Freud
The disease called “man”
There is one word in which to understand Freud’s thought: repression. The whole edifice
of Freud’s work can be thought in terms of repression. In this sense Freud radicalized
theories of human nature and society. Society is repression of the individual, and the
essence of the individual is repression of him/herself.
What led Freud to the hypothesis/concept of repression?
It was the discovery of the meaningfulness of a set of phenomena that were usually
thought of meaningless: (1) madness/neurosis, (2) dreams, and (3) psychopathology of
everyday life, slips of the tongue, errors, and random thoughts.
When Freud claims that these phenomena are meaningful he means of course that they
can be determined by causal explanation. He insists on the principle of psychic
determinism (a little like Wundt) but of course psychic determinism would not be
sufficient to grant these customary meaningless phenomena meaning. Giving these
phenomena meaning implies that they have purpose or “intention”. Neurotic symptoms,
dreams, and errors are caused but they also have purpose and meaning. Since the purpose
of neurotic symptoms, dreams and errors are unknown to the person whose purposes they
express Freud is driven to embrace the paradox that human beings have purposes of
which they know nothing or that they have involuntary purposes (“unconscious ideas”).
From this point of view a whole new world of psychic reality is opened up about which
we are totally ignorant. In the same way that we are ignorant of the external world except
in term so what the senses tell us, Freud claims that we are also ignorant of the inner
world and hence what neurotic symptoms, dreams, and errors mean must be discovered.
This is psychoanalysis: the discovery of the unconscious in mental life.
But Freud did not simply add the unconscious to the conscious life.
He also maintained that some of the unconscious is incapable to becoming conscious in
the usual way (through reflection) because it is disowned and resisted by the conscious
self. Thus, psychoanalysis assumes that the reason we are not conscious of the meaning
of neurotic symptoms, dreams, and errors that we actively resist knowing their meaning.
Thus, the relation between the conscious and the unconscious self is one of conflict psychoanalysis is from top to bottom one of psychic conflict.
The unconscious is established in the individual when s/he refuses to admit into
consciousness a desire/purpose which then goes underground and exists as a “psychic
force” that opposes conscious ideas/reason. This rejection of desires/purposes which
nevertheless remain active in the unconscious as psychic forces is called repression.
Repression keeps (part of) oneself, the reality/meaning of one’s desires/purposes, out of
consciousness. The fact that the desire/purpose that is repressed nevertheless remains or
belongs to the individual (as part of the unconscious) beocmes evident in neurotic
symptoms, dreams, and errors which are all irruptions of the unconscious into
consciousness in a manner that constitutes a compromise between two conflicting
systems (unconscious and consciousness) and hence these phenomena exhibit the reality
of the psychic conflict.
The unconscious remains enigmatic so long as we have no theory of repression. Thus, a
theory of repression produces a theory of the unconscious (part of the self). Or as Freud
said, the unconscious is the “dynamically repressed unconscious”. Freud alludes to this
dynamically repressed unconscious in a series of metaphors analogous to social
phenomena: e.g. war, civil war, police action between conscious and unconscious – i.e.,
inner conflict.
Now it seems like a long step from neuroses, dreams, and errors to a theory of human
nature. Yet Freud argued that he was entitled to apply his hypothesis of repression
broadly (and he argued that this was justified because traditional theories of human
nature said nothing about neurotic symptoms, dreams, and errors because science deemed
these to be peripheral to human life). But the question is whether madness, dreams, and
errors really peripheral?
In fact, Freud argued that to extend the hypothesis of repression from neuroses, dreams,
and errors to the rest of human nature is no great extension at all. One reason is that if the
hypothesis holds up for madness, dreams, and errors, then repression is universal.
Perhaps! But we could doubt for example that madness is universal. But surely not
dreams. Dreams are “normal” phenomena showing not only the working of the
unconscious but also the dynamics of the unconscious (in e.g, “dream censorship”). But
since the same dynamics of repression explain neurotic symptoms, and since the dreams
of neurotics (which are a clue to the meaning of their symptoms) differ not at all from
the content of dreams of normal people the conclusion is that dream are themselves
neurotic. Hence, Freud concluded that we are all neurotic.
What dream show is that the difference between neurotics and normal people prevails
only during the day (at night we all dream). Moreover, since the psychopathology of
everyday life (errors) exhibits the same dynamics, even the waking life of normal or
healthy people is pervaded by numerous symptom formations. Between normality and
abnormality there is no qualitative difference, except to note the practical question of
whether our neurosis is seriously enough to incapacitate us for work/productivity or
loving/being loved (the two criteria of “health”).
Or another more paradoxical way of stating the same thing is to claim that the difference
between normal and abnormal is that the normal have a socially acceptable form of
neurosis whereas the abnormal do not have socially acceptable forms of neurosis (note
abnormality is socially-culturally defined). Or a more cautious way of stating the same
thing is that the study of dreams suggests that the neurotic makes use of normal psychic
mechanisms – and hence neurosis does not imply a newly created morbid disturbance of
the psyche.
Hence, Freud’s first paradox namely of the repressed unconscious implies a second
paradox namely that human nature is neurotic.
Thus, neurosis is not an occasional aberration; it is in all of us all the time. For example,
Freud discovered the Oedipus complex first of all in himself – in his self-analysis
(Interpretation of dreams). This discovery resembles Socrates’ “know thyself”, or we
can also say that the claim concerning the universal neurosis of humankind is the
psychoanalytical analogue of the theological doctrine of original sin [Adam’s motivation
in eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil was the (unconscious) motivation
to be like God].
The crucial point in Freud’s basic hypothesis is the existence of psychic conflict and we
must specify just what that conflict consists in. Freud does this at various different levels
and from various points of view. I want to just indicate some common core to these.
In my characterization of repression I used the word purpose to designate what was
repressed in the unconscious. This vague word conceals something fundamental in
Freud’s theory. That is, the conflict generated in neuroses, dreams and errors are not
intellectual conflicts but conflicts between repressed wishes, desires, purposes and their
conscious expression. Freud uses the phrase “unconscious ideas” but this phrase can be
misleading. For as Freud writes if we stay at the surface (at the level of consciousness)
we find only ideas and memories. But Freud maintains that the only important/valuable
things in psychic life are emotions/feelings (not ideas/reason). Psychic life gains
significance only in its aptitude to evoke emotions/feelings. Ideas are repressed only
because they are bound up with the release of emotions. Repression acts on emotions
because, to say it the other way around, emotions are caught up with ideas. Dreams are in
essence wish-fulfillments, expressions of repressed unconscious wishes, and so are
neuroses and errors.
So if we use the word “desire” for all “unconscious ideas”, Freud’s axiom is that human
beings consist not in thinking but in desiring. Unlike the Enlightenment/modernity focus
on the intellect/thinking/contemplation, Freud’s axiom dates back to Plato’s conception
(in the dialogues of Symposium and Phaedrus) of the psyche as Eros – the fundamental
aim of human beings to find a satisfactory love object. However there was in Plato a
profound ambiguity between this fundamental concept of Eros which seeks a satisfactory
love object and his theory of contemplation as the ultimate good - an ambiguity we also
find in Spinoza and Hegel in our modern period. The turnabout comes after Hegel, with
Feuerbach and Marx, who call for the abandonment of contemplation (as the highest
good) in favor of practical-sensuous activity (note the influence of Idealism). It was
especially Schopenhauer in his notion of the primacy of the will that is the great landmark
demarcation in Western thought between contemplation as the supreme good (which is
really insane/neurotic!) and Freud’s claim that only the wish/desire can set the
mind/psyche in motion. [Thinking alone cannot “move” the mind/person; only thinking
as bound up with feeling/emotion can do so.]
This notion of desire as the essence of human nature is Freud’s claim that desire is energy
directed toward the procurement of pleasure and avoidance of pain (pleasure principle).
Or, sated otherwise, it is simply the pleasure principle which is the basis of life’s
purpose. Freud did not have in mind some complicated hedonic theory (e.g., as to the
source of pleasure); it is simply a commonsense assumption (in the same way that
Aristotle claims that all men seek happiness). The goal of the pleasure principle is
individual happiness.
Now Freud’s claim is that the pleasure principle is at odds, in conflict with, the whole
world. The reality of the whole world means the renunciation of pleasure; reality
frustrates desire. That is, the pleasure principle is in conflict with the reality principle. It
is this conflict that causes repression. Under conditions of repression, the pleasure
principle operates only at the level of the unconscious. But the phenomena of dreams,
neuroses, and errors show that the frustrations of reality cannot destroy our desires which
are the essence of our being; that is, the unconscious/pleasure principle is the unsubdued
and indestructible element in the human soul. The whole world of reality may act against
desire but desire is too deeply rooted in its passionate striving for positive fulfillment of
happiness to succumb entirely to reality.
On the other hand, the conscious self refuses to admit unconscious desire into the
consciousness and hence consciousness institutes a process of repression. That is, the
conscious in being the interface mediating between the inner real being of desire and
reality represses desire (pushing into the unconscious). The conscious self is the part of
the mind that interacts with the real world and especially through speech makes the
conscious self accessible to education and acculturation. (Education is aimed wholly at
educating the conscious self.) Thus, the conscious self is the organ of adaptation to the
environment and culture – meaning the conscious self is governed by the reality principle
– adjusting to reality (i.e., the social-cultural world and its relation to mastering that
world in science-technology).
From this perspective the phenomena of dreams, neuroses, and errors, which as I said
were the result of conflict between the conscious and unconscious, can be also seen as
conflict between the pleasure and reality principles. Thus, dreams, neuroses, and all
manifestation of the unconscious such as fantasy, daydreaming, etc., represent a flight (or
alienation) from reality which is found to be unbearable. But dreams, neuroses etc., also
represent a return to the pleasure principle – they are substitute phenomena for the
pleasures denied by reality. These phenomena are what Freud calls “compromise
formations” between conscious and unconscious, pleasure and reality, wherein desired
pleasure is expressed in a distorted or reduced way, or even transformed into it opposite
pain (pain can be pleasurable although in a distorted manner). That is, pleasure becomes,
under repression, a “symptom” (compromised pleasure by the repressive force of
reality/consciousness).
Of course, to assert that reality causes repression merely defines the problem but does not
solve it. Freud sometimes identifies the reality principle with the “struggle for existence”
as if repression could be explained by an “objective economic reality to work” (Marxist).
But this is not Freud’s meaning. The reason is that we as human beings create our own
reality (“compulsions” to work, perhaps) through various social and cultural media of
language and institutions such as law. Therefore we should say that society imposes
repression (does not simply cause it) and, in his later theory of anxiety, Freud maintains
that human beings are animals that repress themselves and then create culture and
society in order to repress themselves.
Yet the claim that society imposes repression does serve to tie the universal neurosis of
humankind to our social organization. Human beings are social animals and in virtue
of being social animals they are also neurotic animals.
That is, Freud’s claim is that the superiority of humankind over other animals resides in
their capacity for neurosis, and our capacity for neurosis is simply the obverse of our
capacity for cultural and social development.
Freud arrives at the same conclusion as Nietzsche (the “disease called man”): neurosis is
an essential consequence of civilization (human “making”). We must not only
psychoanalyze foreign cultures/societies, the ones we dislike or disagree with, but we
must also analyze our own.
Neurosis and history
The idea that all human beings are mad seems at first sight to contradict with a historical
perspective on the nature and destiny of humankind. It seems to swallow all civilization
into the darkness of neurosis. But this simple critique neglects the fact that Freud had a
very rich theory of neurosis.
1. There are different kinds of neuroses (with different symptoms) all with a
different kind of relation between the repressed, the conscious, and reality. In
Civilizations and its discontents, Freud tries to relate different cultures to different
forms of neuroses. That is, Freud speculates that the evolution of civilization can
be correlated with different neuroses (i.e., with individual development). Hence,
therapeutic recommendations for different neuroses are of great practical interest
also in understanding different cultures.
2. Furthermore, individual neuroses are not static but dynamic. Neurosis is a
historical process with its own internal logic. Because neuroses are compromise
formations they are inherently unsatisfactory (they are compromises of pleasure
and reality) and we might expect a tension between the repressed and the
repressing factors (reality) resulting in ever new compromise (symptom)
formations. Moreover, all symptoms also show a dynamic exhibiting a regressive
pattern which Freud calls the “return of the repressed”. That is neurotic symptoms
show an increasing similarity to the original desire and the original act itself (that
is why symptoms are also meaningful symbols). Hence, the hypothesis of the
universal neurosis of humankind also implies that history itself exhibits a dialectic
of neurosis.
This interpretation of history is an integral part of psychoanalysis. That is, Freud’s
effort to grasp the whole of human history in psychoanalysis is the appearance of dreams
and neurotic symptoms evident in historical themes (ritualistically and mythically) in the
religious history of humankind. Thus, Freud claims that there is a link between his theory
of neurosis and the theory of history, and this link is religion (Totem and Taboo, 1913;
Moses and Monotheism, 1937).
Religion as the link between individual neurosis and history affects both. Human history
can be understood as a neurosis, and individual neurosis can only be understood in the
whole context of human history. Religion (and all cultural institutions) is to be
understood on the model of individual neurosis. In the history of the species something
quite similar happens as in the events of the individual. That is, humankind passed
through conflicts of a sexual-aggressive nature which were for the most part warded off
and forgotten, but return in individual neurosis. This is what Freud calls our individual
“archaic heritage”. Humankind is a prisoner of the past in the same sense that neurotic
patients are prisoners of (unconscious) reminiscences of their past. Thus, the bondage of
all cultures to their cultural heritage (traditionalism) is a neurotic constriction. Similarly,
individuals are caught in memory traces not only of their ontogenetic development but
also of their phylogenetic heritage. The repressed unconscious of the individual which
produces neurosis, is not an individual unconscious but a collective one. Ontogeny
recapitulates phylogeny: each individual recapitulates the history of the race. The years
of childhood means having to overcome the enormous distance between human beings of
the Stone Age and human beings of modernity. From this it follow that a theory of
neurosis must embrace a theory of history; and conversely that a theory of history
must embrace a theory of neurosis.
Psychoanalysis must view religion both as neurosis and as an attempt to become
conscious and cure (from inside the neurosis) the neurosis, and it was this phenomenon of
religion on which Freud based his hope for therapy. In other words, psychoanalysis does
not dismiss religion as merely wishful thinking (The future of an illusion), but rather
Freud sees religion as a “substitute gratification” (or the Marxist analogue of religion as
the “opiate of the people”). Substitute gratifications apply not only to religion and art
(and all other cultural formations) but to dreams and neurotic symptoms – and as such
they contain a truth, namely that they are expressions (albeit distorted by repression) of
the immortal desires of the human heart.
In Moses and Monotheism (1939) Freud gives the proper psychoanalytical perspective on
religion when he sets out to find the fragment of historic and psychological truth in
Judaism and Christianity. Even Marx (in the passage where he speaks of religion as the
opiate of the masses) speaks of religion as the “sigh of the oppressed creature; the heart
of a heartless world”. But Marx did not have the concept of repression/unconscious (that
is, Marx could not recognize the secret mystery of the human heart), but Freud believed
that psychoanalysis is equipped to study the secrets of the human heart and hence must
recognize religion as the core of this mystery of the human heart. The thing is, according
to Freud, that psychoanalysis can also go beyond religion, completing what religion
cannot do, namely make the unconscious conscious. Thus psychoanalysis becomes the
science of the human heart, of the original sin, correcting the error of religion. [In other
words, in clearly recognizing our desiring nature, psychoanalysis can do what religion
does not dare to do namely look at our desiring nature without creating a way out
(repression) of our desiring nature by appeal to “eternity”.]
However, there is also another line of thought in Freud’s earliest writings on the
relation between psychoanalysis and history. This other line of thought works out
the “ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny” in a different way. Thus, the
psychoanalytical model of understanding history is not neurosis but the process of
development – growing up. That is, maturity is envisioned not as a return of
repressed infantile neurosis but as overcoming it. That is, Freud correlates his
stages of psychosexual development with stages of history (e.g., positivist thinkers
like Comte and Frazer). In Totem and Taboo Freud says that the animistic stage
of history corresponds to individual narcissism, the religious stage corresponds to
“object-finding” in which dependence on the parents is paramount, and the
scientific stage is maturity wherein the individual has renounced the pleasure
principle and accepted fully the reality principle (seeking the object in the
external world). This is the stage of scientific materialism/technology. Obviously
this line of Freud’s thinking is a residue of 19th and 19th c optimism and
rationalism – wherein history is a process of becoming increasingly wiser. But
this line of thought is inadequate and it belongs to Freud’s early thinking about
instincts and traditionalist view of the self.
Of course, Freud’s later views on the individual and history (relation between culture and
neurosis) involve great difficulty. For it depends on the formulation of a concept of the
“healthy” or “normal” culture by which to measure neurotic culture in history (is religion
healthy or normal or not?). The development of such a concept is central for both
psychoanalysis and history. The failure to formulate such a concept also explains why
Freud’s pioneering efforts have been difficult to pursue.
If historians have failed to follow Freud, poets have characteristically anticipated him.
For example, according to James Joyce, “history is a nightmare from which I am trying to
awaken”. It was Nietzsche who first tried to grasp world history as the history of
increasing neurosis (Geneology of morals). In both Nietzsche and Freud we find the same
dynamic in the neurosis of history namely the ever increasing guilt caused by repression.
Nietzsche’s “too long has the world been a madhouse” compares to Freud’s
If civilization is an inevitable course of development from the group of the family
to the group of humanity as a whole, then an intensification of the sense of guilt
will be inextricably bound up with it, until perhaps the sense of guilt may swell to
a magnitude that individuals can hardly support.
The necessity of a psychoanalytical approach to history is pressed upon the historian by
one question: why do human beings of all animals have a history?
Human beings do not merely transmit (biologically, environmentally) they also in
making history make themselves. History is human beings’ desires to become other than
they are - and this is essentially an unconscious desire. Thus, the changes in history are
not the result of what conscious desires – every historian knows this and so should every
psychologist. Hegel already made this point in speaking of the (implicit) “cunning of
history”. We are engaged in making history without having the slightest idea of what we
really want or understanding what really makes us happy – in fact notwithstanding all our
scientific/technological progress we seem to be ever more unhappy (and this is surely not
our intent).
Christian theology (cf. St Augustine) seems to understand this human restlessness and
discontent as the psychological source of the historical process. But Christian theology
takes human beings out of history (including the animal “kingdom”) and so commits its
own worse sin, the sin of pride.
Freud’s critique of religion maintains that true humility is to be found in science. What
we learn from Copernicus that the human world (and human beings) is not the center of
the universe, from Darwin that human beings are members of the animal kingdom, and
from Freud that the conscious ego is not master of its own house (there is the unconscious
of the repressed). Apart from psychoanalysis there are no scientific theories as to why
human beings are endlessly discontent and restless. The discontented animal is neurotic –
having endless desires which are not satisfied by society/culture. Freud maintained that it
is these unsatisfied and repressed immortal desires sustain the historical process. History
is shaped not by our conscious will, nor by the cunning of reason (Kant and Hegel) but by
desire…endless desire.
So for Freud the “riddle of history” is not Reason (science) but Desire. It is not to be
founding labor (Marx) but in love. Here Marx confronts Freud and we can clarify Freud
in this confrontation with Marx. For Marx the essence of man is labor (economic factor)
with which Freud does not disagree (economic conditions of existence are influential on
human intellectual, artistic and ethical life) but, of course, for Freud this is nothing but
the working of the reality principle. However, as we have seen, the essence of human
existence is not the reality principle but the pleasure principle (repressed unconscious
desires). No matter how stringently economic necessity presses down on human beings,
human beings are not Homo economicus or Homo Laborans; no matter how bitter the
struggle for bread, Freud recognizes that human beings do not live by bread
(science/technology) alone.
What does “man” want beyond economic welfare and mastery over nature (science)?
Marx defines the essence of man as labor and traces the dialectic of labor in history until
labor abolishes itself when there is a vacuum in Marx’s utopia – unless of course there is
no end to labor and history is never abolished and labor continues, like Faust, ever driven
to greater achievements and some other and truer definition of what it means to be human
can be found (the aspiration of bourgeois capitalism)!
Freud suggests that beyond labor there is love (Eros) and at the end of history there is
love. Love must have been there from the beginning and it must have been the hidden
force supplying the energy devoted to labor and history making. From this Freudian point
of view, repressed Eros is the energy of history and labor is sublimated (compromised)
Eros (pleasure). Thus, Freud can answer the question that Marx cannot (what does “man”
want beyond economic mastery and mastery over nature?).
Marxism is a sociological system and must be settled by sociologists. Freud when he
speaks as a sociologist says that in “imposing repression” at “bottom society’s motive is
economic”. The quarrel between psychoanalysis and economic determinism arises from
the fact that there is an implicit psychological assumption behind economic determinism
and hence to address this quarrel we must move from the abstract society to the concrete
individual.
The issue is not the importance of economics (it is important) but rather its psychology
(here is where we find such scholars as Erich Fromm). Marx had assumed that concrete
human needs and drives sustain economic activity and that these are fully conscious
(class consciousness is consciousness). Here in Marx’s utilitarian self-preservation and
pleasure is the self-evident psychological theory which then ingenuously invokes a
category like “economic necessity”.
Bu there is every reason to believe when we examine human history that human needs
are not what they appear to be. The Faustian restlessness of human beings in history
shows well enough that we are not satisfied with the satisfaction of conscious desires. We
remain unconscious of our real desires – desires that are ever increasing. We need
psychoanalysis of history to understand this ever expanding domain of desires.
Marx could only come up with a psychology of history which condemns “man” to be
eternally Faustian and hence precludes any happiness. Marx needs a psychological
premise which would explain why “man” is unceasing in his quest for mastery thereby
sustaining labor in history. For this Marx turns to biology namely that the satisfaction of
human needs always generates new needs. Obviously if human discontent is biologically
given, then it is also incurable. But then both the “abolition of history” and the “economy
of abundance” of Marx’s utopia are out of the question. Hence, in his 3rd volume of
Capital Marx writes:
Just as the savage must wrestle with nature, in order to satisfy his wants, in order
to maintain his life, and to reproduce it, so civilized man has to do it in all forms
of society and under all modes of production. With his development the realm of
natural necessity expands, because his wants increase, but at the same time the
forces of production increase, by which these wants are satisfied.
But Marx assumption of a biological basis for historical progress really amounts to a
confession that he is unable to explain it psychologically. [This is so for all biological scientific materialism - theories of human nature; they cannot explain hence appeal to
biological “facts”).
Psychoanalysis does have a theory of progress but only in viewing history as neurotic.
By defining man as a neurotic animal psychoanalysis not merely assumes man’s Faustian
character but also explains why man is so. Freud writes:
What appears as an untiring impulsion towards further perfection can easily be
understood as the result of the instinctual repression upon which is based all that
is most precious in human civilization. The repressed instinct never ceases to
strive for complete satisfaction, which would consist in the repetition of primary
experience or satisfaction. No substitutive or reactive formations and no
sublimations will suffice to remove the repressed instinct’s persisting tension.
(in Beyond the pleasure principle)
Psychoanalysis offers a way out of the endless nightmare of the endless Faustian
discontent (a way out of human neurosis and human history). In case of the individual
neurotic, the burden of psychoanalysis is to free (therapeutically) the individual from the
burden of this past, of history, the burden which compels him to go on having and being a
case history (i.e., to set the individual free from his/her past repressions). The way to do
so is to deepen the individual’s historical (personal) consciousness until he awakens from
his/her history as from a nightmare.
This enhancement of psychoanalytical consciousness may also be the fulfillment of
historical consciousness in that ever widening and deepening search for the origins which
have obsessed human thought since the Enlightenment/Renaissance. If historical
consciousness is finally transformed into psychoanalytical consciousness (transparently
meaningful to the individual self) the grip of the past has on the present will also be
loosened. Instead of making himself (repressing himself) in history, “man” can live in
joy instead of compulsively constantly keeping track of old debts and old scores
(neurotic), and so enter a stage of Being which was the goal of human Becoming. An old
humanistic-religious ideal!
Sexuality and childhood
Our essence resides in our unconscious repressed desires (because we always exists in
society) and it is there that we come to understand madness, and the clue to what we
might become if the reality of our own making ceases to repress us. Freud thesis might be
expressed as follows: our repressed desires are the desires we had unrepressed in
childhood, and these desires are sexual desires.
In analyzing neurotic symptoms and dreams, Freud found that they invariably contained a
return or regression to the experiences of early childhood. But as we have seen, according
to the hypothesis of repression, the consciousness which comes into conflict with the
unconscious is the product of education. It follows that in some sense children are (as
uneducated individuals) unrepressed (in children the conscious and unconscious are not
yet separated). Hence, it was natural that Freud made the inference that adults in fleeing
from repressive reality in dreams and neuroses regress to childhood because it is there
that adults were not yet repressed (and therefore happy). Freud also found that the
analysis of neurotic symptoms not only led to childhood but also the sexual life of
children (childhood). Thus, symptoms were not merely a substitute for pleasure denied by
reality, but a substitute for sexual satisfaction denied by reality. But the repressed sexual
desires whose presence was indicated were for the most part labeled perverse or
abnormal. Thus, the analysis of neurosis required that Freud construct a theory of
sexuality which would account for perverted as well as normal sexuality and both would
have to be traced to childhood.
The axiom on which Freud constructed this extension of his basic hypothesis is that the
pattern of normal adult sexuality is not a natural (biological) but a cultural phenomenon.
The pattern of normal adult sexuality (the mutual love of a man and woman in all its
variations) represented a particular social organization of certain possibilities given the
human organism. This normal sexual organization was made possible by social
organization marked by the evolutionary transition from ape to man and which also
makes that social organization possible. Man’s sexual and social organization are
deeply interconnected (as contemporary feminist critiques appreciated in Freud) so much
so that we cannot say which came first but only assume that both evolved at once. Human
social and sexual organization is conjoined.
The critical institution in the transition from ape to man, and the link between man’s
sexual and social organization, is parenthood – with the prolonged maintenance of
children in the state of helpless dependence. Parenthood implies family organization of
some sort or other and that family is the nucleus of all other social organizations. This
much was basic anthropology! What Freud added was the implication of prolonged
parenthood and prolonged infantile dependence on sexual life both of the parents and
children. As far as parents are concerned it is clear that adult sexuality serves a socially
useful purpose of breeding children, but for the individual it is also an end in itself –
according to Freud the greatest source of pleasure. Adult sexuality insofar as it is socially
designed to by rules to maintain the institution of the family, and insofar as sexuality is
diverted from individual pleasure and exploited for the purpose of maintaining a socially
useful institution, is a clear instance of the subordination of the pleasure principle to the
reality principle which is repression. But as such it is also rejected by the unconscious
essence of human beings (which is to seek pleasure not maintain a social order) and
therefore leads to neurosis (the desire for pleasure is blocked by social organization/rules
of procreation and hence adult sexuality is a cultural “compromise formation”. Or, adult
(normal) sexuality is a socially organized compromise formation giving up something of
genuine desire for pleasure in service of fulfilling family/parental obligation to
procreation and care of offspring.
Prolonged infancy has even more far-reaching consequences on children. Infancy is
protected from harsh reality by parental care (and hence initiates a period of privileged
irresponsibility and freedom from the reality principle for children) which promotes the
early blossoming of sexual desires without repression (pure pleasure principle). On the
other hand, the infant’s objective dependence on parental, especially maternal, care
promotes a dependent attitude towards reality and inculcates a passive need to be loved
which colors all subsequent human relations. This psychological vulnerability (of
dependence) is then socially exploited to extract submission to social authorities (at first
parental, and later all other authorities) and to the reality principle more generally.
Thus prolonged infancy shapes human desires in two contradictory directions: (1)
subjectively towards omnipotent indulgence in pleasure freed from reality constraints,
and (2) on the objective side, towards a powerful dependence on other people. These two
tendencies come into conflict because early freedom and absorption in pleasure must
succumb to the recognition of the reality principle in inculcating parental authority under
the threat of loss of parental love. Since the pleasure principle is forced to capitulate
against its will and for reasons which the child does not yet understand, under
circumstances which reproduce the primal experiences of helpless dependence (anxiety),
the capitulation can only be accomplished by repression. This is a trauma from which
the individual never recovers psychologically.
But in the unconscious the repressed ideas of omnipotent indulgence in pleasure persist
(as human beings universal neurosis and restless discontent). This infantile conflict
between actual impotence and ideas/desires of omnipotence is also the basic theme of the
universal history of humankind. In both conflicts – in the history of the individual and in
the history of the human race – the stakes are the “meaning of love” (Eros).
Now because Freud always demands that the (spiritual) meaning of things has a bodily
origin (not a biological origin but a bodily one) Freud starts off not with love but with
sexuality. But obviously Freud who insisted on the sexual character of children and of
such phenomena as thumb-sucking must have had a special definition of sexuality. In
fact, Freud use of Eros shows that he meant by sexuality something very general. It is the
desire/energy with which human beings pursue pleasure with the proviso that the
pleasure sough is the activity of the human body. (Note Freud’s effort to overcome the
mind-body bifurcation.)
Freud attributed the capacity to experience such pleasure (or “erotogenic” quality) to all
surface and deep parts of the human body. The organ in question may be the genitals but
it may also be the eyes in the delight of seeing, the thumb in the comfort of sucking, the
ears in the understanding of the meaning in hearing, etc. Now if sexuality is so defined it
is not surprising that children are sexual beings, or even that sexual pleasure is their
supreme aim. Infants are naturally absorbed in their own bodies (narcissistic) are ignorant
of the business of reality. Pleasure is pleasure of/in one’s own body. Childhood
becomes a period of real immunity from the serious business of life/reality, and children
are able to experience the pleasure of their body in ways that adults no longer can. So
Freud maintained that children have a richer sexual life than adults.
But why must we call this pleasure of the body “sexual”?
The answer is that Freud is offering a historical explanation of adult sexuality, tracing its
origins to childhood. Because of his general notion that the individual psych is
historically evolving and historically organized with others, Freud rejected the idea that
sexuality appeared suddenly out of nowhere at puberty. Moreover, the clinical evidence
from neuroses and dreams suggested that repressed sexuality in adulthood found its
origin in childhood. Now to say that the infantile pattern of seeking pleasurable activity
of the body is sexual is equivalent to saying that this infantile pattern develops into adult
sexuality. Freud found that this hypothesis not only explained the prominence of sexual
themes in repressed consciousness of dreams and neuroses of adults but also accounted
for adult sexual perversions and hence he was able to provide a full-fledged theory of
sexuality.
If normal adult sexuality is a social pattern that grows out of our infantile delight in the
pleasurable activities of the body, then what was originally a much wider capacity for
pleasure in the body had been narrowed in range to one particular genital organ. This
narrowing of pleasure to one (or more) organ is also the subordination of the pleasure
principle to the reality principle (propagation is an exclusively genital function). Adult
normal sexuality (“social organization” of sexuality, as Freud called it), is the tyranny of
one components of infantile sexuality, a components that suppresses other components
altogether and subordinates them to itself. Thus genital sexuality is a social organization
of repression (also including I addition to the life - Eros - instinct, the death instinct) and
demands that infantile sexuality be discarded even as it continues to exists side by side
with it – in conflict with it – in the repressed unconscious. It is these repressed infantile
patterns of sexuality (which exists alongside side the genital organization of adult
sexuality) which are judged by adult standards as perverse.
Adult sexual perversions, like normal adult sexuality, are well-organized tyrannies in that
they represent an exaggerated concentration on one of many erotic potentialities
presenting the human body which are all actively, explored in childhood (which is why
some adults see children as seductive). This tyranny is well illustrated in the fact that
perversions as well as normal sexuality are closely connected, and that perverse pattern of
erotic activity are acceptable is only they are subordinated to the social aim of procreation
(e.g., the RC Church deems anal intercourse acceptable so long as it is in the context of
normal marriage intended for procreation, but it deems it abnormal and sinful outside of
marriage in homosexual and heterosexual relations). Children on the other hand explore
the potentialities of their bodies anarchically –as if they were, polymorphous perverse.
But if we compare infantile sexuality to normal adult sexuality it is perverse and, by the
same token, adult normal adult sexuality if judged by the standards of infantile sexuality
is an “unnatural” restriction (to the genitals) of erotic potentialities of the human body.
Freud’s notion of normal adult sexuality (genital organization) as an unnatural tyranny
(social organization) is so contrary to our ordinary way of thinking that it needs some
elaboration. We usually think of normal adult sexuality (genital sexuality) as simply
“given” by nature as a biological necessity. That is, we accept normal adult sexuality
within the social organization of procreation, so why then does Freud call this
“unnatural”? After all, is not procreation a biological “given” in all species and even
plants? And do not most animals have “genital organization” in their sexual practices so
why is this unnatural?
These distinctions take us to the root of the difference between human beings and
animals. Psychoanalysis must maintain that there is a qualitative difference between
human beings and animals but this distinction is based on what is perhaps only a
quantitative phenomenon namely the prolongation of infancy and the postponement of
puberty which give infantile sexuality a longer period in which to mature and at the same
time parental care shelters the child from the reality principle. Under these conditions
infantile sexuality blossoms in a way in which it does not in any other species. Hence
there is a conflict in the sexual life of human beings that exists in no other species. In
human beings infantile sexuality is repressed but never outgrown. Repression (and
consequently neurosis) distinguishes human beings from animals. The result of this
repression is that genital sexuality is a tyrannical organization I human beings precisely
because human beings have a peculiar infancy which leaves human beings with a lifelong fixation (allegiance) to the pattern of infantile sexuality.
We can see that Freud’s theory of infantile sexuality is an essential component to his
theory of neurosis, and hence infantile sexuality as a concept is as important as the
concept of repression and the concept of the unconscious, and hence Freud claims that
psychoanalysis falls or stands by the expansion of the idea of “sexual function” as
opposed to merely the “genital function”. It is not my concern to justify the therapeutic
value of uncovering the this sexual function in the treatment of the mentally disturbed,
what matters is the light is shed by invoking the concept of infantile sexuality in
understanding the universal neurosis of humankind and on human beings’ ultimate nature
and destiny.
Let examine some implications!
Freud’s theory of infantile sexuality is first of all a critique of the genital sexuality and a
rejection of “free love” and orgasm as the solution to the problems of sexual desire. Thus,
Freud criticizes the “genital character” as a way out of neurosis (e.g. D. H. Lawrence): if
only sexuality is restricted to genitality the problems of neurosis will disappear. The idea
that full genital satisfaction of heterosexual sexual intercourse will stem the frustrations
of desire is definitely not psychoanalysis (as if giving full expression to heterosexual
genital intercourse is the way to happiness). This is merely the glorification of the genital
organs/orgasm as a solution to all social and bodily problems, and we know historically
and from personal experience that that is not so.
Freud sees conflict at first between pleasure and reality principles and later between life
and death instincts in the genital act itself. He distinguished between fore-pleasure and
end-pleasure in sexual intercourse where fore-pleasure is the continuation of
polymorphous perversity of infantile sexuality and end-pleasure is purely genital and
post-puberty. In Freud’s view the subordination of fore-pleasure to end-pleasure is a
compromise concealing conflict between the desire of the immortal child for pure
polymorphous play and the reality principle which imposes genital sexual organization.
Freud thus agrees that in the human animal the immortal child is frustrated even in the
tyranny of genital organization (the ambivalence in orgiastic “getting it over with” and
the continuation of pleasure). Hence, the effort to overcome genital sexuality in certain
practices of mysticism – to get at deeper layers of the self (in coitus reservatus or pure
fore-pleasure which is deemed valuable for mental health say in Taoism).
For Freud the clue to normal adult sexuality as well as to our whole repressed and hidden
ultimate essence lies in infantile sexuality. Obviously this is still not something we take
kindly to. Ignorance and fear both of which are the result of repression, as well as the
illusions of our highest aspirations that we are only soul, set in motion one or other of our
flights from the topic of sexuality altogether. Even in our modern scientific culture where
we are more open-minded towards sexuality (as biological fact), our humor remains one
of abhorrence or laughing amusement. We might be prepared to passively accept human
sexual variation or more than did previous generations, yet we are hardly more likely to
accept Freud’s claim that polymorphous perversity is the pattern of all our deepest
desires.
How can we accept that thesis?
If we get rid of the connotations of the word “perverse” and try to understand what
infantile sexuality is in itself we must return to the definition: infantile sexuality is the
pursuit of pleasure obtained through the activity of all the organs of the body. In this way
we could say that the essence of all desire is the delight in the active life of the human
body. This becomes clear when we examine what Freud means by the “perverse”
components of infantile sexuality: including touching, seeing, muscular activity, and even
a passion for pain. It is therefore no change in perspective when later calls this the life
instinct (libido) or the sexual instinct (Eros). Nor is there a difference between Freud and
William Blake (Marriage of heaven and hell) when he said “energy is the only life and is
from the body…energy is eternal delight”. As with the concepts of repression and
unconscious, Freud is less the inventor of unheard novelties than he is the one who
grasped in rational and scientific form intuitions which have haunted the imagination of
the poets and philosophers throughout the modern/Romantic periods.
Freud and Blake are asserting that the ultimate essence of human being remains in our
unconscious, secretly faithful to the principle of pleasure, or as Blake calls it, delight. But
to maintain this is to put into question the entire edifice of Western morality which has
been to denounce pleasure for the sake of transforming us into ascetic beings. Parental
discipline, religious denunciation, legal proscription, and the philosophical exaltation of
the life of Reason have all left human beings docile but secretly in his unconscious
unconvinced, and therefore neurotic. We remain as adults unconvinced because we have
tasted in the infancy the fruits of the tree of life and know it is good, and we never forget
(at least not the unconscious).
Freud is also asserting that despite 2000 years of higher education based on the idea that
man is essentially a soul (accidentally imprisoned in the body), man remains incurably
obtuse and still thinks of himself first and foremost as body…as desire. Our repressed
desires are not just for delight but specifically for delight in the fulfillment of the life of
our own bodies. Children are unable to distinguish their minds/souls from their bodies –
in Freud’s words, children are their own ideal. Children are also unable to make the
distinction - one that is fundamental for culture, the reality principle, and the serious
business of life – between higher and lower functions and parts of the body. Children do
not yet have a sense of shame (which the Biblical story tells us got us banished from
Paradise and which presumably would be discarded if we are to regain Paradise).
Neurotic symptoms with their fixation on perversions and obscenities, demonstrates the
refusal of the unconscious essence of our human being to acquiesce in the dualism of
flesh and spirit, higher and lower.
So that Freud’s theory of infantile sexuality, rightly understood, is the scientific
reformulation and reaffirmation of the poetic and religious theme of the innocence of
childhood. Freud does not believe that we can return to this innocence, of course; rather
he is merely claiming that the innocence of childhood remains human being’s
indestructible goal. Freud’s pessimism is based on the apparently irreconcilable gap
between this desire for the innocence of childhood and our deeply held commitment
to culture and cultural progress.
But Freud takes with absolute seriousness Jesus’ saying that “except ye become as little
children ye can in no wise enter the kingdom of heaven”. As a religious ideal the
innocence of childhood has turned out to resist assimilation in the rational theological
tradition. Only mystics such as St Francis and Jacob Boehme have made Christ’s ideal
their own. Poets such as Blake and Rilke have affirmed its secular validity. Rousseau
attempted to grasp it in philosophical-rational terms. Freud formulated it in scientific
psychology.
This concept of childhood enables Freud to grasp a form of human activity beyond
labor/mastery and the struggle for existence implied in the reality principle. For children
pursue pleasure and endless activity, and their activity of the body is the pleasure of the
body. But what is this pattern of free activity, free from work, from the serious
business of living, and free from the reality principle? The answer is that children
play.
Not simply conventional play, of course; play that is sexual and perverse of which
thumb-sucking and masturbation are prototypical. The child inevitably takes his/her own
body at sexual object, and in so doing plays with it. Play is activity governed by the
pleasure principle. Play is purposeless yet meaningful. Play is an erotic mode of activity.
Play is an activity that delights in that it united the human being with the object of his/her
love (which is also evident in normal adult genital activity). But according to Freud the
essence of our being erotic demands that play is activity governed only by the pleasure
principle (and as adults our play is “compromised” by the reality principle, such as
shame, guilt, embarrassment, proper sexual conduct etc.).
Schiller (who is concerned with human aesthetic nature) in his Letters on the aesthetic
education of man writes that “man only plays when in the full meaning of the word he is
man, and he is only completely man when he plays”. From a very different point of view,
Sartre (who is concerned with existential freedom) writes that “as soon as man
apprehends himself as free and wishes to use his freedom, then the activity is play”. This
same notion can also be found in Christian religious tradition by taking the notion of
redemption and regeneration of the flesh seriously: the historian H. H. Brinton writes
about the Christian mystic, Jacob Boehme,
In giving the will primacy over the intellect Boehme’s system makes it extremely
difficult to define the nature of the supreme good (summum bonum) which is the
end of all action. The essence of the will is purposeful activity yet such activity is
generated by want (desire). How then can we have activity as a final goal?
Boehme answers by calling the perfect state “play”. In play life expresses itself in
fullness; therefore play as an end means that life has intrinsic value….When
Boehme is speaking of God’s life as it is in itself he refers to it as play…Adam
sought to have been content to play with nature in paradise. “As God plays with
the time of this outward world”, Boehme writes, “so also should the inward
divine man play with the outward in the revealed wonders of God in this world,
and open the Divine wisdom in all creatures each according to its property.”
Adam fell into sin when his play became serious business.
Boehme had the divine naivete to take the Christian promise of the regeneration of the
flesh, the perfection of man in the flesh, seriously. Boehme hears the divine melody not
from a choir of Protestant angels, nor from a Gregorian chant of the church; rather, for
Boehme divine melody is the “joyful play of eternal generation”. In other words, Boehme
placed man’s perfection and bliss not in the promise of some future life or in Holy
sacraments but in the transformation of this bodily life into joyful play.
Heretical Christian mystics like Boehme deserve more respect from secular humanist
intellectuals who in the main have followed mind-body dualist rationalist philosophers
who claimed that man’s true essence resides in disembodied mental activity. Mystics like
Boehme saw far more clearly than did the rationalists (scientific realists); he led that
redemption was the regeneration of the body, the flesh. This is too what Freud saw in
infant sexuality - the unity of body and soul – in the activity of play.
Freud’s conception of infant sexuality as the body at play has all sorts of implications for
social reform. The utopian socialist Fourier whose speculations about a society in which
work was transformed into play anticipate Marx’s call for the abolition of labor as a
necessary precondition for the emancipation of genuinely free and genuinely human selfactivity. Sometimes these utopian speculations were laughed out of court by scientific
realists who seemed to prefer their special interpretation of the doctrine of original sin
that their children are condemned to be as unhappy as they were. But history is
transforming the question of reorganizing society and human nature in the spirit of play,
from speculative possibility to realistic necessity. Fifty years ago, the most realistic
observers were emphasizing our alienation from work, the possibility of mass
unemployment as a result of technology, and the utter incapacity of human nature to
make genuinely free use of leisure in order to play.
This even more so today, as the internet has become the new colonialism of an
information age that generates an anxious foreboding about the loss of local
“community” in a global anonymity wherein the art of living has taken on a compulsive
character whether in education, work, entertainment, religion, health, or human
relationships. Yet as Freud would claim underneath these compulsions resides the
immortal instinct for play in repressed unconscious life. If in this Freud deems play to be
an eschatological concept, it is also the case for example Johann Huizinga examined the
play element in all cultural activities (religion, art, war, law, economics) and suggests that
civilization (notably science an technology) has repressed the play element in culture
which is entirely devoted to maximizing individual and collective gain (reality principle)
in a world dominated by expertise.
Psychoanalytically we can distinguish between Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft,
community and society, wherein community is almost totality absorbed in society with
the consequent loss of what Freud calls “primary process” – the rhythms of dreams and
childhood play – and the ruthless dominance of the reality principle. If we no longer
adhere to a rational-utilitarian model or a model built on gambling and games to
understand individual and collective life, we are also at a loss as to how to understand the
global village in which we now reside. Irrationality runs amok with rationalizing cultures;
and manifestations of Eros (sublimated or repressed) also, warns Freud, resides along
side with aggressive instinct (Thanatos).
If we follow Freud, it is our indestructible unconscious desire for a return to childhood,
our deep childhood fixation, that is a desire for a return to the pleasure-principle namely
the recovery of the body from which culture alienates us in the omnipresent obsession
with information, and for play instead of work. But this Paradise cannot be regained for
the nostalgia for freedom and absorption in pleasure cannot come to terms with the reality
principle. The infant’s world of pleasure and play is built out of wishes uninhibited by
reality, and always satisfied by hallucinatory fulfillment (perhaps evident in the massive
turn to fantasy in contemporary film – one thinks here of Harry Potter, Star wars, etc.)
and dreams and visions of omnipotence (as in sports, science, and commonplace
technology such as cell-phones). By the same token the early blossoming of erotic life
remains basically private never reaching the collective world of reality. In the midst of
our collective lives pleasure remains autoerotic or narcissistic (evidenced in our endless
failure to gain satisfaction or peace even in intimate relationship or of family). Freud is
too realistic to follow the mystics/romantics who ignore the demands of the reality
principle. Infantilism is not glorified and it is no solution to the question of the
meaningfulness or significance of our lives.
Here then is Freud final tension between unconscious desire and the reality principle.
Here is also the source of Freud’s pessimism and the central problem for anyone who
takes Freud seriously. For anyone who carefully considers the sexuality of infancy and its
repression also sees that even in childhood, human love goes outside itself to find its love
object in the world, the mother first of all. We are doomed to be frustrated in our desire to
play – for, as Sartre would say, this turn towards others is hell (reality principle).
What remains is the dynamic of self and other (the love of and repression by others).
Psychoanalysis is unique insofar as it squeezes “psychology” out of our relationship with
others (historically, community or society). To do so, Freud must begin his understanding
of psychology within the historically given of human life. Notwithstanding his
intellectual commitment to scientific materialism, notably biological-evolutionary
science, he is too sensitive a thinker to reduce life in its historical situated-ness to
biology. His focus on the body is not first of all the body as biological mechanism; it is
the body as lived in pleasure. This places Freud also in the idealist tradition of the 19th c.
(his admiration of Goethe was endless) much as it did Wundt. If there were times he tried
to reduce life to science (as in his Project for scientific psychology), he took up Wundt’s
challenge of a Volkerpsychologie. But unlike Wundt who separated his experimental
psychology from his Volkerpsychologie, Freud’s effort to winnow a “psychology” was
deeply influenced by his sensitivities as a physician, an anthropologist, historian, and
philosopher (Freud hated philosophy). Psychoanalysis as one form that psychology could
take, embraced the fullness of human life as lived and hence only always could provide
perspective on our understanding life. Freud did not conceive of psychoanalysis as an
independent academic discipline (what would be its “object”?). Nor did he conceive of
psychoanalysis as a “human science” (Geisteswissenschaft) distinct from natural science
(Naturwissenschaft). As I suggested he has a foot in both camps. Yet he begins
psychoanalysis as a social practice and a cultural form of life wherein we live in the
“flesh”.
Self and other
The human family is distinguished from the animal family by the prolongation of infancy
protected from the harsh realities of life by parental care. This sheltered situation allows
the erotic potentialities of human nature to blossom in being protected from the reality
principle. But this blossoming of erotic life must succumb to repression when it finally
does confront the reality principle. But though it is repressed, or because it is repressed,
this early experience of love stays with us as an immortal dream of love, as the
indestructible demand of our human nature, and as the source of our restless discontent.
The infantile experience to which our dreams return is the experience of pleasure and it is
pleasure that is the indestructible demand of human nature. The question is whether this
return to the pleasure principle is all human nature demands? This question is like
asking whether infantile sexuality involves anything beyond pleasure (the answer is “of
course”).
“Normal adult genital sexuality” at the level of sexual intercourse and at the sublimated
level of love indicates that sexual desire aims beyond bodily pleasure in appropriating
some object (other person). But as we have seen normal adult sexuality is no clue to the
essential nature of erotic desire. If we ask what it is that is contained in infantile sexuality
that leads us to appropriate objects in the world, we see that the early Freud claims that
there are two paths to this binding of desire to objects of desire: identification and object
choice.
Identification is the desire to be like another object (e.g., like my father) whereas object
choice is the desire to possess another object (e.g., like my mother). It is in these two
paths that desire (Eros) constructs the family which is then the model for all social
organization. It is in identification and object choice that the child absorbs and makes the
parent’s moral standards his/her own and so Eros become the fountainhead of morality.
Desire is, if anything is, moral in that it relates always to objects (and the first objects
are the parents).
But assuming that desire always seeks that which is desired, why does desire/love
aim either to identify with or incorporate its object?
Freud begins with the fact that the love (desire for) of objects in the world is modeled on
the primal love of the child for the mother. This love is one of dependence and survival.
The early Freud takes an evolutionary view that the sexual instinct follows the selfpreservation instinct, and hence that the infant’s object-choice is “anaclitic” (leans on) the
non-sexual self-preservation/economic instinct (dependence on the mother) which then
explains why the infant seeks to possess the object.
Quite part from this object-choice of the mother, Freud also finds another pattern of
choice in the infant’s model of the object-choice and that is the desire for the self (his
own body) which then later expresses itself in finding an object like the self which loves
him just like he loves himself. Freud calls this second object-choice “narcissistic” (in
contrast to “anaclitic”) object-choice.
We have here then a distinction between what Freud calls true object-choice (which is
anaclitic on the self-preservation instinct), and narcissistic object-choice which is
identification with the object which is first of all the infant himself and later objects that
are like the infant and with whom the infant identifies.
So in summary the human being has originally two sexual objects: himself and the
mother.
In fact, Freud later changes this scheme for it does not hold up to close scrutiny. Thus, he
finds that object-choice may be the father and identification-choice may be the mother.
The problem here is with the two categories, for there is really only one category which is
the desire for objects (of being-one-with-the-world, i.e., to join with what is identical to
him/herself) which is narcissistic and which then is the basis for the possessive (love)
category of object-choice (the other). These two categories came about because Freud
originally postulated two instincts: aggression and sexuality (where the latter involved
identification and the former object-choice (possession of the object).
But on Freud’s own analysis possessive love (object-choice) and its primal model, love of
the mother, shows that its erotic aim is not possession but union with the object and this
union is hardly distinguishable from identification. Identification then derives from the
desire for union with the world and union with the world take the form of incorporation
on the model of infant and mother’s breast. At he same time, Freud also claims that
incorporation of the object is the aim of normal adult loving (i.e., object choice). Thus,
the distinction between identification and object-choice as the two distinct paths to the
object of desire breaks down, both of them meeting in the project of incorporation or
being-one-with-the-world (on the model of the mother’s breast). And consistently with
this, he asserts that the aim of normal adult loving is the restoration of the primal
condition in which object-choice and identification cannot be distinguished.
In Freud’s later writings the infants dependence on the mother is increasingly emphasized
and he concludes that the love for the mother is grounded in the need to be loved, and if
this is so then the love of the mother is essentially narcissistic (i.e. to be loved). Hence,
once we do away with the distinction between self-preservation (object-choice) and
identification, we are left with desire for pleasure in becoming one with objects in the
world.
Freud always drew attention to the interchangeability of identification and object-choice.
For example, in the self-punishment in melancholia and the self-punishing of the
superego we give up the love-object (object-choice) on the condition that we identify
with the lost object. This process replaces object-choice with identification, and
identification with the lost object is possible by introjecting or incorporating the lost
object into the self (i.e., by making ourselves like the object).
Instead of distinguishing between identification and object-choice (in order to reach the
desired object) Freud distinguishes between active identification with the object and
passive remodeling of the self so as to erect in the self a substitute for the object lost.
Thus we have a choice between erotic action on the external world (union-with-the-world
which does not distinguish between identification and object-choice) and passive
alteration of the person’s own body/psyche as a substitute for the erotic action denied
(narcissism) by making oneself into the object.
The aim of Eros is union with objects outside the self, and at the same time Eros is
narcissistic. How can narcissism lead to union with object other than the self? Or how
does desire for pleasurable activity of one’s own body lead to desiring other bodies?
To answer this question we have to turn to Freud’s theory of the ego-structure. The infant
develops a pure pleasure-ego instead of a reality ego which absorbs into identity with
itself the sources of pleasure (the mother, and the world). Any object, above all the
activity of the infants own body, that is a source of pleasure becomes incorporated into
this pleasure-ego. This pleasure-ego is in conflict with all of reality yet it also turns these
sources of pleasure into an “erotic sense of reality” so as to affirm a world of love and
pleasure in what is a substitute for union with the world. There is much here that is
similar to Spinoza’s claim that desire - the intellectual love of God (totality of Nature) –
is directed at self-maintenance, self-activity and self-perfection which is also selfenjoyment. Spinoza defines love as pleasure together with the idea of an external cause
(the source of pleasure) adding that it is a property of love to will as union with the
beloved object. Thus, for Freud and for Spinoza the self-perfection (narcissism) of the
individual is fulfillment in union with the world in pleasure. But there are also important
differences between Spinoza and Freud. Spinoza has a single conatus (will) whereas
Freud has two instincts at war with each other and so can account for “human bondage”
(Spinoza’s phrase) as inner conflict whereas Spinoza relies simply on ignorance.
Furthermore, Freud’s later notion of death (thanatos) as the antagonist of Eros is
incompatible with Spinoza’s notion of eternity. Nevertheless, both Spinoza and Freud are
at odds with the Western tradition.
Like Freud, Spinoza fights the illusion of free will and is committed to the “hideous
hypothesis” of determinism (unconscious determination) to the effect that our morality is
superstitious and irrational. Hence, Spinoza like Freud replaces moralism with clinical
understanding, and prescribes a radical psychoanalysis to make us conscious of the
causes which determine our nature and so make us free.
On the problem of human happiness, Spinoza like Freud is committed to the pleasure
principle and rejects mind-body dualism. Human desire of narcissistic and human
perfection of the expansion of the self until it enjoys the world as it enjoys itself. Such
desire is for the active life of one’s own body – and hence the perfection of the human
intellect is also the expansion of the power and perfection of the human body in unison
with others. This notion that the body in interaction with other bodies becomes “fitted for
many things” is in effect the body that Freud calls “polymorphous perverse”, the infant
body, delighting in the activity of many organs.