similarly, in another case, a young woman saw her narcissistic ambitions collapse after being unsuccessful at a grande ecole, which had been the only way of gaining recognition in the eyes of her father, a top-ranking civil servant, and of her belittling mother. This failure plunged her into a state of depression in which the narcissistic wound led her to make serious attempts on her own life. She nonetheless became a distin­ guished sinologist, enthusiastically adopting the Taoist religion to which she was initiated in China; but which she also practised at home in Paris, converting the other members of her family. In fact, useful distance and effective difference are the necessary conditions for the ego's functioning in relation to the id, the super­ ego and reality. By useful distance I mean the internal distance where the object can be used to meet the subject's demand. This brings to m ind Winnicott's article The Use of an Object'23 in which he shows how some analysands are unable to use the analyst or, in other cases, are only able to use him to repeat the deficiencies of the environ­ ment; or again, as a support for repeated acts of destruction followed by as many resurrections which satisfy both the object's destructive omnipotence and sense of his own immortality. By effective differ­ ence, I mean the difference in free association between the elements which are associated with the aim of facilitating the associative process in a rapport of closure-disclosure that is optimal for the work at the heart of analytic association. Analytic association, which others call the therapeutic alliance, is the functioning en couple of the analytic work, the importance of which Freud only seemed to appre­ ciate belatedly in 'Constructions in Analysis' (1937b), after 'Analysis Terminable and Interminable' (1937a). W hen useful distance and effective difference are replaced by an unusable distance or an ineffective difference, the problem arises of the functions of repression in their relations to the unconscious, which are both constitutive of unconsciousness as well as its guardian. This is certainly the case in neurosis; but its explanatory value remains insufficient where borderline cases and narcissistic structures are concerned, for which the concept of splitting seems more fruitful. Repression is conceived of as a specific defence against sexuality and castration anxiety. Freud declares that, while the infant does have a

propensity for anxiety, this first decreases before breaking out again at the oedipal stage. He is saying, then, two things: that the normal infant does not experience anxiety, properly speaking, before the Oedipus complex, but also that castration anxiety is inevitable, normal - normative, so to speak. W hen he writes, 'Eros desires contact because it strives to make the ego and the loved object one, to abolish all spatial barriers between them' (.Inhibitions, SE, XX, p. 121), he is pointing out that contact is the common point between Eros and the destructive drives; but, at the same time, he is implying that the Oedipus complex inevitably contains within it the germ of the fear of castration, contact being impossible: erotic contact with the desired object, destructive contact with the rival. However, he also asks himself: 'Is it absolutely certain that fear of castration is the only motive force of repression (or defence)?' (ibid., p. 122). In fact, he is raising the question, implicitly, of the prototypes or precursors of castration anxiety. Are these anxi­ eties related solely to object-libido? I doubt it.

Limits Although repression is the most important structuring and defensive mechanism enabling the ego to stabilise its organisation and ensuring that cathexes circulate freely within it, it should be noted that the cathexes which repression keeps away from the ego are essentially object-cathexes. The question which arises, then, is to know whether it is also repression which is at work when one is talking about egocathexes. Repression, Freud points out, is the equivalent for the internal world of what the protective barrier is for the external world. It therefore seems logical to me to postulate that repression can be conceived of as having two functions. O n the one hand, it keeps object-cathexes, which may threaten the ego's organisation, at a distance; on the other hand, on its outermost surface (just as a glove has an inner surface in contact with the hand and an outer surface in contact with the external world), repression constitutes a protective layer whose function is to safeguard the limits or borders it gives the ego. A sort of moving limit, subject to variation which has a certain amount of play. The permeability of this limit is not constant; it can, and indeed must, increase in what Bouvet called the rapprocher de rapprochement, just as it can, and must, in face of any serious threat to narcissism, draw itself in, reinforce itself, and even turn itself into a carapace when the wound (narcissistic) is looming on the horizon. And this is the right moment to recall that traumatic neurosis comes about by surprise since signal anxiety has not come into operation due to the ego's unpreparedness. The ego is not pre-pared (pre-pare24); it is not ready to fend for itself. It is not inconceivable that masochistic

jouissance strives on each occasion to reconstitute the penetration, and even the breach of the ego by means of the painful trauma, although the latter is perhaps less painful than anaesthesia (erotic or aggressive) and even, at a pinch, than aphanisis created by the loss of the object. There is, then, a lim iting function, or a function bordering on repression, which makes it an ego function both on the inside (in the proximity of the id) and on the outside (in the proximity of reality and the object). Analytic experience shows that, owing to projection, these two limits sometimes tend to become but one. The problem is to know how the advantage created by having limits will overcome the drawbacks of losing limitlessness through separating what is now on one side and the other. That is to say, through having constituted an other, a difference. The solution consists, on the one hand, in securing the consistency of the two territories and, on the other, of finding ways to make them com m u­ nicate without trapping oneself in the dilemma of invasion and evasion, that is, of the loss of proximity, the loss of the fellow man, the Other. It means the way is open to the constitution of narcissistic objects and transitional objects which, paradoxically, transcend the difference Same-Other, Existing-Non-existing, Being-Non-being. Consequently, the debate over the differences between borderline cases and narcissistic structures seems to me to be very relative. One way of settling the debate is to regard them all as classical borderline cases primarily involving drives oriented towards the object, whereas narcissistic organisations pose the problem of cathexes directed towards the ego. Both face us with the unique question of the vicissi­ tudes of counter-cathexes and their different modalities - the object and narcissistic dimensions forming reverse sides of the same reality. This is why I continue to think that the mechanism of the double reversal, which I described in 1966, guarantees this lim iting function by opening two sub-spaces which are inter-communicating: that of object-cathexes and that of narcissistic-cathexes. It is up to the analyst to identify in the course of the transference which of the two sub-spaces he is dealing with predominantly. It is important not to mistake the nature of these cathexes too often. Clinical indications such as the subject's anxiety, the particular themes of the transference material and the defences involved, in particular the language used by the analysand, can be of help to us here.

Anxiety Linked to the One It seems to me that what has been called narcissistic regression only goes a small way towards characterising what I am trying to describe.

It is not necessary to outline the features of this again as everyone will recall them without difficulty. If we accept, as Freud has already pointed out, that in narcissism, the ego seeks to be loved as its own ideal, it follows that the nature of the love which the ego has for itself constitutes a system that is as closed as possible. This division, the ego's love o f loving itself (Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself is a commandment that is diffi­ cult to live up to, says Freud), or again the ego loving itself by loving (when object-love is involved), is suggestive of self-sufficient self-love and of a unity dually divided or o f a duality multiplied unitarily (1 :1 = 1, 1 x 1 = 1). It should be noted that these mathematical expressions are psychologically contradictory, or at least paradoxical: there is division which divides nothing, and multiplication which multiplies nothing, in such a way that unity exists at the end of the operation just as it does at the beginning. This is because unity must be preserved at any price, and also because any deep breach of this unity divides or multiplies into n parts (fragmentation). Neither into two, nor into three, nor into any finite number. This is an appropriate m om ent to refresh our memories of the difference between the ego and the subject. The subject persists, even in the form of n, by contin­ uing to preserve relations between the n elements, whereas the unitary ego is shattered into bits. Consequently, the problem of anxiety comprises: • • • • •

the danger of unity duplication the unlimited infinite fragmented bits (the diasparagmos) annihilation = reducing to nothingness.

The last two of these present us with an opposition, which I think is crucial, between chaos (diasparagmos) and nothingness (or nadir). W hat does the ego want? It wants to be left in peace, to ignore the external world - a source of excitation - and the internal world, as soon as the phase of the purified pleasure-ego is over. W innicott opened up a new area in psychopathology by creating the clinical theory of dependency and the struggle against dependency, the quest for autonomy; that is to say, etymologically speaking, the right under a foreign occupation to govern oneself according to one's own laws. I have often observed this in the course of certain analyses which brought a very rich degree of instinctual material to what I thought was the transference. The interpretation of this material was well accepted by the analysand as long as the interpretation did not make explicit reference to the transference; but it was regularly rejected

when it was formulated as an interpretation of the transference. In other words, the analysand was quite prepared, as a result of the analysis, and even in the analytic situation, to experience all kinds of very rich feelings, even towards the analyst, whatever these erotic or aggressive feelings were. W hat he could not accept was that the analyst was the cause, the source and the object of these affects. He had to be the only one involved. Goethe said: T love you, is that any concern of yours?' I love (you). Ultimately, one could do away with the 'you'; i love' is what is essential. W ho? That is contingent. In all cases the ego saves its unity by negating the impact of the object, the object as the cause of desire (Lacan). W hen the transference towards the object exceeds the ego's capacity for containing it, then a certain number of characteristic themes emerge. W hile the theme of the mirror has been discussed abundantly by analysts, that of transparency has received little atten­ tion. 'Between you and me there seems to be a glass wall, a transparent mirror, separating us.' I have been struck by the frequency with which this material has been observed by other analysts. One of Anne-Marie Sandler's patients said to her: 'For me your words are like the rain beating on the window panes but they do not penetrate inside the house.' Roy Shafer talked to me one day about a patient who told him he felt like a mirror which was slowly, slowly, cracking. It is as though these patients felt threatened like the driver of a car following a lorry on a road that has recently been resurfaced: the tiny bits of grit flying up lightly into the windscreen transform it (or the protective shield) into a spider's web.

Anxiety Linked to the Couple The second figure is that of the mirror - a two-way mirror through which one can see without being seen - enabling the analysand to gain the advantage he believes the analyst has over him, and inducing him to repress the most significant associations by inviting the analyst to speak in his place: 'Say something, anything.' One day I understood from a patient that this appeal was a repetition of the mutism in her childhood. In order to defend herself against what she called her mother's 'antennae', who understood her even when she said nothing, the only way of protecting her autonomy was by developing a peculiar thought process which thwarted her mother's intrusion, that is, no meant yes and yes meant no, which made the analysis of her repres­ sion extremely complicated. She had created a private algebra in which the minus sign replaced the plus sign, no taking the place of yes. This went far beyond the function of repression. More than a negation, it was a question of surviving by means of the resistance

which guaranteed her separate existence though a subverted and subversive way of thinking about her representations and affects. Everything was spoilt when hate towards the object upset this balance and made her run the risk either of losing the object, or of being perse­ cuted in turn by the object through projective identification. Elsewhere, the mirror is true to its nature, that is, all the figures of duplication are represented in the imaginary relationship: total identity between the analyst and analysand, similitude, complemen­ tarity, opposition, their variations being of little importance. W hat is crucial is that the combination of the affects and representations of the two partners in the analytic couple adds up to a perfect totality, in the image of a perfect sphere whose centre is everywhere and the circumference nowhere; a sphere which is smooth and absolutely round, without the slightest roughness or irregularity. W hich amounts to saying that the subject is trying to find the ideal mother, perfectly adapted to the needs of the infans, with whom she is but one. At this point I would like to make a clinical remark on homosexu­ ality and the narcissistic object. For many patients - among whom a high proportion of women, for reasons which are inherent to the primordial object relationship and feminine identity - assuming the heterosexual position comes up against an obstacle that is difficult to overcome: the heterosexual object cannot be assimilated because it is foreign, completely different. Homosexual regression is in fact governed by narcissism, which seeks at any price to find the Same (or the homosexual counterpart), as if changing the object involved the risk of losing the homosexual object, an object satisfying narcissistic requirements. These figures of duality appear in diverse clinical structures: the patient with her private algebra was seized by indescribable anxieties as she left the hairdresser's when the latter had not entirely fulfilled her narcissistic plan, which was aimed at presenting her mother with the splitting image of a 'rebellious street urchin', which was quite sirrtply how she thought her mother saw her. Her mother had had a miscarriage; the dead child was, of course, a boy. However conflictual her relationship with her mother may have been, marked as it was by alternation, intrusion and separation, for a long while the latter remained the only object she could invest. Any interpretation which suggested a paternal transference provoked anxiety, the father being loaded with all the mother's projections and the vagina being threat­ ened by a destructive penis. Following a fantasy of capturing my penis by actively raping me - a fantasy which was analysed and accepted, since she took an active role in it - she had a distressing dream, a nightmare in which her mother and her sister 'just walked into her flat and went through her drawers'. This woke her up in a state of

raging anguish. After analysing this dream, the day before my summer vacation, her sense of peace returned and she expressed her gratitude. But unfortunately, as it happened, she had a flood in her flat. She was in a state of panic and telephoned me after her last session, saying, 'It's incredible, my fantasies are coming true'. Particularly as two years before she had had a dream in which the ceiling crumbled, letting through a flow of faecal matter which her mother was trying to get rid of with a spoon. She had said to her: 'But Mum, that's not the solution.' After the vacation, during which many things had happened, there was another flood and a renewed state of panic. This time I understood that she was confusing the boundaries of her ego with the walls of her flat. But this remained less awful than the fact that her neighbour was called M.G— , representing the initial letter of her mother and father's first name. She had completely split off the fact that I was also M. G— , (Monsieur Green) which brought about an immediate regression. She had the fantasy of curling up in my arms, in her mother's arms.

Anxiety Linked to the Ensemble Lastly, I shall discuss anxiety linked to the ensemble. That is to say, anxiety related to dispersion, fragmentation and breaking-up, against which the defence of depersonalisation is established. This form of anxiety is not the fear of emptiness, that is, of nothingness, but the fear of chaos. It often finds outward expression in a total lack of material order in life: the syndrome of living in a shambles, in a living area to which strangers are not admitted. An area which is sometimes confined to rooms that are closed to visitors, with closed drawers, which even close relatives are not allowed to open, or a cupboard left in an indescribable mess, out of sight. Unlike in 'housewife neurosis', it is the psyche which is represented in these contents. Fragmentation-anxiety has been discussed so extensively in psychoanalytic literature that there is no need for me to enlarge on it here. It has principally been described by authors who have been interested in psychotic structures and has become synonymous with the threat of psychosis. This is only true up to a certain point. We need to bear in m ind that this temptation of fragmentation is not always a sign of ego-regression, implying a danger of psychosis. Depersonalisation is a defence against psychosis, not a psychotic state. Temporary fragmentation can also be a defence against depres­ sion. It can be sought after in an almost perversely hedonistic manner in drug addiction. Hysterics, we know, have an inclination in this direction. I think it would be useful to recap on one or two clinical facts relating to this point. The way to get out of fears of fragmenta­

tion is to seek at any price a substitute object which is present and can be incorporated (a telephone call where simply the voice of the person called is enough to interrupt the process; a tranquilliser which has a magical calming effect; contact with an object of choice ^ the equiv­ alent of a teat - which the Americans call a pacifier). W hat needs to be kept in m ind regarding fragmenting regression is not its signal function, which is overwhelmed, but its relative value, in relation to objects, in evaluating the equilibrium between unifying solidification and nullifying liquefaction. The experience therefore does not have the same consequences for rigid obsessional or para­ noiac subjects as for plastic hysterical or schizophrenic subjects. In the transference it should be noted that experiences of fusion are of limited duration; they give way quite rapidly to affective evoca­ tions from which figures of duality emerge: fragmentation-anxiety has given birth to the dual relationship.25 However, this dual rela­ tionship, which is imaginary according to Lacan's terminology, is unconscious. It therefore has to be analysed and, provided one is not afraid of getting bogged down, interpreting it helps to overcome it. W hat is important is to understand that the arithmetic progression 0, 1, 2, 3, ..., n does not obtain in the transference and that the figures follow each other in a dispersed order, according to the subject's oscillations. But there is another area in which anxiety concerning the ensemble manifests itself, and this is in group relations. Group anxiety is a familiar feature in institutions where there is often an obsessive fear of splits owing to the conflict between the narcissism of members and group narcissism. Group anxiety is a form of anxiety related to the super-ego and its reproaches linked to those of the ego ideal, towards which one is always in debt. The response to fragmentation-anxiety is duplicative splitting. One is divided into two to avoid breaking up into bits (n). These different forms of anxiety are reflected in each other: the longihg for unity always involves nostalgia for dual fusion, or even fragmentation; just as duality is always caught in the alternative of moving towards the One or returning to the multitude. Likewise, the multitude seeks unity under the banner of one person. The Great Man', says Freud, in Moses and Monotheism. The number of the code is always 3, a symbol of unity, of the double duality uniting a subject with the object split into two (good and bad), and of the crowd. The English say Two's company, three's a crowd.' The Oedipus complex is thus the structuring structure. It is reflected and reflecting: in the relation to the breast with a potential father; in the primal scene with an excluded subject; and in the Oedipus complex open to the twofold difference.

The infant's relation to the breast heralds the primal scene, with the sole difference that, in this case, the mother has more pleasure, and with another person which excludes the infant. This is perhaps what is the most tragically unthinkable thing for him. Narcissism upholds the illusion of the an-Oedipus complex (not anti-oedipal but non-oedipal) insofar as it only recognises the 'ego-1' (le Moi-Je). Like God, the 'ego-I' claims to be self-begetting, without sex, that is to say, without sexual limitation and without filiation, thus without any structure of kinship.

Negation and Consistency The stuff of which the ego is made, its texture, is the hallmark of its consistency. We often speak of the rigidity or flexibility of the ego and its defences. This descriptive image is true, but it is even more so when narcissism is involved. Faced with the regressive mutations characteristic of the absence of differentiation, rejecting the object is a vital necessity for the narcissistic subject. Such a rejection is m oti­ vated by the independence of the object which acts of its own accord, whereas the ego feels paralysed by it. Accepting the object means accepting its variability, the risks that go with it, that is, the fact that it can penetrate the ego and then leave it, thereby reviving intrusion and separation anxieties. Moreover, as regression occurs in a state of passivation, the ego senses the danger of total submission (referred to by English authors as resourceless dependency). Under these conditions, negation not only guarantees the ego's autonomy but, as patients say, is what provides an axis around which consistency can organise itself. 'I am able to stand up, I've got good legs', says one patient. 'Rejecting what you say when I feel you are getting too close, gives me a backbone.' 'Wishing that all those closest to me, my wife and children, were dead, is a way of protecting myself from all the trouble which disturbs my ''peace of m ind'", says another. It can be seen, then, that negation does not simply play a role here of economic regression, but is essential if the ego is to consist of something. The issue is to know how the introjection of an object which narcissises the ego and increases its capacity for pleasure can lead to an inter­ pretation which is not tautological. The mirror role given to the analyst has the purpose of confirming what is not supposed to be seen in the material either by the patient or the analyst; it is thus a source of approbation whereby the narcis­ sistic object supports the ego. Because of negation, the whole difficulty lies in interpretation. It is a question of introducing, along with the interpretative echo, a few dissonant, foreign elements, in minute doses which the patient can integrate, a little bit like when

one gives a child unpleasant tasting medicine covered in jam. The Other triggers the signal of negation so that the Same secures its own identity. If the concept of identity has a meaning in analytic theory, it can only be in relation to narcissistic vulnerability. Its only role is to allow difference to emerge, once the illusion of unity has been created. Negation raises the issue of what I call negative investments. By negative investment I mean investing a satisfaction that is absent or denied, by creating a state of quietude (negating dissatisfaction) just as if the satisfaction had, in fact, occurred. This is the function I assign to negative primary narcissism.

A General Model of Psychical Activity Anxiety linked to the One, the couple and the ensemble are thus the narcissistic figures of the dangers which weigh upon the ego's structure. We need to show how this accomplishment of the ego is replicated or reflected in the achievement of language and to tackle the problem of language in narcissistic transferences or the narcissistic aspect of transference.26 Anxiety, whether it be object-related or narcissistic, cuts speech, making the body speak, or rather, gives way to cacophony. Silence, the zero signifier of language, then becomes very tempting. But silence is not only the suspension of speech, it is its very breath. W hen silence is not manifest, and even when it does not mark the pauses, the transitions, and the scansions of discourse, it is present in the constitutive discontinuity of the verbal message. I wonder, therefore, whether it is possible to postulate a general model of psychical activity which would comprise three phases: •

The first period would be that of cathecting a pre-organisation of perception and the unconscious fantasy accompanying it. • v The second period would be one of negativity illustrated by the image of blankness. This negative phase at the basis of disconti­ nuity would be the differential spacing of letters, words, sentences, but also the spacing of all the forms of countercathexis: repression, negation, denial, disavowal and foreclosure. • The third period would be one of reorganisation as a retroactive effect of the counter-cathexis on the cathexis, an after effect of the second period on the first: the return of the repressed, the denied, the disavowed and the foreclosed, the symptomatic formations and psychopathological pictures of which show that a plural logic is involved. The logic of the One, the couple or the ensemble.

Narcissism, whether positive or negative, is concerned by these clinical pictures. Its failure finds expression in narcissistic anxiety, in which the subject's pretensions to wholeness are subjected to the object's power which creates a source of tensions, contesting an order that is over-organised, a factor of entropy, that is, of death. Psychical life - like life - is merely a fruitful disorder. In vain, narcissism pursues the mirage of resisting it. All erotism is violence, just as life does violence to inertia. Our difficulty in thinking about anxiety and its relations to narcis­ sism stems from the fact that our Western civilisation is narcissistic without realising it It has imposed its WesternTcentrist outlook on the world without thinking about its other: the East. West is West; East is East. It is perhaps time we took interest in Eastern thought as the shadow of our own thought. To conclude, I shall quote from the chapter: 'Wise W ithout Knowing It' in The Book ofLieh Tzu: Lung Shu said to the physician Wen Chih: 'Your craft is subtle. I have an illness, can you cure it?' 'You have only to command. But first tell me the symptoms of your illness.' 'I do not think it an honour if the whole district praises me, nor a disgrace if the whole state reviles me; I have no joy when I win, no anxiety when I lose; I look in the same way at life and death, riches and poverty, other men and pigs, myself and other men; I dwell in my own house as though lodging in an inn, look out at my own neighbourhood as though it were a foreign and barbarous country. Having all these ailments, titles and rewards cannot induce me, punishments and fines cannot awe me, prosperity and decline and benefit and harm cannot change me, joy and sorrow cannot influence me. Consequently, it is impossible for me to serve my prince, have dealings with my kindred and friends, manage my wife and children, control my servants. W hat illness is this? W hat art can cure it?' Then Wen C hih ordered Lung Shu to stand with his back to the light. He himself stepped back and examined Lung Shu from a distance facing the light. Finally he said: 'Hmm . I see your heart. The place an inch square is empty, you are almost a sage. Six of the holes in your heart run into each other, but one is stopped up. Can this be the reason why you now think the wisdom of a sage is an illness? My shallow craft can do nothing to cure it.'27 I am not claiming here to offer an alternative to our psychoanalytic ethic. I think that psychoanalysis is about nothing more than

accepting our limits which involve the Other, our neighbour, who is different But I think the East shows us how certain paths are prefer­ able to others. In the course of certain analyses it happens that patients suddenly invest a space of solitude in which they feel at home. This is not an insignificant result; but it is not sufficient. A long period of time is needed before they are ready to abandon their nest and are able to feel well at home, at a host's, or with anyone else, and before they can enable this host to feel at ease with them. This is only possible if the intersection between the two is limited in such a way that each person remains himself while being with the other. Being either completely the One or completely the Other is impos­ sible. This is perhaps the meaning of what constitutes the axis of Freudian theory and which we trivially call castration anxiety, which I can only conceive of as being paired with penetration anxiety. Perhaps we will understand that the figure of psychoanalysis is not the phallus, but the penis in the vagina, and/or, which is more diffi­ cult to imagine, the vagina in the penis.

Part Two Narcissistic Forms

4 Moral Narcissism (1969)*

Virtue is not merely like the combatant whose sole concern in the fight is to keep his sword polished; but it has even started the fight simply to preserve its weapons. And not merely is it unable to use its own weapons, but it must also preserve intact those of its enemy, and protect them against its own attack, seeing they are all noble parts of the good, on behalf of which it entered the field of battle. Hegel, The Phenomenology of Mind. Because you have no inkling of these ills; The happiest life consists in ignorance ... Sophocles, Ajax.

Oedipus and Ajax The legendary heroes of antiquity provide the psychoanalyst with an inexhaustible source of material which he does not hesitate to draw on fully. Usually he calls upon these lofty figures in order to embel­ lish a thesis. I will take as my starting-point an opposition that will allow each one of you, by calling upon his memory, to refer to a common example which might then bring one or the other of his patients to mind. In his book The Greeks and the Irrational,1 Dodds contrasts the civilisations of shame with the civilisations of guilt. It is not irrelevant to recall here that according to Dodds the idea of guilt is connected to an interiorisation, I would say an internalisation, of the notion of fault or sin: it is the result of a divine transgression. *This paper appeared originally in French in the Revue francaise de psychanalyse, vol. 33, 1969. It was first published in English in the International Journal of Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy, ed. by Robert Langs, vol. VIII, 1980-81. Trans. Nancy Osthues. (Revised by Andrew Weller for this volume.)

Shame, however, is the lot of fatality, a mark of the wrath of the gods, of an Ate, a merciless punishment barely related to an objective fault, unless it be that of immoderation. Shame falls upon its victims inex­ orably: without doubt one must impute it less to a god than to a demon - infernal power. Dodds connects the civilisation of shame to a socio-tribal mode in which the father is omnipotent and knows no authority above his own, whereas the civilisation of guilt, moving toward a relative monotheism, implies a law above the father's. In each of the two cases even the reparation of the fault is different. The transition from shame to guilt is a road leading from the idea of impurity and pollution to consciousness of a moral wrong. In short, shame is an affect in which hum an responsibility barely plays a part: it is the lot of the gods, striking m an who is liable to pride or hubris, whereas guilt is the consequence of a fault, bearing the sense of a transgression. The first corresponds to the talion ethic; the second to the ethics of a more understanding form of justice. Without generalising to any great extent, it seems that one might oppose these two problematical questions, shame and guilt, by comparing the cases of Ajax and Oedipus. Ajax, you may remember, was the bravest of the Greeks after Achilles. W hen Achilles died, Ajax hoped to be given his weapons, but instead they were offered to Ulysses. The details of how this came about vary, depending on which version of the myth you refer to. According to the earliest version, the choice was made by the Trojans, who, having been defeated by the Greeks, named the enemy they most feared. They named Ulysses who, though perhaps not the bravest, was nonetheless the most dangerous because he was the most cunning. According to later versions - and Sophocles sided with this tradition - it was the Greeks themselves who chose Ulysses. Ajax thought this choice unjust and insulting. He decided to take violent revenge by executing the Atridae - Agamemnon and Menelaus - by taking the Argives prisoner and capturing Ulysses so that he could whip him to death. However, Athena, offended by Ajax for having refused her aid during the battle with the Trojans, drove him insane. Instead of carrying out his exploit by fighting with those he wanted to punish, he destroyed the Greeks' flocks in a bloody slaughter while in a state of madness. The perpetrator of this hecatomb recovered his sanity only once the wrong had been done. Once he had recovered his sanity, he understood his madness. Driven mad twice, from grief and shame, because he was unable to triumph either by right or by force, and with his pride wounded, he committed suicide by throwing himself - by impaling himself, says J. Lacarriere, and it is quite probable - upon Hector's sword, which he had received as a trophy.

Reading Sophocles, one realises that shame is the key word of his tragedy. The loud voiced rumour, mother of my shame', says the chorus upon learning of the massacre. Madness itself is an excuse for nothing - it is the worst shame of all - since it is a sign of the repro­ bation of a god. Here madness is dishonouring because it is responsible for a murderous act devoid of glory. It ridicules the hero who aspires to the highest degree of bravery by forcing him to savagely destroy harmless animals. It burdens him with 'grievous conceits of his infatuate glee'. As soon as sanity returns, it is evident that death is the only possible solution. Having lost his honour, Ajax can no longer live in the light of day. No tie can resist the tempta­ tion of nothingness. Parents, wife, children, all of whom will be practically reduced to slavery by his death, do not suffice to hold him back. He aspires to hell, praying for the night of death: 'O darkness, now my light.' He leaves his remains behind him like an impurity and lets those who held him in contempt decide what course to take: exposure to the vultures or reparative burial. The ethic of moderation is stated by the messenger: '"For lives presumptuous and unprofitable fail beneath sore misfortunes wrought by heaven," the seer declared, "whenever seed of m an ceases to think as fits hum anity!"' It seems to me fitting to compare the example of Ajax with that of Oedipus. Oedipus' crime was no less great. His excuse was disregard, deception on the part of the gods. The punishment which he inflicted upon himself obliged him to accept the loss of his eyes, which had wanted to see too much; to banish himself, with the help of his daughter Antigone; and to live among men with his impurity until the very end. Before his death, he even allowed himself to become a subject of litigation and dispute between his sons (whom he later cursed), his brother-in-law and Theseus (under whose protection he had placed himself). In the woods of Colonus, on the outskirts of Athens, Oedipus waited for a sign from the gods. After the revelation of his offence, his life was entirely devoid of pleasure, but it was the life given by the gods and the gods took it back when they saw fit. Above all, Oedipus then clung to his objects. They were his very life as they helped him remain alive. He could not abandon them, even at the cost of being manipulated by his children in a sinister fashion. Oedipus hated some of his children (his sons, naturally) but loved his daughters paternally, even though they were the fruit of incest. You can see that we have opposed two problematical questions corre­ sponding to two types of object-choice and object-cathexis: in the case of Oedipus, objectal object-cathexis, generated through the transgression of guilt; in the case of Ajax, narcissistic object-cathexis, generated through the disappointment of shame.

Clinical Aspects of Narcissism: Moral Narcissism The apologue of Ajax, which has served as an introduction, raises an immediate question for psychoanalysts: is it not evident that this form of narcissism is in some way related to masochism? Is it not true that self-punishment is in the foreground here? Before we settle the question and decide whether masochism is, after all, what best qual­ ifies the theme of Ajax - who does not seek punishment but rather inflicts it upon himself in order to save his honour, another key word of narcissism - let us dwell for a moment on the relation between masochism and narcissism. W hile discussing the pairs tension-unpleasure and relaxation-pleasure in The Economic Problem of Masochism' (1924), Freud was led to dissect masochism, as an expression of the death drive, into three substructures: erotogenic masochism, feminine masochism, and moral masochism. I would like to propose a similar dismemberment based not upon the effects of the death drive - a theory to which I adhere completely - but rather upon those of narcissism. It appears to me from clinical observation that one can distinguish several varieties or substructures of narcissism: Bodily narcissism concerns either the perception (affect) of the body or representations of the body; the body as object of the Other's gaze insofar as one is extrinsic to the other, just as the narcissism of bodily sensation (the body as experienced from within) is a narcissism of the scrutiny of the Other insofar as the one is intrinsic to the other. Consciousness of the body and perception of the body are its elemen­ tary bases.2 Intellectual narcissism is displayed when self-control is invested by the intellect in an over-confident manner which is often contradicted by the facts. There is stubborn and untiring repetition that 'that doesn't stop it from being so'. This form, which I will discuss no further, recalls the illusion of dom ination by intellectualisation. This i$ a secondary form of omnipotence of thought, an omnipotence of thought brought about by secondary processes. Moral narcissism, finally, which will be described in a later section.3 In The Ego and the Id (1923), Freud attributed a specific material to each agency. W hat instinct is to the id, perception is to the ego, and the function of the ideal to the super-ego. This ideal is the result of instinctual renunciation; it opens the indefinitely rejected horizon of illusion. It therefore appears that moral narcissism - insofar as the relationship between morality and super-ego is clearly established must be included in a close relationship between ego/super-ego or, more precisely, since it is a matter of the function of the ideal, between the ego ideal/super-ego. W hat follows will show that the id

is in no way an outsider to the situation. If we suppose that the id is dominated by the antagonism between the life drives and the death drives, that the ego undergoes a perpetual exchange of cathexes between the ego and the object, and that the super-ego is torn between the renunciation o f satisfaction and the mirages of illusion, we believe that the ego, in its state of double dependence on the id and the super-ego, serves not two masters but rather four, since each of the latter is split in two. This is what usually happens to everybody; no one is free of moral narcissism. Therefore, the pleasure in our rela­ tionships is due to the general economy of these relationships, provided that the life drive prevails over the death drive and that the consolations of illusion prevail over pride in instinctual renunciation. But this is not always the case. The pathological structure of narcis­ sism I should like to describe is characterised by an economy that heavily burdens the ego by the twofold consequence of the victory of the death drive, which confers upon the Nirvana principle (the lowering of tensions to the level zero) a relative pre-eminence over the pleasure principle, and that of instinctual renunciation over the satisfactions of illusion. Hence there is an over-cathexis of the ego to the detriment of the object. Does not the dom inating effect of the death drive and instinctual renunciation take us back to the severity of the masochistic super­ ego? Approximately, yes. Precisely, no.

Masochistic Fantasies and Narcissistic Fantasies The true masochist', writes Freud (1924), 'always turns his cheek whenever he has a chance of receiving a blow/ This is not the case with the moral narcissist. Paraphrasing Freud, I would say, The true moral narcissist always volunteers himself whenever he sees a chance of renouncing a satisfaction/ Let us compare masochistic fantasies, which are so revealing, with narcissistic fantasies. Where masochism is concerned, it is a matter of being beaten, humiliated, befouled, reduced to passivity (but a passivity that demands the presence of the Other). Lacan4 feels that the masochist's requirement of the Other arouses anxiety in the latter to a point where the sadist can no longer sustain his desire for fear of destroying the object of his pleasure. None of this holds true for the narcissist. For him it is a matter of being pure and therefore alone, and of renouncing the world - its pleasures as well as its unpleasures - since we know that one can always get some pleasure out of unpleasure. Subversion of the subject by the inversion of pleasure is within the grasp of many. W hat is more difficult and more tempting is to be beyond pleasure-unpleasure by vowing endurance, w ithout seeking pain, poverty, destitution,

solitude, even hermitage - all states that bring one closer to God. Is God hungry or thirsty, is God dependent upon the love, the hatred of men? Some may believe so but they do not know who the true God is: the Unnameable. This profound asceticism, described by Anna Freud (1936)5 as a defence mechanism common to adolescence in the normal development of the individual, and to which Pierre Male6 has often returned in his studies on the adolescent, can take pathological forms. Suffering will not be sought after, but neither will it be avoided, no matter how much energy is employed by the subject in doing so. Freud (1924) says that in fact the masochist desires to be treated like a child. The moral narcissist's plan is just the opposite. Like the child he is, he wants to resemble the parents who, one part of him imagines, have no problem dominating their drives. In other words, he wants to be a grown-up. The consequences will be different in the two cases. Through his masochism, the masochist masks an unpunished offence, the result of a transgression, in the face of which he feels guilty The moral narcissist has committed no offence other than that of remaining tied to his infantile megalomania and is always in debt to his ego ideal. The consequence of this is that he does not feel guilty but rather is ashamed of being nothing more than what he is or ofpretending to be more than what he is. Perhaps one can say that masochism operates on the level of a relationship involving the possession of what has been improperly obtained - Til-gotten gains seldom prosper' - whereas narcissism is situated on the level of a relationship concerning being: 'One is as one is.'7 In the case of moral masochism the subject is punished not so much for the offence but for his masochism, Freud reminds us. Libidinal co-excitement uses the road of unpleasure as one of the most secret passages leading to a pleasure of which the subject is unaware. This is seen in the 'Rat Man', who told Freud about the torture which aroused his horror and reprobation, yet felt a pleasure of which he was unaware. In moral narcissism, whose aims fail (as do those of masochism), punishment or shame is brought about by the insatiable redoubling of pride. Honour is never in a position of safety. All is lost because nothing can clean the impurity of soiled honour unless it be new renunciations which will impoverish the relationships with the object, leaving all the glory for narcissism. The dom inant trait of the opposition is revealed here: through the negation of pleasure and the search for unpleasure, the masochist maintains a rich tie to the object which the narcissist tries to abandon. The use of the adjective 'rich' may be criticised because we are accustomed to giving the word normative qualities. Otherwise we might say a substantial relationship with the objects, insofar as they in turn nourish the fantasmatic objects which the subject will ulti­ mately feed upon.

To resolve this conflict, the narcissist will make increasing attempts to impoverish his object relationships in order to reduce the ego to its vital object m inim um , thus emerging triumphant. This attempt is constantly frustrated by the drives, which require that the satisfaction involves an object. The only solution is a narcissistic cathexis of the subject, and we know that when the object withdraws, is lost, or disappoints, the result is depression.8 This remark leads us to understand the particularities of these patients' treatments. Whereas masochistic patients present problems, which Freud foresaw, of a negative therapeutic reaction that is perpet­ ually informed by the need for self-punishment, moral narcissists, faithful and irreproachable patients, expose us, through a progressive rarefaction of their cathexes, to dependent behaviour in which the need for love and, more precisely, the esteem of the analyst, is the oxygen without which the patient cannot breathe. More precisely, it is a question of a need for a special kind of love, as it is aiming for the recognition of the sacrifice of pleasure. But, as Freud wrote in The Economic Problem of Masochism' (1924), 'even the subject's destruction of himself cannot take place without libidinal satisfaction'. W hat satisfaction does the moral narcissist find in his impoverishment? The feeling of being superior by virtue of renunciation; the basis of hum an pride. This recalls the relationship between this clinical form of narcissism and the primary narcissism of. the child and its tie to auto-erotism. If it was Freud who said that masochism resexualises morality, I would like to add: narcis­ sism turns morality into an auto-erotic pleasure in which pleasure itself is suppressed.

Partial Aspects and Derivatives of Moral Narcissism The opposition between masochistic and narcissistic fantasies has allowed us to come to the heart of the principal aspect of this struc­ ture. I shall now briefly consider some of its partial or derived aspects before outlining its metapsychology. I have already mentioned asceticism, when it lasts beyond adoles­ cence and becomes a lifestyle. This asceticism is quite different from that which underlies a religious conviction or a rule, again in the reli­ gious sense of the term. It is, in fact, unconscious. It uses as a pretext limitations of a material nature in order to force the ego to consent to a progressive shrinking of its cathexes so as to tighten the ties between desire and need, bringing the order of the former to the level of the latter. One only drinks and eats for survival, not for pleasure. One eliminates dependence on the object and desire (insofar as it is different) through a meagre auto-erotism, devoid of fantasies, whose

aim is relief through hygienic evacuation. Or else one makes a massive displacement on to work and immediately puts into action a pseudo-sublimation which is more of a reaction formation than an instinctual vicissitude through inhibition, aim displacement and secondary desexualisation. This pseudo-sublimation will have a delu­ sional character because of its megalomaniac undertones, amalgamated with an overall idealisation implying a denial of its instinctual roots. These last remarks lead us to consider a second aspect of moral narcissism. It can be seen behind the features of a syndrome rarely mentioned, but nonetheless very common: affective immaturity. Affective immaturity, which we have gradually learned to recognise, is not a benign form of conflict solution; far from it. On the one hand, the term immaturity is well-deserved because this is indeed a case of retardation whose consequences are as serious for the affective cathexes of the subject as intellectual retardation is for the cognitive investments. O n the other hand, affective immaturity is based upon a substratum of denial of desire and its instinctual base. This denial justi­ fies the fact that early authors such as Codet and Laforgue9 have classified it as schizonia, a psychotic form. One is often astonished by the quasi-paranoid form of this behaviour. Affective immaturity is the apanage of young girls but is also found in young men, with an equally serious prognosis, if not more so. We know its banal aspects: sentimentality, not sensitivity; a horror of hum an appetites, oral or sexual; a failure in sublimation which would imply their acceptance; the fear of sex, especially of the penis, which conceals a desire (present in both sexes) of an absolute and incommensurable nature; and the attachment to daydreams that are childish, affected and openly messianic. Such people can be recognised in everyday life because they often put themselves in the position of a scapegoat; this does not bother them, so sure are they of their superiority over ordinary people. These cursory elements may not be sufficient to enable us to distinguish between hysteria and affective immaturity. The essential difference seems to me to reside in the exorbitant amount of tribute paid to the ego ideal in affective retardation. Here we must recall Melanie Klein's remarks on idealisation.10 She saw idealisation as one of the most primitive and most fundamental of defence mechanisms; idealisation centred on the object or the self. It is this distinction of an economic order that enables us to establish more clearly the sepa­ ration between hysteria and affective retardation, as though the latter were the product of a highly exaggerated narcissism in the face of a growing decathexis of the object. One might fall into the trap of seeing behind all of this behaviour nothing more than a defensive position against instinctual cathexis.

W hat characterises these choices is, above all, immense pride behind the misleading forms of intense hum ility - having nothing in common with the ordinary performances of narcissism.11 There is, it is true, a defensive meaning to this sheltering of the instinct and its objects from vicissitudes. One can imagine that this arrangement protects the subject and one sometimes has the impression that the patient feels intense anxiety because cathexis appears to carry with it the considerable risk of disorganising the ego. Just as the stimulus barrier protects the ego by rejecting external stimuli which exceed a certain am ount and which, because of their intensity, put the fragile organisation of the ego in danger, so in this case the refusal of the instinct aims at achieving a similar protection. It is true that these patients feel extremely fragile and have the idea that admitting the instinct into their consciousness would imply for them the danger of perverse or psychotic behaviour. One patient told me that if she did not watch herself constantly, if she let herself become passive, it would not be long before she would become a bum. Now, everybody is a bit of a bum - on Sunday, during a vacation - and more or less accepts this; the moral narcissist cannot. This is why it seems neces­ sary to insist upon the narcissistic cathexis of pride. Messianism is accompanied in women by an identification with the Virgin Mary, who 'conceived without sin', a phrase whose conse­ quences have been very serious for female sexuality; it is a much more dangerous notion than 'to sin without conceiving', to which women also aspire. In men, the equivalent is identification with the Paschal Lamb. This is not simply a matter of being crucified or of having one's throat cut; it implies being innocent as a lamb when the holocaust arrives. However, we know that the innocent have often been accused by history of crimes they allowed in order to remain pure. This idealised behaviour, always doomed to failure because of the conflict with reality, involves, as I have already stated, shame rather than guilt, dependence rather than independence. The idealisation includes certain particularities within the analytic cure: I.

The analytic object is difficult of access, for the material is buried beneath the narcissistic cloak of what W innicott would here call a false self II. The narcissistic wound is felt to be an infraction, an inevitable condition of the coming to light of objectal material. Here mysti­ fication is directed not only toward desire but also toward the subject's narcissism, toward the guardian of his narcissistic unity, an essential condition of the desire for life. III. The cure is anchored in actively passive resistance in order to satisfy the subject's desire for dependence, a dependence which has the

power to make him stay with the analyst eternally and to tie the analyst to his chair, like a butterfly caught in the net of the analytic situation. IV. The desire for unconditional love is the sole desire of these subjects. This desire takes the form of a desire for absolute esteem, an inex­ haustible need for narcissistic enhancement whose express condition is the burial or putting aside of sexual conflict and access to pleasure linked to the erotogenic zones. V. Projection is a corollary of this desire and is brought into play with the tactical aim of provoking the analyst's reassuring denial. "Assure me that you do not see in me a fallen angel, depraved, banished, who has lost the right to be respected.'

The Metapsychology of Moral Narcissism W hat I have just outlined in descriptive terms must now be given its metapsychological credentials. (I use the term metapsychology in its general meaning.) Thus we must examine the relation of moral narcissism to: (a) the varieties of counter-cathexes; (b) other aspects of narcissism; (c) the development of the libido (erotogenic zones and object relations); (d) id, ego and super-ego; and (e) bisexuality and the death instinct.12 The Varieties of Counter-Cathexis The concept of the defence mechanism has been considerably extended since Freud. However, the multiplicity of defensive forms, the catalogue of which is to be found in Anna Freud's The Ego and the Mechanisms o f Defence (1936), does not enable us to account for the structural particularities of the major forms of the nosography which one vainly tries to ignore. Our only hope lies in thinking about counter-cathexis - repression seen as a defence, not the first but nonetheless the most important in the individual's psychic future.13 In effect, Freud described a series of forms which we must now reca­ pitulate and whose function is to regulate - to encircle - all of the other defences. 1.

2.

Rejection or Verwerfung, which some, along with Lacan, translate as forclusion (English foreclosure). One can argue about the word but not about the thing itself, which implies a radical refusal of the drive or the drive representation and which, directly or in disguise, expels the drives, which nonetheless return through reality, by way of projection. Denial or disavowal, depending on the translation, or Verleugnung, repression of perception.

3. 4.

Repression itself or Verdrdngung, which is specifically directed toward the affect and the drive representative.14 Finally, negation, Verneinung, which is directed toward the faculty of judgement. This is an admission into consciousness in a negative form. 'It is not' is equal to Tt is'.

In its clearest and most characteristic aspects, moral narcissism seems to correspond to an intermediate situation somewhere between rejec­ tion and disavowal - between Verwerfung and Verleugnung. Here I shall point out the seriousness of its structure, which brings it close to psychosis. Several arguments support this opinion. First, the idea that it is a question of a form of 'narcissistic' neurosis, something which clinical studies have accustomed us to consider with uneasiness. Next, there is the dynamic itself of the conflicts, which implies a repudia­ tion of the drives associated with a repudiation of reality. There is a refusal to see the world as it is; that is, as a battlefield upon which hum an appetites indulge in an endless combat. Finally, there is the considerable megalomania of moral narcissism, which implies a repu­ diation of object-cathexes by the ego. Nonetheless, it is not a matter of repressing reality as in psychosis but rather of denial, a disavowal of the order of the world and of the personal participation of the subject's desire. In this regard, if we recall that Freud describes disavowal in connection with the fetish linked to the sight of castra­ tion, we can see that the moral narcissist, making himself a sacrificial object, fulfils a similar function by stopping up the holes through which the absence of protection of the world reveals itself, with an omnipotent divine image, in an effort to obstruct this unbearable deficiency. 'If God does not exist, then anything is permitted', says the hero of Dostoyevsky's The Devils. Tf God does not exist, then I am permitted to replace him and to be the example leading people to believe in God. I will therefore be God by proxy.' One can understand that the failure of this undertaking brings about depression (in accord with the mode of all-or-nothing) without mediation. Other Aspects o f Narcissism The three aspects of narcissism I have particularised - moral, intellec­ tual and bodily narcissism - present themselves as variants of the cathexis which, for defensive reasons, or for reasons of identification, are preferred according to the individual conflict configuration. But, just as the narcissistic relationship is inseparable from the object rela­ tionship, the diverse aspects of narcissism are interdependent. In particular, moral narcissism has a very close relationship with intellectual narcissism. By intellectual narcissism, I mean that form of self-sufficiency and solitary self-enhancement which makes up for the

lack of hum an desires with intellectual mastery or intellectual seduc­ tion. It is not rare for moral narcissism to ally itself with intellectual narcissism and to find in this kind of displacement an addition to pseudo-sublimation. A hypertrophy of desexualised cathexes, which ordinarily occasions the displacement of partial pregenital instincts (scopophilia-exhibitionism and sado-masochism), sustains moral narcissism. We are familiar with the affinity certain religious orders have for intellectual erudition. The aim of this intellectual research of a moral or philosophic character is to find, through philosophy, or God, reasons for an ethic which opposes an instinctual life, which views it as something that must at any price not just be repressed or surpassed, but extinguished. The shame felt for having an instinctual life like every other hum an being gives the impression of hypocrisy in relation to the unavowed aim of the work. This shame is displaced into intellectual activity which becomes highly guilt-ridden. A term is lacking here: one would have to say that it becomes shame-ridden, as if the vigilant super-ego were to become an extra-lucid persecutor who remembers and reads, behind the intellectual justification, the desire for absolution for the remnants of instinctual life which continue to torment the ego. Also punished is the fantasy of grandeur involved in this kind of quest, which aims to provide a rational and intellectual basis for the subject's sense of moral superiority. In other cases intellectual activity, a synonym for the paternal phallus, undergoes an evolution such that successful efforts made at school in childhood become subject to a blockage during adolescence. Here one ought to go more deeply into an analysis of sublimation and regression from action to thought. As this would take us beyond the limits we have set ourselves, a brief discussion must suffice: •

•

Intellectual activity, accompanied or not by fantasy, is highly eroticised and guilt-ridden, but is above all felt to be shameful. It is accompanied by cephalalgia, insomnia, difficulty in concentra­ tion or in reading, and an inability to make use of knowledge. It is considered shameful because the subject, while engaging in this activity, links it with sexuality: T read works of a high hum an or moral value, but I do so in order to fool those around me and to pretend to be what I am not - since my m ind is not pure and because I have sexual desires.' It is not rare in this case to find that the mother has accused the child of pretension or of unhealthy curiosity. Intellectual activity can also represent an escape hatch for aggres­ sive instincts. To read is to incorporate power of a destructive nature; to read is to feed upon the corpses of the parents, whom one kills through reading, through possessing knowledge.

•

In the case of moral narcissism, intellectual activity and the exercise of thought are supported by a reconstruction of the world the establishment of a morality, a truly paranoid activity which constantly remakes and remodels reality according to a pattern in which everything instinctual will be omitted or resolved without conflict.

To sum up, the system perception-consciousness, insofar as it is narcissistically cathected, is in a state of 'surveillance', tightly controlled and thwarted by the super-ego, as in the delusion of obser­ vation, but with a different type of economic equilibrium. But it is above all with bodily narcissism, as one might suspect, that moral narcissism has the closest relationship. The body as an appearance and source of pleasure, seduction and conquest of others, is banished. In the case of the moral narcissist, hell is not other people - narcissism has eliminated them - but rather, the body. The body is the Other, resurrected in spite of attempts to wipe out its traces. The body is a limitation, a servitude, a termination. This is why the uneasiness experienced is primordially a bodily uneasiness which expresses itself in the fact that these subjects are so ill-at-ease with themselves. The session of analysis which allows the body to speak (intestinal sounds, vasomotor reactions, sweating, sensations of cold or heat) is a torment for them because, though they can silence or control their fantasies, they are helpless as to their bodies. The body is their absolute master - their shame. (This intolerance of bodily reactions suggests a reprisal against the body and its drives related to an early relationship with the mother she herself being reluctant to admit her own libidinal trends, which are reactivated through the baby's reactions.) This is why, on the analyst's couch, these subjects are petrified, immobile. They lie down in a stereotyped manner, neither allowing themselves to change position nor to make any kind of movement. It is understandable that in the face of this silence which animates the relationship there is an eruption of visceral motor activity. This is, of course, nothing but the displacement of the sexual body, of that which does not dare name itself. During a session of analysis, a fit of vasomotor reaction will cause the subject to blush, and the emotion will bring on the tears which are the expression of the hum iliation of desire. So, in contrast with the pleas of the body, appearances will become repulsive, harsh, discouraging - even to an analyst who is undemanding about criteria of attraction. I am pointing out those aspects which appear to be defensive, but here again we must not overlook the hidden and proud pleasure to be found behind this humility. T am neither man nor woman, I am neuter', one such patient said to me. It is important to note, however,

that this uneasiness, painful though it may be, is a sign of life. When, after the analysand has succeeded in controlling anxiety in all its forms, visceral included - and this is not so impossible as one might think - the moment of silence arrives and then he experiences an impression of frightful blankness. The lead helmet of psychic suffering has been replaced by the lid of the coffin; and what is now experienced is a feeling of non-existence, of non-being, of an internal emptiness far more intolerable than what the subject was protecting himself from. Before, at least, something was happening, whereas control of the body prefigures a definitive sleep, a premonition of death. Psychic Development: Erotogenic Zones and the Relation to the Object This dependence on the body that we find in the narcissist, and particularly the moral narcissist, is rooted in the relationship with the mother. We know that love is the key to hum an development. In the latter part of his work, Freud never ceased comparing the impre­ scriptible demands of the instinct with the no less imprescriptible demands of civilisation requiring renunciation of the instinct. All development is marked by this antinomy. In Moses and Monotheism Freud makes the following comments on this: W hen the ego has brought the super-ego the sacrifice of an instinc­ tual renunciation, it expects to be rewarded by receiving more love from it. The consciousness of deserving love is felt by it as pride. At the time when the authority had not yet been internalised as a super-ego, there could be the same relation between the threat of loss of love and the claims of instinct; there was a feeling of security and satisfaction when one had achieved an instinctual renuncia­ tion out of love for one's parents. But this happy feeling could only assume the particular narcissistic character of pride after the authority had itself become a portion of the ego. (1939, p. 117) Ttfis passage shows that it is necessary to look at the notion of devel­ opment from at least two angles: on the one hand, the development of object-libido from orality to the phallic and then genital phases; on the other, the narcissistic libido from absolute dependence to genital interdependence. Now, the security which has to be gained can only be acquired - so as not to suffer the loss of a parent's love - through instinctual renunciation, which allows self-esteem to be acquired. The supremacy of the pleasure principle, as well as evolution, is only possible if from the start the mother guarantees the satisfaction of needs, so that the field of desire can open as the order of the signifier. This is also true in the sphere of narcissism, which can establish itself only insofar as the security of the ego is guaranteed by the mother.

However, this security and the order of need can suffer from a preco­ cious conflictualisation brought on by the mother. Then one witnesses the crushing of desire and its being dealt with as need. Also, because of the impossibility of experiencing omnipotence and therefore of surmounting it, the narcissistic wound leads to excessive dependence upon the maternal object providing security. The mother becomes the pillar of an omnipotence attributed to her, accompanied by an ideali­ sation whose psychotic-inducing character is well-known, particularly since it is accompanied by the crushing of libidinal desire. This omnipotence is even more easily created because it corresponds to the mother's desire to bear a child without the contribution of the father's penis. In short, it is as though the child, because of his conception with the help of this penis, were a debased, damaged product. D.W. W innicott has worked on this problem of dependence. He has shown how the splitting off of the remaining part of the psyche from what has been refused leads to the construction and adoption of what he calls a 'false self (Winnicott 1975). The fact that this problem of narcissism is contemporaneous with an orality in which depend­ ence upon the breast is very real, increases this reinforcement of dependence even more. During the anal phase - when, as we know, cultural constraints are important - the demands of renunciation become imperatives and reaction formations predominate; at best, one will end up with an obsessive and rigid character, at worst, with a camouflaged psychopathic paranoid form bearing fantasies of incor­ porating a dangerous and restrictive object animated by an anti-libidinal omnipotence. All of these pregenital relics will heavily mark the phallic phase, conferring upon the boy's castration anxiety a fundamentally devaluing character, and upon the girl's penis envy an avidity of which she will be ashamed and from which she will hide as best she can. Id, Ego, Super-Ego Let us examine narcissism in relation to the id. Here we can speak only of primary narcissism. In a recent work, I demonstrated the necessity of distinguishing between that which pertains to the id, which is usually described by the term elation or narcissistic expan­ sion, and that which is the exclusive domain of primary narcissism, which I characterize as the lowering of tensions to the level zero. We have just seen that the plan of moral narcissism is to use morality as a crutch in order to free itself from the vicissitudes involved in the tie to the object; and so, by this roundabout method, to obtain liberation from the constraints involved in the object relation, in order to give the id and the ego the means to be loved by a demanding super-ego and a tyrannical ego ideal. However, their effort at mystification fails:

first of all, because the super-ego is not so easily fooled; secondly, because the demands of the id continue to be voiced in spite of the ascetic manoeuvres of the ego. If what I have said is the case - that is, if moral narcissism turns morality into an auto-erotic pleasure - then one understands better how the ego can be interested in these operations, using all the means at the disposition of secondary narcissism, robbing the cathexes destined for objects. Here is the travesty which permits it to say to the id, according to Freud's phrase, 'Look, you can love me, too - I am so like the object.' One might add, 'And at least I am pure, pure of any suspicion, pure of any impurity.' However, it is definitely between the super-ego and the ego ideal that the relationship is the closest. I have insisted upon what Freud described in 1923 and returned to repeatedly thereafter. He explains the order of the phenomena proper to the super-ego: the function of the ideal, which is to the super-ego what the instinct is to the id and what perception is to the ego (Freud 1923). To recapitulate briefly: if, at the start, everything is id, everything is instinct, and, more precisely, antagonism of the instincts (Eros and destructive instincts), the differentiation as to the external world leads to the existence of a corticalisation of the ego that differentiates perception and, correla­ tively, the representation of the instinct. The division into ego and super-ego, the latter having its roots in the id, leads to the repression of id-satisfactions, and, at the same time, the necessity of picturing the world not only as one wishes it to be but also as it is; that is, in such a way that a system of connotations makes it possible to control it. Secondarily, or by way of compensation, this leads to the setting up of the function of the ideal, desire's revenge upon reality. It is because this function - a function of illusion - is at work, that the spheres of fantasy, art and religion exist. For the moral narcissist, the ideal, which is capable of evolution, while renouncing none of its original demands, retains its original force. Finding its first application in the aggrandisement of the parents, that is, in the idealisation of their image, the ego ideal preserves all the characteristics of the relationship with the parents, the mother in particular. In the case of these subjects, the love of their ego ideal is as indispensable as the love they expect from their mothers, as indispensable as the nourishment given by the mother whose love was already the first illusion. T am nourished, therefore I am loved', says the moral narcissist. 'Anyone who is not ready to nourish me cannot really love me.' During therapy, the moral narcis­ sist will dem and and try to obtain the same unconditional nourishment, or love, through a privation and reduction of cathexes (the very opposite of the aims pursued by the therapy). Although his

demand makes h im terribly dependent, he ensures his domination and the servitude of the Other. Here again we find the link between love and security which we were speaking about earlier. To be shel­ tered - sheltered from a world which favours excitation - by the analyst's narcissistic love as a guarantee of survival, security and love: that is what the moral narcissist wants. And the super-ego? We shall now discover one of moral narcis­ sism's most characteristic traits. In fact, the moral narcissist lives in a state of constant tension between the ego ideal and the super-ego. The idealising function of the ego ideal is seen for what it is: its function as a decoy, a diverted occult satisfaction, a troubled inno­ cence. The super-ego reveals the trap of this travesty and refuses to be taken in. In turn the ego ideal tries, through its sacrifices and holo­ causts, to ridicule the super-ego, which then pierces the 'sin of pride' of megalomania and severely punishes the ego for its masquerade. The ego ideal of the moral narcissist builds itself upon the vestiges of the ideal ego: that is, upon a force of omnipotent idealising satisfaction which is ignorant of the limitations of castration and which therefore has less to do with the Oedipus complex of the oedipal phase than with the preceding phases. Here I would like to bring to your attention a remark concerning the religious super-ego. Every super-ego carries w ithin itself a germ of religion because it is created through an identification, not with the parents, but rather with the parents' super-ego: that is, an identifica­ tion with the dead father, the ancestor. However, not every super-ego merits the qualifying term religious. A specific feature of any religion is that it takes the super-ego as its foundation and forms it into a system - dogma - a necessary mediator of paternal prohibition. It is certainly this feature that Freud was referring to when he called religion the obsessional neurosis of humanity. Conversely, since there is reciprocity, he also maintained that obsessional neurosis is the tragicomic travesty of a private religion. Moral narcissists have numerous similarities to obsessives, especially in regard to the intense desexualisation they try to impose on their relationships with the object and also in the deep aggression which they camouflage. I have already mentioned the relation to paranoia. Grouping these observa­ tions, one can say that the more the ties to the object are maintained, the more the relationships will be obsessional. The more these ties are detached, the more the relationship will be paranoid. Any failure, in the first case as well as the second, any deception inflicted upon the ego ideal by the object, brings on depression. Let me add a word about the relationship between shame and guilt, and about Dodds' speculation that Greek mythology finds its echo in individual pathological structures. Shame, as I have said, is of a narcis­

sistic order, whereas guilt is of an objectal order. This is not all. One may also think that these feelings, the bases of the first reaction forma­ tions long before the Oedipus complex, are constitutive of the precursors of the super-ego. This occurs before the internalisation of the super-ego, heir to the Oedipus complex. Therefore, linking shame to the pregenital phases of development not only explains its narcis­ sistic prevalence but also its cruel and intransigent character excluding any possibility of reparation. Certainly this is a matter of schematic opposition. Both shame and guilt always coexist. However, in analysis a distinction must be made. Guilt in relation to masturbation is connected with the fear of castration; shame has an irrational, primary and absolute character. Shame is not a question of the fear of castra­ tion but rather of the prohibition of any contact with the castrated person, insofar as he is the proof, the mark of an indelible impurity that can be acquired through contact. It must be stated that only a defusion of narcissism and the object-tie enables shame to have such a great importance. As any defusion favours the liberation of the death drive, suicide on account of shame becomes more understandable. Let us go back to the ego. A point concerning sublimation was left suspended and deserves further attention. I have mentioned pseudo­ sublimation, a form of sublimation others might call defensive sublimation. To my way of thinking, this conception is not appro­ priate; it puts true sublimation, an expression of what is most noble in man, in opposition to defensive sublimation, nothing more than a failed sublimation. Undeniably, sublimations do exist which arise from certain pathological forms. These can be viewed as emergency exits from conflict, without necessarily being reaction formations. And insofar as any sublimation is governed by the threat of castration, this leads to the need to end the Oedipus complex, at the risk of running even more serious risks for the libidinal economy. Thus sublimation has the destiny of a drive. It is therefore a defence, one favoured by the existence of drives whose aims are inhibited. W hat there is to say about moral narcissism in this respect is instructive. One can observe not only these escape sublimations, for which the subject will later pay dearly, but also a process of inhibition, indeed a halting of the subli­ mation by secondary guilt (we must not forget that shame always comes first) in the partial impulses, scopophilia in particular. When the subject tends toward pseudo-sublimation, this mechanism is only on rare occasions a pleasure: of a 'lesser value' in the eyes of the id than sexual pleasure, but of greater value in the eyes of the super-ego. The essential aspect of this vicissitude of the ego is the constitution of what W innicott calls a false self which has taken over the idealising and depriving forms of behaviour at the cost of what is called authenticity, the difference being that the process is totally unconscious.

In the face of this false self it is important not to disregard its economic function. I have already mentioned that which functions as a defensive process at the heart of moral narcissism, as well as that which acts as a substitute satisfaction, that is, pride. But one must not neglect the essential economic consideration that makes moral narcissism and the false self underlying it the backbone of these subjects' egos. It is therefore dangerous to attack it, lest the entire structure crumble. Life, with its potential of disappointments, very often does just this and then comes depression, or even suicide. Bisexuality and the Death Drive The ultimate aim of narcissism is the obliteration of the trace of the Other in one's desire, therefore the abolition of the primary difference, the difference between One and the Other. But what is the meaning of the abolition of this primary difference in regard to the return to the maternal breast? The aim of moral narcissism in this reduction of tension to the level zero is either death or immortality, which is the same thing. This explains why, confronted by these patients, we have the feeling that their life is a protracted suicide, even when they appear to have given up the idea of a violent death. However, this suicidal form reveals how object inanition, consumption, are sacri­ ficed for the love of a terrible god: self-idealisation. W ith the suppression of primary difference, one simultaneously brings about the abolition of all the other differences, and, it goes without saying of sexual difference. It is basically the same thing to say that desire must be reduced to the level zero and to say that one must do without the object which is the object of lack - the object becoming a sign that one is limited, unachieved and incomplete. In Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920), Freud refers to the Platonic myth of the androgyne, a figure evoking the fantasy of a primitive completion prior to sexual differ­ entiation. For the moral narcissist the inconveniences of sexual differentiation must be suppressed by self-sufficiency. Narcissistic wholeness is not a sign of health but rather a mirage of death. Moral narcissism is a narcissism which is positive and negative at the same time. It is positive in its concentration of energy upon a fragile and threatened ego; negative because it gives value, not to satisfaction, or frustration (this would be so in the case of masochism), but to privation. Self-privation becomes the best bulwark against castration. There is a need for a differential analysis, according to the nature of the deficiency; that is to say, according to sex. It cannot be repeated often enough that the fear of castration concerns both sexes. Penis envy concerns both sexes but with different particularities from the start. The man fears castration of what he has, the woman of what she

could have. The woman desires a penis insofar as it is her destiny, through coition or procreation, for example. The man desires a penis insofar as his, like the female clitoris, is never sufficiently enhancing. We must remember the indestructibility of these desires. Moral narcissism enlightens us in this respect. In the case of a man, it leads, through the behaviour of deprivation, to the following defence: T cannot be castrated because I have nothing left; I am stripped of everything and have put all my belongings at the disposi­ tion of whoever wants to take them / In the case of a woman the reasoning would be: T have nothing but I want nothing more than the nothing I have/ This monastic vocation in m an or woman is an attempt to deny the lack or, on the contrary, to love it. T lack nothing. I therefore have nothing to lose and even if I did lack some­ thing, I would love this lack as though it were myself/ Castration continues to lead this chase, because this deficiency will be displaced in the direction of the moral perfection to which the moral narcissist aspires and which will constantly leave h im far from his self-imposed demands. There, shame will expose its face, which will have to be covered with a shroud. The trace of the Other cannot be erased, even in the desire for the One. For the Other will have taken on the face of the One in the double which precedes it and which will repeat to it unceasingly: 'You must love only me. No one but me deserves to be loved/ But who is hiding behind the mask? The double, the image in the mirror? The doubles inhabit the frame of the negative hallucination of the mother. I shall not return to this concept, which I have already developed (Green 1967). But I will extend this hypothesis here by demon­ strating that if negative hallucination is the base upon which moral narcissism stands in its relationship with primary narcissism, then the father is involved. The negation of the absence of the maternal environment links up with the father as primordial absence, as an absence of the principle of kinship, whose ulterior connections with the'Law will be perceived. In the case of moral narcissism it cannot be denied that this detour is aim ing only for the possession of a phallus - a paternal phallus15 - as a principle of universal domina­ tion. The negation of this desire in the form of a celebration of renunciation does not in the least change its ultimate aim. And it is not by chance that in both sexes it is a matter of a negation of castra­ tion. God is asexual but God is the father. For the moral narcissist his phallus is disembodied, void of its substance, an abstract and hollow m ould.16 Before finishing with the relation between moral narcissism and the death drive, we must return to the subject of idealisation. The great merit of Melanie Klein (1946) was to have given idealisation the

place it deserves. For her, idealisation is the result of the primordial splitting between the good and the bad object and, consequently, between the good and the bad ego. This dichotomy overlaps the one that exists between the idealised object (or ego) and the persecuting object (or ego) in the paranoid-schizoid phase. Consequently, the excessive idealisation of the object or of the ego appears to be the result of splitting which attempts to m aintain (in the ego as in the object) all the persecutory parts excluded. This point is confirmed in clinical work. The idealisation of the ego is always the corollary of an extremely threatening feeling, for the object as well as for the ego. This links up with our observations on the importance of destructive aggression in moral narcissists. Idealisation joins forces with om nipo­ tence in order to abolish, neutralise or destroy the destructive drives that threaten the object and, through retaliation, the ego. Here one can perceive more clearly the relations with masochism which pose many questions for the interpretation of moral narcis­ sism. I consider masochism to represent the failure of the neutralisation of the destructive drives oriented toward the ego: hence the failure of moral narcissism and of its work of idealisation. Moral narcissism should therefore be understood as a success of the defence and, consequently, a success in the search for pleasure (megalomaniacal) beyond masochism; megalomania arising from the liberation from conflictual tensions. It should be understood that moral narcissism is not the only way out in the face of a masochism threatening the ego; rather, it is only one of several methods used to keep this threat at a distance. Should we conclude that moral narcissism is a protection from masochism? I do not think so, since it is the dichotomy between idealisation and persecution that is primary. Splitting shows the two positions at the same time. It is necessary to emphasise the fact that idealisation is no less mutilating than persecution in that it removes the subject from the circuit of object relations. In order to make things clearer, I would say that persecution underlies paranoid delusion, whereas idealisation underlies schizophrenia in its most hebephrenic forms. In its milder forms, this problem is obviously less evident. Melanie Klein would say that in these cases the depressive stage has been reached. This explains why the breakdown of the moral narcissist takes on the face of depression and not delusion or schizophrenia. In all of these cases, one can see that it is the intensity of the destructive drives, uncontrolled by splitting, and the accentua­ tion of idealisation that are responsible for the regression. Thus, the two positions, idealisation and persecution, go hand in hand. Beyond this there is a chaotic state which does not recognise the primary symbolising division, that of good and bad.

Technical Implications in the Treatment of Moral Narcissists The treatment of moral narcissists poses delicate problems. I have already pointed out some of the more serious obstacles to the treat­ ment's evolution. They involve difficulty of access to material tied to the object relation beyond the reconstitution of narcissistic depend­ ence upon the mother (and therefore upon the analyst). In my experience it seems that the key to these cures resides, as always, in the analyst's desire, in the counter-transference. For eventually the analyst, knowing that he has to continue such a relationship, finally feels that he is his patient's prisoner. He becomes the other pole of dependence, as in those cases when one does not quite know what distinguishes the gaoler from the m an he is guarding. The analyst is then tempted to modify this analytic situation in order to make it advance. Since the least guilt-inducing variant is kindness, the analyst offers his love, without realising that he is pouring the first drop into the Danaides' barrel. But the fact is that the desire for this love is always insatiable, and one must also expect to see the reserves of love used up: they are limited and therefore exhaustible. It seems to me that here the analyst is making a technical error because he is responding to a desire of the patient, a move we know is always perilous. Since it is a matter of moral narcissism, the analyst then becomes a substitute moralist, indeed a priest. The result is that the analysis loses its specific feature, the spring of its efficacy. It is exactly as if one were to choose to respond to a delusional symptomatology at the level of its manifest expression. To do so would be to create an impasse, If not to commit an error. The second possibility is that of the transference interpretation. As long as it remains expressed objectively through the words of the analyst, it only has a slight echo in this material covered by the narcissistic carapace. One might as well try to awaken the sexual desire of someone dressed in armour. There remains resignation. It is certainly the least dangerous of all these attitudes. Let it be, let it happen. Since the privations required by therapy have no effect other than that of reinforcing moral narcissism, the analyst then risks engaging himself in an interminable analysis, the patient's need for dependence thus being largely satisfied. So there seems to be no solution. There is, however, one that I would not dare mention here without apprehension, if in certain cases it had not allowed me to make perceptible advances. It is a matter of (and the undertaking is perilous) analysing narcissism. Analysing narcissism is a project which, in more than one way, could appear impossible. However, after a sufficient passage of time - several years when the transference is well-established and the repetition behaviour

has been analysed, the analyst can resolve to pronounce the key words: shame, pride, honour, dishonour, micromania and megalo­ mania. And he can thereby free the subject of a part of his burden, since the worst frustration a patient can feel during an analysis is that of not being understood. As tough as the interpretation may be, as cruel as it may be to hear the truth, it is less cruel than the iron yoke in which the patient feels imprisoned. Often the analyst cannot bring himself to use this method, because he has the feeling he is traumatising his patient. He therefore puts up a good front while within he is ill-at-ease. If we believe in the unconscious we ought to suppose that these attitudes, camouflaged by the civility of analytical relations, are perceptible to the patient, through the most subtle indications. The analyst must be an artisan of separation from the patient, with the condition, however, that the patient does not feel that this sepa­ ration is a way of getting rid of him. Moreover, let me add that often those who treat these patients, when face to face with the realisation of their subjects' inaccessibility, get rid of them in most affable ways, at least outwardly. In short, I am defending here nothing other than a technique of truth, certainly not an orthopaedic technique. This interpretative attitude can at times allow access to the problem of idealisation-persecution, and can thereby uncover what is lurking in the persecution implicit beneath the facade of idealisation. Protection from persecution (from the object and suffered by the ego; from the ego and suffered by the object) is, at the same time, an escape from persecution in a camouflaged form. Through this, the object-tie to the mother can be reconstituted. Then the ego's reproaches concerning the object and the object's reproaches concerning the ego will be evident. Recourse to narcissistic sufficiency can be accounted for only by the deficiency of the object, whether this deficiency is real or the result of an inability to satisfy the unquenchable needs of the child.

Heroic Figures of Moral Narcissism Everything I have elaborated here, except for my apologue of Oedipus and Ajax, is drawn from observing patients. Their implied narcissistic regression makes them caricatures of the normal portraits that anyone can discover among those around him. While not quite cari­ catures, certain heroic figures - other than Ajax, who is an extreme case - may be contemplated. Think of Brutus, for example, as portrayed in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. Brutus assassinated Caesar not because of desire or ambition but because of patriotism; because he was a republican and saw in his adoptive father a threat to the virtue of Rome. W hen one assassinates for virtue, afterwards one is never virtuous enough to justify the

assassination: hence this refusal to tie oneself by oath to the other conspirators, as each has to answer only to his own conscience. ... No, not an oath ... And what other oath Than honesty to honesty engaged That this shall be or we will fall for it? (Act II, I) Above all, honour! Brutus has already warned us: 'I love the name of honour more than I fear death' (Act I, III). This explains this act of insanity, for any political debutant,17 which permits the most feared of his rivals, Mark Antony,18 to make the funeral oration. This is also why, before joining battle, he makes violent reproaches to the courageous Cassius, his ally, whom he accuses of being what we would call today a war profiteer. And thus, finally, his suicide, offered as supplementary evidence of his incor­ ruptible virtue. His heroic cause, however, is not necessarily that of the Republic, of the state, or of power. Love also has its heroes of moral narcissism. The most beautiful of them all is the analyst's patron saint, Don Quixote, particularly cher­ ished by Freud. Let us recall the episode in which Quixote goes to the Sierra Morena and wants to live there as a hermit. He strips himself of his few possessions and begins to tear his clothing, to batter his body and leap around madly, all of which astonishes Sancho Panza. When the latter demands an explanation, the hildalgo of pure blood explains to this com m on m an that he is only conforming to the rules of the code of love as stipulated in the novels of chivalry. Quixote is seeking the feat capable of perpetuating his name in the name of love, a love which must not only be pure, with no sign of carnal desire, but which must also totally dispossess him of his fortune. He must come to this destitution of himself and of his individuality, by imitating Amadis or Roland, to the point of madness - or at least an imitation of'ft. 'But I have now to rend my garments, scatter my arms about, and dash my head against these rocks; with other things of the like sort which will strike you with admiration.' This he says to Sancho Panza, who tries in vain to reason with him . 'Mad I am and mad I must be', adds Quixote whose madness here is a sign of virtue. And of Quixote's description of Dulcinea as the 'ever honoured lady', Sancho sees only that 'she will pitch the bar with the lustiest swain in the parish; straight and vigorous, and I warrant can make her part good with any knight-errant that shall have her for his lady. Oh, what a pair of lungs and a voice she has ... and the very best of her is, that she is not at all coy, but as bold as a court-lady ... .' Certainly this is

not the way Quixote sees Dulcinea. One can say that here it cannot be a matter of narcissism but rather of objectal love; it is for the object of love that Quixote inflicts upon himself privations and cruelty. But no, it is only a matter of the narcissistic projection of an idealised image and it is not the least of the strokes of genius of Cervantes that he ends his book with Quixote's repudiation: 'No more of that, I beseech you', replied Don Quixote, 'all the use I shall make of these follies at present is to heighten my repentance.' Doubtless Quixote and Sancho Panza exist, as Marthe Robert has said, 'only on paper'. But they live in us if not in themselves. In the same way, is not Falstaff the absolutely and completely amoral narcis­ sist, whose monologue on honour merits both our reprobation for its coarseness and our admiration for its truth?19 We are caught between an indispensable illusion and a no less indispensable truth. All of these figures have been described by a philosopher. Have you not recognised, again and again in these pages, Hegel and his 'beau­ tiful soul'? Concerned about the order of the world, wanting to change it but anxious for his virtue, he would like to knead the dough with which man is made, while at the same time keeping his hands clean. But let us beware of following Hegel's example; having immor­ talised this beautiful soul with hispen, he could only conclude the Phenomenology o f Mind with a triumph that could well have been that of the beautiful soul. We can feel, can we not, how close this beautiful soul of moral conscience can come to the delusion of presumption, to this law of the heart whose reference is paranoia? In any case, its narcissistic character did not escape Hegel: 'Contemplation of itself is its objective existence, and this objective element is the declaration of its knowing and willing as something universal.' There is even its tie to the most primary narcissism: 'Here, then, we see self-consciousness withdrawn into its innermost being, for which all externality as such has vanished - withdrawn into the intuition of the "ego" = "ego", in which this "ego" is the whole of essentiality and existence.' The consequence of this is 'absolute untruth, which collapses internally'. Am I giving the impression of engaging in the denunciation of virtue and the defence of vice? To do so would be to give in to a fashion which today sees Sade as our saviour. I will content myself with recalling the truth, pointed out by Freud, which makes an indis­ soluble tie between sexuality and morality, the diversion of one automatically bringing about the diversion of the other. Georges Bataille, to whom tribute should be paid by psychoanalysts, has profoundly understood this consubstantiality of erotism and the sacred.

'I must earn your love', a patient said. To which we answered: 'Yes, but what kind of love are you talking about?' She was obliged to recognise, in spite of her vain and hopeless efforts, that Eros, that black angel, for her had turned white. (Bataille 1957)

Conclusion Several points have been left in suspense. First of all, it is necessary to point out that the structure of moral narcissism here is far from being rigid. It characterises certain patients by the predominance of its features. No one is totally free of moral narcissism. One can also draw attention to this structural particularity as a phase in the analysis of certain patients. Moreover, though the cases I have described may well have the outlines of this structure, they are not definitively tied to it. They can evolve - experience has taught us this - and can attain other positions. It is with satisfaction that we can observe favourable evolutions in cases where they were no longer hoped for. Let us also take another look at the ties between moral narcissism and moral masochism. It is useful to distinguish them. Is not one a camouflage for the other? Rather than considering their relationship in terms of one covering or overlapping the other, I think that, though their relationship is dialectical, a different series is nonethe­ less involved. If, however, one had to admit their oneness, I would say that the true masochism is moral narcissism, insofar as there exists in the latter an attempt to reduce the tensions to the level zero - the final aim of masochism insofar as its destiny is tied to the death instinct and the Nirvana principle. To repeat: the connection with suffering implies a relationship with the object - narcissism reduces the subject to itself, toward the zero which is the subject. Desexualisation is directed toward the libidinal and aggressive drives, toward the object and toward the ego. The open range given to the death drive is aiming for the annihilation of the subject consid­ ered as the last fantasy. Here death and immortality converge. In truth, extreme solutions are never encountered; all that one establishes in clinical work, and particularly in the selectivity of psychoanalytic practice, compared with psychiatric practice which is broader, are orientations toward curves, moving to their asymptotic limits. In this regard, the relations between shame and guilt are much more complex than we have said. However, the destructive character of shame is very important: guilt can be shared, shame cannot. Nonetheless, ties are formed between shame and guilt: one can be ashamed of one's guilt, one can feel guilty about one's shame. But the analyst clearly distinguishes the levels of splitting when, faced by his patient, he feels the extent to which guilt can be tied to its uncon­

scious sources and how it can be partially surpassed when analysed. Shame, by contrast, takes on an irreparable character. The transfor­ mation of pleasure into unpleasure is a solution for guilt; for shame, the only thing possible is the path of negative narcissism. A neutrali­ sation of affects is at work, a deadly enterprise in which a labour of Sisyphus is carried out. I love no one. I love only myself. I love myself. I do not love. I do not. I. O. The progression is the same for hate: I hate no one. I hate only myself. I hate myself. I do not hate. I do not. I. O. This progression of propositions illustrates the evolution toward the affirmation of the megalomaniacal T in the last stage before its disappearance.

5 The Neuter Gender (1973)

Although, for psychoanalysis, difference is sexual, the question of bisexuality is related to psychoanalytic theory as a whole. W hat is the position as far as abolishing - or as far as the fantasy of abolishing this difference is concerned? And how are we to situate this particular problem if the reference points needed to localise it have not been defined? So two stages are involved. First, we shall have to establish the theoretical framework for our project; and then, within this framework, we will attempt to elucidate the object of our study which is called the neuter gender.

Reference Points for Psychical Bisexuality The Point o f Departure: Sexuality between Biology and Psychoanalysis No other question is better suited to demonstrate the relations between the biological roots of the drive and psycho-sexual life than that of sexuality. This privileged domain is well-suited for examining Freud's hypotheses in the light of the scientific facts of biology, and for^ comparing medical clinical experience with the findings of clinical psychoanalysis in order to highlight their similarities and differences. Now, so far, this confrontation has revealed profound discrepancies which often confirm, and sometimes undermine, Freud's metapsychological postulates. The contributions of postFreudian authors are not exempt from this new examination. Point 1. Biological Sexuality and Psycho-Sexuality Biological sexuality involves a series of relays spread out in time, each of which plays its role in determining sexual identity (chromosomal, gonadal, horm onal sexual identity, internal genitals, external genitals, secondary sexual characteristics). The m ain fact is that masculinity is the result of an active process (through the interven­

tion of a testicle provoking masculine characteristics), femininity being the outcome of a passive process (obtained either as a result of pathological defect or by the normal absence of a testicle provoking masculine characteristics). One can therefore speak of a development of biological sexuality, from conception to puberty, which is charac­ terised by a discontinuous and differentiated process. However, in the hum an species a new mutative relay (Organiser 1) appears which is superimposed on biological development. This relay is at the origin of an autonomous psychological development which is different from biological development and responsible for psycho-sexuality. The hum an relay is the fundamental determinant of an individual's sexu­ ality (cf. Money, Hampson). Point 2. Parental Wishes and Infantile Sexuality This mutative relay is constituted by labelling the child with a sexual gender, which may conform more or less to the individual's morpho­ logical sexuality (cf. the clinical data on intersexual states with genital ambiguity: pseudo-hermaphroditism1). This labelling is closely connected with parental wishes. Its mode of action finds expression in the mother-child relationship from birth on until the child is about two and a half years old. At this point, the individual experi­ ences and sees himself as clearly monosexual (Money, Hampson). Point 3. Freud The Freudian theory of bisexuality has had the merit of distin­ guishing psychical bisexuality from biological bisexuality. Nevertheless, when he comes up against difficult questions, at many points in his work, Freud maintains that the solution to the mystery is to be found in biology, something which does not seem to be confirmed by science today. Moreover, the Freudian theory of libido development may nowadays seem to be too exclusively based on an individual evolution underestimating the parent-child relationship, or not related to it. Point 4. Melanie Klein and Winnicott By playing down the problem of castration and the difference between the sexes, Melanie Klein's theory neglects bisexuality and, more gener­ ally, the problematics of sexuality in favour of the problematics of aggression. On the other hand, Winnicott's theory puts the emphasis on the parent-child relationship and takes into account the inter-rela­ tionships between processes of maturation and the maternal environment, but perhaps underestimates the father's role and that of parental sexuality. The role of maternal care can be interpreted in a more metapsychological way than it was by Winnicott. Of course, I am

not talking about an external influence. Rather, one might conceive of it as the necessary connection of two drive apparatuses linked to each other by the difference of potential owing to their unequal develop­ ment (the coverage of the child's id-ego by the mother's ego-id). This first connection would in turn be linked up with the father's drive apparatus, in a metaphorical position (Lacan). Each of these three apparatuses would initially be able to have a mediating function between the two others. This first stage would be followed by a re­ organisation once monosexuality had been established. Point 5. The 'Imprint' o f Desire: the Parental Fantasy It seems probable that when a parent labels his or her child with a sexual gender, it acts like a psychical imprint which, however, cannot be likened to the mechanism as it is described in animals. This imprint is constituted following the perception of the child's body as a sexual form, which is strengthened or weakened thereafter by the parent. The parental fantasy, in particular the mother's, therefore has to be seen as playing a powerful inductive role in establishing individual monosexuality. All eventualities are possible: ignoring sexual ambi­ guity (hermaphroditism or pseudo-hermaphroditism); rejecting a biological sex without ambiguity (boy brought up as a girl, and vice versa); unconsciously valuing the sex which the child does not have; showing more or less total intolerance of an individual's psychical bisexuality by means of repression and by making the individual feel guilty for attitudes and tendencies which do not belong to his or her biological sex, etc. One should bear in m ind that this psychical impregnation is tied up with other factors such as perpetuating a fusional relationship with the child beyond the period when this should cease, the attitude vis-a-vis aggressivity, attempting to block the transition of investment from the mother to the father and so on. W hat needs to be emphasised here is that this impregnation is subject to^ the influence of a parent who is himself (or herself) caught in a conflict with respect to psychical bisexuality. Point 6. Psychical Bisexuality and Personal Fantasy There is reason to suppose, therefore, that an individual's psychosex­ uality is dominated by the mother's fantasy. The latter is constituted on the basis of various parameters: an infantile desire to have a child from her father or mother; the sex of this imaginary child; the mother's acceptance of her own sex; the role the husband's (that is, the child's father's) desire has in her own desire; desire for this desire, and so on. O n the other hand, the individual's psychical bisexuality is constituted by means of personal fantasy (more or less related to the parental fantasy). It is through constituting the fantasy of the

other sex - the one we do not have but which we could have through imagination, in the oedipal triangle - that psychical bisexuality is organised, as Freud recognised. Point 7. Psychical Conflict and the Fantasy of the Primal Scene Psychical conflict occurs on several levels which are interconnected. The individual's sex depends, then, on the way he is experienced and perceived by his mother and father, on their convergent and diver­ gent desires for him, and on the way in which he experiences and perceives himself in his convergent and divergent desires towards them. This conflict is intimately tied up with the individual's narcis­ sism as well as his destructive drives. It culminates in the fantasy of the primal scene (Organiser 2), which brings into play contradictory desires and identifications. Point 8. The Neuter Gender Although this conflict ordinarily contributes to the organisation of psychical bisexuality, another possible outcome can be found in destroying sexual desire and therefore sexual identification. The counterpart and complement of psychical bisexuality, whether manifest or latent, thus seems to be the fantasy of the neuter gender, neither masculine nor feminine, and dominated by absolute primary narcissism. This crushing of drive activity leads the subject's idealising and megalomaniac inclinations not towards the fulfilment of sexual desire but towards a longing for a state of psychical nothingness in which being nothing seems to be the ideal condition of self-sufficiency. This tendency towards zero never, of course, attains its goal and finds expression in self-restrictive behaviour of suicidal significance. Point 9. The Oedipal Complex and the Castration Complex Another mutative relay will organise all the earlier data during the oedipal complex (Organiser 3) when bisexuality is put to the test. The oedipal complex, always dual - positive and negative - culminates in a double identification, masculine and feminine. These two identifi­ cations are not however of equal form; they are complementary and contradictory, one dominating the other and concealing it, more or less. The castration complex, as Freud describes it, possesses an indis­ putable heuristic value. It is a time of reorganisation. Before it, the exchange of places and roles in fantasy did not involve any vectorisation of desire. Thereafter, maternal and paternal identifications, governed by the castration complex, obey a law governing the flow of exchanges. Bisexuality is the retroactive effect of this vectorisation. The castration complex is only operative - in the strict and specific sense denoted by the term castration - when the significance of the

sexual gender to which the individual belongs has been acquired. It is not contemporaneous with the discovery of the difference between the sexes, but with the m om ent when this discovery acquires an organising significance. Overcoming the castration complex depends on earlier stages which are reinterpreted apres coup as precursors of castration (loss of the breast and weaning, the gift of faeces, and sphincteral training). O n the other hand, it is important that the preoedipal stages have not been too conflictual, to the extent of blocking development, so that the castration complex can be elaborated. The two-phases of libidinal development are of capital importance; the period of latency, marked by repression, creating a major disconti­ nuity between infantile sexuality and adult sexuality. Point 10. Sexual Reality and Psychical Reality At the time of the oedipal complex, the conflict takes on the form of an opposition between the individual's sexual reality and his psychical reality. Sexual reality concerns the sex which is determined and fixed before the third year; psychical reality concerns the fantasies which are convergent or divergent with sexual reality. This conflict depends to a large extent on the position adopted by the ego. Depending on the case in question, the ego may completely deny reality (trans­ sexual psychosis) or accept sexual reality by splitting it off from psychical reality, endeavouring to satisfy its fantasies by adhering to them and acting them out (perversion); or, lastly, it may reject that part of psychical reality which contradicts sexual reality (neurosis). The ego's options are dependent on the pre-oedipal period and the more or less mobilisable marks it has made on it. The vicissitudes of biological and psychical development present us with a range of structures (real hermaphroditism, pseudo-hermaphroditism, trans­ vestism, homosexuality, fetishism), each of which lays claim to a distinct pathogeny and different therapeutic responses, commensu­ rate with the individual's demand (cf. Stoller). n

Point 11. Primal Femininity and the Repudiation of Femininity The determining role of factors stemming from the maternal envi­ ronment gives us reason to assume, along with W innicott, that, because it is intricately tied up with the new-born child's biological and psychological state of dependency, and in view of the latter's prematurity, the feminine element of maternal origin should be accepted and integrated in both sexes.2 This primal passivation may be the object of a primordial repression which would account for Freud's opinion that it is femininity that both sexes find most difficult to accept. It goes without saying that, in boys, the acceptance of femi­ ninity should not result in making the acceptance of masculinity as

the individual's real sex more onerous. Conversely, in girls, this primal femininity is real and different from secondary femininity, which is only constituted after the phallic phase and gives way to secondary maternal identification. Point 12. The Difference between the Sexual Developments of Boys and Girls It cannot be emphasised enough that the sexual destiny of boys and girls differs considerably. While both are attached to the feminine, maternal, primordial object, when a boy's psycho-sexual develop­ ment is completed, he is able, by means of a single displacement, to find an object of the same sex as the primordial object, whereas a girl will have to find an object of a different sex to her mother's. Her evolution destines her to object-change (the first displacementreversal, by means of substitution, is from the mother to the father), followed by a definitive object-choice (the second displacement is from the father to his substitute). This specificity of feminine devel­ opment accounts for the specific difficulties of feminine sexuality. Point 13. The Limits o f Psychoanalytic Intervention Cultural codes and ideology inevitably influence sexual destiny through the parents' valuing or devaluing of their child's bisexuality, a process in which collective ideas of masculinity and femininity play their part. The fact remains that these variations are integrated in individual conflicts at the parental level and that the basic induction occurs in the parents', and particularly the mother's, matrix exchanges with the child. The analytic situation certainly does not constitute a mere repetition of this situation but, through transfer­ ence, it creates an analogical model. Nonetheless, the deeply inscribed character of certain marks sets limits to the changes that are likely to occur through psychoanalysis.

Bisexuality and Primary Narcissism: The Neuter Gender More often than not the analyst has to deal with psychical bisexuality in the form of a latent conflict which is uncovered during analysis. Indeed, this is one of the difficulties of psychoanalysis and is m ani­ fested by the analyst's limited capacity to tolerate, to allow to develop, to interpret with precision, the transference concerning the imago of the sex which is not his own. So the problem analytic theory has today resides in the fact that each of its two dom inant figures met with this stumbling block in their own respective ways. Freud was undoubtedly - he admitted as much himself - troubled in his analyses of feminine sexuality by his embarrassment at feeling he was the

object of a maternal transference. And in spite of going 'deeper' than Freud, Melanie Klein does not seem, for her part, to have learnt much from analysing the paternal transference of her patients. Nonetheless, if there is a problem, it is because the conflict here is unconscious. In other cases, the analyst may have the opportunity of seeing other structures where bisexuality is displayed or even actualised. (In this case both heterosexual and homosexual activity can be observed. It is nonetheless exceptional that both types are equally invested. The neurotic nature of these cases is highly questionable. The perverse structure falls a long way short of providing an adequate explanation for the psychopathology of patients who present such characteristics. In certain extreme cases of transvestism, bisexuality can even be brought about through horm onal im pregnation by injecting oestrogen.) I cannot go into all the details here concerning the obser­ vation of a patient I saw in 1959 at the Paris Centre for Psychoanalytic Consultations and Treatment.3 I shall just give the m ain outlines which will serve to illustrate the ideas I have put forward. The subject in question was a female, somewhat stout, of sturdy build, and even athletic in appearance. As soon as she was seated, she4 produced a photocopy of a document from the French Ministry of Employment certifying that she presented feminine arid masculine attributes with a feminine dominance and informed me that she had undertaken steps to have her identity changed. The case history is probably worth telling, not only because of the sometimes fantastic turns in the singular destiny of this person - so fantastic that one even wondered at times whether mythomania did not enter into the clinical picture - but also because, as one listened to her account, one got a glimpse of a maternal image to which she was deeply bound. 'My mother hated me before I was bom; she told me so was one of the first things she said at the beginning of two consultations. The mother's feminine induction was reported in an allusion to the child who had just told her of her success in obtaining heb school leaving certificate: 'W hich teacher did you sleep with to get through this exam?' As is usual in these cases the child was brought up and dressed as a girl until she started school. Her public transvestite practices began around the age of sixteen or seventeen (disguising herself as a girl so as to be able to attend the neighbouring village balls). As is also often the case, homosexuality was deeply repressed. Not the least paradoxical aspect of the case - and this was verified - was that the patient was living together with an older woman with whom she participated in minor sado-masochistic prac­ tices of a completely puerile and infantile character. Thus, on Sundays, she sometimes wanted to go out 'to have some fun' but found she was prohibited from doing so by her friend, who chained

her to a stove to make her finish her washing and ironing first! The patient accepted this treatment: she had the key of the padlock on her but declined to use it. Anality pervaded the clinical picture and the aspect of dirtiness was striking. The inside of the apartment was reported to be repulsively dirty The domination she herself was subjected to was converted into her own dominating approach at work where, apparently, she worked wonders re-educating physically disabled people. The search for contradictory satisfactions was evident: her attitude towards any form of authority, public authorities, for example, was one of rejection, and her need to be kept under tight rein, to be bullied and dominated meant she longed'to be in a passive position. The quest here for a powerful maternal character is patently clear. On the other hand, the poverty of sexual satisfactions is remarkable. The fondling of her breasts - which had apparently developed as a result of oestrogen injections given by the Germans during the war - was the only pleasure she procured: 7t is as if my body were divided in two; as if below the belt I didn't exist, or was another person.’ During our second meeting, the patient spoke of the periods she had every twenty-eight days 'through rectal porosity’, and once again produced certificates. 'A few days before my period, I am absolutely impossible, irritable, nervous, etc. I have never accepted being a complete woman.’ At this point I said to her: 'In fact you don't want to be either a man or a woman', and, before I had time to add anything else, she went on as if she had just understood something important: 7 think you're the first person to get to the heart o f the matter; I don't want to give up any o f the advantages o f the two sexes.’ In the rest of this meeting, we discussed the problem of a surgical operation, for it was difficult to differentiate between transsexualism, which involves a pressing demand for a sex change, and transvestism, in which perverse practices seem to suffice for obtaining satisfaction. The patient's reply is worth citing: 'You're telling me, Doctor; that when I leave this room, I will have the choice between two solutions: 'On the right, is an operating theatre with all the equipment needed for giving me a vagina, a uterus, etc. But once I had been operated on, I would be an emasculated individual who would lose all his shape, put on weight, find himself stripped of all his will and energy, who would be unable any longer to make a living and would just be good for walking the streets and getting screwed; well, in that case, I would refuse, and I'm sure you can't guarantee me that that is not what would happen if I had an operation. 'On the left; there is a well-equipped laboratory which could give me back my virility and make my breasts disappear with the help of hormonal injections. There again, I would not believe you. I think there will always be something feminine in me: I don't want to live as a man.’

This development led me to point out that the image which she was trying to give of herself was not that of a woman but of a mascu­ line woman. The patient agreed that this was, indeed, the impression she gave. At this point a new stage of the story began - fantasy or reality? - in which the patient talked about a situation in which he claimed he felt he was 'entirely female'. This account concerns events in which she served as a partner for a perverse burglar who would break into apartments and then introduce our patient into them saying, This is my place. Everything here belongs to me. Lie down on the bed/ The partner would then throw himself on the patient, having an orgasm almost immediately, and then order his partner to take off 'her' clothes (a woman's clothing) and to take others from the wardrobe of the burgled apartment, which they would then leave as soon as the stolen clothes had been put on. A notable fact here was that the theft never assumed proportions other than symbolic. The ritual sometimes became more complex. For instance, in each apartment that was burgled, the thief was capable of requiring the patient to undress and remain naked. Finally, this complicity came to an end since the perverse practices took a sadistic turn which frightened the patient: he feared, it seems, there was a real danger of being castrated. At any rate, during the time they were living together, this was the only time that the feminine identi­ fication was complete: 7 had become his victim and I did whatever he told me to do.' This observation speaks for itself: the image of the phallic mother stands out in this tragi-comic fresque, with the eclipsing of the father as its shadow, so to speak. The patient appeals to the fantasmatic imago of a father really castrating the woman with a penis. The struc­ ture of the case is dominated by the fantasy of the primal scene. It will thus come as no surprise to learn that the subject's first sexual rela­ tionship was with a young girl, at his home, in his parents' bed - a short-lived experience, during which they both lost their virginity, artd which ended in their separating for good. We will leave this patient recalling a family 'story' to which it is tempting to attach great importance: 'My grandmother used to tell me an anecdote in which I took extreme pleasure and which I would ask her to tell again, even though I knew it by heart: it took place during an outing in the country which my parents had made with some friends o f theirs. While the women were conversing on the grass, the men were fishing trout in the river. My father lost his footing, falling into the water and was completely soaked. He took off his wet clothes and then had to make do with whatever was at hand. Most likely out o f fun, more than necessity; each of the women divested themselves of a piece o f their clothing in order to cover my father who ended up being dressed entirely as a woman/

This, then, was the story of someone who was given three first names by his parents: Pierre (like his father), Marie (like his mother) and Andre. His application for a change of civil status contained a deletion, that of his paternal first name, and, an addition, a mute e to feminise his personal first name, a symbol of masculinity. So he came to be called 'Marie-Andree'. W hen I pointed out to him how he had thereby excluded his 'father's name', he denied ferociously that this could be anything other than a coincidence; although normally he very readily confessed his perverse desires. In a long footnote at the end of the fourth chapter of Civilisation and Its Discontents Freud develops his views on bisexuality: ... if we assume it as a fact that each individual seeks to satisfy both male and female wishes in his sexual life, we are prepared for the possibility that those [two sets of] demands are not fulfilled by the same object, and that they interfere with each other unless they can be kept apart and each impulse guided into a particular channel that is suited to it.5 Here, then, is a remark confirming that hum an sexuality is, indeed, as the word used by R. Lewinter suggests, 'sexion'. Moreover, etymology backs this up. The word sex is thought to originate from secare: to cut, separate. Here the biological metaphor supports the fantasy, since each of the two sexes separates in order to unite with the missing half provided by the other sex. Psychical bisexuality takes its revenge for this sexion-cession and recuperates through fantasy the jouissance conceded to the sex one does not have. Bisexuality is thus closely linked to the difference between the sexes. Where there is bisexuality, there is also difference. Where there is difference, there is a cut, a caesura, a castration of the potentialities for jouissance of the comple­ mentary sex: inverse and symmetrical. Claiming real bisexuality means refusing sexual difference insofar as the latter implies the lack of the other sex. If, by definition, each sex lacks the other, putting both sexes, so to speak, on the same level, castration, the fantasy of castration, that is, the absence or the loss of the virile member, symbolises and subsumes this lack, whichever sex one may have. It is possible for a boy to lose the sex he has, or, for a girl to materialise the lack of the sex she does not have. Admittedly, a girl has something else: a vagina, a womb that can be fertilized, as well as numerous and varied entice­ ments. It remains true that she does not have a penis. True enough, a boy also lacks what a woman has; which he does not have. But these assets are not visible at the level of the sexual organs. The nature of imaginary capture is such that what can be represented is this addi­ tional or missing feature of the penis; an imaginary feature to be

symbolised. And there is good reason for thinking that penis envy is not envy for this piece of flesh, but for what is fantasised about the powers it confers, and which are conferred on it by parental desire. Continuing to study this problem from this point of view is to assume that certain problems have been resolved and affirms that the male-female dilemma implicitly admits of their difference or, at the very least, admits that the subject is a sexual being. The patient I was speaking about earlier came to see me because of his anxieties - anxieties, he said, which gripped him every morning on waking, so that he wondered if that day would not be the day of his death. The consultation revealed that this anxious state reflected the time when he was a prisoner of the Germans, who were said to have carried out femininising experiments on him . Each time he woke up he wondered whether he would survive. Here death anxiety and castration anxiety are connected. The problem is not a simple one. In La logique du vivant, Francois Jacob writes, 'But the two most important inventions [of evolution] are sex and death/6 A fruit of coincidence, perhaps, but united, in any case, by necessity. F. Jacob speaks of death 'imposed from within like a prescribed necessity'. I will not let myself be tempted here by the sirens of 'metabiology', and will stay in the realm of clinical experience which is closely akin to myth. In certain psychopathological structures in which sexuality as a whole is rejected outright, without qualification or distinction, the subject builds and constantly nourishes the fantasy of a-sexuality. The subject claims to be neither masculine nor feminine but neuter. Neither one nor the other, ne uter. He sees to it that any form of hetero- or homosexual aspiration is expunged from his behaviour, as from his desire. These cases are rare but they do exist. Of course, it is a defensive position which can be overcome with analysis. This fantasy of neutrality, constructed with the help of all the resources of intemperate narcissism, bears the marks of the absolute despotism of a tyrannical and megalomaniac ego ideal. For where desire is concerned, everything is settled in an all-or-nothing mode: 'Since I cannot have and be everything, I will have and be nothing.' This fantasy could easily be elaborated in relation to the perception of the maternal fantasy which wishes her child to be neither sexual nor alive. But the quest for maternal love goes hand in hand with an inextinguishable thirst for love and an exaggerated sensibility towards any manifestation of rejection by the loved object, whether it be a maternal or paternal substitute. Consequently, salvation is only to be found in the fantasy of the neuter gender, in its states of undif­ ferentiated sexuality; a sign both of obedience to the mother's desire as well as vengeance on her, through the violent rejection of her.

It is remarkable, then, that the aspiration for Nothing is in keeping with ascetic behaviour of reducing needs, just as primary narcissism endeavours to reduce tensions to the level zero. Here 1 mean absolute primary narcissism in the strongest sense of the term; that is, I am not speaking of primary narcissism as it is used to describe the subject's unification into a singular entity, but, on the contrary, of negative narcissism which ardently seeks a return to the quiescent state. The latter finds expression in suicidal behaviour which is more or less disguised or acted out. In chapters 2 and 4, I showed that primary narcissism should not be confused with primary masochism, precisely because the concealing of jouissance by means of masochistic manoeu­ vres is absent here, the final goal being the extinction of all excitation, of all desire, whether it is agreeable or disagreeable. This fascination with death underlies a fantasy of immortality; for, being nothing is simply a way of abolishing the possibility of no longer existing, of one day lacking something, even if it is only the breath of life. The fantasy of the neuter gender is closely akin to the myth studied by Marie Delcourt.7 The complete hum an being, that is, the union of the Father's spirit and maternal nature, is linked with the symbol of the androgynous, self-begetting and immortal Phoenix. There is nonetheless a further need for a baptism of fire which reduces everything to ashes. The Gnostic idea puts the finishing touch to this link between androgyny and deliverance from the flesh. Totality is safeguarded and lack is denied. It is not in the positivity of actual complementarity that sexual difference is abolished, where Hermes and Aphrodite are but one, but in the even more radical movement of a negative process in which the nothing is incarnated and desire results in the death of desire and triumphs over the death of desire. The One proves to be an impossible concept to think about. Because it is made up of two different halves, which cannot be called one because they are lacking something they need to be complete, and because it is caught between the double and the half, only the Zero seems safe. But in order for the zero to exist, it has to be named, put into writing. But in so doing the One, which cannot be elimi­ nated, re-emerges beneath it. Similarly, designating negative hallucination or castration inevitably involves positivising them. Thus Freud attributed the id with the neuter gender. But the id comprises all the clamour for life of Eros, and also the silence of the destructive drives - the silence one never hears. To be heard, it needs to be expressed with the help of sounds or signs, which are inevitably too noisy and too garish to represent it.

6 The Dead Mother* For Catherine Parat

If one had to choose a single characteristic to differentiate between present-day analyses and analyses as one imagines them to have been in the past, it would surely be found among the problems of mourning. This is what the title of this essay, the dead mother, is intended to suggest. However, to avoid all misunderstanding, I wish to make it clear that I shall not be discussing here the psychical conse­ quences of the real death of the mother, but rather of an imago which has been constituted in the child's mind, following maternal depres­ sion, brutally transforming the living object, a source of vitality for the child, into a distant figure, toneless and practically inanimate, deeply impregnating the cathexes of certain patients whom we have in analysis, and weighing on the destiny of their object-libidinal and narcissistic future. Thus, the dead mother, contrary to what one might think, is a mother who remains alive but who is, so to speak, psychically dead in the eyes of the young child in her care. The consequence of the real death of the mother - especially when this is due to suicide - is extremely harmful to the child whom she leaves behind. One can immediately attach to this event the sympto­ matology to which it gives rise, even if analysis reveals later that the catastrophe was only irreparable because of the mother-child relation­ ship which existed prior to her death. In fact, in this case, one should even be able to describe modes of relationship which come close to those that I wish to expound here. But the reality of the loss, its final and irrevocable nature, will have changed the former relationship in a decisive way. So I shall not be referring to conflicts that relate to such a situation. Nor shall I take into account the analyses of patients who have sought help for a recognised depressive symptomatology. *This chapter, written in 1980 and dedicated to Catherine Parat, was originally translated by Katherine Aubertin. (Revised by Andrew Weller for this volume.)

Effectively, the reasons which motivated the analysands of whom I am going to speak to undertake an analysis barely touch on the char­ acteristic aspects of depression, in the preliminary interviews. O n the other hand, the analyst immediately perceives the narcissistic nature of the conflicts that are invoked, connected as they are with character neurosis and its consequences on the patient's love-life and profes­ sional activity. Before examining the clinical framework that I have just defined, by exclusion, I must briefly mention a few references which have been the second source of my ideas - my patients having been the first. The reflections which follow owe much to authors who have laid the foundations of what we know about the problems of mourning: Freud, Karl Abraham and Melanie Klein. But in particular the more recent studies of W innicott,1 Kohut,2 N. Abraham and M. Torok3 and Rosolato4 have set me on this path. Here then is the statement on which I shall be concentrating: The most widely shared psychoanalytic theory entertains two ideas. The first is that of object-loss as a fundamental moment in the structuring of the hum an psyche, at which time a new relation to reality is introduced. Henceforward the psyche is governed by the reality principle, which takes precedence over the pleasure principle which it also protects. This first idea is a theoretical concept and not the result of observation, for this shows that a gradual evolution, rather than a mutative leap, has taken place. The second generally accepted idea is that of a depressive position, but this is interpreted vari­ ously by different authors. This second idea combines observed fact and theoretical concept for both Melanie Klein and Winnicott. Both ideas, it should be noted, are linked to a general situation referring to an unavoidable event in the process of development. If previous disturbances in the mother-child relationship make its passage or its resolution more difficult, the absence of such disturbances and the good quality of maternal care cannot help the child to avoid living through this period, which plays a formative role in the organisation of his psyche. Besides, these are patients, whatever their presenting structure may be, who seem to suffer from more or less intermittent and more or less invalidating depressive traits, which seem to go beyond the normal depressive reaction that periodically affects everyone. For we know that a subject who never experiences any depression is probably more disturbed than someone who is occasionally depressed. So the question I ask myself is this: W hat is the relation that one can establish between object-loss and the depressive position, as general given facts, and the singularity of the characteristics of this depressive configuration, which is central, but often submerged

under other symptoms which more or less camouflage it? What are the processes that develop around this centre? W hat constitutes this centre in psychic reality?

The Dead Father and the Dead Mother Psychoanalytic theory, which is founded on the interpretation of Freudian thought, allots a major role to the concept of the dead father, whose fundamental function is the genesis of the super-ego, as outlined in Totem and Taboo (Freud, 1912-13). W hen one considers the Oedipus complex as a structure, and not merely as a phase of libidinal development, this is a coherent point of view. Other concepts derive from this: the super-ego in classical theory; the Law and the Symbolic in Lacanian thought. This group of concepts is linked by the reference to castration and to sublimation as the fate of the drives. O n the other hand, we never hear of the dead mother from a struc­ tural point of view. There may be allusions to this in certain individual cases, as in the case of Marie Bonaparte's analysis of Edgar Poe, but that concerns a particular event: the loss of the mother at a very early age. There is a limitation imposed here by a purely realistic point of view. It is not possible to explain this exclusion by invoking the Oedipus complex, because one could referdto it in connection with the girl's Oedipus complex, or again with the boy's inverted Oedipus complex. In fact the answer lies elsewhere. Matricide does not involve the dead mother as a concept, on the contrary; and the concept which underlies the dead father, that is to say the reference to the ancestor, to filiation, to genealogy, refers back to the primitive crime and the guilt which is its consequence. Now it is surprising that the general model of mourning that underlies this concept makes no mention of the bereavement of the mother, nor the loss of the breast. I am alluding to this not because these are supposed to be prior to it, but because one is forced to notice that there is no articulation between these two concepts. In Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety (1926 [1925]) Freud cate­ gorised castration anxiety by including it in a series which also comprises anxiety about the loss of a loved object, or a loss of its love, anxiety related to the super-ego, and anxiety at the threat of the loss of the protecting super-ego. We know, besides, that he was careful to make the distinction between anxiety, pain and mourning. I do not intend to discuss in detail Freud's thinking on this point, because this would lead me away from my subject, but I should like to make one remark: with castration it is the same as with repression. First, Freud well knew that, concerning both, there exist as many

other forms of anxiety as other varieties of repression, and even other defence mechanisms. In both cases he considers the possibility of the existence of chronologically earlier forms, from which both derive. However, in both cases he specifically fixes castration anxiety and repression as a centre, in relation to which he places the other types of anxiety and different varieties of repression, whether they come before or after; which is proof of the structural and genetic character of Freudian thought. This is clearly stated when he makes a primal fantasy of the Oedipus myth, which is relatively independent of the vicissitudes of the conjuncture which gives it its specificity for any given patient. Thus, even in the cases where he notes the presence of an inverted Oedipus complex, as in the 'Wolf Man', he asserts that the father, object of the patient's erotic wishes, nonetheless remains the castrator. This structural function implies a constitutive conception of the psychical order - constituting a symbolic organisation - which is programmed by the primal fantasies. This path has not always been followed by Freud's successors. But globally it seems that French psychoanalytic thought, in spite of its divergences, has followed Freud on this point. On the one hand, reference to castration as a model has obliged authors to 'castratise', if I may express myself thus, all other forms of anxiety; one speaks of anal or narcissistic castration, for example. On the other hand, by giving an anthropological inter­ pretation of Freudian theory, one relates all the varieties of anxiety to the concept of lack in Lacanian theory. Now, I believe that, in both cases, one is doing violence as much to experience as to theory to save the unity and generalisation of a concept. It may be surprising that on this point I seem to dissociate myself from a structural point of view that I have always defended. Thus, what I would propose, instead of conforming to the opinion of those who divide anxiety into different types according to the age at which it appears in the life of the subject, would be rather a structural concep­ tion which would be organised, not around one centre or one paradigm, but around at least two, in accordance with a distinctive characteristic, different from those which have been proposed to date. Castration anxiety can be legitimately described as subsuming the group of anxieties linked by the 'little one detachable part of the body', whether it be penis, faeces or baby. W hat gives this class unity is that castration is always evoked in the context of a bodily wound associated with a bloody act. I attach more importance to the idea of 'red' anxiety than to its relation to a part-object. O n the contrary, whether referring to the concept of the loss of the breast, or of object-loss, and even of threats relative to the loss of the super-ego or its protection, and in a general manner, to all threats of

abandonment, the context is never bloody. To be sure, all forms of anxiety are accompanied by destructiveness; castration too, because the wound is, of course, the result of a destruction. But this destruc­ tiveness has nothing to do with a bloody mutilation. It bears the colours of mourning: black or white.5 Black as in severe depression, or blank as in states of emptiness to which one now pays justified attention. I defend the hypothesis that the sinister black of depression, which we can legitimately relate to the hatred we observe in the psycho­ analysis of depressed subjects, is only a secondary product, a consequence rather than a cause, of a 'blank' anxiety which expresses a loss that has been experienced on a narcissistic level. Having already described negative hallucination and blank psychosis, I shall not return to what I have said on the subject, but I shall attach blank anxiety or blank m ourning to this series. The category of 'blankness' - negative hallucination, blank psychosis, blank mourning, all connected to what one might call the problem of emptiness, or of the negative, in our clinical practice - is the result of one of the components of primary repression: massive decathexis, both radical and temporary, which leaves traces in the unconscious in the form of 'psychical holes'. These will be filled in by re-cathexes, which are the expression of destructiveness which has thus been freed by the weakening of libidinal erotic cathexis. Manifestations of hatred and the processes of reparation that follow are manifestations which are secondary to this central decathexis of the maternal primary object. One can understand that this view modifies even analytic technique, because to lim it oneself to inter­ preting hatred in structures which take on depressive characteristics amounts to never approaching the primary core of this constellation. The Oedipus complex should be maintained as the essential symbolic matrix to which it is always important to refer, even in cases of ^so-called pregenital or pre-oedipal regression, which implies the reference to an axiomatic triangulation. However advanced the analysis of the decathexis of the primary object may be, the fate of the hum an psyche is to have always two objects and never one alone, however far one goes back to try to understand the earliest psychical structure. This does not mean to say that one must adhere to a conception of a primitive Oedipus complex - phylogenetic - where the father as such would be present, in the form of his penis (I am thinking here of Melanie Klein's conception of the early Oedipus complex: the father's penis in the mother's womb). The father is there, both in the mother and the child, from the beginning. More exactly, between the mother and child. From the mother's side this is expressed in her desire for the father, of which the child is the reali­

sation. O n the side of the child, everything which introduces the anticipation of a third person, each time that the mother is not wholly present, and her devotion to the child is neither total nor absolute (at least in the illusion he maintains in this regard, before it is pertinent to speak of object-loss), will be attributable retrospectively to the father. It is thus that one must account for the solidarity linking the metaphoric loss of the breast, the symbolic mutation of the relation between pleasure and reality - established retrospectively as princi­ ples - the prohibition of incest, and the double figuration of the images of mother and father, potentially reunited in the fantasy of a hypothetical primal scene which takes place outside the subject. It is from this scene that the subject excludes himself and constitutes himself in the absence of affective representation, which gives birth to fantasy, which is a production of the subject's 'madness'. W hy is this metaphorical? The recourse to metaphor, which holds good for every essential element of psychoanalytic theory, is particu­ larly necessary here. In an earlier work,6 I pointed out that there are two Freudian versions of the loss of the breast. The first, which is theoretical and conceptual, is that to which Freud refers in his article 'Negation' (1925). Freud talks about it as though it implies a unique, instantaneous, basic event - decisive, it goes without saying, because its repercussion on the function of judgement is fundamental. In the second version, in An Outline of Psychoanalysis (1940a) in particular, he adopts a position which is less theoretical than descriptive, as though he were applying himself to infant-observation, so much in vogue today. He accounts for the phenomenon, not theoretically, but in a 'narrative' form, if I may so describe it, where one understands that this loss is a process of progressive evolution which advances step by step. Now I believe that the theoretical and descriptive approaches are mutually exclusive, rather as perception and memory exclude each other in theory. The recourse to this comparison is not only analogical. In the 'theory' that the subject elaborates about himself, the mutative interpretation is always retrospective. It is in the after­ math that this theory of the lost object is formed and acquires its unique, instantaneous, decisive, irrevocable and basic characteristic. The recourse to metaphor is not only justified from a diachronic point of view, but also from a synchronic point of view. The fiercest partisans of the reference to the loss of the breast in contemporary psychoanalytic theory, the Kleinians, now admit, humbly watering down their wine, that the breast is just a word to designate the mother, to the satisfaction of non-Kleinian theoreticians who often psychologise psychoanalysis. One must retain the metaphor of the breast; for the breast, like the penis, can only be symbolic. However

intense the pleasure of sucking linked to the nipple, or the teat, might be, erogenous pleasure has the power to concentrate within itself everything of the mother that is not the breast: her smell, her skin, the look in her eyes and the thousand other components that 'make up' the mother. The metonymical object has become a metaphor for the object. One may note in passing that we have no difficulty in reasoning in the same manner when we speak of sexual intercourse within a loving relationship, in reducing the whole of a relationship, which is far more complex, to the pairing 'penis-vagina', and in relating its mishaps to castration anxiety. From this one may understand that, by going more deeply into the problems relating to the dead mother, I am referring to them as to a metaphor, independent of the bereavement of a real object.

The Dead Mother Complex The dead mother complex is a revelation of the transference. When the subject presents himself to the analyst for the first time, the symptoms of which he complains are not essentially of a depressive kind. Most of the time these symptoms indicate more or less acute conflicts with objects who are close. It is not infrequent that a patient spontaneously gives an account of his personal history where the analyst thinks to himself that here, at a given moment, a childhood depression should or could have been located, of which the subject makes no mention. This depression, which has sometimes appeared sporadically in the clinical history, only breaks into the open in the transference. As for the classic neurotic symptoms, they are present but of secondary value or, even if they are important, the analyst has the feeling that the analysis of their genesis will not furnish the key to the conflict. O n the contrary, the problems pertaining to narcis­ sism are in the foreground where the demands of the ego ideal are considerable, in synergy with, or in opposition to the super-ego. The feeling of impotence is evident. An inability to withdraw from a conflictual situation, inability to love, to make the most of one's talents, to multiply one's assets, or, when this does take place, a profound dissatisfaction with the results. W hen the analysis is underway, the transference will reveal, some­ times quite rapidly, but more often after long years of analysis, a singular depression. The analyst has the feeling of a discordance between the transference depression - an expression that I am coining on this occasion to oppose it to transference neurosis - and the behaviour outside the analysis where depression does not break out, because nothing indicates that the entourage perceives it clearly,

which nevertheless does not prevent the people close to him from suffering from the object-relationship that the analysand establishes with them. W hat this transference depression indicates is the repetition of an infantile depression, the characteristics of which may usefully be specified. It does not concern the loss of a real object; the problem of a real separation with the object who would have abandoned the subject is not what is in question here. The fact may exist, but it is not this that constitutes the dead mother complex. The essential characteristic of this depression is that it takes place in the presence of the object, which is itself absorbed by a bereavement. The mother, for one reason or another, is depressed. Here the variety of precipitating factors is very large. Of course, among the principal causes of this kind of maternal depression, one finds the loss of a person dear to her: child, parent, close friend, or any other object strongly cathected by the mother. But it may also be a depression triggered by a deception which inflicts a narcissistic wound: a change of fortune in the nuclear family or the family of origin, a liaison of the father who neglects the mother, humiliation, and so on. In any event the mother's sorrow and lessening of interest in her infant are in the foreground. It should be noted that the most serious instance is the death of a child at an early age, as all authors have understood. In particular, there is a cause which remains totally hidden, because the signs by which the child could recognise it are lacking, and retrospective knowledge of it is never possible because it rests on a secret: a miscar­ riage of the mother, which must be reconstructed by the analysis from minute indications. This is a hypothetical construction, of course, which gives coherence to what is expressed in the clinical material, which can be attached to earlier periods of the subject's history. W h a t comes about then is a brutal change of the maternal imago, which is truly mutative. Until then, as can be inferred from the presence in the subject of an authentic vitality which came to a sudden halt, remaining stuck thereafter in the same place, a rich and happy relationship had been formed with the mother. The infant felt loved, notwithstanding the risks that the most ideal of relationships presupposes. Photos of the young baby in the family album show him to be gay, lively, interested, full of potential, whereas later snapshots show the loss of this initial happiness. Everything seems to have ended rather like the disappearance of ancient civilisations, the cause of which is sought in vain by historians by making the hypothesis of an earthquake to explain the death and the destruction of palace, temple, edifices and dwellings, of which nothing is left but ruins. Here the disaster is limited to a cold core, which will eventually be

overcome, but which leaves an indelible mark on the erotic cathexes of the subjects in question. The transformation in psychical life, at the m om ent of the mother's sudden bereavement when she has abruptly become detached from her infant, is experienced by the child as a catas­ trophe; because, without any warning signal, love has been lost at one blow. One does not need to give a lengthy description of the narcissistic traumatism that this change represents. One must however point out that it constitutes a premature disillusionment and that it carries in its wake, besides the loss of love, the loss of meaning; for the baby disposes of no explanation to account for what has happened. Of course, being at the centre of the maternal universe, it is clear that he interprets this deception as the conse­ quence of his drives towards the object. This will be especially serious if the complex of the dead mother occurs at the m om ent when the child discovers the existence of the third person, the father, and if the new attachment is interpreted by him as the reason for the mother's detachment. In any case, here there is a premature and unstable trian­ gulation. For either, as I have just said, the withdrawal of the mother's love is attributed to the mother's attachment to the father, or this withdrawal will provoke an early and particularly intense attachment to the father, felt to be the saviour in the conflict unfolding between mother and infant. Now, in reality, the father, more often than not, does not respond to the child's distress. The subject is thus caught between a dead mother and an inaccessible father, either because the latter is principally preoccupied by the state of the mother, without bringing help to the infant, or because he leaves the mother-child couple to cope with this situation alone. After the child has attempted in vain to repair the mother who is absorbed by her bereavement, which has made him feel the measure of his helplessness, after having experienced the loss of his mother's loye and the threat of the loss of the mother herself, and after he has fought against anxiety by various active methods, amongst which agitation, insomnia and nocturnal terrors are indications, the ego will deploy a series of defences of a different kind. The first and most important is a single movement with two aspects to it: the decathexis o f the maternal object and the unconscious identification with the dead mother. The decathexis, which is principally affective, but also representative, constitutes a psychical murder of the object, accomplished without hatred. One will understand that the mother's affliction excludes the emergence of any contingency of hatred susceptible of damaging her image even more. No instinctual destructiveness is to be inferred from this operation of decathecting the maternal image. Its result is the constitution of a

hole in the texture of object-relations with the mother, which does not prevent the surrounding cathexes from being maintained, just as the mother's bereavement modifies her fundamental attitude with regard to the child, whom she feels incapable of loving, but whom she continues to love just as she continues to take care of him. However, as one says, 'her heart is not in it'. The other aspect of the decathexis is the primary mode of identifi­ cation with the object. This mirror-identification is almost obligatory, after reactions of complementarity (artificial gaiety, agitation, and so on) have failed. This reactive symmetry is the only means by which to establish a reunion with the mother - perhaps by way of sympathy. In fact there is no real reparation, but a mimicry, with the aim of continuing to possess the object (who one can no longer have) by becoming, not like it, but by becoming the object itself. This identifi­ cation, which is the condition for renouncing the object and at the same time retaining it in a cannibalistic manner, is unconscious from the start. Here there is a difference from the decathexis, which becomes unconscious later on, because in this second case the with­ drawal is retaliatory; it endeavours to get rid of the object, whereas the identification comes about without the subject's ego being aware of it, and against his will. Hence its alienating characteristic. In later object-relations, the subject, who is prey to repetitioncompulsion, will actively decathect an object who is about to bring disappointment, repeating the old defence; but he will remain totally unconscious of his identification with the dead mother, with whom he reunites from then on by re-cathecting the traces of the trauma. The second fact, as I have pointed out, is the loss o f meaning. The 'construction' of the breast, of which pleasure is the cause, the aim and the guarantor, has collapsed all at once, without reason. Even if one were to imagine the reversal of the situation by the subject, who through negative megalomania, would attribute the responsibility for the mutation to himself, there is a totally disproportional gap between the fault he could reproach himself for having committed and the intensity of the maternal reaction. At the most, he might imagine this fault to be linked with his manner of being rather than with some forbidden wish; in fact, being becomes forbidden for him. This position, which could induce the child to let himself die because of the impossibility of diverting destructive aggressivity to the outside on account of the vulnerability of the maternal image, obliges him to find someone responsible for the mother's black mood, even if he is a scapegoat. It is the father who is chosen for this purpose. There is in any case, I repeat, an early triangular situation, because child, mother, and the unknown object of the mother's bereavement, are present at the same time. The unknown object of

the bereavement and the father are then condensed for the infant, creating a precocious Oedipus complex. This whole situation, arising from the loss of meaning, leads to a second front of defence: (a) the releasing o f secondary hatred, which is neither primary nor fundamental, brings into play regressive wishes of incorporation, but also anal features which are coloured with manic sadism where it is a matter of dominating, soiling, taking vengeance upon the object, and so on; (b) auto-erotic excitation establishes itself in the search for pure sensual pleasure, organ pleasure at the limit, without tenderness, without pity, which is not necessarily accompanied by sadistic fantasy but remains stamped with a reticence to love the object. This is the foundation for hysterical identifications to come. There is a precocious dissociation between the body and the psyche, as between sensuality and tenderness, and a blocking of love. The object is sought after for its capacity to release isolated enjoyment of an erogenous zone (or more than one) without the confluence of a shared enjoyment of two objects, more or less totalised; (c) finally, and more particularly, the quest for lost meaning structures the early development o f the fantasmatic and the intellectual capacities of the ego. The development of a frantic need for play which does not come about as in the freedom for playing, but under the compulsion to imagine, just as intellectual development is inscribed in a compulsion to think. Performance and auto-reparation go hand in hand to coincide with the same goal: the preservation of a capacity to surmount the dismay over the loss of the breast, by the creation of a patched breast, a piece of cognitive fabric which is destined to mask the hole left by the decathexis, while secondary hatred and erotic excitation are teeming on the edge of an abyss of emptiness. This over-cathected intellectual capacity necessarily comprises a considerable part of projection. Contrary to widespread opinion, projection is not always false reasoning. This may be the case but not necessarily. W hat defines projection is not the true or false character of what is projected, but the operation which consists in transferring to the outside scene - the scene of the object - the investigation, even the suspicion, of what has had to be rejected and abolished from within. The infant has had the cruel experience of being dependent on the variations of the mother's moods. Henceforth he devotes his efforts to guessing or anticipating.

The compromised unity of the ego which has a hole in it from now on, realises itself either on the level of fantasy, which gives open expression to artistic creation, or on the level of knowledge, which is at the origin of highly productive intellectualisation. It is evident that one is witnessing an attempt to master the traumatic situation. But this attempt is doomed to fail. Not that it fails where it has displaced the theatre of operations. These precocious idealised sublimations are the outcome of premature and probably precipitated psychical forma­ tions, but I see no reason, apart from bending to a normative ideology, to contest their authenticity. Their failure lies elsewhere. The sublimations reveal their incapacity to play a stabilising role in the psychical economy, because the subject remains vulnerable on a particular point, which is his love life. In this area, a wound will awaken a psychical pain and one will witness a resurrection of the dead mother, who, for the entire critical period when she remains in the foreground, dissolves all the subject's sublimatory acquisitions, which are not lost, but w hich remain momentarily blocked. Sometimes it is love which sets the development of the sublimated acquisitions in m otion again, and sometimes it is the latter which attempt to liberate love. Both may combine their efforts for a time, but soon the destructiveness overwhelms the possibilities of the subject who does not dispose of the necessary cathexes to establish a lasting object-relation and to commit himself progressively to a deeper personal involvement which implies concern for the other. Thus, inevitably, it is either disappointment in the object or in the ego which puts an end to the experience, with the reappearance of the feeling of failure and incapacity. The patient has the feeling that a malediction weighs upon him, that there is no end to the dead mother's dying, and that it holds him prisoner. Pain, a narcissistic feeling, surfaces again. It is a hurt which is situated on the edge of the wound, colouring all the cathexes, filling in the effects of hatred, of erotic excitement, the loss of the breast. In a state of psychical pain, it is impossible to hate or to love, impossible to find enjoyment, even masochistically, and impossible to think. There is simply a feeling of being held captive which dispossesses the ego of itself and alienates it to an unrepresentable figure. The subject's trajectory evokes a hunt in quest of an unintrojectable object, without the possibility of renouncing it or of losing it, and indeed, the possibility of accepting its introjection into the ego, which is cathected by the dead mother. In all, the subject's objects remain constantly at the limit of the ego, not wholly within, and not quite without. And with good reason, for the place is occupied, in its centre, by the dead mother.

For a long period, the analysis of these subjects will proceed with the examination of the classic conflicts: Oedipus complex, pregenital fixations, anal and oral. Repression relating to infantile sexuality and aggressivity, will have been interpreted without cease. Probably some progress will be visible. But it hardly convinces the analyst, even if the analysand himself seeks comfort by underlining the points on which there would be cause for satisfaction. In fact, all this psychoanalytic work remains subject to spectacular collapses, where everything again seems to be as it was on the first day, until the analysand realises that he can no longer continue to bluff himself and finds himself forced to accept the insufficiency of the transference object, that is, the analyst, in spite of relational manoeu­ vres with the supporting objects of lateral transference which have helped him to avoid approaching the central core of the conflict. In these cures I finally understood that I had remained deaf to a certain discourse that my analysands had left me to deduce. Behind the eternal complaints about the mother's unkindness, or her lack of understanding or her rigidity, I could sense the defensive value of these comments, against intense homosexuality. Feminine homosex­ uality in both sexes, for in the boy it is the feminine part of the psychical personality which expresses itself in this way, very often in the search for paternal compensation. But I continued to ask myself why this situation continued. My deafness related to the fact that, behind the complaints concerning the mother's doings, her actions, loomed the shadow o f her absence. In fact the complaint against X concerned a mother who was absorbed, either with herself or with something else, unreachable without echo, but always sad. A silent mother, even if talkative. W hen she was present, she remained indifferent, even when she was plying the child with her reproaches. I was thus able to picture the situation quite differently. The dead mother had taken away with her, in the decathexis of which she had been the object, the major portion of the love with which'she had been cathected before her bereavement: her look, the tone of her voice, her smell, the memory of her caress. The loss of physical contact carried with it the repression of the memory traces of her touch. She had been buried alive, but her tomb itself had disap­ peared. The hole that gaped in its place made solitude dreadful, as though the subject ran the risk of being sunk in it, body and posses­ sions. In this connection I now think that the concept of holding, of which W innicott spoke, does not explain the feeling of vertiginous falling that some of our patients experience. This seems to me to be far more in relation to an experience of psychical collapse, which would be to the psyche what fainting is to the physical body. The object has been encapsulated and its trace has been lost through

decathexis; there has been a primary identification with the dead mother, transforming positive identification into negative identifica­ tion, that is, identification with the hole left by the decathexis (and not identification with the object), and with this emptiness, which is filled in and suddenly manifests itself through an affective hallucina­ tion of the dead mother, as soon as a new object is periodically chosen to occupy this space. Everything that can be observed around this nucleus organises itself with three aims: (a) to keep the ego alive: through hatred for the object, through the search for exciting pleasure, through the quest for meaning; (b) to reanimate the dead mother, to interest her, to distract her, to give her a renewed taste for life, to make her smile and laugh; (c) to rival with the object of her bereavement in the early triangula­ tion. This type of patient presents us with serious technical problems which I shall not go into here. On this point, I refer the reader to my paper on the analyst's silence.7 1 greatly fear that the rule of silence, in these cases, only perpetuates the transference of blank mourning for the mother. I will add that I do not believe that the Kleinian tech­ nique of systematically interpreting destructiveness is of much help here. O n the other hand, Winnicott's position, as it is expressed in his article The use of an object and relating through identification' (Winnicott 1969), seems appropriate to me. But I fear that Winnicott somewhat underestimated the sexual fantasies, especially the primal scene, which I will take up later on.

Frozen Love and its Vicissitudes: The Breast, the Oedipus Complex, the Primal Scene Ambivalence is a fundamental trait of the cathexes of depressives. W hat is the situation in the dead mother complex? W hen I described above the affective and representative decathexis of which hatred is the consequence, this description was incomplete. W hat one must understand, in the structure that I have expounded, is that the inability to love only derives from ambivalence, and hence from an overload of hatred, in the measure that what comes first is love frozen by the decathexis. The object is in hibernation, as it were, conserved by the cold. This operation comes about unknown to the subject, in the following way. Decathexis is withdrawal of cathexis which takes place (pre)consciously. Repressed hatred is the result of instinctual defusion, any unbinding weakening the erotic-libidinal cathexis,

which, as a consequence, frees the destructive cathexes. By with­ drawing his cathexes, the subject believes he has brought them back w ithin his ego, for want of being able to displace them on to another object, a substitute object, but he is unaware that he has left behind, has alienated, his love for the object, which has fallen into the oubli­ ettes of primary repression. Consciously, he believes his reserve of love to be intact, available for another love when the occasion arises. He declares himself ready to become attached to another object, if he appears to be friendly and he feels loved by him . He thinks the primary object no longer counts for him . In truth, he will encounter the inability to love, not only because of ambivalence, but because his love is still mortgaged to the dead mother. The subject is rich but he can give nothing in spite of his generosity, for he does not reap enjoyment from it. In the course of the transference, defensive sexualisation which had occurred hitherto, always involving intense pregenital satisfac­ tions and remarkable sexual performance, comes to a sudden halt, and the analysand finds his sexual life dim inishing or fading away almost to nothing. According to him , it is a matter neither of inhibi­ tion nor of a loss of sexual appetite: it is simply that no one is desirable, or, if perchance someone is, it is he or she who is not attracted in return. A profuse, dispersed, multiple, fleeting sexual life no longer brings any satisfaction. Arrested in their capacity to love, subjects who are under the empire of the dead mother can only aspire to autonomy. Sharing remains forbidden to them. Thus, solitude, which was a situation creating anxiety and to be avoided, changes sign. From negative it becomes positive. Having previously been shunned, it is now sought after. The subject nestles into it. He becomes his own mother, but remains prisoner to her economy of survival. He thinks he has got rid of his dead mother. In fact, she only leaves him in peace in the measure that she herself is left in peace. As long as there is no candi­ date id the succession, she can well let her child survive, certain to be the only one to possess this inaccessible love. This cold core burns like ice, and numbs like it as well, but as long as it is felt to be cold, love remains unavailable. These are barely metaphors. These analysands complain of being cold even in the heat. They are cold below the surface of the skin, in their bones; they feel chilled by a funereal shiver, wrapped in their shroud. It is as though the core of love frozen by the dead mother does not prevent the later evolution towards the Oedipus complex, in the same way that the fixation will ultimately be overcome in the individual's life. These subjects may outwardly have a more or less satisfactory profes­ sional life; they marry and have children. For a while all seems well.

But soon the repetition of conflicts contributes to turning the two essential sectors of life, love and work, into failure: professional life, even when profoundly absorbing, becomes disappointing, and marital relations lead to profound disturbances in love, sexuality and affective communication. It is in any case the latter which is most lacking. As for sexuality, it depends on the later or earlier appearance of the dead mother complex. It may be relatively preserved but only up to a certain point. Love, finally, is never completely satisfied. Thus, at one extreme, it is completely impossible; or, at best, it is somewhat mutilated or inhibited. There must not be too much: too much love, too much pleasure, too much enjoyment, whereas the parental function on the contrary is hyper-in vested. However, this function is more often than not infiltrated by narcissism: children are loved on condition that they fulfil the narcissistic objectives which the parents have not succeeded in accomplishing themselves. Thus, if the Oedipus complex is reached and even overcome, the dead mother complex will give it a particularly dramatic aspect. Fixation to the mother will prevent the girl from ever being able to cathect the imago of the father, without the fear of losing the mother's love; or, if love for the father is deeply repressed, without her being able to avoid transferring on to the father's imago a large part of the characteristics that have been projected on to the mother. Not the dead mother, but her opposite, the phallic mother whose struc­ ture I have attempted to describe.8 The boy projects a similar imago on to the mother, while the father is the object of a homosexuality which is not very structuring but makes him into an inaccessible being and, as in the familiar descriptions, insignificant or tired, depressed, and overwhelmed by this phallic mother. In all cases there is a regression to anality. In anality the subject not only regresses from the Oedipus complex backwards, in every sense of the term, but also protects himself by the anal buttress against the tendency towards oral regression to which one is always thrown back by the dead mother, because the dead mother complex and the metaphoric loss of the breast reverberate each other. One also always finds that reality is used as a defence, as though the subject feels the need to cling to the presence of what is perceived as real and untouched by any projec­ tion, because he is far from sure of the distinction between fantasy and reality, which he does his utmost to keep apart. Fantasy must be only fantasy, which means that one witnesses, at the limit, the negation of psychical reality. W hen reality and fantasy are telescoped together, intense anxiety appears. Subjective and objective are confused, which gives the subject the impression of a threat of psychosis. Order must be maintained at any price, by a structuring anal reference which allows splitting to continue to function, and

above all keeps the subject away from what he has learned of his unconscious. This is to say that psychoanalysis allows him to under­ stand others better than to gain insight into himself. Hence the inevitable disappointment with the results of the analysis, even though it is strongly cathected, narcissistically, more often than not. The dead mother refuses to die a second death. Very often, the analyst says to himself: This time it's done, the old woman is really dead, he (or she) will finally be able to live and I shall be able to breathe a little.' Then a small traumatism appears in the transference or in life which gives the maternal imago renewed vitality, if I may put it this way. It is because she is a thousand-headed hydra whom one believes one has beheaded with each blow; whereas, in fact, only one of its heads has been struck off. Where then is the beast's neck? A habitual prejudice is that one should delve to the deepest level: to the primordial breast. This is a mistake: that is not where the fundamental fantasy lies. For just as the relation with the second object in the oedipal situation retroactively reveals the complex which affects the primary object, the mother, it is not by attacking the oral relation face on that one can extirpate the core of the complex. The solution is to be found in the prototype of the Oedipus complex, in the symbolic matrix which allows for its construction. Then the dead mother complex delivers its secret: it is the fantasy of the primal scene. There are many indications, albeit belatedly, that contemporary psychoanalysis has understood, that if the Oedipus complex remains the indispensable structural reference, the determining conditions for it are not to be sought in its oral, anal or phallic forerunners, seen from the angle of realistic references - for orality, anality or phallicity depend on partly real object relations - nor in a generalised fanta­ sising of their structure, a la Klein, but in the isomorphic fantasy of the Oedipus complex: that of the primal scene. I emphasise this fantasy of the primal scene to stress the difference here from the FreudiaVi position as it is expounded in the 'Wolf Man', where in the controversy with Jung, Freud searches for proof of its reality. Now what counts in the primal scene is not that one has witnessed it but precisely the contrary; namely, that it has taken place in the absence of the subject. In the case with which we are concerned, the fantasy of the primal scene is of capital importance. For it is on the occasion of an encounter between a conjuncture and a structure, which brings two objects into play, that the subject will be confronted with memory traces in relation to the dead mother. These memory traces have been forcibly repressed by decathexis. They remain, so to speak, in abeyance w ithin the subject, who has only kept a very incomplete

memory of the period relative to the complex. Sometimes a screen memory, of an anodyne nature, is all that is left of it. The fantasy of the primal scene will not only re-cathect these vestiges, but will confer on them, through a new cathexis, new effects which constitute a real conflagration, setting fire to the structure which gives the complex of the dead mother retrospective significance. Every resurgence of this fantasy constitutes a projective actiialisation, the projection aiming to assuage the narcissistic wound. By 'actualised projection' I mean a process through which the projection not only rids the subject of his inner tensions by projecting them on to the object, but constitutes a reviviscence and not a reminiscence, an actual traumatic and dramatic repetition. W hat happens to the fantasy of the primal scene in the case that concerns us? O n the one hand, the subject becomes aware of the insuperable distance that separates him from the mother. This distance makes him realise his impotent rage at being unable to establish contact with the object, in the strictest sense of the term. O n the other hand, the subject feels incapable of awakening this dead mother, of animating her, or giving life back to her. But on this occasion, instead of his rival being the object who had captivated the dead mother in her experience of bereavement, he becomes on the contrary the third party who shows himself apt, against all expectation, to return her to life and to give her the pleasure of orgasm. This is where the revolting aspect of the situation lies, which reac­ tivates the loss of narcissistic omnipotence and awakens the feeling of an incommensurable libidinal infirmity. Of course, in reaction to this situation there will be a series of consequences which may come singly or in groups: 1. 2.

3.

4.

The persecution by this fantasy and hatred for the two objects which form a couple to the detriment of the subject. The classic interpretation of the primal scene as a sadistic scene, but where the essential feature is that the mother either has no orgasm and suffers, or else has orgasm in spite of herself, forced to it by the father's violence. A variation of the last situation; when the mother experiences orgasm, she becomes cruel, hypocritical, playing it up, a sort of lewd monster, that makes her the Sphinx of the Oedipus myth, rather than Oedipus' mother. The alternating identification with the two imagos: with the dead mother, whether she remains in her unaltered state or gives herself up to a sado-masochistic type of erotic excitation; with the father, the dead mother's aggressor (necrophilic fantasy) or the one who repairs her through sexual union. More often,

5.

6.

depending on the moment, the subject alternates between these identifications. Erotic and aggressive de-libidinalisation of the primal scene to the advantage of intense intellectual activity, which restores narcis­ sism in the face of this confusing situation, where the quest for meaning (which was lost anew) results in the formation of a sexual theory and stimulates an extensive 'intellectual' activity which re-establishes the wounded narcissistic omnipotence by sacrificing libidinal satisfaction. Another solution: artistic creation, which is the support for a fantasy of auto-satisfaction. The negation, 'en bloc', of the whole fantasy. Ignorance of every­ thing pertaining to sexual relations is highly cathected, making the emptiness of the dead mother and the obliteration of the primal scene coincide for the subject. The fantasy of the primal scene becomes the central axis of the subject's life which over­ shadows the dead mother complex. This is developed in two directions: forwards and backwards. Forwards, there is the anticipation of the Oedipus complex, which will then be experienced according to the schema of defences against the anxiety of the primal scene. The three anti­ erotic factors, namely hatred, homosexuality and narcissism, will conjugate their effects so that the Oedipus complex is adversely structured. Backwards, the relation to the breast is the object of a radical reinterpretation. This becomes significant retrospectively. The blank mourning for the dead mother reflects back to the breast which, superficially, is laden with destructive projections. In fact it is less a question of a bad breast, which is ungiving, than a breast which, even when it does give, is an absent breast (and not lost), absorbed with nostalgia for a relation that is grieved for; a breast which can neither be full nor filling. The consequence of this is that the re-cathexis of the happy relation to the breast that existed prior to the occurrence of the dead mother complex, is this time affected with the fleeting signal of a catastrophic threat; and, if I dare say so, it is a false breast, carried within a false self, nourishing a false baby. This happiness was only a decoy. T have never been loved' becomes a new outcry which the subject will cling to and which he strives to confirm in his subsequent lovelife. It is evident that one is faced with a situation of mourning which is impossible, and that the metaphoric loss of the breast cannot be worked through for this reason. It is necessary to add a precision concerning oral cannibalistic fantasies. Contrary to what happens in melancholia, here there is no regression to this phase. W hat one witnesses above all is an identification with the

dead mother on the level of the oral relation and with the defences which arise from it, the subject fearing to the utmost either the ultimate loss of the object or the invasion of emptiness. The analysis of the transference by means of these three positions will lead to the rediscovery of the early happiness that existed prior to the appearance of the dead mother complex. This takes a great deal of time; and one has to work it over more than once before marking a victory; namely, before blank mourning and its resonance with castration anxiety allow one to reach a transferential repetition of a happy relationship with a mother who is alive at last and desirous of the father. This result supposes one has passed through the analysis of the narcissistic wound, which consumed the child in the mother's bereavement.

The Characteristics of the Transference I cannot dwell on the technical implications which arise in those cases where one may identify the dead mother complex in the trans­ ference. This transference presents remarkable features. The patient is strongly attached to the analysis - the analysis more than the analyst. Not that the analyst escapes it, but the cathexis of the transferential object, though it seems to present the whole scale of the libidinal spectrum, takes deep root in a tonality of a narcissistic nature. Beyond acknowledged expressions which give rise to affects, which are very often dramatised, this can be explained by secret disaffection. This is justified by a rationalisation of the type 'I know the transference is but a lure, and that, in fact, everything is impossible with you in the name of reality: so what's the use of it?' This position is accompanied by the idealisation of the analyst's image, whether it is a question of m aintaining it as it is or of being seductive to attract his interest and admiration. Seduction takes place through the intellectual quest, the search for lost meaning, which reassures intellectual narcissism and constitutes as many precious gifts for the analyst; all the more so to the extent that this activity is accompanied by a richness of representation and a gift for self-interpretation which is quite remarkable in contrast with its meagre effect on the patient's life, which is only slightly modified, especially in the affective sphere. The analysand's language often adopts rhetoric here, which I described in Chapter one: the narrative style. Its role is to move the analyst, to implicate him, to call him to witness in the reciting of conflicts which are encountered outside; like a child telling his mother of his day at school and the thousand small dramas which he

has experienced to attract her interest and make her participate in what he has been through during her absence. One may guess that the narrative style is relatively unassociative. W hen associations are produced, they coincide with a movement of discrete withdrawal, which makes one feel that everything is said as though it concerned the analysis of someone else not present at the session. The subject disconnects, becomes detached, so as not to be overcome by revivifying emotion, rather than reminiscence. When he gives way to it, naked despair shows itself. In fact, there are two notable features in the transference. The first is the non-domestication of the drives: the subject cannot renounce incestuous desire; nor, as a consequence, can he consent to mourning for the mother. The second, and more remarkable feature, is that the analysis induces emptiness. That is, when the analyst succeeds in touching an important element of the nuclear complex of the dead mother, for a brief instant, the subject feels himself to be empty, blank, as though he were deprived of a stop-gap object, and a guard against madness. Effectively, behind the dead mother complex, behind the blank mourning for the mother, one catches a glimpse of the mad passion of which she is, and remains, the object, which makes m ourning for her an impossible experience. The subject's entire structure aims at a fundamental fantasy: to nourish the dead mother, to maintain, her perpetually embalmed. This is what the analysand does to the analyst: he feeds him with the analysis, not to help himself to live outside the analysis, but to prolong it into an interminable process. For the subject wants to be the mother's polar star, the ideal child, who takes the place of an ideal dead object, who is necessarily invincible, because not living, which is to be imperfect, limited, finite. The transference is the geometric space of condensations and displacements reverberating between the fantasy of the primal scene, the Oedipus complex and the oral relation which are constituted by a double inscription: on the one hand, peripheral and luring and, on the other, central and veracious, around the blank mourning for the dead mother. W hat is essentially lost here is contact with the mother, who is secretly maintained in the depths of the psyche, concerning whom all attempts of replacement by substitute objects are destined to fail. The dead mother complex gives the analyst the choice between two technical attitudes. The first is the classic solution. It carries the danger of repeating the relation to the dead mother by an attitude of silence. But I fear that, if this complex is not noticed, the analysis may sink into funereal boredom, or into the illusion of a libidinal life, finally rediscovered. In any event, the time for despair cannot be avoided and disillusionment will be harsh. The second, which I

prefer, is one which, by using the setting as a transitional space, makes an ever-living object of the analyst who is interested, awakened by his analysand, giving proof of his vitality by the asso­ ciative links he communicates to him, without ever abandoning his neutrality. For the capacity to support disillusion will depend on the way the analysand feels himself to be narcissistically invested by the analyst. It is thus essential that the latter remains constantly awake to what the patient is saying, without falling into intrusive interpreta­ tion. To establish links which are proffered by the preconscious, which supports the tertiary processes, without short-circuiting it by going directly to the unconscious fantasy, is never intrusive. And, if the patient does express this feeling, it is quite possible to show him, without being excessively traumatising, the defensive role of this feeling against a pleasure which provokes anxiety. You will have understood that it is passivity that is at the heart of the conflict here: passivity or passivation as primary femininity, femi­ ninity com m on to the mother and the infant. The blank mourning for the dead mother will be the common body of their deceased loves. W hen analysis has succeeded in rendering life, at least partially, to the aspect of the child which is identified with the dead mother, a strange reversal will take place. Restored vitality remains the prey of a captive identification. W hat then happens is not easily interpretable. The former dependency of the child upon the mother, at a time when the infant still needs the adult, becomes inverted. From now on, the relation between the child and the dead mother is turned inside-out like the fingers of a glove. The healed child owes his health to the incomplete reparation of the mother who remains ill. This is trans­ lated by the fact that it is then the mother who depends on the child. This seems to me to be a different movement from that which is usually described as reparation. It has less to do with positive acts, which are the expression of remorse, than simply a sacrifice of this vitality on the altar of the mother, by renouncing the use of these new potentialities of the ego, to obtain possible pleasures. The inter­ pretation to give the analysand then is that it is as though his activity was aimed at furnishing the analysis with an occasion to interpret, less for himself than for the analyst, as though it were the analyst who needed the analysand, contrary to the previous situation. How is one to explain this change? Behind the manifest situation there is an inverted vampire-like fantasy. The patient spends his life nourishing his dead, as though he alone has charge of it. Keeper of the tomb, sole possessor of the key of the vault, he fulfils his function of foster-parent in secret. He keeps the dead mother prisoner, and she remains his personal property. The mother has become the infant of the child. It is for him to repair her narcissistic wound.

A paradox arises here: if the mother is in mourning, dead, she is lost to the subject; but at least she is there, however afflicted she may be. Dead and present, but present nonetheless. The subject can take care of her, attempt to awaken her, to cure her. But in return, if cured, she awakens, is animate and lives, the subject loses her again, for she abandons him to go about her own affairs and to become attached to other objects - with the result that the subject is caught between two losses: presence in death, or absence in life. Hence the extreme ambiva­ lence concerning the desire to bring the dead mother back to life.

Metapsychological Hypotheses: The Effacement of the Primary Object and the Framing Structure9 Contemporary clinical psychoanalysis has been engaged in defining more precisely the characteristics of the most primitive maternal imago. In this respect Melanie Klein's work accomplished a mutation in theory, even though she was mainly concerned with the internal object, as she was able to picture it, both in the analysis of children and the analysis of adults of psychotic structure, and without taking account of the part played by the mother in the constitution of her imago. Winnicott's work was born of this neglect. But Klein's disciples, starting with Bion, recognised the necessity of readjusting her ideas on this subject even though they did not share Winnicott's views. In fact, Melanie Klein went to the limit of what could be attributable to a group of innate dispositions concerning the respective strength of the life and death drives present in the baby, the maternal variable hardly entering into the question. In this she was following Freud's lead. Above all, Kleinian contributions concentrated on projections relative to the bad object. Up to a point this was justified in view of Freud's denial of their authenticity. Frequently one has noted the way he overshadowed the 'bad mother' with his immovable faith in the quasi-paradisiacal bond uniting the mother to her infant. So it fell to Melanie Klein to touch up this partiel and partial picture of the mother-infant relationship; and this came all the more easily in that the cases she analysed - whether children or adults - being mainly of a maniaco-depressive or psychotic structure, revealed the evidence of such projections. There is an abundant literature giving a full descrip­ tion of this omnipresent internal breast, threatening the infant with annihilation, fragmentation and infernal cruelty of all kinds, and linked in a mirror-relationship with the baby who defends himself, as well as he can, by projection. W hen the schizo-paranoid phase starts to give way to the depressive position, the latter, which coincides with the unification of the object and the ego, has as a fundamental characteristic the progressive cessation of projective activity and the

infant's growing capacity to assume his own aggressive drives. He becomes 'responsible' for them, as it were, which in turn encourages him to take care of the maternal object, to worry about her, to fear losing her, by turning his aggressivity against himself owing to archaic guilt, and with a view to making reparation. This is why, more than ever, there is no question here of incriminating the mother. In the configuration that I have described, where vestiges of the bad object may persist as a source of hatred, I suspect that hostile characteristics are secondary to a primary imago of the mother, where she has found herself devitalised by a mirror reaction of the child who was affected by her bereavement. This leads us to develop the hypoth­ esis that has already been proposed. W hen conditions are favourable for the inevitable separation between the mother and the child, a decisive mutation arises in the depths of the ego. The maternal object, in the form of the primary object of fusion, fades away, making way for the ego's own cathexes which are the source of his personal narcis­ sism. Henceforth the ego will be able to cathect its own objects, distinct from the primitive object. But this effacing of the mother does not make the primitive object disappear completely. The primary object becomes a 'framing-structure' for the ego, sheltering the negative hallucination of the mother. Most certainly, the repre­ sentations of the mother continue to exist and are projected inside this framing structure on to the backdrop of the negative hallucina­ tion of the primary object. But they are no longer frame-representations or, to make myself clearer, representations that fuse what comes from the mother with what comes from the child. One may as well say that they are no longer representations whose corresponding affects express a vital character, which is indispensable for the baby's exis­ tence. These primitive representations hardly deserve the name of representations. They are the compounds of barely outlined repre­ sentations, probably of a hallucinatory nature rather than representative, and loaded affects which one. could almost call affec­ tive hallucinations. This is just as true in the hopeful state anticipating satisfaction as in states of want. W hen these are prolonged, they give rise to the emotions of anger, rage, and then catastrophic despair. Now the effacing of the maternal object that has been transformed into a framing structure comes about when love for the object is sufficiently sure to play this role of a container of repre­ sentative space. The latter is no longer threatened with cracking; it can face waiting and even temporary depression, the child feeling supported by the maternal object even when it is not there. The framework, when all is said and done, offers the guarantee of the maternal presence in her absence, and can be filled with fantasy of all kinds, even including aggressive violent fantasies which will not

imperil the container. The space which is thus framed constitutes the receptacle of the ego; it surrounds an empty field, so to speak, which will be occupied by erotic and aggressive cathexes, in the form of object representations. This emptiness is never perceived by the subject, because the libido has cathected the psychical space. Thus it plays the role of primordial matrix of the cathexes to come. However, if a traumatism such as blank mourning occurs before the infant has been able to establish this framework solidly enough, there is no psychical space available within the ego. The ego is limited by this framing structure; but in the circumstances this frame surrounds a conflictual space which strives to hold the mother's image captive, struggling against its disappearance, and alternately noting the revival of the memory traces of lost love, with nostalgia, which is expressed by the impression of painful vacuity. These alter­ nations reproduce the ancient conflict of unsuccessful primary repression, to the extent that effacing the primordial object will not have been an acceptable experience, nor mutually accepted by the two parties of the former mother-infant symbiosis. Arguments on the theme of the antagonism between primary narcissism and primary object-love are perhaps ... without object. It all depends on the point of view adopted. That primary object-love can be observed straightaway by a third party, an onlooker, can hardly be disputed. On the other hand, that this love should be narcissistic from the child's point of view could hardly be otherwise. Doubtless, the debate has been obscured by differing uses of the term of primary narcissism. If by such a term one wishes to designate a primitive form of relation where all cathexes come from the child to start with - which is probably distinct from auto-erotism which has already elected certain erogenous zones on the baby's body - then, there is certainly a characteristic primary narcissistic structure of inaugural forms of cathexis. But if one means by primary narcissism the accomplishment of a feeling of unity which is established only after a phase dominated by fragmentation, then one must conceive of primary narcissism and object-love as two modes of cathexis centred around opposite and distinct polarities. For my part, I see here two successive moments of our mythical construction of the psychical apparatus. I am inclined to believe that the earliest primary narcissism encompasses all cathexes in a confused way, including primary object-love, and even what we might symmetrically call primary object-hatred, because it is this early lack of subject-object distinction which characterises the type and quality of the cathexes. It is when separation has been accomplished that one may justifiably speak of later primary narcissism, as desig­ nating the ego-cathexes alone, as distinct from object-cathexes.

To complete this description, I propose to distinguish a positive primary narcissism (connected with Eros), tending towards unity and identity, from a negative primary narcissism (connected with the destructive instincts). The latter is not manifested by hatred towards the object - this is perfectly compatible with the withdrawal of positive primary narcissism - but by the tendency of the ego to undo its unity and to proceed towards zero. This is manifested clinically by the feeling of emptiness. W hat we have described under the name of the dead mother complex helps us to understand cases where the evolution is unfavourable. We witness the failure of the experience of individu­ ating separation (Mahler) in which the young ego, instead of constituting the receptacle for cathexes to come, after separation, relentlessly endeavours to retain the primary object and to relive its loss repetitively. At the level of the primary ego (which is fused with the object) this gives rise to the feeling of narcissistic depletion, expressed phenomenologically by the sentiment of emptiness, so characteristic of depression, which is always the result of a narcissistic wound experienced at the level of the ego. The object is 'dead' (in the sense of not alive, even though no real death has come about); hence it draws the ego towards a deathly, deserted universe. The mother's blank mourning induces blank mourning in the infant, burying a part of his ego in the maternal necropolis. To nourish the dead mother amounts, then, to m ain­ taining the earliest love for the primordial object under the seal of secrecy, enshrouded by the primary repression of an ill-accomplished separation of the two partners of primitive fusion.10 It seems to me that psychoanalysts should have little difficulty in recognising a familiar clinical configuration in the description of the dead mother complex, which may however differ in one aspect or another from my own account of it. Psychoanalytic theory is elabo­ rated on the basis of a limited number of observations, and it may well be that what I have described covers both sufficiently general characteristics to coincide with the experiences of others, and more singular characteristics which would be particular to the patients I have had in analysis. Although I may perhaps have schematised the structure of this dead mother complex, it is quite possible that it may be found in more rudimentary forms. In this case one might imagine that the traumatic experience to which I have alluded has been either more discreet, or more tardy, taking place at a time when the child was better able to bear its consequences, and so only resorted to a more partial, more moderate depression, which was easier to overcome.

It may seem surprising that I should attribute such an important role to a maternal traumatism, at a period in psychoanalysis when one tends to insist a great deal more on the vicissitudes of intrapsychical organisation, and when one is more prudent about the role played by conjuncture. As I indicated at the outset of this work, the depressive position is a fact that is now recognised by all authors, whatever explanations they may give. On the other hand, the depressing effects of early separations between mother and infant have been described for years, without however, any general accord being established between the importance of the trauma and the observed depressive manifestations. In the dead mother complex, the situation cannot be reduced to the level of the com m on depressive position, nor likened to the serious traumatisms of real separations. In the case that I describe, there has been no effective break in the conti­ nuity of the mother-infant relationship. However, independently of the spontaneous evolution towards the depressive position, there has been an im portant maternal contribution which intervenes, disturbing the positive outcome of the depressive phase and compli­ cating the conflict, because of the reality of maternal decathexis which is sufficiently noticeable to the infant to wound his narcissism. This configuration seems to me to tally with Freud's views on the aeti­ ology of the neuroses - in the wide sense - where the child's psychical make-up is formed by the combination of his personal inherited dispositions and the events of his earliest infancy.

Freud and the Dead Mother The starting-point of this work is contemporary clinical experience which has arisen from Freud's writings. I have not adopted the usual course, namely to begin by seeking out the new approaches that Freud's work opens up, but have preferred, on the contrary, to leave this until the end of the chapter. In fact it is only at a late stage, almost At the end of proceedings, that repression in me has lifted, and that I have remembered retrospectively something in Freud that can be related to my subject. It is not in 'Mourning and Melancholia' (1917a [1915]) that I found Freud's support, but in The Interpretation o f Dreams (1900). In the last chapter of the Traumdeutung, and already in the first edition, Freud tells a final personal dream concerning arousal by dreams (ibid., p. 583). It is the dream of the 'beloved mother', and the only childhood dream he recounted, either in this work or in his published correspondence. In this matter, Fliess' psychical deafness made him one of Freud's dead mothers, after having been his eldest brother. W ith the help of previous interpreta­ tions by Eva Rosenfeld and Alexander Grinstein, Didier Anzieu gives

a remarkable analysis of it in Freud's Self-Analysis.11 Here I cannot go into all the details of this dream or the multiple commentaries to which it gives rise. I shall lim it myself to the reminder that its manifest content showed 'my beloved mother, with a peculiarly peaceful, sleeping expression on her features, being carried into the room by two (or three) people with birds' beaks and laid upon the bed'. The dreamer awoke in tears and screaming, and interrupted his parents' sleep. It was an anxiety-dream which was interrupted on waking. The commentators who have analysed this dream, beginning with Freud himself, have not paid sufficient attention to the fact that it is a dream that could not be dreamed, a dream that might have been a dream which had no end and which one would almost have to construct. W hich of the two or the three - an essential hesitation - will join the mother in her sleep? In his uncertainty, the dreamer could stand it no more; he interrupted, killing two birds with one stone, the dream and the parents' sleep. Detailed analysis of the dream, both by Freud and his commentators, ends up with the conjunction of two themes: that of the dead mother and that of sexual intercourse. In other words, we find confirmation of my hypothesis concerning the relation between the dead mother, the primal scene and the Oedipus complex; here, besides the object of desire, two (or three) people with birds' beaks are brought into play. The associations shed light on the origin of these people derived from the Philippson Bible. Grinstein's enquiry12 allows one to attach this representation to Figure 15 of this Bible, which was a gift of Freud's father, an illustration which becomes the object of a conden­ sation. In effect, in this illustration, it is not a question of gods with falcons' heads, which was Freud's first association, but of two pharaonic personages of Lower Egypt - I emphasise Lower - whereas the birds surmount the columns of the bed. I think this is an impor­ tant condensation, for it displaces the birds from the mother's bed to the head of the personages, of whom there are two here and not three. Thus the mother is perhaps attributed with a bird-penis.13 The corresponding text illustrates the verse 'King David follows the litter (of Abner)', which, as Anzieu remarks, abounds with themes of incest, parricide and, I should like to stress, fratricide. Anzieu interprets the two personages correctly, I believe, as the representations of Jacob Freud, a grandfatherly image, and Philipp, the younger half-brother of Freud, a paternal image. This was, as everyone knows, because Philipp, who was born in 1836, was himself only one year younger than Freud's mother, and Freud had Philipp's eldest son Emanuel as a playmate. In the dream the dead mother has the expression of the maternal grandfather on his deathbed, on 3 October 1865, when Sigmund was nine and a half. Thus this is a

bereavement which must have had an effect on the relationship between Amalie Freud and her son. The commentators have noted the erroneous dating in this dream, which was not rectified by Freud. He says he dreamed it when he was seven or eight years old, that is, a year and a half or two years prior to the time of the grandfather's death, which is impossible. Whereas others have simply noted the error and corrected it, it seems to me a revealing lapsus, and it leads me to conclude that it is not the bereavement of the maternal grand­ father that is in question, but a former bereavement. The significant period in the error - a gap of one and a half to two years - reminds me of another bereavement of the mother: that of Freud's younger brother, Julius, who was born when Sigmund was seventeen months old (almost a year and a half) and who died when he was twentythree months old (nearly two). Hence the double explication: two (or three) people, namely Jacob, Philipp or Jacob, Philipp and Philippson: Philipp's son, Julius; because in 1859, when Freud was three, he dreaded that his mother might be pregnant again like the Nanny, and that Philipp might have shut her in a cupboard, imprisoned her, or more coarsely, 'had it off with her'.14 This, I shall note in passing, is why the young initiator, the concierge's son who reveals the information on sexual intercourse, is supposedly called Philipp. It is Philipp who copulates with Amalie, and it is Philippson (Julius) who allows Sigmund to understand the relation between copulating, giving birth and dying ... behind the name of Julius, that of the painter Julius Mosen is forgotten, whom Freud mentions in his letter to Fliess, on 26 August 1898.15 MosenMoses, we know what follows, and also Freud's insistence on making Moses an Egyptian, that is, to make the point clearly, not the son of Amalie and Jacob, but of the concierge, or at a pinch, of Amalie and Philipp. This also sheds light on Freud's conquest of Rome, if one remembers that he quotes Livy (Freud 1900)16 in connection with the incestuous dreams of Julius Caesar. I understand better the importance of this age, eighteen months, in Freud's works. It was the age of his grandson when he was playing with the wooden reel (mother dead-mother resurrected), and who died when he was about two; which was an occasion of intense mourning, though it is minimised. This is also the age at which the Wolf Man supposedly witnessed the primal scene. Anzieu makes two remarks which link up with my own deduc­ tions. He shows, concerning the preconscious elaboration of Freud, the rapprochement between Freud and Bion, who, besides love and hatred, gave a specific place to knowledge as a primordial reference w ithin the psychical apparatus: the quest for meaning. Finally, he concludes that one should find suspect Freud's insistence on reducing

the specific anxiety of the dream, anxiety over the mother's death, to something else. There is only one other hypothesis pending, that of the oral rela­ tionship. Another dream which is in keeping with that of the 'beloved mother' refers to this, where the mother appears to be alive: the dream of the Three Fates' (1900, pp. 204-5). In this dream Freud's mother is making Knodel, and while little Sigmund is waiting to eat them she intimates that he should wait until she is ready ('these were not definite spoken words', Freud adds). One knows that his associa­ tions with this passage concern death. But further on, when he has put the analysis of the dream aside, he comes back to it, to write: 'My dream of the three Fates was clearly a hunger dream. But it shifted the craving for nourishment back to a child's longing for his mother's breast, and it made use of an innocent desire as a screen for a more serious one which could not be so openly displayed' (ibid., p. 233). Probably, and how can one deny it when the context is so pertinent, but here again it would be as well to remain suspicious. One should especially question this triple image of a woman in Freud's thinking, which is examined again in the Theme of the Three Caskets': the mother, the wife (or beloved), and death. The censure of the beloved has been much discussed in recent years.17 I in turn wish to draw attention to the censure of the dead mother: the mother of silence as heavy as lead. Now our trilogy is complete. Once again we are led to think of the metaphoric loss of the breast, interrelating with the Oedipus complex, or the primal scene fantasy, and that of the dead mother. The lesson of the dead mother is that she too must die one day so that another may be loved. But this death must be slow and gentle so that the memory of her love does not perish, but may nourish the love that she will generously offer to whoever takes her place. Thus we have come full circle. It is again significant retrospectively. I have known of these dreams for many years, as well as the commen­ taries to which they have given rise. They were inscribed in my m ind as significant memory traces of something that seemed to me to be obscurely important, without my knowing exactly how or why. These traces have been re-cathected by the discourse of certain analysands whom, at a given moment, I was able to hear, though not before. Is it this discourse that permitted me to rediscover Freud's written word, or is it the cryptomnesia of this reading that made me permeable to my analysands' words? In a rectilinear conception of time, this hypothesis is the correct one. In the light of Freud's concept of Nachtrdglichkeit,18 it is the other that is true. Be that as it may, in the concept of Nachtrdglichkeit, nothing is more mysterious than this preliminary statute of a registered meaning which remains in

abeyance in the psyche while awaiting it's revelation. For it is a question of 'meaning', otherwise it would not have been able to be recorded in the psyche. But this meaning-in-waiting is only truly significant when it is reawakened by a re-cathexis which takes place in an absolutely different context. W hat meaning is this? A lost meaning, re-found? It would give too much credit to this presignificative structure, and its rediscovery is much more of the order of a discovery. Perhaps potential meaning which only lacks the analytic or poetic? - experience to acquire real meaning.

Postscript The Ego, Mortal-Immortal (1982) For Brigitte Pontalis

In modern societies, at least, death has become something scandalous. This scarcely surprises us any more, and it probably should surprise us more. W hen a loved one dies, even at an advanced age, we express our regret, and sometimes even reproach those whom we feel were respon­ sible for not having saved their life; as if we had become accustomed to considering the duration of life as unlimited, and its end as some­ thing that could be put off indefinitely. This attitude towards death is a relatively recent one. Although it is difficult to say precisely when it appeared, under the influence of a combination of circumstances - for example, the longer period of peacetime after two particularly bloody world wars; the improvement of the means available to cope with natural catastrophes; medical progress and the lowering of infantile mortality - it is clear that this new era is nothing more than the size of a finger on the top of a mountain, when one considers how far preceding centuries were marked by the presence of death in all soci­ eties and at all stages of history. It is equally surprising, moreover, that this tendency not to resign ourselves to the inevitability of dying, or to put it off as long as possible, is accompanied by a relative lack of awareness concerning the accumulation of mass means of destruction. Although one cannot speak of indifference here, one can nonetheless point out that the wish to ward off this threat has not led to a general mobilisation against the danger of war. This is the paradoxical situation we find ourselves in today. It may be that we are no longer in a position to appreciate the state of m ind which reigned less than a century ago, at a time when death was a worrying but familiar shadow in every living household, and when religion still offered the supreme consolation. We are not, I think, fully aware of the import of Freud's ideas on the subject. Their genuine audacity has lost its edge because the

changes which have come about in other areas have made them seem banal. Death is not represented in the unconscious: this is what he asserted with the conviction of someone who had been there to see for himself. Man cannot know what death is; either consciously or unconsciously. In the unconscious there is nothing but representa­ tions of wishes and affects. A pure positivity, then, whose function is precisely to counter the frustrations which reality imposes on our capacity to fulfil our desires, making us experience these lacks on a daily basis, be they big or small, of which death is merely the maximal actualisation. Basically, Freud discovered the 'beyond' of religion, which awaits the just, the virtuous or the.repentant, in the uncon­ scious, with all the limitations and reservations that this comparison may give rise to. Nevertheless, even if we cannot know what death is, or imagine it, and even if the unconscious is unaware of it - in the sense that it has no place for it - this does not, for all that, do away with man's aware­ ness of the fact that he is mortal. Freud was not satisfied with struggling against religious illusion and dethroning the consciousness of the philosophers by dashing the excessive confidence they placed in it; he also insisted on contesting the actual content of the reflec­ tions inspiring this consciousness of death. W hile Western philosophy as a whole, the source of his own culture, had continually spun the web of discourse on death over the centuries, reworking it indefinitely in the light of changing conceptions, and considering it as one of the most noble achievements of hum an thought, Freud now flung an abrupt judgement in the face of these thinkers: the fear of death underlying the philosophical meditation of the one who is called the being-for-death (I'etre-pour-la-mort)l is a snare, a mask behind which m an hides in order to deny that the real issue is castration anxiety. Such was his rash observation, which bordered on arrogance. Freud wanted to show that it required less courage to allege that man was tlje only being in the animal kingdom to speak at length about death, ^knowing that he is mortal, than to recognise the limitations of his consciousness, to play down his illusory vanity and, above all, to accept the idea that the real motor of action, as well as of hum an thought, was that which eluded the control of his will and conscious being, that is, the unconscious, the invisible master pulling the strings of the puppet 'consciousness'. Was this provocation? In fact, it could not have been anything else for Freud who was constantly pursuing his ideas on the unconscious system to their logical limits. The radicalism of his views on the inex­ istence of death in the unconscious, owing to its lack of representation there, is justified by the type of rationality character­ ising the primary process. It admits neither of doubt nor degrees of

certitude; it is unaware of negation and remains insensible to the passing of time; and hence to any notion of time whatsoever. Consequently, it is unable to conceive, in whatever form, of the end to an existence animated by the sole exigency of wish-fulfilment. The latter finds in this domain, having failed to do so in reality, ways to satisfy itself by suppressing the obstacles which stand in the way, thanks to means which allow it to circumvent the censor. The supremacy of the pleasure principle is thereby affirmed. In order to ensure the survival of the precarious entity which the ego of the very young infant represents, consciousness, arising from the constraints of external reality, is governed by the reality principle - which is a good deal more vulnerable than the pleasure principle. Ultimately, the final function of the first is to safeguard the second, whose reign is only undivided in the unconscious. One of its most significant manifestations is the negation of unpleasure connected with the threat of castration. The latter arouses the most extreme sense of horror: it constitutes the supreme threat of extinguishing sexual pleasure, the foundation and prototype of all the others. The unpleasure linked to the idea of death may be explained by the fact that the latter, like castration, has the same implications. It contains w ithin it the same dangers. By putting an end to the pleasures of living, it basically involves losing the capacity for sexual pleasure. Lacan (1977, p. 317) puts it more eloquently when he says: 'the absence of Jouissance makes the Universe vain ... / Thus the narcissistic wound - Freud dixit - inflicted on man by contesting the sovereignty of consciousness, did not only deprive him of the pride he obtained from being able to hold forth on death; it became purulent as a result of being forced to realise that this discourse formed a screen against his sole and unique reason for anxiety, that is, castration. We thought that we could console ourselves for the yoke of death with the knowledge that we were mortal; and this knowledge gave us the feeling that we could prepare ourselves for it: 'Philosophising is about learning to die.' It was not resignation or submission to a blind power in the face of which one bows helplessly; consenting to our finiteness sustained the idea that death could find within us a respected adversary. Not a slave but a free being, because he claimed to be lucid. In fact, without realising it, we were not only ignorant of death but also of ourselves, taking pride in the vanity of the nobility in which our consciousness was cloaked, turning our backs on the real source of our thoughts. The latter, tied up with far more prosaic motives, were riveted to the quest for childhood pleasure, always barred by the fear of seeing the possibility of its renewal fade away. And even though some aspects of our behaviour seemed to indicate

that we were drawn towards unpleasure, this was merely the ultimate ruse, a protective disguise, in which rigorous analysis soon discov­ ered, in the contrary of pleasure, the indelible mark of the state prior to unpleasure: pleasure, again and always, whose initial aim was the sexual pleasure linked with the earliest stages in our lives. Descartes was once asked if children had a soul. He replied in the negative, arguing that they were unstable, that their minds were labile, always in movement, drawn towards play, that is, incapable of accomplishing the mental process which was supposed to lead to the irreducibility of the Cogito. It was only with Freud, Melanie Klein, and, above all Winnicott, that we came to understand that children's play was a serious matter which had such a necessary and extensive role that it could include the most serious and profound mental activ­ ities of which adults were capable. For play can only be understood in the light of fantasy; the latter being anchored in sexuality before finding its fulfilment in sublimation. An over-hasty interpretation would seek an explanation for castra­ tion anxiety, so closely linked in m an with sexuality, in ontogenesis. But this was not how Freud saw things at all. His work makes it abun­ dantly clear that his conception of the development of libido postulates the existence of specific programming - that is, program­ m ing which is linked to the species rather than the individual. Sexuality is assumed to be governed by organising schema - primal fantasies of seduction, castration, the primal scene, and even those that are connected with the Oedipus complex - which shape the burgeoning of individual experiences, giving them sense (direction and meaning) by making a selection between certain events and investing them in a specific manner; as well as by classifying them in the way that thought is classified into philosophical categories. One is naturally led here to think of Kant's a priori. But what is acceptable and even commendable in philosophy is difficult to accept for a theory which aims at scientific truth. Nothing on a scientific level supports Freud's speculation concerning what he called phylogenetic mnemic residues, for which primal fantasies are supposed to be the psychical expression on an individual level. No opportunity was missed for pointing this out to him. He treated these objections with disdain: perhaps he was ahead of science. He even replied that he had little time for this appeal to scientific knowledge since he was not a scientist but a psychoanalyst. Under the circum­ stances, Freud proved to be curiously incoherent. He never ceased to claim that psychoanalysis should have the status of a scientific disci­ pline, admitting no other criteria of truth than those of science. It was not in his theory that one should expect to find a Weltanschauung; one of those conceptions of the world with which philosophers had

nourished man's illusions. And so it was that on this subject he erected a speculative system in honour of a supra-scientific dignity, while sheltering behind a prophetic gift, and without providing the slightest evidence for what he was advancing. What was it, then, that sustained this unshakeable conviction? W hat others saw as reprehen­ sible rashness seemed to him to be entirely coherent, and was probably the expression of a certain fidelity to himself which was not immediately noticeable. It may be safely argued that, if Freud found the referent of psychical life in sexuality, it was not only because the latter is closely connected in man with pleasure, but mainly because it is the function which goes right through the individual. Not only because it affects his relations with others, but also because it extends beyond his own existence, before and after, linking generations together; ascendants and descendants forming an unbroken chain. For this very reason it cannot be conceived of from an ontogenetic point of view. It has been said that the 'invention' of sexuality and death went hand in hand. It is true that without sexual differentiation - in the absence of 'sexion'- the indefinitely repeated scission of the same organism conjures up a figure of immortality. But, along quite different lines, one may also argue that, when the individual dies, a part of him survives through the patrimony he has passed on to his descendants. If, to this part, it has been necessary to add the part of a partner of the other sex, something of himself will nonetheless be transmitted which has migrated to a new hum an being. A relative immortality, then, but immortality all the same; at least within the space of a generation. As for women, current day science makes returning to absolute immortality possible. Parthenogenesis, which is capable of creating a new hum an being identical to the parent, gives the mother-daughter succession - the daughter becoming in turn the mother of another daughter - an immortal character; but at the price, of course, of the limitations involved in merely repeating the same. And so, in recent times, there has been an affirmation of the superiority of the entirely self-sufficient woman, able to love her own image in her offshoot. We are now in a position to appreciate the links that exist between narcis­ sism and immortality. But there is something in it for object love as well. Thus a husband who renounces the joys of paternity, to which he has made a contribution, will be able to overcome the sadness of seeing the object of his love affected by the wear and tear of time by subjecting his wife to this reproduction of the same, thereby redis­ covering her in the flower of her long lost youth. He will even have the immense satisfaction of having known her since her earliest childhood days, just as she was before he met her!

But it is now time to leave these musings, pleasant or terrifying as they may be, and to return to Freud who did not suspect that they could become a reality. To his m ind, sexuality was the life function which relativised the individual's power. This can easily be seen from the very earliest phases of his work. His first drive theory opposed the (individual's) drives of self-preservation and the sexual drives; the preservation of the species, although not directly perceptible, is nonetheless the final aim. In other words, sexuality covers both the domain of the individual and that of the species, whereas self-preser­ vation only concerns the individual. Thus sexuality, pleasure (already considered as a threat to self-preservation at this stage of Freudian thought) and the negation of death are linked by a com m on fate which can only be brought to light through the analysis of uncon­ scious processes. Strictly speaking, however, one cannot really speak here of immor­ tality. Being deprived of any representation of death and believing one is immortal are only apparent equivalents. If death has no representa­ tive in the unconscious, the latter cannot claim immortality. This denial, which excludes awareness of death, is not stated in terms of its possibility and even less in terms of its ineluctability. The absolute affirmation of life, in the form of fulfilling desire, has no antagonist. At the very most, it has to face the censor but never the knowledge of being mortal. This is why the reference to castration is pertinent. It is materialised through the opposition 'phallic-castrated'. There is no doubt that Freud's conception was phallocentric since, in his view, the essence of all libido is masculine, in both sexes. W hich is also why castration is of interest - in different ways - to both sexes, insofar as it threatens any kind of pleasure which may arouse death anxiety with extinction. W hen Freud analysed the reasons why he had forgotten Signorelli's name, his associations led him to mention the Turks who believe that without sexual jouissance life is not worth living. Does this not atnount to saying that anything is better than being a eunuch? Clearly, it is impossible to understand Freud's ideas without appre­ ciating their metaphorical value. The 'great Lord Penis' (Freud)2 is, to use Lacan's expression, the signifier of desire, its bodily material support. This phallic presence in which the Phallus, according to Lacan, is the guarantor of the symbolic order, eclipses the vagina, which, like death, is unrepresentable according to Freud. We may wonder about the selectivity of Freud's memory which found in the tragedy of Sophocles an intuition of the Oedipus complex while forgetting why Tiresias, the psychoanalyst's ancestor, was castrated. The vagina, which is capable of having nine times as much pleasure as the penis, is said to be the signifier of nothing, and vagina envy is said to be inconceivable. We have not finished with this 'repudiation

of femininity' which Freud held to be responsible for the limitations of psychoanalytic treatment. For the moment, let me simply empha­ sise the transindividual function of sexuality, while pointing out in passing that this function is embodied much more in women than in men who, at a certain moment in their existence, may include within the same organism two bodies in one, separated by a generational difference and sometimes by a sexual difference. W hen Freud modified his first drive theory in favour of the oppo­ sition between ego-libido and object-libido, sexuality being distributed between the first and the second, immortality was not absent from his thoughts, as the following citation from 'On Narcissism: An Introduction' (1914) shows: The individual does actually carry on a twofold existence: one to serve his own purposes and the other as a link in a chain, which he serves against his will, or at least involuntarily. The individual himself regards sexuality as one of his own ends; whereas from another point of view he is an appendage to his germ-plasm, at whose disposal he puts his energies in return for a bonus of pleasure. He is the mortal vehicle of a (possibly) immortal substance - like the inheritor of an entailed property, who is only the temporary holder of an estate which survives him. The separa­ tion of the sexual instincts from the ego-instincts would simply reflect this twofold function of the individual.3 These lines clearly show the support which Freud felt he had found in Weismann who had argued in favour of the opposition between germen and soma. Only soma is mortal. Is it not fair to infer, then, that between the immortality of soma and the bonus of pleasure obtained in exchange for achieving the aims of germen, lies castra­ tion anxiety, forming a bridge between germinal plasma and somatic plasma? Weissmann's ideas again provided backing for Freud a few years later in the mutative leap in his thinking expressed by Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920). The speculative character of his reflec­ tions should not lead us to believe that Freud's thought was entirely self-generated. For, a few years before, in 1911, he had undertaken the analysis of Schreber's Memoirs in which the author's delusion bore witness both to narcissistic regression, through libido flowing back into the ego, which was now megalomaniac, and to the fantasy of immortality present implicitly in-the fundamental theme of the neo-reality Schreber had created. Due to his transformation into a woman, by emasculation, and as a result of his coupling with God, Schreber is alleged to have given birth to a new race of men. Freud interpreted this desire for feminine jouissance as merely satisfying

passive homosexual wishes towards the Father in which castration anxiety was foreclosed. But it was not until a few years later, immediately before Beyond the Pleasure Principle, in his article on The Uncanny' (1919), in which Freud tackled the theme of the double - the object of a famous work by Rank - that he explicitly introduced the ego's immortality. This shift from the unconscious to the ego, inaugurating the first authentic psychical expression of immortality, modified his earlier views. The analysis of myths and literary texts concerning twinning reveals the division of the ego into two halves - represented by the twins - one of which is mortal while the other is often endowed with the gift of immortality. Here, what is involved is no longer the imm ortality of sexuality through biological vocation, nor the absence of the representation of death in unconscious psychical life, but of an ego belief which may sometimes become conscious under the cover of fiction. In 1900, at a time when Freud was drawing his conclusions from the analysis of hysteria, the normal universal phenom enon of dreams had enabled Freud to demonstrate that the unconscious was not the apanage of neurosis. In 1919, this demon­ stration was taken up again on the same grounds: delusion did not have a monopoly either of the unconscious expressions of the ego's immortality. The collective or individual fiction which men take pleasure in transmitting and sharing without being suspected of illness - they even find religion is elevating for their souls - shows in the same way how the ego - or a part of it - considers itself immortal among ordinary mortals. It is from this point of view that it is really possible to speak of immortality; that is, of a genuine denial of death at the heart of an ego which knows it is mortal, its 'double' refusing to accept the fatality of the term of its existence. The reference to sexuality is not, however, challenged. But the immortality of the germen has no presence in the psyche, any more than death is represented in the unconscious. O n the other hand, the immortality of a part of the ego corresponds to the biological mortality of soma and the conscious­ ness of death. It is narcissism - the effect of the sexualisation of the ego drives - which is the cause. W hen Freud designated the empty space of death in the uncon­ scious, he had discovered a truth which he felt was worthy of being counted among the acquisitions of science. This certainly represented a victory for the ego which was able to fathom a secret of the vast territory eluding consciousness. And so, at the heart of this lucid ego, which was able to see beyond itself, Freud discovered that the uncon­ scious had an accomplice, a traitor that was underm ining his efforts to shed 'more light' on affairs.

Once again it is necessary to link Freud's speculations, apparently the result of analysing fiction, with the hard disillusionments of clinical experience. At the beginning of his work, the unconscious and the ego were in conflict. Freud saw the ego as his best ally in treatment, for he had credited it with being the representative, at the core of the psyche, of relations to reality. Before analysis, conscious­ ness overestimated its power, but its role was less negligible than was supposed. It sinned through ignorance. All that was needed was for the ego, with the analyst's help, to 'become aware of' and recognise the real links between thing-presentations (unconscious) and wordpresentations (preconscious-conscious) in order to acquire a real power over the unconscious and not only over the external world. One is justified in wondering here whether Freud was not giving back to philosophy a part of the territory he had taken from it. It is philos­ ophy, is it not, which has always claimed that it is through ignorance that men lack wisdom? In short, if the causes of man's madness are explainable by his ignorance of the unconscious, and if the method which is supposed to free him from it no longer consists in philosophising but in interpreting, the gap between the two disci­ plines, deep as it may seem, is not unbridgeable, in spite of Freud's aversion for philosophers. It is indeed the task of a conscious human being to strive for greater awareness. This final illusion was to collapse in turn when Freud came a cropper over certain rebellious neuroses, of which the case of the 'Wolf Man' is the sad paradigm. Contrary to all expectations, the interpretation of the earliest memories, those of the 'primal scenes' did not succeed in returning to the ego any of its possessions invested by the unconscious. The rational ego seemed to refuse to put its own house in order, even though it seemed to accept - not without apparent conviction - the analyst's constructions. It slept with its eyes open and remained closed to any understanding ... As the years passed, Freud had to admit, reluctantly, that his confidence in this uncompromising ego had been misplaced. Although it remained true that the ego was able to respond adequately to certain exigencies of reality, lest it wither away, it had now to be recognised that the former ally was capable of concealing that half of itself - but was it only half? - which it had formed in secret, where the wish to be immortal, however unreasonable it seemed, could find refuge and credence. The entire structure of the psychical apparatus needed reviewing in the light of this deficiency; which was what justified the new conception of the ego in the second topography. The ego, said Freud in 1923, is largely unconscious; and to such an extent that certain of its essential functions, the mechanisms of defence against anxiety, are uncon­ scious too. They had their rightful place in earliest childhood, when

they made use of the only psychical processes available to the still undeveloped ego, trying to relieve it of the internal tensions it suffered by resorting to mechanisms which were concerned less with external reality than psychical reality. In adulthood, they become obsolete, more disabling than useful, owing to their anachronism. The ego clings to these beliefs of the past and does not give them up lightly, even when they are correctly interpreted. It only accepts their inadequacy half-heartedly, in those cases when it is not blind to the point of understanding nothing of its own functioning, and, when the analyst takes the trouble to dismantle the latter through the expe­ rience of transference. The belief in immortality is thus rooted in the unconscious ego. The raison d'etre for this topography is the sexualisation of the ego drives. The ignorance of death in the unconscious has taken up resi­ dence in the ego. But, as the ego is also conscious - necessity obliges - the agency which is a guarantor of rationality, and which knows through its relations with external reality that it is mortal, contains w ithin its recesses a megalomaniac understudy, ready to surge forward to the point of eclipsing the other, sometimes for the innocent pleasure of fiction, and, at other times, to uphold the faith. It breaks into the open under the grips of psychosis. The ego, then, is characterised by this very duplicity; its divided structure participating in its most intimate functioning, which is concealed under normal conditions, but openly visible in times of illness. The recognition of material reality - the importance of which, moreover, should not be minimised - and the ignorance of material reality by psychical reality (unconscious): such is the dialectic which accounts for the fact that the wish for immortality only acquires meaning by coexisting with the consciousness of death. Nonetheless, as things stood, in 1919, Freud still conceived of death anxiety as a displacement of castration anxiety. Immortality was to narcissism what the negation of castration is for object-libido. Yet Freud was beginning to suspect that other factors were possibly involved. He was too well-versed in the clinical psychiatry of his time not to notice that Cotard's syndrome, observed in melancholy, and the grandiose ideas found in the terminal phase of general paralyses and other mental diseases, could not be interpreted in the name of narcis­ sism alone. Even within the framework of psychoanalytic treatments, the resistance to healing called for other explanations than the ego's obstinacy in exhausting itself by maintaining outmoded defences. Few exegetes of Freud's thought have been struck by the close rela­ tionship linking the last drive theory and the second topography of the psychical apparatus. The id, the ego and the super-ego replaced the unconscious, the preconscious and the conscious; the latter were

reduced to denoting psychical qualities and stripped of their function as agencies. Attention has mainly been given to the relations between the two topographies, the second appearing to do no more than redis­ tribute the values of the first. In fact, the introduction of the death drives totally modified the conception of how the psychical apparatus functioned. One can appreciate this by comparing Freud's views on melan­ choly in two different texts. The earliest, 'Mourning and Melancholia' (1917a [1915]), expounds a conception prior to the final drive theory. The latest, The Ego and the Id (1923) came three years after it. In the first, melancholia is still seen from the angle of a libidinal fixation, without any reference to the death drives. Admittedly, the oral canni­ balistic stage, at which melancholy is thought to remain stuck, implies the destructive consumption of the object; oral sadism and ambivalence are involved, but everything happens here within the context of narcissistic and object-libido. Freud does not take into account the highly destructive potential of this affection which involves the greatest risk of suicide in the whole of psychiatry. In The Ego and the Id, melancholy is designated differently, that is, as a 'pure culture of death instincts'. Here, the ferocious antagonism between the death drives and the life drives reveals the titanic combat taking place in the psyche, and perhaps not only there. A defusion of the drives is at work. Hence the dangerous quality of the crisis, since any reduction in the mitigation of the drives has the effect of freeing the death drives from their links with the Eros of the life drives. Their freedom gives them an unsuspected destructive power when they are no longer impeded by the yoke of Eros, which hitherto had succeeded in binding them by eroticising them. It is as if the Eumenides, leaving their dwelling place after a new matricide, returned to their former identity as ruthless Erinyes, vampires demanding blood for blood. From this point on, it was no longer possible for Freud to maintain that all forms of death anxiety were substitutes for castration anxiety. W hat might be true of transference neuroses (hysteria, phobia and particularly obsessional neurosis) was no longer so of the narcissistic neuroses, of which melancholia was the prototype, and probably even less so of the psychoses.4 The analysis of melancholia shows the existence of a split within the ego. A part of it identifies with the lost object - it is this loss for the libido which is at the origin of the defusion - whereas the other part retains its status. One can guess, then, how this refusal to accept the object's death can contribute, by reflection, to the ego's fantasy of immortality. W ith regard to castration, Freud speaks of anxiety, that is, of a danger; but, when he comes to deal with narcissism in mourning (and

not only there), he speaks of a narcissistic 'wound', as if it were no longer merely a threat but an actual mutilation that was involved. And, similarly, in transference neurosis, desire can use the detour of secondary identification in order to obtain, by procuration, the grat­ ification from which the other person has benefited. In melancholia, identification with the lost object (or the object that cannot be lost) occurs in a primary mode. The ego 'takes itself' for the lost object. It heaps reproaches on itself, accuses itself of the slightest peccadilloes, attributing them with the seriousness of as many mortal sins. It reviles itself and expects to be severely punished. But all this is just a disguise. In fact, a part of the ego simply rises up against the other part, as if it were its worst enemy, in order to conceal the wish to mistreat the object; and, in this prolongation of existence constituted by identification, to fulfil the sadistic wishes which were repressed in the most distant past. Even suicide, so often successfully carried out in melancholy, does not justify an interpretation in connection with the oral phase of infantile sexuality. Owing to the confusion between the ego and the object, a second death of the object is thus accom­ plished. Henceforth, an immortal union with it is consummated. The nuptials with the object will no longer admit of any separation, in the rediscovered, infinite and limitless paradise of orality. This is the view presented in 'Mourning and Melancholia'. W hen Freud returned to melancholia in The Ego and the Id, he renewed his interpretation, examining it closely in the light of the second topography. Now it was no longer two halves of the same ego which split in order to fight each other. The splitting of the ego which Freud did not abandon, however, his final work being entitled 'Splitting of the Ego in the Process of Defence' (1940b [1938]) - was replaced by the conflictual relation between the ego and that part of it which had separated from it long ago: the super-ego. Melancholy thus offers the distressing spectacle of the ego's persecution by the merciless super-ego. It may be compared to Yahweh punishing his chosen people because they were stubborn, making them pay the price for being the chosen people with the wretched conscience which Hegel was to identify in them. O n the surface the difference between 1915 and 1923 would appear to be merely a slight nuance. But, in fact, the new theory was quite different from the earlier one. For Freud did not fail to point out that, unlike the ego, the super-ego draws its resources from the id. In other words, the morality of which it is the herald is anchored in the depths of the wildest agency in the psyche, which are now haunted by the death drives as well as the life drives, forming such an explosive mixture that any weakening of Eros - whether it comes from external reality through m ourning or, from internal reality, due to the excessive disappointment resulting from a

change in the object - creates out if this vital mixture a lethal potion. Moreover, Freud did not miss the opportunity at a later juncture of having a dig at Kant in passing, by pointing out that the categorical imperative was far from being as immutable as he claimed; since melancholy, primarily, but also the less serious forms of masochism, show how the super-ego is subject to variations which rob it of any transcendental character. One year after The Ego and the Id, in The Economic Problem of Masochism' (1924) - an appendix to the essay of 1923 - Freud went even further. He distinguished between the masochism of the super­ ego, responsible for a desexualisation' of morality, and the masochism of the ego, of mysterious origin, which proves to be an even greater obstacle to treatment than the former. For the masochism of the super-ego is the form bound by the death drives; and, it should not be forgotten either, that the super-ego is a 'protec­ tive power of destiny' of which one can say that it protects the individual by m aintaining the principal prohibitions laid down by society. Whereas the ego's masochism reflects the diffuse impregna­ tion of the psychical apparatus by excessive destructivity spread over all the agencies, in an unbound state, and thus not controlled. The more Freud's thinking evolved, the more the ego struck him as being incapable of fulfilling its tasks. As the servant of three masters making contradictory demands - the id, the super-ego and reality - it not only has to reckon with the blindness affecting its unconscious part, but also with the poison which saps it from within, that is, the death drive. It becomes the seat of a conflict, the full scale of which is only revealed in illness, but which is present in us all. Caught between its obstinacy in not abandoning its earliest libidinal fixations which are incompatible with the limitations of external reality - that of the physical world as well as the social world - and the destruc­ tivity of the death drives, whether their direction be centrifugal or centripetal, it exhausts itself in stopping up holes, sealing cracks, shoring up its walls, going from one damaged area to another in order to keep itself upright. A pessimistic view, no doubt. Life seems so selfevident that perhaps we ought to be more surprised that it can be pleasant, just as Einstein said that we should be more surprised that the universe is comprehensible. There has been a great deal of speculation on the reasons which induced Freud to put forward the hazardous hypothesis of the death drive. He is suspected of having been affected by personal events which are thought to have been responsible for this mutation adorning the psychical apparatus with the shades of death. This rather unconfident vision of the force of life is thought to have replaced his earlier vision, which glorified the vitalising power of

sexuality, only because of the effects of ageing, resulting in less resist­ ance in face of the ordeals inflicted by fate (cancer, the loss of his daughter and of his grandson, and so on). In fact, what we know of Freud's biography rather suggests that his preoccupation with death went back a very long time. It had existed since the birth of psycho­ analysis.5 The correspondence with Fliess testifies to this. There one finds Freud, thanks to his adhesion to his friend's theory of 'periods', indulging in calculations about the supposed date of his death, especially as he felt his health threatened by heart symptoms which were not all neurotic or psychosomatic. W hile there is justifi­ cation for thinking that the years of Freud's friendship with Fliess were marked by a strong stimulation of his homoerotic sexual impulses, which drove him into masochistic submission to the judge­ ments of the man he deeply admired, one should also draw attention to the narcissistic exaltation of a mirror relationship which coloured this friendship. And although there was no absence of ambivalence in their relations - Freud encountered a resistance in Fliess to recog­ nising his own discoveries, whereas, for his part, he showed himself to be very receptive to the views of the Berliner - the rupture between them was probably due to a sort of fit in which he was carried away by his own narcissism. In short, in this relationship with Fliess, Freud's ego played a double role. He knew he was mortal and lent his accomplishments the character of a race against death, while at the same time libidinising this fear of death in what he called his 'lefthandedness' (homosexuality). On the other hand, he claimed to be immortal - put more rationally, he was in search of the immortality that he hoped his discoveries would bring him. And, in the final analysis, it was this part of himself which took precedence over the other. One only has to mention the fantasies he had when he was analysing the dream of Irma's injection and imagining the marble tablet commemorating the unveiling of the secret of dreams for futurq passers-by. Freud had had an analogous experience with another of his elders, Breuer, to whom - with an excessive degree of modesty which may have masked both his pride and his guilt - he attributed his own discoveries. Whereas, in fact, it was the timidity of the co-author of Studies in Hysteria - the limitations imposed on him by his overrational ego - which was the reason for their collaboration being terminated. First Breuer, then Fliess; but the series was to close with Jung, since Freud, who was too affected by the disillusionment the latter - this time his junior - had inflicted on him, decided to finish with the snares of sublimated homosexuality.6 He took as much care as he could with this crown prince, playing the tolerant father faced with

the outward signs of an Oedipus complex which was sufficiently evident to enable him to recognise the patricidal wishes of the one on whom he wished to confer his crown. Prince Hal donned his father's crown before the latter had even expired. After a period of homo­ sexual submission - think of Freud's fainting fit during one of their encounters - he broke off with the son, just as he had put an end to his relations with his elders, whom he regarded unconsciously as fathers rather than equals. Renouncing the idea of a premature death and being concerned about his succession, as well as the future of his work which he believed would be accepted more easily by a non Jew, he pursued his conquest of immortality alone. We know that among the reasons which drove Freud to abandon his views on the redistribution of the drives into ego-libido and objectlibido, one - and not the least important - resided in the fact that he considered this conception - elaborated after the break with Jung - too close to the ideas of the latter who had preferred the path of dissidence with a view to acquiring his own immortality. The theory that accorded such an important place to narcissism was perhaps simply an effect of a work of mourning which needed to be completed by stressing the incompatibility of Freud and Jung's theories. This probably explains why, once the final drive theory had been set out in Beyond the Pleasure Principle, seven years after his initial article on narcissism, Freud's interest in the latter waned. Narcissism was just a detour, a stopping-place on the journey which accom­ plished its goal in 1921, a goal that was never again put in question during the eighteen remaining years of his life. At this point, Freud turned his back on narcissism; he did not even take the trouble to explain to his disciples, not to mention the public he was trying to reach beyond the members of the profession, how it was necessary to re-evaluate his earlier ideas - which were, nonetheless, very convincing - in the light of his new hypotheses. One might think that, after 1920-21, Freud would have realised that the ambivalence which had marked his successive relationships with Breuer, Fliess and Jung, were just a screen. It was no longer the conscious or preconscious hostility that the latter manifested towards him which stood in the way of the full development of his genius, but his own aggressivity directed against himself. In other words he was his own worst enemy. However, although ultimately it is to the death drive that we must look for an explanation for this inhibiting process resisting the completion of syntheses which is the charge of Eros, one cannot overlook the forms in which the latter is linked with the death drives: aggressivity directed towards others, homosexuality and narcissism. The ego's immortality should also be thought about through this

prism which decomposes the elements one finds when one comes to analyse more closely the creation of the double, thanks to which this fantasy becomes conscious. All this shows the complexity of what J.-B. Pontalis has rightly called the 'work of death7 in Freud.7 Far from being justified in thinking that, in regard to the death drive, the founder of psycho­ analysis gave in too easily to the temptation of advancing a fantastic hypothesis, we would be m uch nearer the truth if we were to empha­ sise how much Freud resisted it. We only need to consider the other case of dissidence, that of Adler, who threw out a line to Freud which he did not seize. He m ight have let himself be tempted, even if it had meant formulating differently what the limitations of his disciple prevented him from conceptualising. O n the contrary, Freud took the time he needed to think, delaying writing the text which must have been fermenting within him for a long time before he actually put into black and white the ideas which he initially presented with caution, without demanding the slightest adherence to them. Doubt was permitted on this issue, in contradistinction to other concepts such as the unconscious, repression, the Oedipus complex and trans­ ference, which were the conditions sine qua non for the right to call oneself a psychoanalyst. As the years passed, from 1921 to 1939, spec­ ulation was to turn into certainty. For him, at least. The death drive works in silence, says Freud, the clamour of Eros covering the muffled noise of its deleterious action. A silence that is occasionally interrupted by some note of alarm whose trace is found in writing. The Theme of the Three Caskets' (1913) ended with the three female figures: the beloved one, the mother, and lastly Mother Earth where bodies rest when life has left them. Well before he was into old age, Freud had felt close to the old Lear. Unconscious complicity linked him to Breuer; each of them had given their wives the nickname Cordelia. The old m an carrying the young girl was simply the inverted figure of the other, much more probable image, of death carrying off the old man, still a child. Mythology has a predilection for linking women with death. W hile such a representa­ tion can still justify an interpretation in terms of castration anxiety, it is equally rooted in the depths of the collective unconscious which, since the beginning of time, has made a parallel between death and antenatal existence. In many cultures, and particularly during the most archaic ages, the dead are laid in their sepulchre in the foetal position. W hat idea is more widespread amongst the beliefs of many peoples - and perpetuated by the monotheistic religions still in place - than death as rebirth in another world? The Uncanny' had ended with the silence imposed on us by the impossibility of representing either death or the vagina. And so it is

that men are struck dum b in the face of this unthinkable notion. But, worse still, how are women to experience themselves when they have lost the representation of a part of their bodies and are reduced to envying the sexual organ they do not have? Of course, the penis can be verified by sight, whereas the vagina cannot. On the other hand, this surely provides a very strong stimulation for representation. Freud's phallocentric point of view leads to a significant confusion of ideas. As far is sexuality is concerned, the evidence of the senses gives the penis a representability which accounts for the displacements and condensations which it can be subject to in the unconscious. But, when it comes to maternity, Freud changes his strategy. Maternity can be proved by the evidence of the senses.8 But the same phallocentrism which confers the penis with an exclusive power of representation functions the other way round here. In Moses and Monotheism (1939), Freud attributed the development of intellectual curiosity to the uncer­ tainties of paternity; progress in spirituality consisting, according to him, in according greater value to the processes of intellectual deduc­ tion than the evidence of the senses. In this case, women should be credited with greater intellectual penetration on account of the deduc­ tions which they must be led to make by the hidden situation of their genitalia. Freud rejected this idea. But for what reason? Because the vagina, the 'former home of men' from which each hum an being originates, which arouses in them the feeling of familiar uncanniness or uncanny familiarity to the point that they are unable to say anything about it, enveloping the feminine sex and death within the same silence, makes an almost natural state of the feminine condition, culture being the affair of man. The myth of woman as the giver of life and death drove Freud both to idealise the mother figure and to see in the repudiation of femininity - in both sexes - the reasons for the obstinate tendency to remain ill. Here there was a danger of seeing the mother - common to both sexes - as a threat to be warded off, almost as great as that of death. Was this yet another manifestation of castration anxiety? After the introduction of the death drive, it was no longer possible to invoke it under all circumstances. Post-Freudian psychoanalysis, the most remarkable figure of which has been a woman, Melanie Klein, showed how idealising the mother image was a denial of the persecutory anxieties to which she is subject. The reference to psychosis - the schizo-paranoid and depres­ sive positions further a dichotomy which has been present in psychiatry since Kraepelin, a contemporary of Freud - has replaced the grids of neurosis which enabled Freud to decode the castration anxiety lying behind death anxiety. For Melanie Klein, who was to take Freud at his word concerning the death drive - and probably in a way which was more foreign to him than familiar - neither the

vagina nor death lacked representation in the unconscious. One might even think that they occupied almost the whole field. Freud's phallocentrism, to which Lacan remained faithful - 'woman is not all' - was dethroned by Melanie Klein's 'mammocentrism'. Well before the question of castration arises, there is the issue of the good and bad breast which is a factor of division from the child's earliest days. Well before the baby - who is undoubtedly immersed in a world of language - can speak, the 'thoughts' he may be assumed to have revolve around an experience of annihilation. He owes his survival simply to the Manichean mechanisms of defence which structure, more or less efficiently, the universe, sometimes paradisiacal, some­ times infernal - but the latter leaves its mark more than the former which he inhabited in alternating states of bliss and terror. W hat becomes of the ego's immortality in this context? Are we obliged to resign ourselves to the possibility that the two versions are irreconcilable? Perhaps not. By laying so much emphasis on the vulnerability of the ego, overwhelmed by the multiple effects of destructivity, one simply makes the fantasy of its immortality all the more necessary. Once again, it is at the level of primal narcissism that it reappears. Immortality is a state of ego idealisation, and we know, moreover, that the ego feels its existence is threatened. The invulnerability which is thus conferred on it is closely linked to a state which may be described either as self-sufficient bisexuality or as indifferent asexualisation; or again, as lacking sexual differentiation. That is, an ego which would be all narcissism, thwarting an ego dependent on its om nipotent primary object. In its more elaborate forms of expression, the divided ego no longer needs the complementary object belonging to the other sex. Narcissistic completeness no longer results from fusion with the object; it now arises from the relationship the ego has with its double. Just as it has been said that the ideal of auto-erotism is 'lips kissing themselves', one might also detect in the fantasy of immortality the symmetrical ideal of the ego making love to itself, or to its double, without being concerned any longer either by castration anxiety or by death anxiety. The ego no longer merely defends its integrity or its unity through its wish for immortality. It denies its limits both in space and time. It no longer knows the finiteness of 'being there' or the wearing effect of the here-and-now. The series of figures which are traversed by immortality extends from the primitive fusion of the young ego with the object to the ego's narcissistic cathexis of itself; then, to cathecting the double, in a coherent evolving movement. The psychotic danger begins with hypochondria: this may be interpreted as the blocking of libido in one part of the body, which

then lives for itself, giving expression to the very first signs of psychical fragmentation which will pull the ego to pieces if the psychosis develops. It is now clearer why Freud dissociated the latter from melancholy; because more than narcissistic regression is required to account for what would indeed appear to be a destruction of the ego's unity. And it is probably no coincidence that those who defend the death drive are to be found today among the psychosomatists - at least those who belong to the Paris school, under the direction of P. Marty.9 The concept of the death drive has given rise to different interpre­ tations by authors ranging from Hartmann to Laplanche. For the former, the aspect of Freud's views that deserves acceptance is the equal degree of importance that he placed on aggressivity and sexu­ ality. But what is at stake here is only the contingent of drives directed towards the external world, which Freud simply saw as a secondary derivation whose purpose was to drain off the main part of their original lethality. Laplanche would prefer to speak of the sexual life drives and the sexual death drives.10 Be that as it may, there are few authors in the literature who acknowledge the necessity of giving the forces of death the status of a group of drives. Even though the idea of primal masochism would be rejected, masochistic turning against the self and the importance of the reversal into its opposite (of love to hate), threaten the ego sufficiently to oblige it to create the fantasy of immortality, especially when it suffers from narcissistic deficiency. Freud's radicalism drove him to make formulations which seem to be in conflict with his initial conceptions. The hastening of life's course towards death is not due to the exhaustion of a potential at the end of its resources; it is the effect of an active, deadly process which increasingly gains ground with age or in relation to the subject's biological equipment. Sexuality is only vitalising provided it is put under good guard. And now Freud, who had contributed so much to giving it back the place he thought it deserved as the source of life, was writing that the pleasure principle appeared to be in the service of the death drive! It would seem to me that this idea was very influ­ ential for the work of Georges Bataille.11 The Economic Problem of Masochism' placed the Nirvana principle, borrowed from Barbara Low, in the foreground, acting in the service of the death drives, of which the pleasure principle, in the service of the sexual drives, is thought to be but a modified form in animate beings. It does not take a great deal of effort to understand - the reference to Nirvana shows this - that the death drive and immortality are related to each other. We can see how unequal the struggle is between Eros and the death drives, since the latter always have the last word. The individual, Freud wrote shortly before his death, in one of his rare posthumous notes,

'perishes from his internal conflicts whereas the species perishes in its struggle with the external world'. Throughout the course of his work, the revolutionary affirmation tracing death anxiety back to castration anxiety was to shrink away. Unconsciousness of death became uncon­ sciousness of the longing to die. Perhaps this needs putting in another way: mourning for the mother's penis came to be included within the more general category of object losses (part or total). Melancholia, the misfortune of a few, echoes the prototype of mourning which is perhaps the cause of the common misery against which psycho­ analysis declared it had no remedy as early as Studies on Hysteria (1895c). If one reads Freud as one should, that is, backwards from 1939 to his beginnings, one is astonished to notice that the late principle of Nirvana - the invention of which was yet again attributed here to someone else - was already present in his thought under the name of the principle of inertia (the unexcitability of non-cathected systems).12 Is it not the case that this psyche which shams death, on the pretext of not wanting to see its quietude disturbed, in fact aspires to it constantly without knowing it? No one is spared depression, which is part of the hum an condi­ tion; it is the price we pay for being attached to objects which give us joy in being alive. Fortunately, we will not all die of it. In most people, the life drives give us a taste for living which at some time or other will pall. The libido fights back, investing objects again, or re­ investing those which have been the cause of the disappointment which led us to withdraw our investment from them. Even the mourning of those closest to us, those who we thought to be irre­ placeable, comes to an end eventually. This is the great lesson given by Montaigne and Proust. Forgetting is on the side of life, without which immortality would be a burden. Repression also preserves. W hen m ourning becomes interminable, this inconsolable loss should not be attributed to love; but, on the contrary, to a feeling of hidden or disguised resentment at being abandoned by the object. In addition to the two kinds of arguments inform ing Freud's reflec­ tions on death - his reaction to events which had affected him, and the resistance to recovery found in the negative therapeutic reaction, which he attributed to masochism - there was also the evidence of social life, that is to say, the 1914-18 war. Although he gave way to nationalistic passion - how could he have done otherwise, with his own children on the front? - he unquestionably found additional encouragement here for advancing the hypothesis of the death drive. The massacre of hum an life, occurring in what was called a world war, might have led him to think that the first aim of this drive was the death of someone else. This was only how it seemed. He took advan­ tage of this to extend the horizons of his lucidity in Thoughts for the

Times on War and Death' (part II 'Our Attitude towards Death') (1915).13 There he pointed out how we are indifferent to the death of others when they are not part of our libidinal patrimony. Even when they are, however painful their loss may be, we eventually resign ourselves to no longer counting them among our own. For in spite of the enormous attachment which ties us to them, they are never more than guests whom we welcome within us. Basically, they remain strangers to our most intimate ego, which survives their passing away. However, although death remains inconceivable for us, it is perhaps the death of those who have been the objects of our love which has whispered to us the idea of immortality. In Totem and Taboo (1912-13), Freud set out many reasons explaining why the thought of 'primitive peoples' exhibited a spon­ taneous belief in immortality. One of them shows us just how much such a belief is explicable. The death of a person who has been cathected libidinally and internalised in the ego in no way does away with their existence within us. Not only do the traces left by memory keep them alive in our psyche, but they reappear in our sleep in the form they had many years before they took leave of the world. Even though their body has gone, their soul lives on in us in the uncon­ scious. If their soul is immortal, then so is ours. Shadows haunt the sleep of the living, plunging them into mourning without their even realising it. 'The shadow of the object' [that is, its ghost] fell upon the ego', we read in 'Mourning and Melancholia'. No doubt there is good reason to suppose that this danger makes sleep impossible: Lady Macbeth lived an interminable waking nightmare which only stopped with death. The dead invite themselves when they have something to reproach us with, or a debt to remind us of. In short, we may think we have mourned our lost loved ones, but this m ourning is never as complete as we think. The souls of the dead live on in the unconscious, even if they are no longer thirsty for blood and accommodate our taste for living. The close links between mourning and the state of being in love naturally come to m ind here. One succeeds the other, as its reverse side or its inverted double. If we consider, as Freud did - although this is open to discussion - that narcissism is impoverished by love, the overestimation of the object going hand in hand with the underestimation of the ego,14 it is easier to understand that, once the state of being in love has cooled off or is completely over, the ego is bolstered with the sense of its own worth and gives fresh impetus to its belief in its immortality. M. Torok15 notes quite rightly that immediately following the death of a loved one, and before the work of mourning proper begins, the ego reacts to this loss by a brief period of euphoria - unexpressed, more often than not, for obvious reasons - which does not merely explain

the denial of death but also the ego's trium phant satisfaction at still being alive. Maniacal mourning, or the switch from m ourning to mania, is an illustration of the defensive resources of the ego which shows itself here to be much more than just 'supremely indifferent'. There are, then, a stack of sufficiently persuasive arguments to suggest that the ego's immortality has at its disposal a very large area in the psyche, since it extends from normality to psychosis. Even if there is justification for linking it with narcissism, it should nonethe­ less be added that it is also the same narcissism which is directly affected by the death drives, within the ego. I do not think it is possible to confine ourselves to Freud's formulations on narcissism, by situating it entirely on the side of the life drives. Alongside positive narcissism we need to put its inverted double, which I propose to call negative narcissism. So Narcissus is also Janus. Instead of sustaining the aim of unifying the ego through the activity of the sexual drives, negative narcissism, under the influence of the Nirvana principle, representing the death drives, tends towards lowering all libido to the level zero, aspiring for psychical death. I think this is what may be logi­ cally inferred with regard to the fate of narcissism after the final theory of the drives. Beyond the parcelling which fragments the ego, drawing it back to auto-erotism, absolute primary narcissism seeks the mimetic sleep of death. This is the quest of non-desire for the Other, of non­ existence, non-being; another way of acceding to immortality. The ego is never more immortal than when it claims that it no longer has any organs or body. Such is the case of the anorexic who refuses to be dependent on his (or her) bodily needs and reduces these appetites by means of a drastic inhibition, letting himself die, as one says so aptly. It is not just individuals who let themselves die. There are also whole civilisations w hich seem to be stricken with apathy, renouncing their ideals and sinking into passivity; a forewarning of their extinction, once they have lost all illusion with regard to their future. This is an aspect of the final part of Freud's work which has not b£en given sufficient attention by his commentators. If Freud became increasingly convinced, day after day, that there were good grounds for affirming the major role played by the destructive drives, it was not because he was making an unreasonable generalisation on the basis of what he had learnt from clinical experience. We know that his am bition was not just to throw light on the mystery of neurosis, or even of psychosis. The treatment of the neuroses was simply one application of the method. Although less assured than when it draws its conclusions from clinical work, observing the social world confirms what the psychoanalyst's ear is able to decipher from the conscious discourse. Societies - from the most 'primitive' to the most civilised - repeatedly iterate their desire for peace and tear each

other apart in war, as in peacetime. Is it not true that war, in the last analysis, is the best protection against the fratricidal danger of civil war? Shakespeare was well aware of this already. Civilisation is no more than the result of the balance between the life drives and the death drives. It improves the lot of individuals, enabling them to enjoy many advantages which are not available to uncivilised peoples - who, incidentally, enjoy others. But it is also the favoured terrain of the death drives. There is little in the way of tech­ nical progress which does not serve lethal ends. Moreover, civilisation compels individuals to renounce drive satisfactions, thereby restricting the field of Eros. It is Eros which facilitates repression, lends value to sublimation, and tends towards auto-satisfaction. An ineradicable narcissism leads to the idea that one civilisation is worth more than the others. The conflict even occurs between so-called civilised nations, giving free rein to barbarity which they justify with the most noble ideals. This programme calls for compensations for the sacrifices demanded of Eros, which cannot be satisfied by using aggressivity. This was, no doubt, the function of the ideal, by means of religion formerly, and then through political ideologies, both past and present. The immortality of the gods was to have its counterpart in the immortality of heroes (warriors, athletes, politicians, saints, philoso­ phers, artists and scientists). It is not unimportant to recall that between Beyond the Pleasure Principle and The Ego and the Id, came Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego (1921), in which Freud was already making a prophecy, without realising it, about the destiny of certain European societies which was driving them towards dictator­ ship. But in this instance he showed himself to be timid, for he did not dare use the resources of the last drive theory which he had just put forward. At a time when he was still hesitating over the signifi­ cance of his discovery and venturing into the social domain, he felt it was wise not to add the hypothetical death drive to the conjectural character of his exploration. But in Civilisation and its Discontents (1930) he corrected this omission. Moses and Monotheism (1939) was a continuation of Totem and Taboo (1912-13), boldly affirming that the father was indeed killed by his sons - against all probability. This was not so much in order to demonstrate the permanence of the Oedipus complex, which had been part of collective life since the earliest times, as to reaffirm the work of the death drive and the means by which a nation resists its own extinction. This meditation on and gathering around the Holy Book was its sole contribution, he said, to the process of civilisation. Today, the political project has taken over from the Scriptures. Nowadays, it would seem that many societies no longer find the means to give collective support to the fantasy of immortality by cele­

brating rites or commemorating the past. Deprived of its cement in the community, immortality is neglected like an abandoned tomb. It is relegated to the level of a peculiar belief, a 'private religion', still strongly rooted in the psyche, but afraid of the criticisms of the rational ego. Admittedly, this is just an outward reaction which has little bearing on the internal world. The requirements of rationality have nevertheless put an end to the security which the ego obtained from a respectable and commendable shared conviction, its collective expression being a source of nourishment for individual pride. Even though everyone knows within himself that his neighbour cannot do without this illusion either, the lost sense of com m union is missed. This raises legitimate questions. W ithout this social system of support, what will become of this essential form of expression of the relationship between man and death, his death? It may be that soci­ eties which have maintained this faith in the immortality of individuals who will have to pay the price for the coming of a utopian golden age by sacrificing their lives, will be the ones to trium ph over the others in which immortality has been reduced to nothing more than an offshoot of the individual unconscious. In any case, it is doubtful whether this more or less fanatical faith can achieve its objectives without resorting to the destruction of other societies inspired by different ideologies, and, as experience has taught us, to internal violence. For the pursuit of megalomaniac ideals (changing hum an nature!) results in many deaths. We should be prepared then for the disillusionment which will certainly arise, curbing the fulfilment of promises. Under the pressure of men and events, these societies will perhaps be obliged to return to Eros certain rights of which it has been plundered. This was already the conclu­ sion of Civilisation and its Discontents, more than fifty years ago. Is it fair to hope that immortality, put to the service of Eros, will be able to assign itself more modest aims, finding sufficient narcissistic satis­ factions in the pride of belonging to a cultural tradition, without despising the others; and, of adding to the pleasures of belonging those of filiation, the daughter of alliance? This is perhaps the nature of the challenge which presents itself to modern man: the heavens have been deserted by the gods and so he only has himself to rely on. In his thoughts on life and death Freud found courage in stoic morality. Today, it is perhaps no longer enough to prepare oneself serenely for the eventuality of death. It is also necessary to try and check the temptation to abandon ourselves collectively to it when it threatens the planet with irreparable havoc.

Notes

Preface 1. 2.

3. 4. 5. 6.

7. 8.

9.

This is a reference to the author's recollection of spending a few hours sitting in an orchard. [Translator's note] At the International Congress of Psychoanalysis in 1971, the International Psychoanalytic Association, which was celebrating Freud's return to Vienna in the person of his daughter Anna, proposed aggres­ sivity as the theme of reflection for its scientific debates. It was noticeable that, fifty years after Beyond the Pleasure Principle, almost all the analysts remained sceptical about the existence of the death drives with the exception of the Kleinians who, however, assigned a rather different meaning to the death drive than Freud had. In English in the original; author's italics. Author's italics. The reader may like to refer to my contribution on borderline cases in On Private Madness. London: Hogarth Press, 1986. By 'real' object, I do not mean we can determine the 'reality' of the said object, which always remains elusive, but the presence within the subject of a discourse which alienates him from himself but originates outside himself, superimposing itself on his own discourse. It would be more correct to speak of the object from outside being on the inside; though there is little reason to doubt the reality of certain traumas suffered by the external object. Lacan's expression. It is essential to understand that these displacements will inevitably only result in imperfect solutions, always more or less unsatisfying - that's life!, as we say. For the hope of finding the inaugural experience of satis­ faction again is a retrospective fantasy and the attempt to reproduce it a lure. But it is also because of this that the libido is always searching for new investments involving instinctual satisfaction that is more or less sublimated. In English in the original.

Chapter 1 1. 2.

3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.

11. 12. 13. 14. 15.

16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22.

London: Macmillan and Co., 1926, vol. 1, p. 314. 'Likeness' attenuates the sense of 'image' by excluding the idea of parity. The concrete term 'image' implies a physical similarity as between Adam and his son (Genesis 5:3). It also implies a general similarity of nature: intelligence, will and strength; man is a person. It makes way for a higher revelation: the participation of nature through grace. (Genesis 1:26-27. The Holy Bible, RSV.) Freud, S. (1895b). Project for a Scientific Psychology, SE, I, p. 323. Freud, S. (1910b). SE, XI, p. 211. See the note in SE, XIV, p. 73. See Chapter 2. Grunberger, B. (1971). Narcissism. Paris: Payot. Lichtenstein, H., 'Le role du narcissisme dans l'emergence et le maintien d'une identite primaire', Nouvelle revue de psychanalyse, 1976, no. 7. Laplanche, J. (1970). Vie et mort en psychanalyse. Paris: Flammarion. Rosenfeld, H. 'A clinical approach to the psychoanalytic theory of the life and death instincts: an investigation into the aggressive aspects of narcissism', Nouvelle revue de psychanalyse, 1976, no. 7. In English in the original. [Translator's note] Kernberg, O. (1975). Borderline Conditions and Pathological Narcissism. Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson, 1985. Pasche, F. (1969a). A partir de Freud. Paris: Payot. Lacan, J. (1966). Ecrits. Paris: Le Seuil. See Green, A. (1999). The Fabric o f Affect in the Psychoanalytic Discourse. Trans. Alan Sheridan. London: Routledge. First published in 1973 as Le discours vivant. Paris: PUF. Castoriadis-Aulagnier, P. (1975). La violence de Yinterpretation. Paris: PUF. In The Complete Letters o f Sigmund Freud to Wihelm Fliess (1985). Trans. J.M. Masson. London: Belknap Harvard Press, p. 390. Green, A. 'Sexualite et ideologie chez Marx et Freud', Etudes freudiennes, 1969, nos 1-2. SE, XIV, p. 100. See Chapter 4. Fe^lern and Grunberger have developed this point, often referred to by the latter as 'narcissistic elation'. There is a gulf in this respect between the Judeo-Christian and Eastern religions. Whereas the Judeo-Christian religions clearly boggle at thinking about emptiness, Zen makes it its point of reference. J.-F. Lyotard (L'economie libidinale, Paris: Editions de Minuit) vigorously denounces the Tao: Thirty spokes converge at the hub, but it is the emptiness between them that makes the wheel turn' (Tao-te Ching, XI: my translation). Curiously, his point of view is closely akin to Father Merton's when debating with Suzuki (Zen, Tao and Nirvana), belief in Christ excepted. As for Islam, it falls between the two. M. Shaffii shows this clearly in 'Silence and Meditation', International Journal o f Psycho­ Analysis, 1973, p. 53.

23.

24. 25.

At the end of his work, in the Outline {SE, XXIII, p. 188), Freud proposes a different formulation which speaks volumes on this evolution: There is no doubt that, to begin with, the child does not distinguish between the breast and its own body; when the breast has to be separated from the body and shifted to the “outside” because the child so often finds it absent, it carries with it as an "object" a part of the original narcissistic libidinal cathexis. This first object is later completed into the person of the child's mother... .' Freud, S. (1940b [1938]). 'Splitting of the Ego in the Process of defence', SE, XXIII, p. 271. 'A Metapsychological Supplement to the Theory of Dreams' (1917a [1915]) in On Metapsychology. B. Lewin's notion of the blank dream screen enables us to think better about the background against which dream figures appear. However, one may wonder if it is still the hallucination of the breast that is involved or if the blank does not represent the absence of representation. Hindu thought points in this direction. Well before neuro-physiological research, which led to the discovery of the cerebral dream stage (a paradoxical phase) and the stage of dreamless sleep, The Questions o f King Melinda (second century b c to second century a d ), a Buddhist work, gave precise answers to these questions. King Melinda who is reminiscent of the Greek King Menander - is having a discussion with a Buddhist sage, Nagasena. He asks: 'Venerable Nagasena, when a man dreams a dream, is he awake or asleep?' 'Neither the one, O King, nor yet the other. But, when his sleep has become light, and he is not yet fully conscious, in that interval it is that dreams are dreamt. When a man is in deep sleep, O King, his mind has returned home, and a mind thus shut in does not act, and a mind hindered in its action knows not the evil and the good, and he who knows not has no dreams. It is when the mind is active that dreams are dreamt. Just, O King, as in the darkness and gloom, where no light is, no shadow will fall even on the most burnished mirror, so when a man is in deep sleep, his mind has returned into itself, and a mind shut in does not act, and a mind inactive knows not the evil and the good, and he who knows not does not dream. For it is when the mind is active that dreams are dreamt. As the mirror, O King, are you to regard the body, as the darkness sleep, as the light the mind' (vol. 2: IV, 8, 36. Trans. T.W. Rhys Davids. Oxford: Clarendon, 1894). Here we have the idea of the neuter (neither fortune = pleasure, nor misfortune = unpleasure). The theory of the four states already existed in earlier Upanishads (sixth century b c ). The Kausitaki-upanishad says: 'When a man is fast asleep and sees no dreams at all, then these become unified within this very breath - his speech then merges into it together with all the names; his sight merges into it together with all the visible appearances; his hearing merges into it together with all the sounds' (in Upanishads. Trans. Patrick Olivelle. Oxford: Oxford World Classics, 3, 3: p. 217). Thus in the most ancient Upanishad (Brihadaranyaka), a king and a Brahman arrive at a place where a man is sleeping and greeted him in these words: 'O Soma, great king dressed in white!' (2, 1, 15: p. 25).

For further study of these questions, see Les songes et leur interpretation. Paris: Seuil, 1959. 26. In On Metapsychology. 27. David, C. (1971). L'Etat amoreux. Paris: Petite Bibliotheque, Payot. 28. SE, XIV, p. 78. 29. In italics in the original. [Translator's note] 30. In italics in the original. [Translator's note] 31. See Althusser, L. (1974). Philosophie et philosophie spontanee des savants, Maspero. 32. And two counter-models: Schreber and Dostoyevsky. Too destructive. 33. Frege, G. (1971). Etudes logiques et philosophiques. Paris: Seuil. See Green, A. 'L'objet a de J. Lacan', Cahiers pour l'analyse, 1966, no. 3. 34. We have shown in 'Repetition, difference, replication', Revue frangaise de psychanalyse, 1970, no. 3, the kinship with the myth of Aristophanes in the Symposium which Freud interprets in his own way with the genetic code of Watson and Crick. T. Sebeok has defended the unity of all codes or the way they interlock, from the genetic code to language (L'unite de I'homme, Paris: Seuil). 35. Kirk, G.S. (1973). Myth. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 36. See La dissymmetrie (1973) by R. Caillois. Paris: Gallimard. 37. Here I should write nothing and leave a blank to avoid positivising the concept. It is left to the reader to inscribe his own signifier. 38. See Donnet, J.L. and Green, A. (1973). L'Enfant de $a. Paris: Editions de Minuit. 39. Bion, W. (1975). Brazilian Lectures. Rio de Janeiro: Imago Editora Ltd. 40. Constituted by combining two primary defences: turning around upon the self and reversal into its opposite. 41. Laing, R.D. (1965). The Divided Self. London: Penguin. 42. This may be translated as: Closeness through rapprochement and close­ ness through rejection. [Translator's note] 43. Bouvet, M. (1969). Oeuvres completes. Paris: Payot, vol. 1. 44. A term coined by the author meaning 'to be put in a passive situation which is constraining'. [Translator's note] 45. * See Engel, G. 'Anxiety and depression withdrawal: the primary affects of unpleasure', International Journal o f Psycho-Analysis, 1962, no. 43, f)p. 88-97. 46. For further exploration of this term, see Dylan Evans' (1996), An Introductory Dictionary o f Lacanian Psychoanalysis (London: Routledge), p. 97: a term 'coined by Lacan from the definite article la and the noun langue) ... Lalangue is like the primary chaotic substrate of polysemy out of which language is constructed, almost as if language is some ordered superstructure sitting on top of this substrate: "language is without doubt made of lalangue'". [Translator's note] 47. See Pontalis, J.-B. (1975). 'Naissance et reconnaissance du self, in Psychologie de la connaissance de soi. Paris: PUF. 48. For memory: 'Having' and 'being' in children. Children like expressing an object-relation by an identification: 'I am the object.' 'Having' is the later of the two; after loss of the object it relapses into 'being'. Example: the

49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58.

breast. The breast is part of me, I am the breast/ Only later: 'I have it' that is, '1 am not it' ... (Findings, Ideas, Problems, SE, XXIII, pp. 299-300). Let us recall that this note of 12 July 1938 begins by referring to identifi­ cation with the clitoris, thus to sexual difference and to the denial that this interpretation arouses. In English, and in italics, in the original text. [Translator's note] An allusion to the words of Augustus in Pierre Corneille's Cinna, Act V, III, 1696. London: Penguin Classics, 1975. [Translator's note] 'On parle d'un enfant', Revue frangaise de psychanalyse, 1976, no. 40, pp. 733-9. See Green, A. 'La psychanalyse, son objet, son avenir', Revue frangaise de psychanalyse, 1975, nos 1-2, pp. 103-34. See Green, The Fabric o f Affect An allusion to Homer's Odyssey, Book IX, 397. London: Everyman's Library. [Translator's note] Miller, J.-A. 'Theorie de la langue (rudiments)', Omicar, 1975, no. 1, pp. 16-34. Derrida, J. 'Le facteur de la verit£', Poetique, 1975, vol. 21, pp. 96-147. Green, The Fabric o f Affect Von Foerster, H. 'Notes pour une epistemologie des objets vivants', L'unite de Yhomme.

59. 60.

61.

62. 63.

64. 65. 66.

Neyraut, M. (1975). Le transfert. Paris: PUF. This painting has been reproduced for the cover page of L'Arc, no. 34, dedicated to Freud. See Freud's commentary on it in his Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis. Grimal, P. (1951). Dictionnaire de la mythologie grecque et romaine. Paris:

PUF. Our interpretation is based on the dictionary article and not on the original texts. An interpretation of interpretations. See the Nouvelle revue de psychanalyse: 'Bisexualite et difference des sexes', 1973, no. 7. Remember that Shakespeare did not invent the situation; it is already in Holinshed (see Holinshed's Chronicle as Used in Shakespeare's Plays. London: Dent & Outton). But he writes it. For more details, see Green, A. 'Lear ou les voi(es) de la nature', Critique, 1971, no. 284. Lear, the Fool, and Edgar. Breuer, to whom he confided this, disclosed that he did the same.

Chapter 2 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

SE, XVIII, p. 59. An Outline o f Psycho-Analysis, SE, XXIII, p. 150.

'A Metapsychological Supplement to the Theory of Dreams', SE, XIV, p. 222. 'A Metapsychological Supplement'. Author's italics. SE, XXIII, p. 198.

7.

8.

9.

10.

11.

12.

13.

'In consequence, the nervous system is obliged to abandon its original trend to inertia (i.e. to bringing the level o f tension to zero). It must put up with [maintaining] a store of Q>) sufficient to meet the demand for a specific action. Nevertheless, the manner in which it does this shows that the same trend persists, modified into an endeavour at least to keep the Q?7as low as possible and to guard against any heightening of it - that is to keep it constant (my italics)/ Project for a Scientific Psychology (1895b), SE, I, p. 29 7. Mentioned by Breuer, attributing it to Freud in the Preliminary Communication as well as in a lecture given by Freud in 1893 (SE, III, p. 36). 'a principle ... which promised to be highly enlightening, since it appeared to comprise the entire function. This is the principle of neuronal inertia' (The Project, SE, I, p. 296). Ibid., p. 297: 'All the functions of the nervous system can be comprised either under the aspect of the primary function or of the secondary one imposed by the exigencies of life/ The primary function is the trend towards reducing the level of tension to the level zero; the secondary function is that of keeping the quantity of excitation as low as possible. The pleasure principle follows from the principle of constancy' (Beyond the Pleasure Principle, Chapter I). Freud explains himself by adding imme­ diately afterwards:/... actually the latter principle was inferred from the facts which forced us to adopt the pleasure principle'. To understand the probable origin of this theoretical shift it is necessary to go back even earlier. Since Freud felt an imperious necessity to preserve the theoretical difference between primary and secondary, and, as, since 1911 (that is, since his 'Formulations on the Two Principles of Mental Functioning'), he had linked secondary processes to the reality principle, he could no longer attribute the primary function to phenomena whose aim was to bring tension to the level zero in order to free it entirely from excitation. Instead, he was content with a relative value; that is, of keeping tension constant or, at least, as low as possible. For the reality principle is simply a supplementary detour imposed to safeguard pleasure and does not tally with the trend towards stability. '...It should be noted, however, that strictly speaking, it is incorrect to talk of the dominance of the pleasure principle over the course of mental processes ... the most that can be said, therefore, is that there exists in the mind a strong tendency towards the pleasure principle, but that that tendency is opposed by certain other forces or circumstances so that the final outcome cannot always be in harmony with the tendency towards pleasure. We may compare what Fechner remarks on a similar point: "Since however a tendency towards an aim does not imply that the aim is attained, and since in general the aim is attainable only by approxi­ mations ...'" (Beyond the Pleasure Principle, Chapter I, SE, XVIII, pp. 9-10. Even though he did not name the two principles of inertia-Nirvana and constancy-pleasure separately, up until 1915 it was clear from the text what the differences between them were. The commentators of the Standard Edition draw attention to this very clearly. In this respect, I

14. 15. 16.

17. 18. 19.

20. 21.

should point out that I do not see the relations between the two princi­ ples in the same way. In my view, one should not divide, as the commentators of the Standard Edition do, these two principles into the principle of constancy, from which the principle of Nirvana is inferred, and the pleasure principle, characterised by the tendency to master stimuli by reducing tension to the lowest level possible and avoiding unpleasure. In my opinion, the principle of constancy is confused with this tendency to mastery that Freud attributes to the pleasure principle, whereas we should put together the principle of inertia and the principle of Nirvana from which the notion of mastery is absent and which the subject endures. For although pleasure is indeed what the individual is seeking, in many other notes Freud shows us that forces of another kind are at work, with the result that this quest is itself subjugated. We should nonetheless be grateful to Strachey and his colleagues for having identi­ fied the existence of two distinct functions. It is only in the first part of Beyond the Pleasure Principle that the two principles are condensed. I believe - without wishing to suggest that his presentation was artful that it was because he was soon going to argue in favour of a Beyond the pleasure principle that he began by giving the latter as large a dimension as possible. That Freud never really believed this is suggested by the following citation from The Ego and the Id (1923): 'if it is true that Fechner's principle of constancy governs life, which thus consists of a continuous descent towards death ...' (SE, XIX, p. 47). This point needs stressing, for the interpretation of modern versions of primary narcissism depends on it. They are compatible with the sover­ eignty of the pleasure principle, the removal of tension - and, ultimately, the annihilation of the conflict - which may account for the ego's euphoria or ego-cosmicity. On the other hand, if the fundamental prin­ ciple is indeed that of reducing tension to zero (rather than counterbalancing it) then primary narcissism cannot be held responsible for the manifestations described, even if they retain their clinical value. SE, XVIII, pp. 55-6. and we shall henceforward avoid regarding the two principles as one' (SE, XIX, p. 160). The Nirvana principle, belonging as it does to the death instinct, has undergone a modification in living organisms through which it has become the pleasure principle ... It is not difficult to guess what power was the source of the modification. It can only be the life instinct, the libido, which has thus, alongside of the death instinct, seized upon a share in the regulation of the processes of life' (ibid.). 'On Narcissism: An Introduction', SE, XIV, p. 78. In the sense of the term as used by Charles Bally. 'We assume that mental life is the function of an apparatus to which we ascribe the characteristics of being extended in space ...' SE, XXIII, p. 145. Ibid., p. 147. Cf. Green, A. (2000). La diachronie en psychanalyse. Paris: Editions de Minuit.

22.

23. 24.

25.

26. 27.

28. 29. 30. 31.

32.

The first part of the Outline, to which Freud gave no title, contains two chapters on the fundamental tenets, The Psychical Apparatus7and The Theory of the Instincts', two further chapters derived from the first two: The Development of the Sexual Function', which should be related to the second, just as 'Psychical Qualities' should be related to the first, and the chapter on dreams, which serves as an illustration, as the title indi­ cates, of the foregoing chapters. SE, XVIII, p. 63. Thus our analysis has shown us that what may be attributed to a hesita­ tion, or even an uncertainty, between the principle of inertia, on the one hand, and the principle of constancy and the pleasure principle, on the other, is not irrelevant here. The principle of inertia was affirmed as long as the drive was not defined sexually in the 'Project' and, although later Freud seemed to stress the relation between keeping the level of excita­ tion constant and pleasure, it was precisely because he intended to introduce a conceptual element which had power over it, situated beyond. The postulate he advanced was that of the compulsion to repeat. And finally, it was when he no longer doubted that the death drive was not just a working assumption but a fundamental fact, that he circum­ scribed the pleasure principle and redefined the Nirvana principle as an abstract generality or virtuality of which the pleasure principle was a modification. The detailed report by Daniel Lagache particularly excels in its critique of naturalising conceptions of the drive. The author principally sees the latter as a 'latent object relation'. Do not these 'functional object rela­ tions', which pre-exist actual object relations, pose the problem of the relations between the theory of the drives and the psychical apparatus? Cf. La psychanalyse, vol. 6, pp. 18-22. SE, XXIII, pp. 149 and 156. In The Logic of Lacan's objet a and Freudian Theory: Convergences and Questions', Interpreting Lacan: Psychiatry and the Humanities, vol. 6. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983. I tried to use these formulations advantageously by applying them to the theoretical approach of psycho­ analysis. Lacan, J. 'Remarque sur le rapport de D. Lagache', La psychanalyse, vol 6, pt'121. [My translation] Derrida, J. (1967). 'Freud et la scene de l'ecriture', L'ecriture et la difference. Paris: Seuil. Cf. 'Appendix B' which follows The Ego and the Id (SE, XIX, p. 63). After the ego-id differentiation these narcissistic affects are transferred to the ego. It is worth mentioning here Freud's note, found after his death, on mysticism - in which feelings of elation and expansion are intense considered as self-perception, beyond the Ego, of the Id. Notably in Beyond the Pleasure Principle: The difficulty remains that psychoanalysis has not enabled us hitherto to point to any [ego-] instincts other than the libidinal ones. That, however, is no reason for our falling in with the conclusion that no others in fact exist.' And in the Encyclopaedia article of 1922: 'Nevertheless, it has to be borne in mind

33. 34. 35.

36.

37. 38.

that the fact that the self-preservative instincts of the ego are recognised as libidinal does not necessarily prove that there are no other instincts operating in the ego7(SE, XVIII, pp. 53 and 257). The Ego and the Id, SE, XIX, p. 40. SE, XXII, p. 97. In his study #On the Universal Tendency to Debasement in the Sphere of Love' (1912), Freud attributes certain psychical disturbances of sexuality to the absence of a union between two currents of libido: the affectionate current and the sensual current The affectionate current, the older of the two, is the one that corresponds to the child's primary object-choice. It carries along with it contributions from the sexual instincts which are at the origin of erotic cathexes formed in the attachment or anaclitic mode. The sensual current, which appears with the arrival of puberty and no longer mistakes its aims, follows the earlier paths created by the currents that pre-existed it. A failure in sexual activity stems from the fact that the affectionate current is thought to have carried with it, along a divergent path, the contributions of the primitive sexual instincts, so that the cathexes of puberty, separated by the barrier of incest from infantile cathexes, gain the upper hand in the final organisation (SE, XI, p. 180ff.). One can find connections between these classical Freudian notions and certain formulations of J. Lacan, without, however, making them coincide entirely. In this division of labour, the cathexes which have undergone the internal inhibition of the drive do indeed meet up with the object, at the price of sacrificing the lack, whereas the drives which find satisfaction in organ pleasure remain in waiting for a non-identified addressee, wandering endlessly in devotion to the desire of the Other. The Ego and the Id, SE, XIX, p. 31. Adopting this point of view makes certain essential passages more intel­ ligible. Would Freud have got so deeply involved in the article on The Psychology of Love', crediting the two currents with the same impor­ tance? Would he have built the problematics of social relations in Civilisation and its Discontents around the opposition between genital love and love with an inhibited aim if the second term in the pair did not have the authority to make itself heard to the same extent as the first? When, in the New Introductory Lectures, he retraces the theory of the drives, he certainly seems to group together the change of aim and object (sublimation) with the inhibition of aim by expressly distinguishing them from other drives. Although 'Instincts and their Vicissitudes' only defined the drive in terms of the demand made upon the mind for work in consequence of its connection with the body, Freud added in the New Introductory Lectures (XXXII): 'on its path from its source to its aim the instinct becomes psychically operative'. It becomes easier to understand, then, why he could not accept that this restraint, this reserve, was a vicis­ situde among others. It is difficult to see how things could have been otherwise when we recall that already in 'Instincts and their Vicissitudes' Freud, who was beginning to have an inkling of the nature of sublima­ tion, saw it as one of the four fundamental modes of the vicissitudes of the drive, along with repression and the two reversals (upon the self and

39.

40.

41. 42. 43. 44. 45.

46.

47.

48. 49. 50. 51.

into its opposite). However, if our view that there is a coincidence between the inhibition of aim with the loss of the object-breast and the apprehension of the object-mother seems to brings us closer to that of J. Laplanche and J.-B. Pontalis in the relation that they themselves estab­ lish between this structural moment and auto-erotism, the differences of interpretation and points of discussion on the relation between narcis­ sism and repression will be made clearer in the course of this work. Cf. 'Fantasme originaire, fantasme des origines, origine du fantasme', Temps modemes, no. 215, April 1964. Let us note once again that it is the components of the drive that are responsible for this and not the action of repression, however primal it may be. One could almost say that they find a taker in repression. We come across this assertion of 1912 again, almost unaltered, in the note left by Freud after his death and dated June 1938 (SE, XXIII, p. 299). It is worth pointing out that Freud recognises the role played by social prohi­ bitions, since he mentions the other major cause of the fragility of the sexual function, that is, the prohibition of incest. In short, there are two complementary series: one concerning the restrictions and limitations of the super-ego, the other being intrinsic to the id. 'For the ego, perception plays the part which in the id falls to instinct.' 'Speaking broadly, perceptions may be said to have the same significance for the ego as instincts have for the id' (SE, XIX, pp. 25 and 40). Ibid., pp. 37 and 38. Ibid., p. 31. Ibid., p. 30. Ibid., pp. 30, 45 and 54. This is further evidence that in Freud's mind there is a link between iden­ tification and this common group of phenomena: The effects of the first identifications made in earliest childhood will be general and lasting' (ibid., p. 31). Ibid., pp. 46 and 54. This obviously does not work in favour of the idea of a non-conflictual energy; here Freud is referring to the most lethal aspect of Eros. 'Conscious processes on the periphery of the ego and everything else in the ego unconscious - such would be the simplest state of affairs that we might picture. And such may in fact be the state that prevails in animals. But in men there is an added complication through which internal processes in the ego may also acquire the quality of consciousness.' And he then goes on to speak about the function of speech. (SE, XXIII, p. 162). The Ego and the Id, SE, XIX, p. 55. The Outline, SE, XXIII, p. 162. 'Fantasme originaire, fantasme des origines, origine du fantasme', Hachette, 1985. Original publication in Les Temps modemes, 1964. This was not their purpose. Laplanche and Pontalis set out to link fantasy to the auto-erotic stage; but, since they rejected certain interpretations of fantasy by suggesting that it originated with auto-erotism, it would have been logical for them to exhaust the sources of Freudian theory on this issue.

52.

53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62.

63.

64.

65.

This idea may seem paradoxical because organ pleasure is obtained here. In fact, what we wish to draw attention to is that auto-erotic pleasure inhibits the pleasure of sucking the breast carrying milk. 'Fantasme originaire', p. 1866. Ibid., since Laplanche and Pontalis see in fantasy the emergence of desire and regard the latter as originating during the auto-erotic period. 'L'anti-narcissisme', Revue frangaise de psychanalyse, XXIX, 1965, p. 503. SE, XIV, p. 134. And certain passages in Freud lend weight to this interpretation at first sight. By the reality-ego, initially. The Outline, SE, XXII, p. 163. SE, XIV, p. 147. At least in its early forms. SE, XIV, p. 147 (Freud's italics); a statement that is repeated at the end of the article. This quotation expresses unambiguously that repression cannot be attributed with the power of constituting the unconscious since, from Freud's point of view, at least, the distinction between conscious and unconscious is pre-existent to it. Further, Freud implicitly recognises the existence of defence mechanisms before repression comes into operation. Here we have a striking example of the fact that, for him, the oldest or earliest element is not always the most important; for there is no question that, to his mind, repression was the most significant defence mechanism. SE, XX, p. 92. An essential difference between the protective shield and repression lies, no doubt, in their respective natures: biological, in the first case, and psychical, in the second. There is an extreme ambiguity here, for the terms need to be related to the contextual situations. Flight is an active phenomenon which, over a period of time, has allowed a protective shield to be formed. In a way, the latter has reaped the benefit of this resistance through blocking activity from outside. That the internal barrier functions in the same way does not obscure the fact that this defence comes into operation in response to a situation in which the subject is essentially 'passivated', that is, rendered passive in a way that is restricting; and, that flight, which can now only turn inwards towards the subject himself, feeds, preserves and works on such passivity. [Incidentally, passivation is a term coined by the author (translator's note)] We can find further indication of this in all the warnings Freud gave against confusing repression and regression and notably in the lecture (XXII) where he discusses their relations: 'thus the concept of repression involves no relation to sexuality: I must ask you to take special note of that. It indicates a purely psychological process, which we can characterize still better if we call it a "topographical" one' {SE, XVI, p. 342). The whole difficulty lies in the conception one may have of an internal flight from an internal danger, and of a flight between different parts of a common, but heterogeneous organisation. This Freud knew perfectly well: 'I think it is probable that there are some defensive processes which can truly be

66. 67.

68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75.

76.

77.

78. 79.

likened to an attempt at flight, while in others the ego takes a much more active line of self-protection and initiates vigorous counter-measures. But perhaps the whole analogy between defence and flight is invalidated by the fact that both the ego and the instinct in the id are parts of the same organisation, not separate entities..., so that any kind of behaviour on the part of the ego will result in an alteration in the instinctual process as weir (Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety, SE, XX, p. 146). My italics. Addenda XI, SE, XX, p. 164. It is true that in a passage of a text preceding this addendum, Freud comes very close to comparing primary repression with the mechanism of the protective shield. But he reminds us imme­ diately of the limitations of the analogy: 'the protective shield exists only in regard to external stimuli, not in regard to internal instinctual demands'. Although he could not be certain, he suggested that perhaps the emergence of the super-ego provided the demarcation line between primal repression and after-pressure (ibid., p. 94). We can see even more clearly now the meaning of this metapsychological rectification since there is mention here, alongside the emergence of the super-ego, of the differentiation between ego and id. In any case, the final formulation in the Outline, where repression appears to be a rejecting behaviour towards that which has already been accepted, seems to me to be the most inter­ esting, not because it is the last but because it is the most fruitful from a heuristic point of view. 'Repression', SE, XIV, p. 147. Ibid., pp. 126-7 and 132. XXXIII Lecture, SE, XXII, p. 113. 'Instincts and their Vicissitudes', SE, XIV, p. 127. Three Essays on the Theory o f Sexuality, SE, VII, p. 182. 'On Narcissism: An Introduction', SE, XIV, p. 100. 'Instincts and their Vicissitudes', SE, XIV, p. 132. In spite of their apparent convergence, these two movements obey different trends. The mother seeks to be reunited with her object in order to form a greater unity with it, especially as the child's perception of and contact with the mother have reactivated fantasies of intimacy with her. The child's sole aim is to rediscover the conditions in which he was free b f all perturbation. It is remarkable that when separation in this sense occurs, the desire for reunion which has thus been sacrificed may impinge in return on the most fundamental functions of the drives of self-preservation; for instance, the sleep of wetrnurses. Beyond the Pleasure Principle. In other words, binding now has the function which formerly belonged to discharge. Unlike discharge, binding does not exhaust tension. By binding, it masters partly, and preserves through linking, that which disappears by exhausting itself through discharge. This would not explain, for instance, why the 'o-o-o-o' is a prolonged sound, whereas the ‘da ' only has a single scansion. The Ego and the Id, SE, XIX, p. 30.

80. 81.

82.

83.

84. 85.

86.

Beyond the Pleasure Principle.

It is striking that forming the Mobius strip involves two operations: turning the strip round towards its initial extremity (against oneself) and turning it inside out (into its opposite). All that is needed then is to join up the two extremities. We are indebted to Lacan for examining the applications of the Mobius strip in psychoanalysis. Our discussion of the model of narcissism owes much to Lacan's teaching. We have left aside his discussion of the concepts relating to this problem which deserve a special study in their own right. Their examination required that the present work be completed first. For a comparison of certain common points, see The Logic of Lacan's objet a and Freudian Theory: Convergences and Questions', Interpreting Lacan: Psychiatry and the Humanities, vol. 6. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983. Criticism may be raised against resorting to the Mobius strip as a model on account of its highly abstract nature. Yet I recall having studied the case of someone a few years ago who, in his personal fantasies, had managed to create a double who walked on the 'opposite' side to the one on which he himself was going without ever being able to meet up with him, continually returning to the point of departure. Cf. The "Uncanny"', SE, XVII. It is certainly no coincidence that Freud introduced the drives of self­ preservation after making a study of the visual function and that scopophilia is one of the two drives he refers to in his description of the double reversal. Hermaphrodite. Paris: PUF, 1958.

Chapter 3 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

8.

Translation by A.C. Graham. London: John Murray, 1960, p. 22. Freud, S. (1926 [1925]). Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety, SE, XX, p. 130. Which does not preclude improving the conditions of birth as far as is possible. A problem that has already been raised with the institution of the original reality-ego and the purified pleasure-ego. For reasons of discretion, I shall not give clinical examples as an illustra­ tion, although my hypothesis is based on them. Green, A. 'Le double et l'absent', Critique, May 1973, no. 312. Proust, M. (1996). In Search o f Lost Time. London: Vintage Classics, vol. 5, p. 803-4. It is interesting to note that Proust placed this addenda to the manuscript at a different place from the editors; that is, a few pages later (clearly an error). If this was an unconscious slip, it is worth noting that it occurred at the point when Marcel tells Albertine of his wish to replace her with Andree. So the object (Albertine) finds herself caught between the empty apparatus of the subject, on the one hand, and the object which succeeds her and takes her place, on the other. Between two deaths: one that is still to come and another that has already occurred. Bouvet, M. 'Depersonnalisation et relations d'objet', Revue frangaise de psychanalyse, 1960, 24 (4-5), p. 611. Cf. my contribution, pp. 651-6.

9. 10. 11.

12. 13.

14.

15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22.

23. 24. 25.

26.

27.

SE, XIV, p. 298.

Green, A. The Analyst, Symbolization and Absence in the Analytic Setting', in On Private Madness, London: Hogarth Press, 1986. This does not contradict the idea that identification can be imaginary identification with an image of the object rather than with the object itself. It is with respect to the imaginary aspect of representation that identification brings about transformation. The quantity of cathexes can diminish favouring an elevation of their level. R. Diatkine has pointed out that this failure of the object to adapt is a constitutive aspect of the relationship, and that it is a source of fruitful stimulation in later development. This terminology does not belong to traditional psychoanalytic vocabu­ lary and was even rejected by North American psychoanalysis as a title for a round table discussion at a Congress of the International Psychoanalytic Association. 'Sur la douleur' (psychique), in Entre le reve et la douleur. Paris: Gallimard, 1978. This may be related to what Rosolato calls the unknown relationship. Donnet, J.-L. and Green, A. (1973). L'enfant de Qa. Paris: Editions de Minuit. Bloch, O. and Von Wartburg, W. (1996). Dictionnaire etymologique de la langue frangaise. Paris: PUF. The French word blanc means both 'white' and a 'blank space'. [Translator's note] Originally published in French as Le discours vivant, 1973. English trans­ lation by Alan Sheridan. London: Routledge, 1999. [Translator's note] Or, more generally, the imperceptible, the insensible, and, ultimately, the unthinkable and the inconceivable. In 1960, with regard to the discussion of M. Bouvet's paper 'Depersonnalisation et relation d'objet', I suggested the following formula to characterise the decompensated narcissistic relationship: The ego breaks up but does not yield' (Le Moi rompt mais ne plie pas). In Playing and Reality. London: Tavistock, 1971. In French: Parer = to fend off; pare-excitation = the protective shield. [Translator's note] Cf. Green, A. (1986). The Analyst, Symbolisation and Absence in the Analytic Setting', in On Private Madness. London: Hogarth Press. Original publication in the Revue frangaise de psychanalyse, 1974, vol. 38, pp. 1190-230. By way of indication: insofar as language constitutes a homeostatic struc­ ture in relation to material and psychical reality, in relation to thought, it plays, the role of a third reality which overcomes the opposition of the other two by means of its predicative and constantly assertive function. Autonomy of the subject. The Book ofLieh Tzu, p. 82.

1. 2. 3. 4.

5.

6. 7.

8. 9. 10.

Dodds, E. (1951). The Greeks and the Irrational. Berkeley: University of California Press. Cf. Chapter 2: 'Primary Narcissism'. It goes without saying that we do not see any correspondence between the three forms of masochism and the three forms of narcissism. Lacan, J. (1966). Ecrits. Paris: Le Seuil. Freud, A. (1936). The Ego and the Mechanisms o f Defence. Revised edition, The Writings o f Anna Freud. New York: International Universities Press; London: Hogarth Press, vol. II. Male, P. (1956). 'Etude psychanalytique de l'adolescence', in S. Nacht (ed.) (1967). De la pratique a la theorie psychanalytique, Paris: PUF. Is the example which we have found in Ajax in contradiction with what we have just been saying? Ajax killed himself because Achilles' arms were given to another person. In his case, what was involved was a relation­ ship to possessions of which he was deprived. But let us not be mistaken here. What Ajax suffered from was a wounded self. This was because he had not been recognised as the most fearsome of warriors, of which the arms of Achilles, forged by Hephaestus, were a symbol. It was a phallic attribute that he was lacking, but in as far as this would procure him the admiration of friends and enemies. Which is why his reaction was one of shame, as if their attribution to another was a mark of his decline and worthlessness. The distinction between the most courageous (which he was) and the most fearsome (which Ulysses was, owing to his cunning) was meaningless for him. He could only face dishonour by abandoning life and all the objects which kept him attached to it. Pasche, F. (1969). 'De la depression', in A partir de Freud. Paris: Payot. Codet, H. and Laforgue, R. (1925). 'Les arrierations affectives: la schizonoYa', devolution psychiatrique, vol. I. Klein, M. (1946). 'Notes on some Schizoid Mechanisms', in Envy and Gratitude and Other Papers, 1921-45. The Writings of Melanie Klein.

11. 12.

13. 14.

15.

London: Hogarth Press, vol. III. Of course, this narcissistic hyper-cathexis is the consequence of an irreparable narcissistic wound. We will not consider metapsychology in terms of the three points of view, dynamic, topographical and economic, each taken separately. But under each heading it will easy to see what belongs to each of them. I am thinking here of the distinction in Latin between prima and summa, defended by G. Dumezil. Contrary to accepted opinion of recent years, I think, for my part, that affect is repressed and not simply suppressed. Cf. Green, A. (1999). The Fabric o f Affect in the Psychoanalytic Discourse. Trans. Alan Sheridan. London: Routledge. First published in 1973 as Le discours vivant. Paris: PUF. Or rather, parental. For the paternal penis is only the principal figuration and derivation of a parental penis which also belongs to the image of the phallic mother.

16. 17. 18. 19.

A phallus which, in short, has a double inscription: positive phallic and negative vaginal. Cassius is aware of this and whispers to Brutus: 'You don't know what you're doing/ But, also, it seems the most loved by his object of love, Caesar, who at this point in time seems to prefer Mark Antony to Brutus. Prince. 'Why, thou owest God a death/ Falstaff. "Tis not due yet: I would be loath to pay him before his day. What need I be so forward with him that calls not on me? Well, 'tis no matter; honour pricks on me. Yea, but how if honour prick me off when I come on? How then? Can honour set to a leg? No. Or an arm? No. Or take away the grief of a wound? No. Honour hath no skill in surgery then? No. What is honour? a word. What is that word, honour? Air. A trim reckoning! Who hath it? he that died o' Wednesday. Doth he feel it? No. Doth he hear it? No. It is insensible then? Yea, to the dead. But will it not live with the living? No. Why? Detraction will not suffer it. Therefore I'll none of it: honour is a mere scutcheon; and so ends my catechism' (Henry IV, I, V, I).

Chapter 5 1. 2. 3. 4.

5. 6. 7.

Kreisler, L. 'Les intersexuels avec ambiguite genitale', La psychiatrie de Venfant, XIII, 1970, pp. 5-127. Consult the large bibliography. Playing and Reality (1971), Chapters 5 and 6. Centre de consultations et de traitements psychanalytiques de Paris. (Translator's note] The alternate use of masculine and feminine to refer to the subject is inevitable in view of the extent to which the analyst, the misled spec­ tator of this hybridisation, was alternately caught between illusion and reality. Freud, S, SE, XXI, p. 106, footnote 3. Jacob, F. (1971). La Logique du vivant. Paris: Gallimard. Delcourt, M. (1958). Hermaphrodite. Paris: PUF.

s

Chapter 6 1. 2. 3.

4. 5.

Winnicott, D. (1971). Playing and Reality. London: Tavistock Publications. Kohut, H. (1972). The Analysis o f the Self. London: Karnac Books. Abraham, N. (1978). 'Le crime de l'introjection', and Torok, M. (1978) 'Maladie du deuil et fantasme du cadavre exquis', in Abraham, N., Uecorce et le noyau. Paris: Aubier-Flammarion. Rosolato, G. (1975). 'L'axe narcissique des depressions', Nouvelle revue de psychanalyse, 1975, no. 9, pp. 5-34. ‘Noir ou blanc' - in French blanc can mean either 'white' or 'blank'. In this chapter it has the latter meaning, 'empty', throughout. [Translator's note]

6.

7. 8. 9.

10.

11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18.

Green, A. The Borderline Concept', in On Private Madness, Chapter 3. London: Hogarth, 1986. First published in Borderline Disorders, ed. Peter Hartocollis. New York: International Universities Press, 1977. Green, A. (1973b). 'Le silence du psychanalyste', Topique 23. Green, A. (1968). 'Sur la mere phallique', Revue frangaise de psychanalyse 32. 'La structure encadrante': this notion combines in the word 'cadre' the meaning of 'frame', but is also used in the French sense of the 'setting', 'le cadre analytique' (of technical importance in this paper). [Translator's note] What I have just described cannot fail to evoke the very interesting ideas of N. Abraham and M. Torok. However, even if, on numerous points, our conceptions converge, they differ elsewhere on a theme to which I attach great importance, namely the clinical and metapsychological significance of states of emptiness. The manner in which I attempt to account for them is taken up in a continuous thread of thought, where, after having tried to define the heuristic value of the concept of negative hallucination and proposing the concept of 'blank psychosis' with J.-L. Donnet, I have in this work been engaged on the elucidation of what I call blank mourning. One might summarise these differences by stating that narcissism constitutes the axis of my theoretical reflection, whereas N. Abraham and M. Torok are essentially concerned with the relation between incorporation and introjection, with the crypt-like effect to which they give rise. Anzieu, D. (1986). Freud's Self-Analysis. London: Hogarth Press. Grinstein, A. (1972). 'Un reve de Freud: les trois Parques' (Freud's dream of the three Fates), Nouvelle Revue Psychanalyse 5. Bird = oiseau, also a familiar term for penis. [Translator's note] The French here is: et que Philippe ne I'ait enfermee dans un coffre, 'coffree' ou, vulgairement, ' tringlee'. [Translator's note] Masson, J.M. (ed.). (1985). The Complete Letters o f Sigmund Freud to Wilhelm Fliess, 1887-1904. London: The Belknap Press. SE, IV-V, p. 398n. Fain, M. and Braunschweig, D. (1971). Eros etAnteros. Paris: Payot. Fr. I'apres-coup; SE, 'deferred action'; more recently Jean Laplanche has suggested the term 'afterwardness'; An Introductory Dictionary ofLacanian Analysis (1966) gives 'retroaction'.

Postscript 1. 2. 3. 4.

Here I am extending Heidegger's expression to cover the philosophical tradition. Letter to Fliess, dated 24 January 1897. SE, XIV, p. 78. We know that initially Freud included melancholia and schizophrenia among the narcissistic neuroses. In 1924, he decided to limit this descrip­ tion to melancholia, classifying schizophrenia as belonging to the category of the psychoses proper.

5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14.

15.

Not to mention the years before that, concerning which we lack first­ hand information. Ferenczi, and other epigones who wanted to have this place in Freud's heart, were wasting their time. Pontalis, J.-B. (1978a). Entre le reve et la douleur. Paris: Gallimard. Except in transference. Marty, P. (1976). Les mouvements individuels de vie et de mort et L'ordre psychosomatique. Paris: Payot. Laplanche, J. (1970). Vie et mort en psychanalyse. Paris: Flammarion. Bataille, G. (1957). L'erotism. Paris: Minuit. See the Project for a Scientific Psychology (1895b) in SE, I, pp. 283ff. SE, XIV, pp. 273ff. In L’etat amoreux (Paris: Petite Bibliotheque Payot), C. David has pointed out that love can also increase narcissism, creating in the lovers a feeling of exaltation, accompanied by a state of elation, as a result of identifying with the overestimated object; and particularly when the love is recip­ rocal. It could be said that under these circumstances it is the couple which thinks it is immortal, which might explain the phenomenon of joint suicide at the height of love, as in the case of H. von Kleist. Torok, M. (1978). 'Maladie du deuil et fantasme de cadavre exquis', in L'ecorce et le noyau by N. Abraham, pp. 229-51. Paris: Aubier-Flammarion.

References for the French Edition

The previously published texts have been revised. The modifications have mainly concerned the form, with few changes to the content. The rare addi­ tions were designed to clarify what had been formulated somewhat too elliptically in the earlier publication. I would like to thank Olivier Green for the help he has given me in finalising the manuscript. 'Un, Autre, Neutre: valeurs narcissiques du Meme', Nouvelle revue de psych­ analyse: Narcisses, 1976, no. XIII. 'Le narcissisme primaire: structure ou etat?', I'lnconscient, no. 1, 1966, no. 2, 1967. 'L'angoisse et le narcissisme', Revue frangaise de psychanalyse, 1979, XLIII, pp. 45-87. 'Le narcissisme moral', Revue frangaise de psychanalyse, 1969, XXXIII, no. 3. 'Le genre neutre', Nouvelle revue de psychanalyse: Bisexualite et difference des sexes, 1973, no. VII. 'Le narcissisme, hier et aujourd'hui', hitherto unpublished. 'La mere morte', lecture given to the Paris Psychoanalytic Society, 20 May 1980, hitherto unpublished. 'Le Moi, mortel-immortel', hitherto unpublished.

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Index

Abraham, Karl 171 Abraham, N. 9, 25, 171 Achilles 132 Adler, Alfred 216 adolescence 136 adultomorphic imagination 18 affective immaturity 139 affects 94-5, 96-8, 105 Agamemnon 132 aggressivity 13, 14, 33, 42, 147, 223 and Freud 215, 219 aim-inhibited drive 64-6, 68, 70, 72, 75, 80, 90 Ajax 131, 132-3, 134, 153 alter ego 26, 41 Ameinias 45 amoebas 62 anaesthesia 119 anal phase 145 anorexia nervosa 222 anti-narcissism 9, 34, 74 Antigone 133 anxiety 91-3, 98, 101-7, 119-24, 127-8 and blank psychosis 112, 113 definition of 107 and destructiveness 174 and lack 173 linked to the couple 91, 121-3, 126 linked to the ensemble 91, 123-5, 126

linked to the One 91, 119-21, 126 separation 21, 92, 115, 125 signal anxiety 92, 106, 116, 118 and transference 119 see also castration anxiety; death anxiety; depression; narcissistic anxieties Anzieu, D. 196-7, 198 apres-coup, concept of 199-200 Artemis 44 asceticism 8, 16, 136, 137-8 asexualisation 218 Athena 132 Atriadae (Agamemnon and Menelaus) 132 authenticity 148 auto-erotism 10-11, 15, 18, 72-5, 80-2, 84-5 and asceticism 137 and dead mother complex 180, 194 and desire 74 and introjection 87 and moral narcissism 146 and narcissism 100, 218, 222 object choice 6, 19 and pleasure principle 77 and primal ego 4, 5 and self-sufficiency 90 and sexual enjoyment 13 autonomy 120-1

auxiliaries 29, 30-1, 33 auxiliary ego 103 Balint, M. 9, 31-2 Bataille, Georges 155-6, 219 being 30-1 'beloved mother', dream of 196-9 Benveniste, E. 32 binding and unbinding 23-4, 27, 36, 41, 44, 71-2 biological sexuality 158-9 Bion, W. 9, 16, 26, 110, 116, 198 birth trauma 92, 93 bisexuality 45, 91, 149-51, 158-69 biological 159 and castration complex 161-2 and personal fantasy 160-1 and primary narcissism 163-9 psychical 159, 160-1, 163, 167 self-sufficient 218 see also sexual difference; sexuality black 174 blanc 10, 26, 111 blank 111-12, 113, 174 blank mourning 174 blank psychosis 10, 26, 111, 112, 174 bodily narcissism 134, 143-4 body image 96 Bonaparte, Marie 172 Book ofLieh Tzu 91, 127 Bouvet*,'M. 28, 31, 97, 116 breast 24, 79, 82, 113, 125, 199 absent 188 and dependence 145 divine 8 good and bad 188, 218 having and being 30 loss of 77, 93, 175-6, 180, 181 and auto-erotism 81, 84 and castration anxiety 173 and mourning 172 and narcissism 11, 90 metaphor of 175-6

and narcissism 145, 149 negative hallucination of 112 and Oedipus complex 66, 124-5, 185 sexual object 18, 72 Breuer, J. 214, 215, 216 British Psychoanalytic Society 107 Brutus 153-4 captation 114, 115 Cassius 154 Castoriadis-Aulagnier, P. 10, 29, 39 castration 43, 45, 147, 159, 169, 172, 203 fantasy of 167-8, 204 castration anxiety 117-18, 128, 148-50, 161-2, 172-3, 202 and death anxiety 168, 203, 206, 210, 211, 217 and narcissism 13, 20 narcissistic 115 and ontogenesis 204 and sexual intercourse 176 cathexis (investment) 4, 7, 8-9, 9 narcissistic investment 17-22 negative investments 126 primary 62-4 see also narcissistic objectcathexes Cephissus 44, 45 Cervantes, M. de 155 chaos (,diasparagmos) 91, 120, 123 character 11-12 child death of 177-8 incomplete development 94 civilisation 223 Codet, H. 139 communicabiliae 40 communication 91 complementarity 91, 109, 169, 179 conjunction and disjunction 23-4 conscious 210-11 constancy, principle of 53, 54, 56

container/containment 103, 193-4 Cotard's syndrome 210 counter-cathexis 140-1 counter-transference 41-4, 152 creativity 21 Cronian myth 19 culture 44 cumulative trauma 108-9 David, C. 20 dead father 172 dead mother 170, 172, 176 dead mother complex 176-83 blank mourning 190, 191, 194, 195 and breast 188 and loss of meaning 180, 189 and mother-child relationship 191-2 and primal scene 186-8, 190 and psychoanalytic treatment 182, 186, 189, 190-1 death 24, 90, 168-9, 216, 217 attitudes to 20, 201-4 negation of 90, 206 preparation for 224 death anxiety 168, 203, 206, 210, i 211,217 death drives 23, 60-1, 81, 83-4, 90, 219, 222-3 and bisexuality 10-1 and desexualisation 66-9, 156 and Eros 61, 63, 64, 83, 215-16, 219 and Freud 52, 54-5, 59, 213-14, 216, 219-20, 223 interpretations of 219 and Klein 9, 217 and life drives 22, 24, 49, 69, 135, 211 and masochism 134, 213 and melancholia 211 see also destructive drives decathexis (disinvestment) 17 and blank psychosis 26, 112, 113, 174

and dead mother complex 178-9, 180, 182-3, 186, 196 fainting 110 and idealisation 139 decussation 79 defence 77-8, 98, 116, 140, 178, 218 against psychical pain 108, 109 asceticism 136 and character 11 and dead mother complex 179, 180 depersonalisation 123 and fear of inertia 28 idealisation 139 regression 8, 117 and repression 90, 173 sublimation 148 temporary fragmentation 123 unconscious 49, 209-10 see also protective shield; regression; repression Delcourt, Marie 89, 169 delusion 27, 33, 98, 101, 208 paranoid 151 and rationalisation 12 and transference 111 dementia praecox 4 denial (disavowal) 139, 140, 141 dependence 120, 125, 139-40, 152 and love 144-5 depersonalisation 28, 31, 123 depression 106, 141, 147, 171, 220 and ambivalence 183 black of 174 dead mother complex 176, 195, 196 and disappointment 32, 100, 101, 137, 149 and idealisation 151 and narcissistic wounding 32, 117 see also anxiety depressive position 171, 192-3, 195, 217 Derrida, J. 39, 60

Descartes, R. 204 desexualisation 7, 11, 66-9, 114, 139, 142, 156 destructive drives 103-4, 151, 169, 222 and Eros 23-4, 27, 48, 60-1, 66, 118 and narcissism 12, 44, 49 see also death drives destructiveness 174, 178, 181, 183 development, stages of 18-19 Diatkine, R. 32 diphasic sexuality 94 disintegration 104, 110 disinvestment see decathexis dismissal/repudiation 77-8 dispersion 91, 123 displacement 108, 139, 142 dissociation 31 distance 115, 116-17, 118 compression and condensa­ tion 116 useful 117-18 Dodds, E. 131-2, 147 domination/mastery 14 Don Quixote 154-5 Donnet, J.-L. 32, 111 Dostoyevsky, E 141 double 218 double reversal 11, 78-81, 85, 90, 119 and Mobius strip 27, 87, 88 and passivation 31 dreamer, narcissism of 19-20 drive-obj£ct dichotomy 94 drives 22-4, 58-61, 64-6, 69-70, 75, 81-2 and auto-erotism 73 and frustration 102 and narcissism 9, 13-14, 15 non-domestication of 190 pregenital 9, 33, 65, 66 see also death drives; destruc­ tive drives; Eros; Freud, S., drive theory; life drives; sexual drives Dulcinea 154-5

Echo 44, 45 effective difference 117-18 ego 4, 5, 29-30, 31, 48-9, 62-4, 67, 68 and affects 95 as agency 29, 96, 98-9, 104 and anxiety 106, 118-19 autonomy 125 binding 83 birth of 92-4 in blank psychosis 112 consistency of 125-6 construction of 114-16 and delusion 98 dreamless sleep 63 and drives 103 and id 86, 94, 114 immortality 23, 25, 208, 218, 219, 222 impotence of 12 and libido 7 limits 118-19 and moral narcissism 145-6 negation 125-6 origin of 8-9 and pain 108, 110, 118-19 persecution by super-ego 212 primal 4, 5 and psychosomatic syndromes 98 and reality 64, 209, 210, 213 and repression 75-8 splitting 212 struggle against object 103 thanatophilic 23 and trauma-object 98-101 unconscious 49, 209-10, 213 and unification with object 97-8 unitary cathexis 7-8, 9, 10, 11 unity of 41, 181 see also Self ego defences 98 ego drives 72, 87 ego ideal 14, 67, 81-3, 89, 101, 114 and affective immaturity 139

and group anxiety 124 intransigence of 88 and moral narcissism 147 moral narcissist and 136 and narcissism 19 and super-ego 93, 134, 145, 146 see also ideal, function of; ideal ego; super-ego ego-libido 207 ego-love 60 ego-relatedness 24, 97 ego-representations 94-6, 97, 99 Einstein, A. 213 emptiness 17, 91, 112-13 see also nothingness Entzweiung 57 epistemophilia 5 Epops 45 Erikson, E.H. 48 Eros 52, 58, 69, 169, 212, 223 and death drives 61, 63-4, 83, 211, 215-16, 219 and destructive drives 23-4, 27, 48, 60-1, 66, 118 see also life drives erotic libido, and aggressive libido 92-3 erotogenic masochism 134 erotogenic zones 144-5 Eumenides 211 existence, affect of 27-8 expansion 16-17 explosion and implosion 28 fainting 110-1 false self 27, 139, 145, 148-9, 188 family, as extension of ego 16 father 102, 145, 174-5, 178, 179-80 dead father 172 Fechner, G.T. 52-3, 54 Federn, E. 94 feminine masochism 134 femininity 159, 191, 217 repudiation of 162-3 Ferenczi, S. 39

fixation 93 Fleiss, W. 196, 198, 214, 215 flight 77-8 floating attention 34 foreclosure 140 Foerster, Heinz von 40 fragmentation 49, 91, 101, 106, 123-4 Frazer, J.G. 3 Frege, G. 26 Freud, Amalie 198 Freud, Anna 136, 140 Freud, Jacob 197, 198 Freud, Julius 198 Freud, Philipp 197, 198 Freud, S. absence 84, 85 aggressivity 215, 219 anxieties 104, 105, 106, 108, 117-18 auto-erotism 72-3 birth trauma 92, 93 bisexuality 159, 167 castration anxiety 172-3, 206, 211-12 dead mother 196-200 death 20, 47, 201-2, 203, 208 death drive 52, 54-5, 60-1, 213-16, 219-20, 223 defences 140-1 delusion 33 destructive drives 23, 27, 222 distance 116 double 208, 216 drive theory 22, 52, 64-5, 66-74, 87, 103, 206 durability 69-70 ego theory 30, 48-9, 98-9, 114, 134-5, 146, 209, 213 ego and id 62, 68, 71, 75, 76 and ego ideal 89 ego-libido and object-libido 215 and ego-representations 94-5 fainting 110-1

Freud, S. (continued) femininity 162, 163-4 and immortality 214, 215, 221 inhibitions 94 language of analyst 36 loss 97, 171, 175 love 144 masochism 134, 135, 136, 137 melancholia 211, 212-13, 219 mother-infant relationship 192 narcissism 49-52, 56, 82, 89-90, 101, 215, 221-2 Narcissus myth 46 Oedipus complex 172, 173 paranoia 35 passivation 31 phallocentrism 206, 217, 218 philosophy 209 play 204 pleasure principle 52, 55-6, 59, 64, 77 primary identification 32 primary narcissism 50, 52-3, 62 principle of inertia 52-4, 72,

220 protective shield 69-72 psychical apparatus 58 psychical pain 105 repression 76, 77, 78-80, 85-6, 116, 173 sexual difference 149 sexuality 22, 57, 65, 204, 206-7, 217 stages'of development 18-19 sublimation 43, 60, 64, 69 theory of narcissism 4-9, 10-11, 12-16, 24 frozen love 183-9 fusion 28, 31 germen 207 Gillibert, Jean 8 God 19, 21-2, 136, 141, 142, 150 Goethe, J.W. von 121 good-enough mother 102 Grinstein, A. 196, 197

group anxiety 124 group narcissism 124 Grunberger, B. 9, 48 guilt 13, 131-3, 142, 147-8, 156-7 see also shame Guiraud, Pierre 112 hainamoration 26 Hartmann, H. 8, 9, 29, 43, 48, 219 hatred 180, 183-5, 193, 194-5 Hector 132 Hegel, G.W.F. 131, 155 Helicon 45 Hermaphrodite 46 holding 93, 102, 182 homosexuality 109-10, 122, 164 feminine 182 hypochondria 88, 97, 104, 106, 108, 109, 218-19 hysteria 7, 123, 139, 208 id 25, 67-9, 71-2, 75-6, 83-4, 134-5, 212-13 and narcissism 145-6 neuter gender 169 origin of 8-9 id-ego differentiation 62-3, 75, 79, 81, 94 ideal, function of 15-16, 66-9, 72, 90, 134, 146, 223 ideal ego 14-15, 67, 99 see also ego ideal; ideal, function of idealisation 15-16, 43, 93, 139-9, 150-1, 152 self-idealisation 103, 149 see also ego ideal; ideal ego identification 11, 69, 86, 90, 99, 115 and affect 105 and religion 147 with analyst 33 with dead mother 179, 183, 187, 188-9, 191 and defence 109 with father 68 imaginary 17, 100, 114

and negative hallucination 85 primary and secondary 20, 105, 212 projective 101, 103, 109, 111,

122 with Virgin Mary 139 identity 9, 11-12, 16, 29-30, 48, 126 illusion 134, 135 immortality 89, 205-10, 211, 218-19, 223-4 Freud and 214, 215, 221 incestuous desire 190 indifference 10, 17, 23 individuation 29, 33 inertia fear of 28 principle of 8, 23, 52-4 infans, adult identification with 17-18 inhibitions 94, 99 instincts see drives intellectual activity 142-3 intellectual narcissism 134, 141-2 internalisation 81, 131 introjection 73, 87-8 intrusion anxiety 115 intuition 50 investment see cathexis 'Irma's injection' dream 214 Jacob, F. 168 Jacobson, Edith 29, 48 Jakobson, R, 30 Joseph, and Pharoah's dreams 24 jouissance (sexual enjoyment) 13-14, 43, 119, 167, 169, 207-8 absence of 203, 206 and pain 37, 105 Julius Caesar 153-4 incestuous dreams of 198 Jung, C.G. 4, 6, 7, 24, 30, 49, 186, 214-15 Kant, I. 204, 213 Keats, J. 23

Kernberg, O. 9, 33-4 'King Lear' (Shakespeare) 46-7, 216 Klein, Melanie 9, 43, 159, 164 idealisation 139, 150-1 maternal imago 192, 217-18 mourning 105, 171 play 204 Kleinians 48, 175, 183 . Kohut, H. 9, 17, 29, 33-i, 42, 48 Kraepelin, E. 217 Lacan, J. 9-10, 32, 43, 57, 61, 124, 203 captation 114, 115 hainamoration 26 and lack 173 Law and Symbolic 172 and linguistics 29, 38, 40 masochism 135 mirror stage 81 object as cause of desire 121 and Other 27 and phallocentrism 206, 218 Lacarriere, J. 132 lack 39, 99-100, 149, 150, 173 Lady Macbeth 221 Laforgue, R. 139 Lagache, D. 14 Laing, R.D. 28 language 10, 12, 126 auxiliaries 30-1, 33 lalangue 39 metaphor for ego and thought

12 and metonymy 39 in narcissistic discourse 28-33, 36-41 object as complement 32-3 pronouns 32 reflexive 38 and representation 39-41, 116 self-referential system 30 subject 29-30 verbs 31-2 see also representation language-object 38

Laplanche, Jean 9, 12, 15, 29 anaclitic object relations 82, 93 auto-erotism 72, 73, 74 and drives 219 Law 37, 43, 150, 172 Lebovici, S. 48, 82 Leonardo da Vinci 5, 6, 19, 24 Lewin, B. 28, 112 Lewinter, R. 167 libido 1, 31, 69, 144, 211, 220 Lichtenstein, H. 9, 29, 48 life drives 22, 49, 69, 135, 220 see also Eros Liriope 44 love 6-7, 15, 20, 137, 144, 146-7, 152, 154-6 and dead mother complex 185 and hate 26 love-object 18-19 maternal 168, 178-9 unconditional 140 Low, Barbara 23, 55, 219 Mahler, M.S. 29 Male, Pierre 136 Mark Anthony 154 Marty, P. 219 masculinity 158-9 masochism 10, 16, 135-7, 169, 219, 220 and death drives 134, 213 and narcissism 134, 135-7, 151 maternal care 159-60, 171 maternal depression 170, 177 maternal imago 177, 186, 192-4 maternal love 31-2, 168, 178-9 meaning, loss of 200 megalomania 104, 114, 151 melancholia 98, 105, 113, 188, 210-13, 219 Menelaus 132 mental pain 106 metalanguage 38 metaphoro-metonymic oscilla­ tion 33 metonymy and metaphor 39

Miller, J.-A. 39 mirror 11, 27, 103, 121-2, 125 'mirror' transference 9 mnemic signs and symbols 104-7 Mobius strip 27, 87, 88 monosexuality 159, 160 Montaigne, M. de 220 moral masochism 134, 156 moral narcissism 134-5, 136 derivatives of 137-40 heroic figures of 153-6 metapsychology of 140-51 treatment 152-3 Moses 24-5 mother and death of child 177-8 death of 170, 172 idealisation of 145 mirroring role of 27 negative hallucination of 84-6 omnipotence 145 separation from 77, 83, 84, 86, 92-3 see also maternal care; maternal love mother-child relationship 93, 99, 102-3, 144-6, 170-1, 192 and sexuality 159 mourning 97, 98, 105, 110, 170, 172, 212, 220-2 and anxiety 92-3, 104 blank mourning 174, 183, 188, 189, 190 and mania 222 and object-loss 220 see also dead mother Nachtrdglichkeit (Fr; I'apres-coup) 199-200 Nacke, P. 7 narcissism as agency 48 analysing 152-3 autonomy of 9, 33, 114 clinical aspects of 134-5 and desire for the One 25, 86-7, 90

and drives 13-15, 22, 33, 82 and ego ideal 89, 120 illness of youth 46 and immortality 205, 210, 222 and masochism 134, 135-7, 151 obstacle to communication 91 origins of 18-19 as psychoanalytic concept 4, 9-10 secondary 88, 90, 146 and western civilisation 127 narcissistic anxieties 97, 101, 103, 107, 127 and psychotic anxieties 101-4 narcissistic investment 17-22 narcissistic libido 144, 211 narcissistic object-cathexes 20, 32, 34, 36, 43, 104-5, 107, 114 narcissistic objects 17-22, 43, 119 narcissistic personalities 13, 20 narcissistic pride 14, 114 see also pride narcissistic rage 109, 614 narcissistic regression 119, 153, 207 narcissistic structure 114-16 narcissistic transference 33-41 and metonymy and metaphor 39 and object transference 34 and resistance 35 and silence and discourse 35-41 narcissistic withdrawal 16-17, 101, 103, 104, 110 narcissistic wound 32, 109, 118, 139, 189, 191, 203, 212 narcissistic-cathexis 93, 97, 104, 114, 119 narcissistic-libido 63, 94 Narcissus 21-2 and bisexuality 45 eye of 88 myth of 5, 6, 44-7, 89 paradox of 38

negation 141 negative hallucination 87, 111, 112, 169, 174 of mother 84-6, 88, 89, 90, 150, 193 negative investments 126 negative narcissism 10, 17, 24, 26, 126, 169, 222 negative therapeutic reaction 220 Nemesis 44 neurosis 93-4, 98, 208, 222 Neuter 10, 17, 23, 26, 27, 37 neuter gender 158, 161, 163, 168, 169 Nirvana 52 Nirvana principle 8, 23, 26, 71, 220, 222 and masochism 156 and pleasure principle 55, 56, 63, 69, 135, 219 see also pleasure principle; principle of inertia nothingness 26, 120 see also emptiness Nunberg, H. 14 object 7, 17-19 as cause of desire 121 as complement 32-3 external and internal 102-3 independence of 125 part-object and whole object 19, 32, 43, 91 object-choice 6, 13, 20, 26, 70 object-libido 63, 94, 118, 144, 207, 210-11 object-loss 18, 20, 171, 173, 177,

220 and depression 32, 171-2, 177 and pain 108, 119 see also separation anxiety object-love 60, 102-3, 194, 205 object-relations 9-10, 97, 179, 181 anaclitic 87, 93 and distance 116 object-representations 97

oceanic feeling 16, 19 oedipal phase 93, 118, 147 Oedipus 24, 44, 131, 132, 133 Oedipus complex 19, 124-5, 161-2, 172, 174, 204 and affection 66 and anxiety 118 and dead mother complex 184, 185, 186, 188, 190, 199 permanence of 223 and super-ego 19, 147, 148 One 8, 10, 169 anxiety linked to 91, 119-21, 126 desire for 25, 86-7, 90 dual unity 25-6 and Other 26, 27-8, 37-8, 41, 91, 128 oral cannibalistic stage 211 Other 10, 18, 119, 126 invasion by 28 see also One, and Other; Same and Other Ovid 44, 46 pacifiers 124 pain 92, 97, 104, 181 see also psychical pain paranoia 23, 35, 44, 105, 147, 155 paranoid-schizoid phase 151, 192 parental fantasy, and sexuality 160 parthertogenesis 205 Pasche, F. 9, 29, 60, 74 passivation/passivity 28, 31, 125, 162, 191, 222 Pausanius 45 penetration anxiety 128 penis envy 145, 149-50, 167-8, 217 perception 67, 134 repression of 140 persecution 151, 153 personalisation 29 personation 48

perversion 6-7 phallic phase 145 Philippson Bible 197 Phoenix, legend of 89-90, 169 phylogenesis 106 play 204 pleasure principle 18, 54-6, 59, 64, 77 and life and death drives 52, 83, 219 and Nirvana principle 55, 56, 63, 69, 135, 219 pleasure-unpleasure 105, 135, 136, 157, 203-4 and reality principle 55, 171, 175, 203 see also Nirvana principle Pontalis, J.-B. 29-30, 82, 216 auto-erotism 72, 73, 74 pain 107 preconscious 210-11 pregenital drives 9, 33, 65, 66 preservation of species 22, 61, 70, 206 pride 67, 132, 135-7, 149, 224 see also narcissistic pride primal ego, and auto-erotism 4, 5 primal femininity 162-3 primal scene 161, 175, 183, 186-8, 190, 204 primary narcissism 5-9, 17, 25-6, 32, 48-90, 145 absolute 7-8, 50-1, 55, 93, 222 and neuter gender 161 objectless 32 and zero excitation 7, 26, 53, 62-3, 76, 169 and auto-erotism 137, 222 and moral narcissism 150 positive and negative 195 and primary object-love 194 primary object love 9, 17, 194 primitive fragmentation 49 principle of inertia 52-4, 72, 220 see also Nirvana principle projection 27, 87-8, 140, 180, 187

projective identification 101, 103, 109, 111, 122 pronouns 32 protective shield 69-72, 75, 77-8, 79, 115 see also defence Proust, M. 95-6, 220 pseudopodes (boundaries) 27 psychic development 144-5, 148 psychical activity, model of 126-8 psychical apparatus 94, 98, 103, 104, 209 and drives 58-61 psychical death 28, 111, 114 psychical pain 104, 105, 106, 107-11 causes of 108-9 defence against 108, 109 psychical rebirth 110 psycho-sexuality 159 psychoanalysis 24-5, 127-8 and scientific knowledge 204-5 psychosis 12, 104-5, 219, 222 psychosomatic regression 104 psychosomatic syndromes 98 psychotic anxieties 101-4 purified pleasure ego 14 'Purloined Letter' 39 Racamier, P.-C. 48 Rank, O. 11, 92, 208 Rat Man 5, 136 rationalisation 12 reality 12-19, 26, 35, 43, 209 as defence 185 external 35, 103, 109, 114, 203, 210, 212-13 internal psychical 43, 103, 162, 185, 210, 212 and unconscious 40 reality principle 18, 54, 55, 75, 171, 203 regression 98, 103, 114, 123-5, 142 as defence 8, 117 homosexual 122

and melancholia 98 narcissistic 119, 153, 207 and psychical pain 108 psychosomatic 104 Reich, W. 43 rejection 140, 141 renunciation 68, 134-6, 145 repetition-compulsion 179 representation 43, 44, 58, 86, 112-13 and affects 94-5, 96-7, 106, 112, 122 dead mother complex 193 ego-representations 94-6, 97, 99 and language 28, 32, 39-41, 57 and negative narcissism 10 unconscious 67, 99, 116 see also language; negative hallucination repression 42, 59, 78-82, 85-6, 90, 94, 116 and auto-erotism 6 and castration anxiety 172-3 and dead mother complex 183-4, 196 decathexis 174 as defence 140-1 and distance 117-18 and ego 75-8 and Eros 223 limiting function 118-19 and mourning 220 and narcissistic neuroses 12 primary 194, 195 Robert, Marthe 155 Rosenfeld, E. 196 Rosenfeld, H. 9 Rosolato, G. 33, 39, 171 Sade, Marquis de 155 sadism 11 sado-masochism 15, 142, 164 Same and Other 23, 27, 37, 41, 44, 45, 111 Sandler, Anne-Marie 121

schizo-paranoid position 217 Schizonia 139 schizophrenia 105, 151 Schreber case 12, 18-19, 33, 207 Schwind, M. von 42 sclerosis 114, 115 scopophilia 5, 11, 148 scopophilia-exhibitionism 142 Self 9, 29, 34, 35, 48 see also ego self-deprecation 32 self-esteem 6 self-idealisation 103, 149 self-mastery 39 self-object 17 self-observation 89 self-preservation 13, 69, 114 and ego-love 61 and inhibition of aim 70 preservation of species 22, 61, 70, 206 and sexual drives 4-5, 22, 64, 74, 206 self-sufficiency 114, 116, 141, 149 self-withdrawal 28 separation, from mother 77, 83, 84, 86, 92-3 separation anxiety 21, 92, 115, 125 sex, origin of word 167 sexual desire, destruction of 161 sexual difference 19, 89, 163, 167-9, 207 and bisexuality 149, 158, 162, 167 and transference 36 see also bisexuality sexual drives 18-19, 22, 66, 74, 87, 206 sexual reality 162 sexuality 15, 93-4, 98, 158-69, 219 adult 162 biological 158-9 and dead mother complex 185

and death 205 defence against 118 development in boys and girls 163 female 139 and Freud 22, 56, 65, 204, 206-7, 217 and immortality 208 infantile 159, 162, 212 and morality 155 and parental transference 163-4 and parental wishes 159, 160 and personal fantasy 160-1 and play 204 and psychoanalytic interven­ tion 163 role of 4, 7, 13, 207 and self-esteem 6 and trauma 100 see also bisexuality; jouissance Shafer, Roy 121 Shakespeare, William 24, 46-7, 153 shame 131-3, 136, 139, 142-3, 147-8, 156-7 see also guilt signifier heterogeneity of 35 order of 76-7 and representative 39^40 silence 35-41, 126 Sisyphus 157 sleep, and dreams 50-2 societies, self-destructive 222-3 soma 207 somatic dementia 104 Sophocles 131, 132, 133 soul 204, 221 see also immortality specific action 103 Spiegel, L. 48 Spitz, R.A. 48 splitting 106, 145, 151, 156, 162, 185, 212 states, theory of 56, 57, 63, 70 Strachey, J. 62, 75, 89

structures, theory of 56, 57, 63, 70, 75 Styx 45 subject 29-30, 93 subjective object 17 sublimation 7, 24, 27, 69, 90, 93, 142 aim of analysis 43 and aim-inhibited drives 64 and creation 27 and dead mother complex 172, 181 and Eros 223 and Freud 43, 60, 64, 69 and play 204 pseudo- 139, 142, 148 suicide 45, 148, 149, 154, 170,

212 super-ego 20, 43, 134-5, 145-6, 210, 212-13 and ego 13, 98, 134 function of 67, 89 and group anxiety 124 internalisation of 148 loss of 173 and moral narcissism 147 and Oedipus complex 19, 172 Power of Destiny 91, 92-3, 213 and religion 147 and shame 142 Symbolic 172 symptoms 104 syntagma 29, 33, 39 Tausk, V. 88 tessera 26 Thespiae 45 thought, sexualisation of 5, 7, 12 Three Fates' dream 199 Tiresias 44 Torok, M. 171, 221 total ego 29 transcendental speech 41 transference 99, 119, 120-1

and counter-transference 41-4 and dead mother complex 176, 184, 189-92 delusional 111 and fusion 124 interpretation 152 narcissistic 33-41 paternal 122 and sexual difference 36 transference depression 176-7 transference neurosis 212 transitional objects 100, 119 transvestism 164-7 trauma-object 96, 98, 100-1, 102, 103-4 triangulation 102, 161, 174 twins, myths of 26 Tzu, Lieh 91, 127 Ulysses 84, 132 unconditional love 140 unconscious 210-11 and death 202, 206, 208 laws of 24-5 and neurosis 208 unintegrated state 110 unitary ego 7, 98-9, 100, 120 unity 39, 120 vagina 122, 128, 167, 206-7, 216-18 and castration anxiety 112, 115, 176 discovery-rediscovery of 19 verbs 31-2 vesicles 27, 62, 71 Virgin Mary 139 vision 8 psychogenic disturbances of 4, 5 Weismann, A. 22, 207 Weltanschauung 204-5 Winnicott, D. 9, 27-8, 30, 38, 192 dependence 120, 145 ego-relatedness 24, 97

Winnicott, D. (continued) false self 27, 139, 145, 148-9 holding 93, 102, 182, 183 mourning 171 and pain 110 play 43, 204 reactive behaviour 108 sexual drives 74 sexuality 159-60 subjective object 17 transitional object 100 wish-fulfilment 203

withdrawal 12 Wolf Man 112, 173, 186, 198, 209 'wooden reel' 85, 198 zero 23, 25, 26-7, 28 zero excitation 52-5, 90, 145, 222 and absolute primary narcis­ sism 76, 169 and moral narcissism 149, 156 and self-sufficiency 81 see also Nirvana principle; principle of inertia