This paper proposes a partial answer to the hypothetical question, "What might Jung's contribution to a theory of narcissism have been had he remained a psychoanalytic writer?" [please overlook the scanning errors -dw]
Jungs Lost Contribution to the Dilemma of Narcissism by Jeffrey Satinover, M.D.
Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association. Pp. 401-438. 1986.
JUNG'S LOST CONTRIBUTION TO THE DILEMMA OF NARCISSISM
by Jeffrey Satinover, M.D.
This paper proposes a partial answer to the hypothetical question, "What might Jung's contribution to a theory of narcissism have been had he remained a psychoanalytic writer?" An attempt is made to demonstrate that, long before it became the vogue, Jung began to explore narcissistic terrain. In the course of this exploration, he formulated many insights, in idiosyncratic language, some of which have since been reformulated in psychoanalytic terms. It is posited that, in addition to anticipating current developments in our understanding of narcissism, Jung formulated some ideas that go beyond it. Whether or not they prove accurate, these ideas are an untapped psychoanalytic resource.
JUNGIAN PSYCHOLOGY HAS GROWN INTO A worldwide school of psychotherapy entirely independent of' psychoanalysis. Jungians consider Jung to have created a general psychology as well as a therapeutic approach to a broad spectrum of' psychogenic disorder. Yet, although he presented it in n)ore general terms, ,Jung's contribution was, in essence, a theory of' narcissists and a method for treating its disturbances.
Early in his career, .Jung's researches focused on disruptions in the process by which a healthy and stable self is formed. But following his break from Freud, he turned his attention to the nature of, selfhood in later life, especially in creative, spiritually gifted (and tormented) individuals. It is this latter work for which Jung is known and extravagantly both praised and damned.
I would like to thank Eric T. Carlson, Lawrence Friedman, Jacques Quen, and the other members of the Section on the History of Psychiatry at the Payne-Whitney Psychiatric Clinic for their stimulating critique of this paper's first draft. I would also like to thank my wife, Julie, for her skillful editing, but more important, for a contribution to its content that is present throughout.
Kohut, another potential schismatic, whose late works (1971, 1977, 1981) bearing a striking resemblance to Jung's, argues an independent, "tragic" dimension to life, complementary to the psychosexual, consisting in .1 lifelong evolution From infant-tile narcissism to mature wisdom, wit, and creativity. Jung's early views of the infantile and his later views of" the spiritual may likewise be seen as intimately linked.
Over the years, the Jungian have developed a language so different from that of psychoanalysis that mutual understanding is very difficult. Even the concept "narcissism," which I believe is the true focus of Jung's work, has only of late reentered the Jungian vocabulary, and only because of' interest in Kohut.
This difference in language began with Jung, who was at considerable pains to differentiate himself from Freud by establishing what he intended to be, and in part was, a wholly different theory.* The task of' translation is made yet more difficult by Jung's redefinitions of psychoanalytic terms.
Nonetheless, Jung's theory was a brilliant resynthesis of' many (but not all) data of early psychoanalysis, including some observations that had resisted psychoanalytic theory (largely from the study of the "narcissistic neuroses"). Most important, it 'was an idiosyncratic creation,' embracing peculiarities of" ,Jung's interest predating his knowledge of psychoanalysis, which he had set aside in order to be Freud's prince and heir. I shall translate Jung's conception into psychoanalytic language, both those parts that correspond to extant ideas, and those that do not. This conception will refer to narcissism as:
1. A variety of psychic energy, in the broadest sense, interest directed toward the self. This psychic energy will be treated as having a particular source.
2. A broadly conceived developmental stage wherein the basis for a unified sense of self is established.
* I leave open whether this effort was a symbolic enactment .rid therefore an only par tidally successful attempt by Jung to reduce a primitive identification with Freud (Slochower, 1981; Satinover, 1985).
3. A variety (or component of' various kinds) of psychopathology, characterized by a prominence of' narcissism (in the sense of point 1), reflecting a regression to (or fixation a() narcissism (in the sense of point 2).
This overall conception will also contain three categories of, ideas:
1. Ideas about narcissism that, since Jung, have been redeveloped within psychoanalysis.
2. Ideas about the psyche that Freud also formulated but that are not seen as pertinent to narcissism, and that have been set outside the generally accepted corpus of psychoanalytic theory.
3. Wholly original ideas central to Jung's theory that also have not been seen as pertinent to narcissism.
However, for the following reasons. I shall not address the adequacy of' Freud's later theories to an analysis of the narcissistic problems toward which Jung's work is oriented.
From the late teens through the middle thirties, Freud profoundly altered his theories. In. his later works, lie rarely addressed himself explicitly to clinical conditions in which overt complaints of a sense of meaninglessness, of ambivalence about grandiose fantasies, and of fragile self-esteem predominated. But in formulating and attempting to characterize the relations among the ego, ego ideal, and superego, Freud was dealing precisely with matters that are now generally characterized as meaning, grandiosity, and self-esteem (Freud, 1923, 1924, 1933; Blum, 1982). Thus, it may be argued that the narcissistic problems which, it is claimed, newly beset us, are not new at all; that there has been no significant shift in the prevailing psychopathology; but that what has changed is the language people use to complain about their unhappiness (Rangell, 1982).
As it stands, Freud's late structural theory may or may not be adequate to an analysis of narcissistic problems. It is subject to modification: But it is a particular type of theory, a scientific one, in contrast to Jung's ideas (and others') that propose for the same problems mot just am alternative explanation, but am alternative type of explanation.
In the conflict between object-relations or self-psychology, and the classical structural approach, ,Jung's ideas collate with the former. Theirs is the psychological language and approach into which Jung's ideas arc most readily translated.
Freud's theory is based on conflict among agencies of the mind. Such a conflict theory shares with other scientific models the following principles: implicit im the psychoanalytic motion of' conflict, and explicitly formulated im the theory, is the hypothesis of fundamental elements (drives, the ego, the superego) into which the larger, complex structure (the psyche) may be broken down (analyzed) from observation of the interaction (conflict) among these elements, hypothetical rules that describe the interaction (dynamics) are formulated and, if found to describe accurately the behavior of the larger structure as a whole, are accepted (as features of a model).
The late structural theory is thus truly analytic im its approach. It achieves its power from the rigorous reduction of larger entities to smaller ones (mot, however, from mental ones to physical ones-Brenner, 1982). When an analytic approach is applied to the physical world, it yields comprehension (as measured by the model's capacity to predict) and as a result, control. But When applied to the psychic world, it yields something else as well: a subjective blow to our cherished motions of' autonomy, integrity, wholeness, and specializes (Itch, 1982). In response to this blow am impulse is generated to deflect the relentless application to human mature of that truly analytic scrutiny which has given us such impressive power over mother mature. As Rangell (1982) comments, "Advocacy of the self im the theoretical context is preservation of the self im the subjective sense" (p. 863).
The question may them be posed, "How reducible is the need to conceive of the self as whole?" This question has fueled many controversies im psychoanalysis. Im lime with Ticho's (1982) observations, it seems to me that a member of the dissenting schools have arisen out of an overt or covert attempt to respond, "The meed is irreducible," and furthermore that it is irreducible "because the self is primordially whole and therefore at bottom inaccessible to analysis in the strict sense."
Such am assertion inevitably generates a synthetic model im which dynamism is not seen as the resultant of* essentially independent forces (elements), but is conceived as a kind innate program (like a musical score). The entity being so modeled also tends to be described im states (e.g., Jaspers, 1963, describes emotions as "states of the self"). Two basic states predominate: harmony and disharmony (cohesion and fragmentation), with harmony (or cohesion) as the expression of entelechy.
Synthetic models have been proposed repeatedly as alternatives to or advances within psychoanalysis. Mostly, they are rejected because of 'a fundamental conflict between the analytic and synthetic approaches. Jung's contribution to a theory of* the psyche, especially as applied to the problem of' narcissism--that is, to a painful lack of' the feeling of wholeness--is uniquely comprehensive im its application of' the synthetic approach. Of course, this may he considered mo contribution to analysis: "An abandonment of our knowledge of internal structures, however, with a return to a psychology of only the cornposite whole, is, in my opinion, a scientific regression rather than an advance" (Rangell, 1982, p. 868; see also Blum, 1982).
Historical Background
The development of the concept of' narcissism is the subject of' an extensive literature. I shall not summarize this history, but rather will focus on the problem in the theoretical conflict between Freud and Jung.
The Dualism of Psychic Energy
As Bibring (1941) carefully details, throughout numerous reworkings of theory, Freud maintained a dualistic conception of psychic energy. He consistently held that there are two opposing groups of forces at work in the human psyche, one not transformable into the other. It is out of the unique balance between these forces that the individual personality emerges. At first, Freud characterized these forces as the sexual and ego instincts, later (in the context of the structural hypothesis) as Eros and Thanatos. First proposed in Beyond the Pleasure Principle in 1920, the latter distinction enabled Freud to avoid the hypothesis of an autonomous energy unique to the ego. As Bibring (1941) notes, "The concept of narcissism made the first breach in the independent existence of the ego-instincts" (p. 7). In defending his proposal, Freud hearkened back to the old conflict with Jung. Although he had abandoned his earlier proposal of' an ego-libido duality, Freud (1920) explained he was not thereby capitulating to Jung's monistic alternative; he was, so to speak, merely slicing the pie at a different angle.
Freud's first dualism of sexual and ego instincts fit neatly with that view of man which sees him as it sees any other organism: driven, on the one hand, to defend himself as an individual, and on the other, to reproduce himself as a species. The capacity to grasp reality, a precondition of successful individual functioning, would seem to be an instance of ego instinct par excellence.
The Problem of Libido in Dementia Praecox
Freud noted, however, that individuals who suffered from paranoia or dementia praecox seemed to be absorbed in themselves in the same degree to which they lacked interest in others. This imbalance, he further noted, corresponded to the loss of their reality function. he proposed, therefore, that in dementia praecox the loss of, reality was due to a withdrawal of, libido front objects and its secondary reattachment to the ego. In certain circumstances, the ego apparently could be cathected not only with its own proper energy, but with additional sexual energy as well. Freud called this state "secondary narcissism." He laid
out this conception in his analysis of the case of Schreber, a previously published autobiographical account of' mental illness brought to Freud's attention by Jung. Freud's own formulation therein (1911) is as follows:
We can no more dismiss the possibility that disturbances of the libido may react upon the ego-cathexes than we can overlook the converse.... It therefore appears to me far more probable that the paranoiac's altered relation to the world is to be explained entirely or in the main by the loss of this libidinal interest ... it would resemble dementia praecox in so far as the repression proper would ... have the same principal feature-detachment of the libido, together with its regression on to the ego ... [p. 75J.
At the time he was reading this passage, Jung was at work on his own analysis of "The Miller Fantasies," a case of prodromal schizophrenia published by Theodor Flournoy (Miller, 1906). This analysis was to become Wandlungen and Syntbole deb Libido (hereafter referred to as "the Jahrbuch article" ).* Jung felt so strongly that this article would be considered by Freud a betrayal of psychoanalytic principles, that he delayed its completion for months, agonizing over the dreaded and wished-liar break from his mentor (Jung, 1961). In a letter predating its publication, Jung wrote to Freud on December 11, 1911:
As for the libido problem, I must confess that your remark in the Schreber analysis . m,.. has set up booming reverberations. This remark, or 'rather the doubt expressed therein. has resuscitated all the difficulties that have beset me throughout the years in lily attempt o apply the libido theory to Dem. praec. The loss of' the reality function in D. pr. cannot be reduced to repression of libido (defined as sexual hunger). Not by me, at any rate. Your doubt shows me that in your eyes as well the problem cannot be solved in this way. I have now . . . arrived al a solution ... [McGuire, 1974, p. 471].
* Originally published in 1911-1912 in Jahrbuch fur psychoanalytische, and psychopathologische Forschungen; subsequently translated into English (Jung, 1916); revised in the Collected Works (Jung, 1952).
In the resulting Jahrbuch article that, on the theoretical side, did indeed cap the break with Freud, .Jung (1916) wrote:
If [one] believes that through the withdrawal of 'libido from the outer world the paranoid system of the schizophrenic symptomatology results, then this assumption is not justified ... because a mere libido introversion and regression leads, speedily, as Freud has clearly shown, into the transference neuroses, and not into dementia praecox. Therefore the transferring of the libido theory to dementia praecox is impossible, because this illness produces a loss of reality which cannot be explained by the deficiency of the libido defined in the narrow sense [Jung, 1916, p. 143].
Jung's Monistic, Genetic Libido
At this point, the story becomes more complex., Jung elaborated a number of' ideas seminal for his later psychological theory. But certain of his hypotheses turned out to be contradictory, and were later modified or dropped.
First, in his Jahrbuch articles, Jung proposed a specific alteration in the psychoanalytic theory of libido, a proposal not to be found in later editions of the same work, nor in his overall theory of later years. This is the notion of a "genetic" component to the libido (genetic in the biological sense). In the letter to Freud quoted above,, Jung continued:
The essential point is that I try to replace the descriptive concept of libido by a genetic one. Such a concept covers not only the recent-sexual libido but all those forms of it which have long since split off into organized activities [McGuire, 1974, p. 471].
In the article itself,. Jung described a primordial energy of' primitive organisms that could be considered essentially sexual, i.e., the core chive of this organism was reproduction. In the course of evolution, however, other functions developed that were needed to maintain the organism in order that it might successfully reproduce. Thus, the original sexual energy had become genetically modified. Only a portion remained in the service of sexuality per se ; the remainder had long since become fixed in maintenance functions which, having evolved, were now inherited.
Second, Jung hypothesized a monistic, overall "psychic energy" (which he continued to call "libido"-a point of contention with Freud). There is a crucial flaw in this idea. Jung equated his monistic "libido" with the "primal libido" described above. He wrote of his new idea that "it regards the multiplicity of instincts as issuing front a relative unity, the primal libido." He also claimed, "nor is there any possibility of restoring it (Jung, 1916, p. 150 passim)." However, if' there is no possibility of restoring the multiplicity of instincts to their original unity, the primal libido, then there is no real difference between Jung's supposedly original concept and Freud's. For all practical purposes, Jung failed to establish a monistic concept of libido. One would be born anyway with multiple, on interconvertible instincts, their monistic origins notwithstanding. In his later writing, Jung consequently dropped his "genetic" conception and reiterated instead his proposal of a unitary psychic energy. He thereby preserved his disagreement with Freud on the nature of libido, and laid the groundwork for his later model of the psyche, a model not based on intrapsychic conflict.
Third, although he continued to assert the ,monism of' psychic energy, Jung's later (1921) conception of the psyche is dualistic (though nonconflictual). But whereas Freud's dualism was, at least originally, an analytic one of' ego versus libido, .Jung's is a more synthetic one of* good and bad aspects of the sell (requiring integration). His "archetypes" which, front an experience-near point of view, arc the equivalents of' primitive self-object self-object representations, divide along these lines. This is a point to which I shall return in greater detail.
Ego Regression in Dementia Praecox
The value of, Jung's biological speculation is its implicit assertion of an evolved, independent energy of the ego, supporting the reality function, in disturbances of which he located the primary source of, schizophrenic psychopathology.
A version of Jung's thesis persisted in psychoanalysis after ,Jung's departure. Although Abraham (1908) was further developing Freud's idea that the withdrawal of libido from objects explained the symptoms of schizophrenia (in particular megalomania), this idea was slowly replaced by theories that emphasized disturbances in the ego per se. Ferenczi's (1913) article, "Stages in the Development of' the Sense of Reality," asserted the primacy of sexuality in the genesis of the reality function, but it focused greater attention on the ego instincts. And, as do later theorists of narcissism such as Grunberger (1979), Ferenczi ultimately located the origin of infantile omnipotence not in self-love, but in a dim recollection of intrauterine self-sufficiency.
In his article, "On Narcissism," Freud (1914a) rebutted Jung's revised conception of libido, as well as Jung's assertion that the sexual instinct is not primarily disturbed in dementia praecox. In this paper (with which Freud himself was not entirely satisfied [ 1914b]), he presented ideas about the nature of narcissism that have yet to be fully integrated or satisfactorily modified, and that are at the heart of current controversy (Rangell, 1982).
The Sources of Jung's Ideas
As Homans (1979) suggests, Jung's Jahrbuch articles, and the books that followed over the next four years, contain almost the entirety of Jung's psychological theory. The nucleus of this work is his 1911 discussion of a schizophrenic prodrome.*
* Jung believed "that a general psychology of' the personality lies concealed within psychosis" (196 1. p. 127).
In this discussion, he defined and attempted to characterize what he termed an "introversion of libido." Freud referred to this process as "narcissism," and considered it a withdrawal of-sexual interest from objects onto the ego. I ask you to bear these points in mind while I defer discussion of the rest of Jung's theory, and turn briefly to the sources of Jung's ideas.
It seems to me that Jung's world differed from Freud's, both internally and externally, and this difference is reflected in their respective points of view. To oversimplify, Freud saw an essentially psychoneurotic world, Jung an essentially "narcissistic-neurotic" or psychotic one. His revision of Freud's libido theory had its origins not only in his study of one case of' prodromal schizophrenia, but in four mutually reinforcing areas.
Jung's Early Interest in the Occult and Spiritualism
In his autobiography, Jung (1961) writes of his first year at the University of Basel that he discovered and read nearly the entire literature of spiritualism. Later, in his medical dissertation, Jung (1902) discussed his fifteen-year-old cousin, who considered herself a medium. Jung concluded that the "spirits" that presented themselves to her in trance were actually portions of the girl's personality with which she did not identify. Further, he concluded that the "spirits" were themselves "personalities." In general, he said, although they are stereotyped and uncomplicated, they are not simply wishes, thoughts, or images. Each "spirit" is an integrated, quasi-person split off in its entirety from consciousness, and accessible only in trance. In Jung's view, the personality like character of these split-off portions of' the psyche, with their consequent will-like autonomy, is their most important feature. In 1961, lie reiterated: "In most cases where a split-off complex manifests itself it does so in the form of a personality, as if the complex had a consciousness of itself"' (p. 159).
Association Experiments
Thus, early in his career, and prior to his contact with Freud, Jung was beginning to formulate his own theory of psychic dissociability. This theory gained experimental support from the association experiments he conducted at the Burgholzli, under Bleuler.
In these experiments, Jung quantified disturbances in patients' associations in a format that attracted him to Freud's attention. Both men felt initially that these experiments verified Freud's concept of repression (McGuire, 1974). Out of these researches, Jung coined the term "Complex." To an extent, these researches did support the concept of repression, or so it must have seemed in the context of the emerging psychoanalytic viewpoint of the time. But in an essential way they did not. Jung's discussion of his experiments was more consistent with a view of psychic dissociability different from repression.
In essence, Freud proposed that the psyche is capable of dissociating. The force that maintains the dissociation is repression; the boundary along which the dissociation occurs is between idea (or image or wish) and emotion. The emotion appropriate to a particular wish becomes separated from the representation of the object of that wish and, for example, is displaced onto some other image. This other image is suitable for the displacement because it is in some way similar to or associated with the original. In this view, the personality retains its overall integrity, but the conscious portion loses some of its color. This emotional color then reappears in the unconscious, that is, as substitute symbols and symptoms.
As both his early spiritualistic interests and his doctoral dissertation might suggest, Jung's theory of complexes is based on a different kind of dissociation. In his view, the psyche maintains emotion and image as a unit, but can split apart into multiple such units. Consciousness usually remains identified with but one, which dung therefore called the "ego-complex," except in unusual circumstances when it might adopt one of the other complexes as its basis. A consequence of this approach is that symbolic images that represent the unconscious function not as compromise distortions, but rather as metaphors, more precisely, as personifications--of' the complexes. These therefore function as "little people," each being a member of a more or less disintegrated whole.* This leads us to the next important source for Jung's ideas.
* Jung's theory of tile complex, had it been understood at the time for what it was, might have played a role in a developing theory of narcissism similar to the one William Niederland's "Little Man Phenomenon" actually did (Niederland, 1956, 1965). Niederland's "little man" is a particularly clear instance of what Jung referred to as a "personified complex."
Psychiatric Posting
Jung's first major book, The Psychology of Dementia Praecox (1907), analyzes the complexes that emerged from association experiments conducted on schizophrenic patients. It was the first attempt to make psychoanalytic sense out of the "bizarre" speech of the psychotic. But it was another feature of schizophrenic pathology that caught Jung's attention. In his autobiography (1961), Jung reports that while immersed in his study of Friedrich Creuzer's Symbolik und Mythologie des alten Voelker, he discovered the Miller Fantasies (1906). The parallel Jung saw between archaic mythology and the archaic fantasy in schizophrenia catalyzed the Jahrbuch articles. By archaic, Jung meant:
1. A profound alteration in the way the subject perceived himself-for instance, the grandiose self-references hidden in the apparent jumble of metaphor, as lie teased these out in The Psychology of Dementia Praecox (1907).
2. The appearance of fantasies directly analogous to religious symbols and ritual enactments. These fantasies constituted the metaphors symbolizing the patient's self (see point 1).
3. The regression to a "presexual stage" (Jung, 1916) not of libido as Freud used the term, but of an energy that maintained the reality function. By "presexual," Jung apparently meant something equivalent to "prephallic." The points he makes are these: first, there is a regression of "libido" to a stage of development prior to "sexuality," i.e., prior to the formation of the Oedipus complex, and also prior to both a focus on the genitals as a source of pleasure and to the recognition of gender differences; second, the primary object of attachment in this phase is the mother; third, this attachment is not sexual, but nurturing ("nutritive"); fourth, the "presexual" period extends from birth to age three or four: fifth, this nurturant attachment to the mother reveals itself' in the adult personality as a passive, "infantile attitude" toward life in general (Jung, 1916, 1952).
Compare these ideas to Brunswick's (1940) discussion of the "preoedipal phase":
The preoedipal phase ... is for both sexes that earliest period of attachment to the first love object, the mother, before the advent of the father as a rival. It is the period during which an exclusive relation exists between mother and child ... [This period is the most ancient, the most archaic, and the most foreign to our usual mode of thought.... [It] extends from the beginning of life to the formation of the oedipus complex ... ['T]he discovery of the sexual differences ordinarily falls within its scope.... Previous to this discovery the child makes personal but not sexual differentiation between the individuals of its immediate world. It must be remembered that until approximately three years of age, the pregenital zones outweigh the genital in importance.... The first great pair of antitheses, active-passive, governs the beginning of life. The active-passive phase is prephallic.... [T]he child takes for granted the likeness of its owe sexual organization to that of others, and the genital is ... of no greater concern than the other erogenous zones, notably, at this early age, the mouth [pp. 295-299].
Jung's conception is a striking anticipation of the kind of attention that later psychoanalysts would pay to the preoedipal phases. Jung was likewise the first, but not the last, to enlarge a theory of the preoedipal phases into a general psychology.
Thus, without putting it into these words, Jung perceived in dementia praecox close relations among what we would now call narcissism (self-esteem and self-representation), regression to an early preoedipal organization, ego distortion (loss of reality function), and what may appear novel in this regard, the archaic inheritance (the emergence of putatively phylogenetic
fantasies).
Jung's Personal Psychology
As a psychiatrist, Jung was observing severely disturbed individuals. But he was also examining himself'. Many of the phenomena he observed in patients were also features of' his owe psychology (see Ticho, 1982). His hypotheses about these phenomena were in part generated and validated by introspective application, much as was true for Freud in the area of* neurosis. But Jung was not able to accommodate to a rational psychoanalysis the theories that arose from these sources. Gedo (1981) remarks that "every personality has a core that might well be described meaningfully in such terms as Jung used" and, of' Jung, that "lie gained. access to this primitive core without a permanent disruption of his personality" (pp. 79, 80).
Jung's intellectual work is a theory about, and a proposal for the treatment of', disorders arising out of this primitive core. His contribution is not, strictly speaking, to analysis, but rather, as Gedo puts it, to a "cure of' souls" about which "we have learned all too little."
It would take me too far afield to attempt here a patho-graphic analysis of Jung's childhood and adult psychopathology as revealed both in his autobiography, and in his psychological theories (taken not as hypotheses, but as symptoms [Satinover, 1985]). Numerous authors have made this attempt. There is a common thread that rues through them: Jung's psychopathology was not neurotic-it was narcissistic (Homans, 1979), oil, trans-neurotic" (Wolf', 1984), or schizophrenic (Stern, 1976), or childhood-schizophrenic (Winnicott,' 1964)-that is, in general terms, it involved "early and deep fragmentations of one's sell" (Ticho, 1982, p. 861).
Winnicott (1964), with whose views on Jung I am largely in accord, wrote:
Jung could not have had analysis with Freud because in fact Freud could not have done this analysis which would have involved aspects of' psychoanalytic theory that ate only now, half a century later, beginning to emerge as a development of psychoanalytic metapsychology.... I have stated elsewhere that it is in the area of psychosis rather than that of psychoneurosis that we must expect to find cure by self-healing. Jung provides an example of this, but of course self-healing is not the same as resolution by analysis [p. 450].
Considering the above passages in the light of Jung's view of psychic dissociability, this additional comment of Winnicott's (1964) falls into place: "It is not possible to conceive of a repressed unconscious with a split mind; instead what is found is dissociation" (p. 453).
Jung's formulation of' psychic dissociability was an early attempt to conceptualize, in part through introspection, in part through extrospection, the so-called "vertical splits" of narcissistic personalities (Kohut, 1971) or the "primitive splitting" of borderline and schizophrenic individuals (Kernberg, 1976). In 1938, Freud proposed a similar concept, the "Splitting of the Ego in the Defensive Process." Kohut calls his "vertical splits in the self" a variant of Freud's idea, but there is a crucial difference: Freud's notion that it is only the ego that splits lends itself to a view of splitting as a defense. Kohut's vertical splits and J ring's view of psychic dissociability both presuppose an integral psyche (the sell) that falls apart in a kind of regression, not as a defense, but because of its deficiency.
During the collapse of his relations with Freud and after his withdrawal from the psychoanalytic movement, Jung suffered what appears to have been a psychotic or near-psychotic
break. In his own description he was overwhelmed by I emotions, hallucinations of world destruction, and extraordinarily vivid and at times morbid dreams (Jung, 1961). However, throughout three years of disorientation, Jung managed to maintain a largely successful home and professional life. He kept a careful diary of all the manifestations of the break, painted the contents of his fantasies, and engaged in what we would now call play therapy. During this time, he composed the better pal t of two important books, Two Essays in Analytical Psychology (1928a, 1928b) and Psychological Types (1921). These books together with the two Jahrbuch articles contain, in essence, his complete psychological theory.
Recovery from a psychotic break is usually at best partial. But Jung seems to have been able to maintain a functional personality concurrent with and following the break. In his case, it might be more accurate of his mental state to say that, as Gedo (1981, p. 80) put it, "he gained access to his primitive core." Having done so, he took advantage of it, at least partially healing himself, and in the process composed a psychology that is both of and about that core.
To argue both pro and con in ad hominem fashion: as Winnicott (1964) observed, Jung's insight into the primitively split psyche is exceptional and well worth consideration in being, so to speak, a first-hand report. It is suspect in that as the basis for a scientific theory it appears strikingly defensive, especially if one assumes repression to be the primary mechanism whereby psychopathology arises (or even if splitting is thought of as a primitive defense).
In the fantasies that accompanied Jung's break, two features stand out (Jung, 1961). They are the same features that dominated his earlier interests and researches: (1) During his break, Jung experienced the psyche primarily in the form of split-off "personified complexes" that exhibited a startling degree of autonomy. (2) These split-off complexes took archaic, mythologic forms (as is not uncommon in schizophrenic fantasy). Jung's childhood propensity for intense, personified fantasy (Jung, 1961), his youthful interest in the occult, the research hypotheses of' his residency, and his first theoretical constructs thus all foreshadowed the way in which, during middle age, his own psyche apparently dissociated.
Jung's Theory Before 1918
I turn now to a fuller description of the elements of Jung's theory that are relevant to narcissism, as he developed them before 1918. The discussion of' the following points aims to illustrate their relevance to a theory of narcissism; to relate them to certain aspects of Freud's thinking that have not been integrated with the concept of' narcissism; to relate them to modern concepts from the object-relations and self-psychology schools of, thought; to demonstrate how Jung's concepts form an internally consistent whole. I shall try to express Jung's ideas in terms more familiar to the reader than those of his original presentation. The assertions are Jung's, but the form of expression and interpretation is mine.
1. The psyche dissociates "vertically" into stereotyped subpersonalities, i.e., "complexes."
The idea of a kind of psychic dissociability different from repression bas, of course, found its way into current psychoanalytic theory. Although Freud first recognized its existence (1938), splitting plays a much larger role in object-relations and self-psychology than in the classical structural theory.
Kohut (1971) postulates the existence, in narcissistic personality disorders, of a "vertical split." In narcissistic personalities, be writes, there is:
... a specific, chronic structural change to which I would like to refer in a modification of Freud's terminology as a vertical split in the psyche. The ideational and emotional manifestations of a vertical split in the psyche-in contrast to such horizontal splits as those brought about on a deeper level by repression and on a higher level by negation-are correlated to the side-by-side, continuous existence of otherwise incompatible psychological attitudes in depth [pp.
176, 177]
... we are not dealing with the isolation of circumscribed contents from one another, or with the isolation of ideation from affect, but with the side-by-side existence of cohesive personality attitudes with different goal structures, different pleasure aims, different moral and aesthetic values [p. 183].
The notion of "otherwise incompatible psychological attitudes in depth" is a fair equivalent of, Jung's "personified autonomous complexes." The "complexes" are conscious, but at times disavowed; idea (or image) is not separated from affect.
Similarly, in reference to "primitive splitting," Kernberg (1976) observes:
In isolation, it is the specific affect which is kept separate from the ideational representation of the impulse, and these two do not appear in consciousness together. By contrast ... [in narcissistic and borderline patients], there is a complete, simultaneous awareness of an impulse and its ideational representation in the ego. What are completely separated from each other are complex psychic manifestations, involving affect, ideational content, subjective and behavioral manifestations.... [..']here exists what we might call mutual denial of independent sectors of the psychic life. Actually, we might say that there exist alternating "ego states," and I use the concept "ego state" as a way of describing these repetitive, temporarily ego syntonic, compartmentalized psychic manifestations [p. 20] ... each of these mutually unacceptable "split" ego states represents a specific transference disposition of the patient of a rather striking kind [p. 21].
2. The lines of cleavage between typical complexes are between all-good and all-bad ones, and between male and female ones, that is, between stereotyped opposites.
The "archetypes" divide into opposites. In 1919, Jung added the following formulation to his theory: the archetypes are images of the instincts. He was thus groping toward a formulation consistent with, if note figurative than, the current view of splitting as a failure to interpenetrate drive derivatives, that is, a failure to integrate good and bad self-object representations. As Volkan (1976) expresses it: "primitive internalized object relations are associated ... with separation of 'all good' from 'all bad' object representations by means of primitive splitting" (p. 57). Individuals prone to primitive splitting "cannot interpenetrate derivatives of libidinal and aggressive drives" (p. 58).
Although Jung postulated that the "archetypes" (pairs of stereotyped opposites) manifest themselves as a consequence of regression to a preoedipal ("presexual") period, he turned away from potential sources of confirmation for his ideas: infant observation and analytic reconstruction. Indeed, Jung would have blanched at such a suggestion for, consistent with his synthetic approach and with his personal need for synthesis, Jung would not have questioned the irreducibility of the archetypes. He turned his energy instead to their religious, mythological, and literary elaboration, and to the correlating phenomenology of the personalities in which they predominate. His exceptional insight yielded much in these areas.
The synthetic approach implied by the concept "archetype" may be used as a defense against the analytic process (an accusation that Freud made of Jung's new theories). It might be argued conversely that an insistence on the rational analysis of origins may, in some cases, mask a fear of the "primitive core."
The conflict between the classical analytic view of the psyche as built out of the drives, and Kohut's view of the drives as secondary disintegration products of a primordially unified
self is a parallel antinomy. I have already proposed that most of' the major dissenters may be seen as having tried to incorporate into psychoanalytic theory and practice some kind of
holistic or synthetic principle. Freud (1919) firmly resisted this. Some theories, including Adler's, Jung's, and Kohut's, are openly teleological; others, like Stekel's, are universalist; yet others, like Rank 's (1923), preserve the integrity of the self by locating pathogenesis beyond the reach of analysis (to wit, in "birth trauma"). Theories, such as Jung's, that also emphasize innate elements of the psyche, additionally defend the integrity of the self by locating it in biology, likewise beyond the reach of analysis. Kohut's theories have progressively moved, in a direction parallel to Jung's, to incorporate all of these views--e.g., the idea of an innate, nuclear self, the belief that this self is primordially integral, the proposal that the self is a goal-seeking structure. Freud night have considered belief in such theories a defense against the narcissistic wound inflicted by analysis on our infantile wish for omnipotence.
3. There is an inherent impulse toward a unitary psyche.
4. As a consequence of this impulse, a pathologically disintegrated psyche spontaneously attempts to reintegrate. Regression reactivates this impulse toward reintegration.
This idea is a homeostatic corollary to Kohut's (1980) description of a nuclear self that:
consist[s] of nuclear ambitions, nuclear skills and talents, and nuclear idealized goals and . . . thus explains] the fact that the human self is poised towards the future. The dynamic tension of the program laid down in our nuclear self strives towards realization and thus gives to each of us a specific destiny that we either fulfill, or fail to fulfill in the course of our lives.... A central program ... makes tip the core of each person's self [p. 44].
In Jung's (1944) words:
In the last analysis every life is the realization of a whole, that is, of a self, for which reason this realization can also he called "individuation." All life is bound to individual carriers who realize it, and it is simply inconceivable without them. But every carrier is charged with an individual destiny and destination, and the realization of these alone makes sense of life [p. 222].
When this nuclear self is split (that is, when symptoms occur that are interpreted as indicative of such a split), most therapists attribute a successful "reunification" more to the environment than to innate maturational impulses. In this view appropriate psychotherapeutic technique, as experienced by the patient, is less mere vehicle than active agent.
Jung viewed it differently and more consistent with the idea of a self-cure. He considered the symbolic productions of psychosis, more generally of the "presexual" pathologies, and eventually of most psychopathology, to be direct representations of a largely autonomous attempt at self-healing in which the environment plays mostly a supporting role. In this view, translated into Kohut's terms, "appropriate mirroring by a self-object" (mother, analyst) means simply that an "ecological niche" has been found in which the innate symbolic processes, of self'-synthesis and self-object differentiation can emerge and play themselves out.
Because he considered the drive toward self-synthesis ("individuation") to be innate, Jung concluded that failure to find that ecological niche leads to a continuing, compulsive search that ends only when the niche is found. Kohut (1978) describes essentially the same drive in the creative individual's quest for the properly mirroring self object, in relation to whom his creative energies, the expression of his true, nuclear self, may emerge. For Jung (1951), these "selfobjects," or more precisely, the internal imagos that correspond to them are, for a man and a woman respectively, the "anima" and the "animus."
5. In instances of this kind of dissociation, the regression of the ego is to a "presexual" stage in which nurturance plays the largest role.
This controversial point is prominent in current theories. In the light of the previous point, we see that Jung additionally considered the regression to be the means by which a self-cure was attempted. The regression, in his view, was not the illness. The illness was the felt falseness, or partiality of the consciously acknowledged personality-analogous to the "false self" of Winnicott (1960; see also Perry, 1976). Jung felt that the apparent exacerbation of the illness in an acute break was actually the conscious personality being confronted (often futilely) with the drive to individuation. What we consider the merely premorbid personality, he would say is the true disease; the symptoms of the "illness" arise from an attempt at self-cure.
Immediately following his own self-cure, Jung (I928a, 1928b) formulated it more or less as follows: the one-sidedness of the personality that is a consequence of identification with the "persona" (Winnicott's false self, modeled alter convention) is disrupted by a violent emergence of the long-suppressed individuation process, a psychotic break (see also ,Jung, 1950; Perry, 1976).
6. As a consequence of the regression to a nurturant phase, mother imagos (split into the "Great Mother" and the "Terrible Mother") dominate fantasies of fragmentation.
Jung (1950) focused many of his mythological researches on the stories of the dying and resurrecting hero-gods that figure prominently in primitive cultures and in Christianity (see also Adler, 1961; Baynes, 1940; Jacobi, 1964, 1968.) In Jung's view, these myths may be read directly as metaphors for the psychological states peculiar to certain (narcissistic) personalities in particular and the "primitive core" in general. Kohut (1971) reports dreams in his patients with these kinds of motif's, but he does not relate them to the larger mythologem.
These god figures are usually the sons of ambivalently good and had mother goddesses. Thus, a common motif is the ambivalent mother as an agent in her son's dismemberment and death (often including castration, as in the case of Osiris) as well as in his subsequent resurrection and immortalization (Frazer, 1922).
7. "Libido" takes two fundamental directions: toward objects (extraversion) and toward the self (introversion).
He called it libido, but Jung's now conventional distinction between introversion and extraversion refers to energies of the ego. Jung never stated this explicitly. Nonetheless, in his system, introversion and extraversion are "attitudes" of consciousness, of which the ego is considered the executor. The energy of the ego called extraversion is directed outward, hence to object reality (to that which is perceived as not-self) and gives rise to the reality function. The energy of the ego called introversion is directed toward the self and gives rise, as it were, to another variety of reality testing, the testing of the reality of the self.
In ,Jung's view, these autonomous ego energies are innate and irreducible. Jung's view of the symbolic function is consistent with this hypothesis. But the relation between extraversion (reality function) and introversion (self-perception) may be demonstrated without assuming that they are innate (just as Hartmann [1950] saw that it was not necessary to determine whether there is an innate, neutral energy of the ego in order to see that it disposes of neutralized, conflict-free energy).*
* Fairbairn (1940) saw a similarity between Jung's concept of introversion and his own "schizoid personality." But he considered introversion to arise not because of innate typology, but due to genetic and dynamic considerations.
In Jung's view the "narcissistic neuroses" consist of a withdrawal of energy from extraversion and a consequent "excess" of introversion. But it is an "excess" only in the symptomatic, self-curative sense that, for instance, a reactive leukocytosis is an "excess" of white blood cells. In narcissistic (and psychotic) disturbances, the withdrawal of energy from the reality function is in response to the inadequacy of the "false self." This withdrawal constitutes a regression of ego energy. It leads to the relativization, or destruction, of that self (the mythic motif of the death of the god-hero in Jung's Jahrbuch articles) in the face of reactivation of unintegrated, primordial archetypes, that is, of ego nuclei. Thus, the symptoms of these disturbances-the introversion of ego energy, the loss of the reality function, archaic fantasy, and grandiose self-images-represent a homeostatic process by which a more comprehensively integrated selfrepresentation is sought-"regression in the service of the self," if you will.
In normal individuals, introversion is a background process by which a more or less stable self-representation is maintained. Like breathing, it is noticed only when interrupted or exaggerated. The normal expenditure of ego energy in the form of extraversion is contrariwise more readily appreciated, and hence more readily thought of as the only normal form of expenditure, because its consequences are visible and tangible.
8. There is a specific, normal, and innate symbolic function of the psyche. It becomes most evident when attention is directed toward the self. That is, it generates images of the self.
This is the essential function of introversion, i.e., of narcissistic libido.
9. The symbolic function, and symbolization, are sui generis; they precede and may be distorted by repression; they are not a consequence of repression.
10. Symbolism produced in this fashion is metaphoric. Thus, part of the primary process is narcissistic in that it aims at sell-representation.
11. The "autonomous complexes" arc parts of the self as personified in metaphor by the symbolic function.
Thus, restated simply, one of the two major conclusions of Jung's Jahrbuch articles is: the unconscious directly represents itself in metaphor. Unfortunately, Jung developed his argument using psychoanalytic terms whose meaning he had redefined. By redefining it as "life energy," he made "libido" essentially identical to psychic process, or psyche. His title re
veals his intent: Wandlungen und Symbols deb Libido-- "Transformations and Symbols of the Libido."
Jung's other major conclusion therein, his reinterpretation of the incest motif (and hence the Oedipus complex), was a choice of topic more certain than any other to have placed him in opposition to Freud. He argued, if there is an underlying, unacceptable wish, i.e., for incest, then symbolism indeed may be understood as a distortion of that wish, a compromise between its enactment and its repudiation. Jung, however, examining himself and other patients in whom he apparently saw a preponderance of what we may call splitting, did not really believe in repression, nor did he make a distinction between varieties of psychic dissociability. He sought to reinterpret the meaning of the incest motif in terms consistent with the sort of unconscious material he felt he was seeing, namely as direct self-representation. fn so doing, he wits driven to reinterpret the neuroses in a fashion consistent with his interpretation of dementia praecox, thus negating all of Freud's work (Ticho, 1982). He reasoned as follows:
If all products of the unconscious are self-revelations, and if the natural, undistorted mode by which the unconscious presents itself is metaphor (i.e., a particular image = a particular mental or emotional state), then all products of the unconscious are undistorted but metaphoric self-representation. The incest motif', he concluded, must also be a metaphor. A metaphor for what? For the introversion of "libido" (or narcissistic libido), that is, for the regression of the ego to the "presexual" period, symbolically the dissolution of' the ego by reentry into the mother (dedifferentiation of the sell and object representations). And what of- the danger, the anxiety which in the Oedipus complex arises from the (paternal) threat of castration? That, too, is a metaphor lot- the fearful aspect of' this dissolution in the mother, the loss of sell, a kind of dismemberment. It is the danger of passivity described by Brunswick (1940) as an aspect of the preoedipal phase. Thus, as described above (point 6), the mother imago is split into nurturing and threatening aspects.
I have proposed that, expressed in different language, .Jung's libido theory really refers to the ego and to the process of establishing in the ego a stable integrated self-representation. This might he thought of as a merely preconscious process except that, as Winnicott (1964, p. 453) suggests, "It is not possible for a split personality to have an unconscious." The undifferentiated part self-objects (archetypes) arc entities in depth, separated front each other vertically. Thus, it is not accusing .Jung of shallowness to say that his researches refer primarily to the ego, or that he viewed unconscious processes from the standpoint of the ego, that is, from the standpoint of a primitive ego (i.e., an ego not yet distinct from the id (Freud, f937]). In the early clays, however, such an accusation would have been damning. And certainly by first extending his theories to include the psychoneuroses, and then expanding them into a general psychology, Jung left himself open for a broadside of criticism (Ticho, 1982). Applied-to the "narcissistic neuroses," or the psychoses, his standpoint remains illuminating. In any case, similar proposals, among them Kohut's, have resurfaced of late. These, too, show a tendency to evolve into Weltanschauungen (see Ticho, 1982). With his general reinterpretation of the incest motif (and the alterations in the understanding of transference and technique that inevitably followed) Jung had turned Freud's work on its head, and was lost to psychoanalysis.
But even before his contact with Jung, Freud (1900) recognized that there was some capacity of the psyche to represent itself directly by using concrete images as metaphors for abstract processes or states: "in certain circumstances, a species of selfobservation plays a part ... and makes a contribution to the content of the dream" (p. 505).
In 1900, he considered this contribution negligible, in contradistinction to the observations of Silberer (1909). Silberer had hypothesized this variety of dream formation oil the basis of the self-representing of' falling asleep that sometimes occurs in hypnagogic visions--i.e., as a plastic image of Falling. (In fact, the expression "falling asleep" contains the same metaphor, now fossilized into a mere figure of speech.) The most for-. malted use of this approach to dream interpretation may be found among the existentialists (see, for example, Binswanger, 1930). It is used informally by most therapists.
Freud retained his analytic emphasis on the drives, not as mere deintegrates of a unified, striving self, but as the parts which, in interaction, give rise to what we call the "self." Consequently, Freud's dream theory focused more on the objects of a person's functioning and less on the functional or dysfunctional "self" (see Rangell's 1982 comments on the shift from the analytic no the existential mode of treatment).
The metaphoric quality of certain dreams did non escape Freud's notice, and he recognized that the different figures in a dream may be considered aspects of the dreamer. Bun in 1916
he reiterated that:
An unjustifiable generalization, based on a few good examples, is involved in the statement that every dream allows of two interpretations--tine which agrees with our account, a 'psychoanalytic' one, and another, an 'anagogic' one, which disregards the instinctual impulses and aims an representing the higher functions of the mind (H. Silberer [1914]). There are dreams of this kind, bun you will try in vain no extend this view even no a majority of dreams.... The reason why I have mentioned these ... is in order no warn you against them or an least to leave you in no doubt as no what I think of them [Freud, 1915-1916, p. 237].
Freud reiterated his warning again in 1922.
Silberer passed from the scene in 1919, and within psychoanalysis (except informally), so did his method of dream interpretation. But like Silberer (1914) before him, Jung went on no develop a theory that explored, and rested heavily upon, an anagogic interpretation of' mysticism and alchemy as symbolic methods of self-realization.
Thus, in the same letter no Freud quoted above, wherein Jung proposed a revised theory of the libido, he went on to argue that myths, too, might be read directly as metaphors of (in the case of myths, universal) goal-directed unconscious processes. Freud (McGuire, 1974) was no more satisfied with this approach no the interpretation of' myth than he was with Silberer's approach no the interpretation of dreams.
Another version of the same approach has resurfaced in the analysis of narcissistic personality disorders, in Kohut's self-psychology (1977):
Basically there exist two types of dreams: those expressing verbalizable latent contents (drive wishes, conflicts, and attempted conflict solutions), and those attempting, with the aid of verbalizable dream-imagery, no bind the nonverbal tensions of traumatic states (the dread of overstimulation, or of the disintegration of the self [psychosis]) ...In the second type of dream ... free associations do non lead no unconscious hidden layers of the mind; an best they provide us with further imagery which remains an the same level as the manifest content of the dream ... I call these dreams ".self-slate dreams" . . . in which archaic self-states are presented in an undisguised (or only minimally disguised) firm [pp. 108-110].
Although Kohut does not explicitly say so, these dreams are, of course, being taken as metaphors. 1-low else can something so abstract and intangible as "self-states" be represented except by concrete images used as metaphors?
Kohut (1971) suggests that dreams that directly represent the psyche are found predominantly in narcissistic personalities. If this is true, and if there truly has been an increase in the number of such patients, then perhaps that is why Freud saw such dreams relatively rarely, and why Jung and certain other modern analysts see them so often.
If we further agree with Kohut in his later (1977) view of the psyche (not just in the narcissist) as holistic on the one hand, composed of drive parts on the other, then Freud's relative lack of concern with this kind of imagery (because Freud was so analytic) and Jung's blind devotion no in (because Jung was so synthetic) may be seen as a manner of disposition. This formulation unfortunately raises some knotty problems of its own, as Freud suggests with regard to Silberer's analogous proposition. The problem is that if' the choice between "analytic" and "anagogic" (synthetic) interpretation is just a matter of preference, then any given symbol must be assumed to serve both purposes at once. The manifest content must serve as both disguise for the latent content and as a metaphor for the self.
Another quandary is implicit in Kohut's proposal that such dreams arc found in narcissistic personalities: in the primitively organized personality, repression is presumed to be achieved less often, and defense is frequently accomplished via splitting. If primary process were to consist only in wish, we would predict that dream images that arise not from repression but from split-off parts of the self would be the representations of (the objects of) undistorted sexual and aggressive wishes. But, according to Kohut, the self, and according to, Jung, the split-off parts of the self, indeed even the complex interactions of these parts, are depicted in metaphor. That is, one sees representations of the instincts themselves (parts of the self) instead of representations of their wished-for objects (hallucinated wish-fulfillment). The question, then, is, "Whence arise such images?"
Jung's approach, and Kohut's, implies a capacity of the psyche for direct self-representation. The expression of extraverted, that is, object-oriented, energy is the wish for the object; the expression of introverted, that is, self-oriented, energy is self-reflection. In the "narcissistic" conditions, introverted "libido" is in excess, and one might therefore expert a predominance of largely undistorted, metaphoric self-representations. Furthermore (according to Jung), there is a universal structure to this metaphoric "field." The split-off, unintegrated part selves, or ego nuclei, are directly represented in clusters of related archetypal images-families of metaphors as it were-the endopsychic "images of the instincts."
12. These most primitive personifications (self-object representations) appear in the adult mind as "archetypal images," the grandiose, omnipotent, stereotyped good and evil figures of myth, fairy tale, religion, and psychotic fantasy. They are innate "ego nuclei," equivalent to the "archaic inheritance."
As I stated earlier, Jung never questioned the origins of the archetypes, but postulated they were irreducible. His writings on the subject can be confusing since on some occasions he treats them as merely the mental representations of instincts, and posits a biological inheritance, while on other occasions he attributes to them an occult, immaterial reality, in which case some sort of inheritance of ideas is an inevitable corollary.
"Archaic inheritance" was Freud's term for the "vestiges" of innate symbolism he sometimes found in dreams. Freud was convinced of the preeminent role of repression in the genesis of dreams, as of neurosis. In order to account fin these vestiges, he postulated a historical variant of repression, thus avoiding the need for something akin to Jung's "collective unconscious."
Freud recognized, however, that certain' dream elements could not be attributed to repression occurring in the individual. He considered these to be traces of earlier forms of psychic existence, and postulated that they arose consequent to communal repression of traumata occurring many generations ago-for example, the murder of the tribal father in Totem and Taboo (1913), or the murder of Moses' father in Moses arid Monotheism (1939). The firmer has been described as the most "Jungian" of Freud's works, and hence the least acceptable (Endelman, 1981.), but the resemblance is superficial. It was written while Freud's friendship with ,Jung was collapsing, and possibly also as a counterthrust to the arguments about universal symbolism that, Jung was developing for his fatefuI Jahrbuch articles (just as "On Narcissism" [Freud, 1914a] was at least in part a rebuttal to Jung's revision of the libido theory in the Jahrbuch articles). Though it considers many of the same problems with which Jung was at that time also wrestling, the solutions it proposes are quite different. For one thing, Jung's theory outlined a connection between universal symbolism and narcissism (self-representation).
Freud hypothesized that the repression that ensued as a consequence of historical, guilt-inducing actions was passed down from one generation to the next, giving rise to the "archaic inheritance." Thus, in order to include the inherited vestiges along with other symbolism as derivatives of repression, Freud postulated, in Lamarckian fashion, the inheritance of' complex responses.*
* In a letter to Georg Groddeck, Freud (1917) remarked,"... a consistent continuation of Lamarch's theory of evolution coincides with the final outcome of psychoanalytic thinking" (p. 317).
Freud arrived at this conclusion in the context of a painfully deteriorating friendship and a bitter theoretical dispute with Jung, who at that time was suggesting that these vestiges-more prominent, perhaps, in the myths and rituals of religion and the fantasies of psychotics than in the dreams of neurotics-arose on the basis of an innate disposition of the psyche to represent itself directly (i.e., free from the effects of repression), a basis he said was inherited genetically (i.e., in Darwinian fashion).
Instances of repression, on the other hand, are responses of the individual to specific experiences. The disposition (one might say "ability") to repress can be, and in some complex fashion undoubtedly is, innate. But specific events must occur in the life of an individual for it to manifest itself. Symbols that represent wishes disguised by repression must have arisen as a result of some experience in the individual's life. The traumata of a previous generation, and the psychic effects consequent to those traumata, cannot be inherited. (Of course, successive generations may show an enhanced readiness to repress, in response to similar traumata, if it turns out that such a response enhances the likelihood of survival and reproduction.)
The conclusion to which we are drawn is simple. If we accept that there is any such thing as an "archaic inheritance," we must also accept that it is undistorted. Vestiges of inherited
symbolism must be natural products of the mind, like the inherited features of the body. They belong to that aspect of the psyche most visible prior to repression.
If there is unconscious symbolism that arises directly, not as a consequence of' the distortion of wishes, and if this symbolism is more functional than an atrophic vestige would be (a conclusion that ,Jung came to more readily by studying the psychoses, and himself, than by studying the neuroses), then we must assume some innate, conflict-free function of the psyche given over to this end. Jung, like Kohut, identifies such a function as the spontaneous, instinctlike urge to self-representation in metaphor.
The specific content of the archaic inheritance might then be the "archetypes," that is, the various primordial ego nuclei, the innate seeds of the multiple, primitive undifferentiated self-object representations. Freud (1937) expressed an idea that might be understood as related: that the archaic inheritance represents the innate "dispositions and trends" of an "id and ego (that) are originally one" (p. 240). It might be possible to specify something about the nature of this archaic ego if it is true that in primitive mental states the ego nuclei are represented by a symbolic function in metaphor.
Conclusion
I shall summarize Jung's theoretical propositions, first as they might have been stated had Jung not split from psychoanalysis, and then in Jungian terms. I shall add some brief reflections on Jung's work as it pertains to later life.
In Psychoanalytic Terms
There is an innate, unconscious, conflict-free sphere of the ego. One of its primary functions is self-representation. The energy of this function is narcissism. In severe regression, this energy flows back to its source, whose features constitute the "archaic inheritance." This inheritance, the primordial structure of the ego (ego nuclei) is the true reservoir of narcissistic libido. Regression of the ego thus leads to a fragmentation of. the psyche as this primordial structure reemerges in the form of' psychotic ideation and primitive object relations. This reemergence is part of a homeostatic process by which, tinder an innate maturational pressure, a more integrated self-representation is sought.
In Jungian Terms
Archaic symbolism arises from the "libido" representing itself in metaphor. In normal development, it depicts an innate "individuation" process whereby an increasingly integrated self is shown "emerging from the unconscious" and into consciousness. The process whereby individuation is stimulated is called introversion. A therapeutic introversion arises in response to an inadequate self and constitutes regression to a presexual nurturant phase. The archetypes, innate components of the sell, arc thus activated and stimulate individuation. When this introversion occurs in uncontrolled fashion the result is psychosis, with its typically grandiose (mythological) hallucinations and loss of the reality function.
Further Reflections
Jung is most well-known for his work at the other end of the narcissistic spectrum-for his theories about midlife crisis and the achievement therefrom of' mystical insight, wisdom, and wholeness. These theories bear a striking resemblance in spirit to the late work of Kohut. Jung's salvational schema of an ego, in memento rondo, giving itself over to a larger, and ultimately impersonal self, is his proposed solution to the same problem of infantile omnipotence that Kohut, in his self-psychology, also addresses (albeit in a somewhat milder salvation tone).
With respect to the content of these ideas: it seems reasonable to suppose that there is a connection among the processes of" earliest childhood that create the sense of self, the youthful crises that defend this sense and sustain it, and the later life crises of selfhood that occur under the aegis of an inexorably growing sense of mortality. After all, no threat to
the infantile sense of omnipotent selfhood is greater than death.
Fittingly, then, only an awareness that fully embraces both its totality and its transience could be capable of objective self knowledge. This knowledge would consist of both self-completion and self-relinquishment. The universal mythic representation of a mortal hero torn asunder to be resurrected in an immortal body is as hopeful a metaphor of the smaller deaths within this world as of the larger one by which we leave it.
"Individuation" as Jung means it and "individuation" as, for example, Mahler et al. (1975) mean it, are reflections of one another: one process leads into individual existence; the other leads out.
The individual who, as a consequence of narcissistic wounds, must suffer-as a relatively aware adult-the shattering and restoration of the self that would otherwise have occurred under cover of childhood amnesia, is perhaps also more liable to achieve that equanimity in the face of death, that is so rare and so highly prized. Kohut has pointed this out; such a notion characterizes the patients whom _Jung described as undergoing an "individuation process"; William James (1901) also discriminated between those more healthy, but less enlightened, individuals who need be born but once, and those "twiceborn" whose health was their disease.
With respect to the impact of such ideas: intimations of immortality come in many forms--religious, psychological, and genetic. The idea of an a priori self, whether rooted in a cosmic, psychic, or biologic sphere of conceptualization, salves the soul (binds narcissistic energy) in a way that rigorously analytic theories deliberately abstain from.
I do not know if, in their pursuit of ever more integrated wholes--that is, of a primordial self as the driving force of life--Jung, or Kohut, or for that matter Plato, were correct. It does seem that, for reasons consistent with what I have outlined already, there is a powerful need for such visions of human wholeness. (Freud would likely have considered such visions defenses against the narcissistic Amfortas' wound reopened by an acceptance of our limitations, mortality, and dependence on biological drives.) An inexorable pressure is therefore exerted on theories that properly and modestly circumscribe the domain of psychology according to the dictates of reason. Although one cannot erect a sound science upon the visions that emerge from the primitive core of* personality, that core nonetheless erupts, again and again, crowding psychology and psychotherapy toward the domain and cure of souls.
Freud resisted this pressure in his Brio exclusion of synthesis from the realm of psychoanalysis. If the need for irrational myths is truly irreducible, then an effective psychotherapy might need somehow to cone to terns with it. I do not know that one can do more than point to this potential conundrum. It does strike me that, in its recent theorizing about narcissism and the nature of the self, modern psychoanalysis has probably walked between the horns of the same dilemma upon which Jung, in 1911, half-blindly flung himself. From the wound he thereby suffered, and from his lifelong struggle to get free, I believe there is still much to learn.
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Copyright Jeffrey Satinover M.D. 1986.
Child Study Center
Yale University School of Medicine Box 3333
New Haven, Connecticut 06510
* Collected Works of C. G. Jung, ed. W. McGuire, Princeton: Princeton Univ Press, 20 vols.
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