Understanding Narcissism
Around the time Lou was conversing with Freud and gradually entering into his circle, she was asked to write papers and to work with her own patients. Freud was trying to understand narcissism at the time, or self-love. In his letters with Lou, she found this to be her favorite subject along with the anal phase of childhood sexual development. She peppered him with questions, but he was cagey about creating easy to criticize systems, with weak foundations, and he was also quick to criticize other systems for the same reasons, for example when theoreticians ignored the power of the unconscious, or when Lou emphasized the interconnection of everything. “Naturally I do not always agree with you. I so rarely feel the need for synthesis. The unity of this world seems to me so self-evident as not to need emphasis. What interests me is the separation and breaking up into its component parts of what would otherwise revert to an [undeveloped] mass.”
On Narcissism – Sigmund Freud (Narcissism 1 of 4): https://rumble.com/v1gtgdl-on-narcissism-sigmund-freud-narcissism-1-of-4.html
The unconscious for Freud was truly unconscious. Most of what people felt was unconscious material was in fact content appearing in the mind in a meditative state, the preconscious, but by that point Freud felt that those contents were already distorted by displacement, condensation, symbolization, and dramatization found in dreams. There were embarrassing and shameful wishes behind the distortions, starting with the Oedipus Complex with parents, and extending out to people who were otherwise unavailable for intimate relations for one social reason or another. There were also disguised desires for aggression towards human obstacles blocking those wishes from being fulfilled. The classic example would be the little boy who wants to monopolize the attention of the mother and wish to kill the father. The key to finding the embarrassing truth behind the distorted content was to discern what the situation presented in terms of object-choices to get pleasure from or obstacles to annihilate without regard to morality or fears of social punishment: a pure pleasure principle. The goal wasn’t to completely remove repression, as some people inferred. Social constructions, like the Ten Commandments, provided rules to improve social harmony and to avoid quagmires of passion. Mental peace requires some self-control, and a later psychoanalytic book, The Psychopathic Mind, by J. Reid Meloy, described this unfiltered Id being like a “reptilian mind…limbic dysfunction…a walking impulse…unmodulated affect.” Ideally, a psychoanalyst would bring out the possible forbidden fruit in the material coming out of the patient for the purposes of learning and then proper object-choices would then be selected based on the reality principle.
Dreams – Sigmund Freud: https://rumble.com/v1gtf6j-dreams-sigmund-freud.html
Case Studies: ‘Little Hans’ – Sigmund Freud: https://rumble.com/v1gu93b-case-studies-little-hans-sigmund-freud.html
The Pleasure Principle – Sigmund Freud: https://rumble.com/v1gurqv-the-pleasure-principle-sigmund-freud.html
Now these desires for other people, object-choices, didn’t stop there. Freud noticed that desires can also be for oneself in many different ways, including desires for one’s own body, or even loving an idea of oneself. At the beginning of psychoanalysis, so many pathologies were lumped together and different diagnoses were being parsed out into mostly undeveloped lumps of symptoms, but narcissism was found to exist in many of these categories, including homosexuality, paranoia, and schizophrenia. Like found with Harry Stack Sullivan in his patient intake, many men were triggered by stress related to their homosexual desires with overt anal and oral thirsts, cravings, and reflexes. In the ‘Wolf Man’ study there could be childhood incestuous hetero- and homosexual desires towards parents that could lead to shame and Oedipus frustrations at an early age. The shame then could trigger biological predispositions for one kind of pathology or another. For example, Daniel Paul Schreber admonished himself for having wild psychotic breaks when there were desires to be a woman and a self-hatred connected with his imploding marriage due to these intolerable changes. When Sullivan gained success with schizophrenic patients, by using mindfulness to query events, no matter how small, that happened before a psychotic break took over, patients then could sometimes remember the trigger, and come back to reality. Clearly in psychoanalysis, there was a belief that stress in the mind can affect the body in many different ways, and stress is often connected with frustrated wishes and self-esteem.
Case Studies: Daniel Paul Schreber – Freud and Beyond: https://rumble.com/v1gu84v-case-studies-daniel-paul-schreber-freud-and-beyond.html
Object Relations: Harry Stack Sullivan: https://psychreviews.org/object-relations-harry-stack-sullivan/
Case Studies: The Wolf Man (1/3) – Freud and Beyond: https://rumble.com/v1gucp1-case-studies-the-wolf-man-13-freud-and-beyond.html
Different kinds of psychotic breaks were put under the heading of Paraphrenia, and the patterns found in Paraphrenia, for Freud and other clinicians, was that of megalomania, and a loss of interest in the external world. Psychoanalysis couldn’t progress further because of its slow method, hence the need for later clinicians like Sullivan, to move towards quick interrogations before the patient was lost for long periods of time, or in some cases, lost forever. Not all pathologies led to a complete disconnection with reality, but only partially so. With hysteria, which was a general term for ungovernable emotion, and obsession, which involved uncontrollable ritualization, desires towards real objects and people manifest, but activity to take action and achieve those goals is repressed. The craving, or libido is inhibited.
When craving is not going outward, Freud viewed it as an economical situation where craving moved inward towards Freud’s idea of introversion. This reservoir of emotional investment and attachment is limited and aimed at oneself in self-preservation or escape from the dreadful world, so it becomes a form of narcissism, but the reservoir of craving, theoretically, must have already existed and had a more primary function before this secondary narcissism of withdrawal from the world. Connecting with Totem and Taboo, Freud felt that primitive societies and children sent their wishes more haphazardly due to ignorance of science, so wishes could turn into magical thinking, or the omnipotence of thoughts. In paraphrenias, these are failed attempts at returning to the world, but with less severe pathologies obsessives and the hysteria minded could find ways to survive in the wild with confirmation bias and rudimentary skills. These examples included rituals that led to some kind of concentration or focus on a skill development or ethical problem as a precursor for religions. This limited craving energy went out, which was a survival risk, to emotionally feed on rewarding objects and relationships. That energy had to withdraw when the danger became too great. There’s an “antithesis between ego-[craving] and object-[craving]. The more one is employed, the more the other becomes depleted. The highest phase of development of which object-[craving] is capable is seen in the state of being in love, when the subject seems to give up his own personality in favour of [emotional investment in an object.]” This is loving another like oneself. When there’s extreme paranoia, this does not happen because the world appears so dangerous that it looks like an apocalypse. Another example is that of a person feeling physical pain and how their attention goes towards their own body, but there is now not enough energy left for love towards others. “We should then say: the sick man withdraws his [craving attachments] back upon his own ego, and sends them out again when he recovers.”
Totem and Taboo – Sigmund Freud: https://rumble.com/v1gsmvn-totem-and-taboo-sigmund-freud.html
Because self-craving is hard to measure, Freud felt that object-choices would at least be a key because craving would have to be involved before a choice could be made. Transference neuroses for Freud was a category of craving going within and attaching towards fantasy replacements or going out to replacement objects as opposed to narcissistic neuroses that withdrew craving from the world and directed it towards the super-ego. Early stages of self-love on the other hand could be sussed out by observation of infantile enjoyment of the body and skin, including infantile masturbation. Adult forms of self-love also includes vanity, grooming, and cleanliness rituals. Now, there can be an idea of sickness, as opposed to actual sickness, where a hypochondriac goes through useless medical rituals needing constant reassurance of health. So a psychological belief about the health of oneself, an idea as opposed to a reality, can have a similar effect where there is a withdrawal of craving from the world, to be then aimed at oneself.
Emotional disturbances about an idea of the self also manifest in the old diagnosis of neurasthenia, which was a bundle of symptoms involving low energy, headaches, and irritability, as well as other anxiety disorders. All these prevented people from acting on their goals and losing worldly interest. Freud then worked backwards to say that if there was a diminishment of interest in the world, sexual or otherwise, there could be an increase of self-preservative narcissism, introversion, and regression. Here regression would be moving to more archaic skills as opposed to skills that master the environment as intended. There was a damming up of craving preventing skillful satisfaction. For Freud, when the world was more safe, and when there was enough rest, the craving would regularly exceed what was needed for the ego and self-preservation. It then felt better and energy was now available for exploration in the world of objects. The love that Freud talked about was of course for other people, but it could also be discharged in activities and interests beyond intimate relationships. The “demands of reality” could be daunting for the mind, and being able to find replacement object-choices that were more accessible, provided opportunities to relieve that pressure. When people were stuck in rumination and there was not enough creativity to make new object-choices, pathology was more likely to arise. This was also the case when there were skill deficits. But for some people, no change was observable, except that the quantity of craving increased or decreased, based on their constitutional makeup.
In variants of homosexuality, Freud viewed object-choices of the same sex as about loving oneself. “We say that a human being has originally two sexual objects—himself and the woman who nurses him—and in doing so we are postulating a primary narcissism in everyone, which may in some cases manifest itself in a dominating fashion in his object-choice.” Typical patterns of masculine love was to overrate the female, and therefore diminish the self, with a sense that the man needed the woman more than she needed him, as seen by all his resources being mobilized to demonstrate the care he could provide women. Beautiful women in reverse narcissistically loved themselves more based on how they were rated, especially when they could leverage good looks, and they chose the man who demonstrated the most love and protection. Freud saw how a godly self-containment could be an attraction for those who were trying to get their attention, while valuing themselves low, with the intention of using the object to redress their low self-esteem. Low self-esteem makes the man risk all their resources while tolerating regular debasement, and in the modern world, this is called Simp Culture, which is another name for co-dependency or masochism. It’s all about the woman making the man feel good so that he relinquishes his boundaries over his resources.
Sexuality Pt 3: Homosexuality – Sigmund Freud & Beyond: https://rumble.com/v1gtqk5-sexuality-pt-3-homosexuality-sigmund-freud-and-beyond.html
What’s hard for people to understand about these relationships is unconsciousness and how happiness with object-choices can be near impossible to attain without wisdom. People in optimum environments can be very pleasing, novel, fresh, and mysterious. Until the environments change with repetition and boredom, or when there are stress tests, only then do you really learn about people. The illusion bursts. Many women are genuinely lonely, and they also imagine men in optimum environments with the same illusions where stress and boredom don’t exist. How partners then move on from one to another is the “love at first sight” where an optimum solution, even if only temporary, appears with this new character on the scene.
Kylie Minogue – Love At First Sight: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wf421JsG004
Kylie Minogue – Come Into My World: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63vqob-MljQ
No better than to examine pop stars and their long list of relationships, especially ones with long careers, like Kylie Minogue, who has seen everything, as soon as boredom or stress appears, the offended partner is often gone into the blue. This is partly because they can see new pathways and avenues, but sometimes those pathways are just the imagination, because it’s filled with scenarios where there are only flow states. Yet, no life, no matter how luxurious, will be totally free from stress and boredom. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with being an adult and making choices, as long as there’s enough reality to hold onto. In Kylie Minogue’s Into The Blue, she sounds similar to Lou Andreas-Salomé’s celebration of a life lived with intensity and the acceptance of all the messiness along the way. “I’m not ashamed of all my mistakes / ‘Cause through the cold I still kept the fire burning / These memories that I can’t erase / Always remind me I’m on an endless journey.”
Kylie Minogue – Get Outta My Way: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHGaW8lBlSk
Kylie Minogue – Into The Blue: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fL6FaI-wJxs
Kylie Minogue Relationship History – New Idea: https://www.newidea.com.au/celebrity/kylie-minogue-relationship-history/
When the man appears too stressful or boring to his partner, and she’s gone, he often becomes like a sad sack moaning artist. Not to single out men as angels, because they also respond to stress and boredom with similar relationship ending actions that become fodder for tabloids scanning for scandals. “After meeting at the Brit Awards in 2000, Kylie and model James Gooding went on to be in a relationship for three years before rampant cheating and drugs on James’ end lead to the end of their romance, which quickly turned ugly…’She turned into a self-obsessed, virtually friendless control freak, desperate to pursue her ambitions as far as she could take them,’ James said about Kylie after their break-up. ‘I fear she is going to end up a lonely spinster with only a cat by her side for company.’ However, Kylie went on to blast her ex in The Daily Star, saying the love rat should ‘grow up and move on. It’s sad James has let it come to this. I wish he’d just accept that we have to move on,’ she told the Star. ‘We had a great time, but it’s run its course—even though I remain fond of him. But I can’t let my life be governed by him.'” Now these are alphas at the peak of their expectations, and many accept that life in the limelight means that one will have impossible expectations. It’s unavoidable and irresistible. Regular people on the other hand can sometimes imitate celebrities, but everything is lesser in opulence and pride.
Beck – The Golden Age: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6zAT15vaFk
Beck – Lost Cause: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-iEId2vmb0M
Beck – Thinking About You: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6i7iPPiMy0
The typical situation for a guy at the beginning is when he finds a woman that is better than what he thinks he should get, and for many men, this is often in a new country or new town where they are anonymous, and there is hope that the women there have lower expectations. The danger of course, is that if he’s not very experienced and desperate, the first time a woman gets him off, the sexual euphoria leads him to spend money and give in to all financial demands to fend off rejection. He may even notice he’s being used in the background of his mind, but the sexual inertia prevents him from having financial boundaries, or any other boundaries where he’s allowed to say no to bring back some self-respect. Women in poorer countries with lower expectations may still have access to media, like Instagram on their phones, and enviously follow the highlights of other people’s lives. Weak boundaries for a man will open him up for exploitation anywhere in the world. Eventually, when the money is gone, so is she. “The great charm of narcissistic women has, however, its reverse side; a large part of the lover’s dissatisfaction, of his doubts of the woman’s love, of his complaints of her enigmatic nature, has its root in this incongruity between the types of object-choice.” The alpha man with the greatest resources can also hang the woman out to dry as he tries to maximize his choice for the most desirable woman. Through projection, one’s own love can fill in gaps that may be missing from the object-choice so that when love is unrequited, it’s a shock for the dependent partner, even if there was never any concrete evidence of love returned or observable events to refer to. You can’t wish, or the buzzword today, you can’t manifest without observable effort and responses. There’s a common pattern of illusion that persists in thinking this way. People leave red-flags hanging or go into denial rather than look at how things really are. Reality is never ideal, but there’s more opportunity to learn and develop if one engages with the freshness that’s there. Psychosis with unbending standards leads to stagnation.
The Verve – Lucky Man (Official Music Video): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MH6TJU0qWoY
Why Men STOP Dating Modern Women – Simp Culture – Manosphere: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KB54SvKoyMA
How women select simps (why women choose simps) – Madison Chloe Loves: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWMtGan651k
Why Men STOP Dating Single Mothers #10 – Manosphere: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NSlCTY-8Cqc
Expat Warns Men: Don’t Waste Your Time Looking For Girls In The Philippines: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2dIOJnGUZEc
Why Western Men Are Manipulated By Thai Women: https://youtu.be/fh7S8X5oA7Y?si=khhk0Wo5gerwmsSc
14 Common Lies Thai Girls Tell You – Mac TV Travel Learn Inspire: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Rd-6QTK8nc
The Ladyboy Extortion Scam | Joe Rogan & Mariana Van Zeller: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWW5_Ls_Ufk
The Ladyboy beer scam Bangkok – Alpha Omega Occasionally: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDcmI6-rMI0
Top 5 Dangers in Pattaya – Mac TV Travel Learn Inspire: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYXn9r7V2Wc
The Dangers of Dating in Colombia (´´For Men´´) – Life with David: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OgQLZMTyNp4
The Dark Secrets of Japanese Girls Exposed – K.D. Wilson: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X5jqYfW4xNE
Why Are 42% Of Japanese Men Virgins? | Japan’s Virginity Epidemic “Herbivore Men”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7m461t0_LCE
Red flag when dating a Korean girl – yunibxx: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/TA5–YJEnl4
Why Nice Guys See Sex Workers – Sex Love, and Soul: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4H5PH29jC44
Narcissist: Financial Control: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dl6jO_IfMs0
Tips: Survive Your Borderline Enchantress – Sam Vaknin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wy7526-ysCM
So how narcissistic love is for Freud, is based on how the subject rates themselves now in the eyes of others, how they rated before, how the company that they keep rates, and how they want to be rated in the future. On the other hand, the anaclitic, or dependent attachment type, is based on efforts, work, and resources needed from the other person, or can be provided, but one must add that these contributions are only dependent if the person has no boundaries to say no when they need to. In this way, those real efforts can be discounted if the ideals of the other partner are unreasonable. Being able to negotiate greatly improves the situation for the person who has lost their power. Again, it’s important to have a good grasp of reality.
Those desires related to rating oneself high and choosing partners that are rated high, leads to children being an extension of those parents, like a trophy, a common example that is used, to pamper them and assume future honors and airs for the parents to bask in. They are expected to be a successful protagonist in the world. Of course, the skills required to do those things are either too much for the child or they are never even brought up, so the child becomes too spoiled to achieve anything later on. These ideals, harsh or too soft, are taken on by each generation and are repressive forces where the ego splits into an agency that watches present moment activity: the super-ego. “We can say that the one man has set up an ideal in himself by which he measures his actual ego, while the other has formed no such ideal. For the ego the formation of an ideal would be the conditioning factor of repression…This ideal ego is now the target of the self-love which was enjoyed in childhood by the actual ego. The subject’s narcissism makes its appearance displaced onto this new ideal ego, which, like the infantile ego, finds itself possessed of every perfection that is of value. As always where the [craving] is concerned, man has here again shown himself incapable of giving up a satisfaction he had once enjoyed. He is not willing to forgo the narcissistic perfection of his childhood; and when, as he grows up, he is disturbed by the admonitions of others and by the awakening of his own critical judgement, so that he can no longer retain that perfection, he seeks to recover it in the new form of an ego ideal. What he projects before him as his ideal is the substitute for the lost narcissism of his childhood in which he was his own ideal.” The need to worship a God, or parents, or powerful people, becomes an internal watcher ready to provide rewards for the ego, or punishments, based on whether behavior is successful or not. One is now worshipping one’s own self-image.
Being both the center of the universe and the universe itself without boundaries in infancy is hard to compete with in adulthood. One has to become a “star” at whatever endeavors one tries so as to create a fandom to bask in that very feeling of being central and important. When there’s stress or boredom, partners are better off trying to work together knowing that if they can develop enough skills together, they can find that flow again in the real world as it is. There’s also wisdom in returning to a person’s strengths in order to get a breather before taking on new challenges again. Unrelenting ideals can be a tyrant if one is not too careful.
Kylie Minogue – I Was Gonna Cancel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6g0c9mv0j9E
I Was Gonna Cancel – Conception: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Was_Gonna_Cancel#Conception
Exploitation and Engulfment
Freud saw that society is made up of rewards and punishments and as those are doled out so goes the psyche. Lou instead loved the rest found in meditative oneness, but one must have independent finances to make this work because of the independence of others who may not fund someone like Lou without enough reciprocation on their part. People will not always cooperate with your “oneness,” and as said in prior episodes, Lou had an inheritance and decent book sales to be like an entrepreneur and always solvent. That independence afforded her the ability to meditate with nature, attend seminars and publish. She didn’t really need a man and she wasn’t pursuing motherhood.
For those who wanted a family, they had to work hard, both men and women, to create a new generation. Hedwig Dohm’s insight into Lou’s way of thinking tapped into the economic understanding of a zero-sum game that Freud had in that women would need a pension from day one, and if they didn’t have money of their own, who would pay for them? It would be all those people who aren’t women, which are men. They would be slaves because all their rewards would be garnished into oblivion. The economical reciprocity of the man giving his all for the woman ends when there are little to no rewards coming back. As much as women like Lou, who found home economics and child rearing a drudgery, men on the other hand went to work for bosses who were pitiless and who humiliated them, and they had to suffer periodic job losses requiring emotional support and some buffer of savings to move to the next prospect. When people had no rewards, savings and ownership to make decisions over their lives, the batteries drained and the craving energy moved towards self-preservation. This is when the institution of family fell apart as both men and women tried to escape their unrewarding exchanges. A meditative repose was now preferred in divorce for men, so as to let go of all the mental noise, conflict, and claims over one’s body and resources. As Freud stated, “it is easy to observe that [a craved for] object-[investment] does not raise self-regard. The effect of dependence upon the loved object is to lower that feeling: a person in love is humble. A person who loves has, so to speak, forfeited a part of his narcissism, and it can only be replaced by his being loved. In all these respects self-regard seems to remain related to the narcissistic element in love.”
Why I love being single and alone – Evan: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wFdipkg–g
Study: Women Are Happier When Single: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I52UCZDwetw
Why Men Are Walking Away From Dating – Your Wingmam: https://youtu.be/wF5-W7oOBzQ?si=loI2Bmjr0VHXs5ng
Sexuality Pt 5: Sadism – Sigmund Freud & Beyond: https://rumble.com/v1gtssd-sexuality-pt-5-sadism-sigmund-freud-and-beyond.html
I live in Canada, and I think the following divorce statistics can be similar in the U.S. and Europe and are illustrative of the destruction of the institution of marriage in the modern world. The inability to handle boredom and stress with weak negotiation skills can explain the 40% divorce rate here. “34% of divorces are caused by domestic violence, verbal abuse, or physical abuse. Infidelity accounts for 27% of divorces. An average of 25% of couples report that money problems played a role in their divorce. In 41% of cases, money problems serve as a ‘last straw’ among many other issues that are already weakening the marriage. 38% of those who try couples counseling still get divorced once they stop going, though attending therapy can offer 4+ years of increased marriage satisfaction.”
There are many reasons for divorce.
- Infidelity, either emotional, physical, or financial, remains a leading cause of divorce.
- Inability to resolve conflicts or argue productively.
- Partners who have a lack of respect for one another, or verbal abuse.
- A lack of physical intimacy.
- Domestic violence.
- Substance abuse.
- Either partner feels the other is not ‘carrying their weight.’
- Significant financial problems, debt, and a lack of agreement on how money should be handled, saved, and spent.
Canadian Divorce Statistics – Merchant Law Group: https://www.merchantlaw.com/canadian-divorce-statistics/
So one can reverse engineer from these results to find strong supports to keep a marriage long-lasting. Boundaries with money and being able to follow a budget will scare off partners who refuse to cooperate. Learning negotiation skills can reduce shouting matches and escalation. Those skills can also allot duties amongst the family members. I would also add sublimation skills described below to allow appreciation to grow for chores so they appear less like a grind. Pursuing jobs that are fulfilling and that provide enough wealth for saving can also bolster boundaries so that people with excessive expectations can take a hike. A reasonable level of grooming, exercise, and taking care of oneself would also reduce feelings of disgust between partners, but again one must have standards that are lower than an artificial intelligence sex doll of the future. All humans get sick, have stinky pits, and fart from time to time. A reminder that ideals always remove details related to boredom and stress can also help people look at infidelity less like a cure-all for one’s frustrations. This is why a patient that doesn’t follow treatment, long enough for them to learn how to create healthy boundaries for themselves, will inevitably project illusions onto new relationships.
Freud was also aware of what happens to libido, energy, or craving, when an ego ideal is out of reach, so that one is able to give very little to others, but one is still making object-choices out of their league. A lot of people don’t realize how much they have to work on themselves, as described above, before they can reasonably be considered a candidate for an alpha partner. They will only choose a partner like this because they enjoy someone who tolerates debasement and exploitation. “What possesses the excellence which the ego lacks, is loved. This expedient is of special importance for the neurotic, who, on account of his excessive object-[attachments], is impoverished in his ego and is incapable of fulfilling his ego ideal. He then seeks a way back to narcissism from his prodigal expenditure of [craving] upon objects, by choosing a sexual ideal after the narcissistic type which possesses the excellences to which he cannot attain. This is the cure by love, which he generally prefers to cure by analysis. Indeed, he cannot believe in any other mechanism of cure; he usually brings expectations of this sort with him to the treatment and directs them towards the person of the physician. The patient’s incapacity for love, resulting from his extensive repressions, naturally stands in the way of a therapeutic plan of this kind. An unintended result is often met with when, by means of the treatment, he has been partially freed from his repressions: he withdraws from further treatment in order to choose a love-object, leaving his cure to be continued by a life with someone he loves. We might be satisfied with this result, if it did not bring with it all the dangers of a crippling dependence upon his helper in need.”
This dependence leads one to be engulfed and absorbed by the more narcissistic object-choice, and this is because the ideal partner needs to get something they want in return and if this person with low self-esteem does not have what they want, then only a servile existence would be accepted, especially if they are already shopping for one kind of slave or another. “Freud’s (secondary) narcissism assumed the removal of the charge from the object, a capitulation and regression to the primary narcissism. For Lou narcissism was connected to external objects, and their capture, their use [was as] extra-territorial markers of infinity. This appropriation of the object reminded her of the [engulfing actions] in amoebas. She wrote that love was not dissolution in another, but one’s own strengthening all the way to a fruitful over-abundance: not being dissolved in another, but the opposite, through contact with this other, becoming fruitful, a strengthening to fruitful surplus. For our becoming fruitful itself was no longer, as with the amoeba, a self-decomposition into parts, but likewise already a partial function—a higher state of segregation, a condition of surplus.”
Lou’s dualism supported by a non-dual energy meant that some boundaries were allowed. What’s not so clear is how extensive the boundaries are and what depletion is for her. Women who treat raising kids and keeping a home as a hobby can release energy so that it becomes less like drudgery, and one who is resistant and wants to do completely different activities will only feel depleted by housework. As in her book Deviations, the character Gabriele was able to pursue her independence through her work so that all work became less like drudgery. This meant her favorite subject of sublimation, which is to find what can be sublime in an end result of an activity, to do good work, or to do something well, and to take pleasure in that so no activities are excluded, allowed a way out for her. Of course Lou couldn’t do that in all areas of her life and so it’s up to the creativity of the woman, or even the man, to actively develop autotelic skills to see that the grass can be greener where you create interesting goals to make the means and ends the same. If the mind is distracted, the greener grass is always elsewhere, and craving needs to escape, frittering away all that energy generated by the concentration. When this happens home economics and raising children will always be a drag, and the children will also see this and probably repeat the same patterns of resistance and low energy. Almost all concentration in meditation practices creates a simplicity and a targeted level of energy to the task at hand so that energy is used efficiently. Daydreaming or rumination will always lead to depleting.
Lou Andreas-Salomé Pt. 3: https://rumble.com/v5gpvpp-lou-andreas-salom-pt.-3.html
Lou Andreas-Salomé Pt. 6: https://rumble.com/v5nm28z-lou-andreas-salom-pt.-6.html
How to gain Flow in 7 steps: https://rumble.com/v1gvked-how-to-gain-flow-in-7-steps.html
The Jhanas: https://rumble.com/v1gqznl-the-jhanas.html
Narcissistic self-sufficiency
Goddess-like indifference was the attractiveness that these types of women used to magnetize men, often unconscious of their low self-esteem, who wanted to partake of that serenity mixed with rapture. In the mind of the low status man, the goddess is so beautiful to the point of being too perfect, leading to a desperate craving to debase oneself with feelings of worship, like an obsessed fanatic. The man is in a frenzy of desperate attraction while the woman is unfazed like a cat that is curious and wondering what all the desperate commotion is about. The man’s self-concern and narcissism completely vanishes without a trace, leading to the possible danger arising from healthy defenses being lowered. “Men loved such women, who required love from them. The narcissism of another person was found to be very attractive for those who renounced part of their own narcissism and were in search of an object of love. In a similar way the charm of a child lay in narcissism, self-sufficiency and inaccessibility, just like the charm of various animals, such as cats and large beasts of prey, which seem completely unaffected by our concern for them.” For Freud this would be an imbalance in that the reward of love from the woman would always be goal posts moving farther away, mainly because ideals can never reproduced in the world, only approximated.
In Lou’s conversations with Freud, he like Nietzsche, equated her with a cat self-sufficiency, and he knew that psychoanalysis was a reward for her, but psychoanalysis would have to need her more than she needed it. This dynamic caused jealousy as she was allowed leeway to modify theories without ostracism. Adler, Jung, Rank, Bjerre, etc., were all rejected and made into pariahs. He was welcoming when there was agreement, but when Lou went too far, he mercifully and politely chose to not take her inventions seriously. She would then respond by seeing where she may have gone in error and modify her theories while keeping aspects that were different, as long as they didn’t do damage to the overall theory and anger Freud. He didn’t want to lose the Oedipus Complex as the source of neuroses even when many people wanted to include the influence of the womb and how disappointing the world is in comparison with the instant gratification of the fetus. Freud had demonstrated his own feline self-sufficiency against all comers.
On Lou’s side, women are essentially the goal because they are chased after by the man. The woman “‘does not pursue the unattainable, the infinite. Why should she, being herself the goal?’ Femininity, according to Lou, is that condition which man had lost. The teleologophallicism of a man, is what turned him inside out, doomed to the search for a lost object, always outside himself. A woman, on the other hand, preserved herself in her objectless narcissism. In Protagoras’ formulation, it is precisely the woman who occupied man’s place: woman is the measure of all things. A woman, according to Lou, is integral, complete, she lives in a unity of soul, mind, body, and feeling. Man, differentiated to a greater extent, is never integral, never satisfied, he is always in movement, searching.” This goes into writers like René Girard and Jacques Lacan, where the lack of the object of desire is the sought after intensity, and if there’s a chance in the mind that the pursuer will succeed, the sense of lack turns into an energetic anticipation that is pleasurable. On the other hand, if success in sexual gratification leads to rapture, the sense of familiarity fades over time the intensity into boredom, if one is not capable of appreciation, or sublimation. Those who are not capable of appreciation, sublimation, or they never find any success in romantic love, psychological illnesses of a variety of kinds can appear, especially an ontological sickness, or masochism, otherwise termed as low self-esteem, resentment, or self-hatred.
Girardian Primers:
Totem and Taboo – Sigmund Freud: https://rumble.com/v1gsmvn-totem-and-taboo-sigmund-freud.html
The Origin of Envy & Narcissism – René Girard: https://rumble.com/v1gsnwv-the-origin-of-envy-and-narcissism-ren-girard.html
Case Studies: Dora and Freud: https://rumble.com/v1gu2dt-case-studies-dora-and-freud.html
Stalking: World Narcissistic Abuse Awareness Day: https://rumble.com/v1gvhk1-stalking-world-narcissistic-abuse-awareness-day.html
Love – Freud and Beyond: https://rumble.com/v1gv5pd-love-freud-and-beyond.html
Psychoanalysis – Sigmund Freud and Beyond: https://rumble.com/v1gvgq7-psychoanalysis-sigmund-freud-and-beyond.html
Object Relations: Fear Of Success Pt. 2: https://rumble.com/v1gvuql-object-relations-fear-of-success-pt.-2.html
Object Relations: Fear Of Success Pt. 7: https://rumble.com/v3ub2sa-object-relations-fear-of-success-pt.-7.html
Object Relations: Melanie Klein Pt. 8: https://rumble.com/v50nczb-object-relations-melanie-klein-pt.-8.html
Sublimation
For those interested in developing their own ability to sublimate, a lot of it has already been described in the word sublime. Both Lou and Freud talked about how ideals can be used to motivate action towards goals. For Freud, some of these ideals have already been created in the ego-ideal, which is the kernel of the Super-ego. “The formation of an ideal heightens the demands of the ego and is the most powerful factor favouring repression; sublimation is a way out, a way by which those demands can be met without involving repression…Sublimation may take place regularly through the mediation of the ego…One part of self-regard is primary—the residue of infantile narcissism; another part arises out of the omnipotence which is corroborated by experience (the fulfilment of the ego ideal), whilst a third part proceeds from the satisfaction of object-[craving]…Being in love occurs in virtue of the fulfilment of infantile conditions for loving, we may say that whatever fulfils that condition is idealized.”
We also gain a lot of ideas from role models on how to find interest in activities. “The other case will be recollected, in which the ego deals with the first object-[attachments] of the id (and certainly with later ones too) by taking over the [craving] from them into itself and binding it to the alteration of the ego produced by means of identification.” The pleasing feeling of tension and release becomes non-sexual when a non-sexual goal or sub-goal is created for satisfaction, or another way of saying it: non-sexual goal-tension and release. “The transformation [of erotic craving] into ego-[craving] of course involves an abandonment of sexual aims, a desexualization.” Ideals allow one to create a preference in the environment and if the preference to change something in the environment is not a sexual preference, then the motivation has now appropriated the craving. A craving to cook a good meal, for example, or to achieve something that a person feels is worthwhile. “By thus getting hold of the [craving] from the object-[attachments], setting itself up as sole love-object, and desexualizing or sublimating the [craving] of the id, the ego is working in opposition to the purposes of Eros and placing itself at the service of the opposing instinctual impulses. It has to acquiesce in some of the other object-[attachments] of the id; it has, so to speak, to participate in them.” This means that love has to be involved in creativity.
Since so much stress and frustration is not being able to achieve goals without interruption from others, or for lacking skills needed for those goals, the art of being creative and satisfying what you can, becomes a way to stave off neurosis and it can take you far if hobbies and interests are found to be more fulfilling in one’s time in this world. “The ego, by sublimating some of the [craving] for itself and its purposes, assists the id in its work of mastering the tensions.” The irony is that if sublimations allow one to achieve gainful employment or successful businesses, it makes one attractive socially so as to give Eros what it always wanted in the end. In a world that tests man’s survival skills, it makes sense that sublimation would be allowed to develop and adapt. Desexualization and resexualization happens when what is “sublime” or good, or something is found to be “worthwhile,” appears in a goal that is socially valued. These goals create social rewards in the form of being attractive to others, but it initially requires a narcissistic ego-ideal, and identifications from role models, to desexualize and create goals that enhance self-esteem and attractiveness.
Sublimation – Sigmund Freud: https://rumble.com/v1gv2fr-sublimation-sigmund-freud.html
The Ego and the Id – Sigmund Freud: https://rumble.com/v1gvdo1-the-ego-and-the-id-sigmund-freud.html
Ideals as Energy
Going back to Nietzsche and through Freud and Andreas-Salomé, they all agreed that ideals are involved in motivation. They are preferences, and in fact, for Freud, you needed preferences in order to learn anything about craving as separate from the ego. “As regards the differentiation of psychical energies, we are led to the conclusion that to begin with, during the state of narcissism, they exist together and that our analysis is too coarse to distinguish between them; not until there is object-[attachment] is it possible to discriminate a sexual energy—[craving]—from an energy of the ego-instincts.”
In Lou’s letters to Freud, she wanted to elaborate on primary narcissism and the meditative oneness and unity without objects, and also the value of concentration and sublimation. “I cannot rid myself of the impression that one should to some extent differentiate the type of narcissism here defined as true narcissism from that type which represents a quite definite stage of development, in which the ego consciously chooses itself as object, i.e., it presupposes an object which it prefers to others, as is the case with self-admiration, vanity etc.; for in these there lies a cleavage, an impaired unity of the personality, whereas narcissism is rooted in the deepest naïveté there can be.” Even in concentration, there is a loss of self-consciousness that is pleasurable and demonstrates a unity with the environment. “For while creating the artist is completely absorbed in his creation, and is quite unaware of the extremely personal and decisive relationship of his work to his own most intimate and infantile nature. It is only when he has awakened from this ‘unconscious’ explosion or else has not properly entered into it that he is thrown back into personal vanity, i.e., into the surplus [craving] directed towards himself as a person.” Lou liked Freud’s idea of harnessing the craving energy as opposed to Adler’s need to treat “the [craving as if it] was something in the possession of the ego…” The ideals in the super-ego are fed by energy of the Id so craving energy can be taken with less resistance. Those who grind away without hankering for a project related preference, will have resistance for engagement compounded on top of normal tiredness and boredom.
Lou felt that the overrating of object-choices, especially in the extreme, would lead to constant disappointment, as described above, precisely because of the incomparable identity with oneness, and the rest found in passivity and repose of the embryonic unity. “This tension at the same time releases so much pleasure really arises from the psychical [craving]-state: i.e., from a state which desires a great deal more than mere relief, which strives to re-experience a union with its enormously overvalued sexual object, such as it perhaps enjoyed in the womb in its identity with its environment.” This is the primal hurt for Lou, whereas the Oedipus Complex was for Freud. This could also be an influence for Freud’s death drive, where the exhaustion of dealing with reality takes over and a person wishes to be inert to gain a primal peace, the Nirvana Principle. One can be tired of effort in general.
Beyond the Pleasure Principle – Freud & Beyond – War Pt. (2/3): https://rumble.com/v1gv855-beyond-the-pleasure-principle-freud-and-beyond-war-pt.-23.html
World as Reproduction of the Womb
Because this primal ideal is so influential in our preferences, it means that it is always with us in all our development. It’s not something you only find when you are disappointed with an object and want to retreat. “Accordingly, narcissism is not limited to a single phase of [craving], but is a part of our self-love which accompanies all phases. It is not merely a primitive point of departure of development but remains as a kind of fundamental continuity in all the subsequent object-[attachments] of [craving],—which in fact, in Freud’s metaphor, stretches forth pseudopods to objects, like the amoeba, only to withdraw them when need arises.” This withdrawal helps to delineate the different kinds of defenses used and which object-choices are now repressed with phobias. “‘Sick’ and ‘healthy’ signify the false or true mutual relationships of the two inner tendencies, as they limit or further one another…If self-preservative and self-assertive drives should be conceptually separated from [craving] drives, then [craving] must constitute the connecting link between the desire for individuality and the contrary movement toward conjugation and fusion. In this dual orientation of narcissism the relations of [craving] would be expressed in our being rooted in our original state; we remain embedded in it, for all our development, as plants remain in the earth, despite their contrary growth toward the light. Even the physical processes of sex and procreation are bound to units which remain undifferentiated, and the erogenous zones are the residues of an infantile state from which the bodily organs have long since been separated in the service of self-preservation.”
Lou reinterpreted the story of Narcissus by taking her bad experience of seeing her reflection in the mirror and expanding things beyond the reflection of the individual. More is in the reflection, especially when gazing at a puddle outdoors in nature. “Bear in mind that the Narcissus of legend gazed, not at a man-made mirror, but at the mirror of Nature. Perhaps it was not just himself that he beheld in the mirror, but himself as if he were still All: would he not otherwise have fled from the image, instead of lingering before it?” Reading between the lines, it appears as if Lou wants to wait for inspiration, or the overflow of craving to arise from a meditative resting state, and then to act only then, which goes against the modern world full of deadlines and time pressure. When people feel replenished from meditation, there are natural desires that arise without effort and overflow until activity responds to that energy. When the energy is inhibited, like when there is fear or grinding exhaustion, the need for rest returns. Craving also withdraws when goals are too difficult. “St. Augustine’s remark is apt: ‘I was in love with love’. So objects appear to deeper observation to be mere occasions for unburdening an excess of love,—love belonging to ourselves, and not finding an outlet. The question of how we divert our self-love to object [craving] has often been answered by Freud by such a concept of overflow.”
If the activities are rewarding, it’s possible to repeat addictively as object-attachments increase, and if they are not rewarded, the cravings and actions withdraw. Lou felt that oneness in primal narcissism was not archaic or primitive from Freud’s point of view because there it has the advantage of relief from effort and monotony. “Freud has come to maintain an absolute opposition between a first (objectless) narcissistic state and object-relations. This primitive state, now called primary narcissism, is supposed to be characterized by the total absence of any relationship to the outside world, and by a lack of differentiation between ego and id; intrauterine existence is taken to be its prototypical form, while sleep is deemed a more or less successful imitation of that ideal model.”
Oneness is the reduction of tension and separation, which is only achieved conventionally when the release appears after tension, in normal goal achievement, a dualistic rediscovery of ideal oneness. “In the final analysis every object is a substitute, and in the strict psychoanalytic sense a symbol, for all that abundance of unconscious meaning, inexpressible itself, associated with it. From the point of view of [craving], no object [attachment] possesses any reality beyond this symbolic one. The quantum of pleasure derived from it is quite comparable to that which Ferenczi once described as ‘the pleasure of rediscovery: the tendency to rediscover the beloved in all manner of things in the hostile world outside probably accounts for the formation of symbols’. To which we would add object [craving] itself as essentially narcissistic in its substance and provenance. Psychoanalysis contends that the later [craved] objects are transferences of the earliest; in essence this means that a [craved] object is a transference from an earlier undifferentiated unity of subject and object to an individualized external image.”
We can take from this that when there’s trauma or disappointment, a narcissistic wounding arises which signifies a fear of rejection, from needed social relationships and our sense of survival, of being left out of heaven. This leads to concerns about ethics and the impact of our goals on others. When people say “sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me,” people are trying to defuse the power of normal defensive reactions to circle the wagons around one’s self-concept. “Quite apart from guilt feeling, the ego is confronted by its omissions and commissions, and also by a feeling of disillusion with life and existence. So do we acknowledge our shortcomings not with [strict observance of tradition] or abjectness as if they were external, but we are wounded at the point of primal attachment surviving in our narcissism.”
Even if we can never recreate the instant gratification of the womb, creativity and flow for Lou is the second best option. “Human-all-too-human are the three elements adhering to artistic creativity: the struggle against repressions which have to be overcome, the danger of sliding into infantile materiality, and lastly the hurry and the overstrain. Otherwise the work would be a guide to blessedness like nothing else on earth, a rejoicing in the incredible fullness of union between intoxication and peace.” The brain enjoys novelty, beauty, pleasure, progress, alleviated repression, love, friendship, and harmony. To get out of self-consciousness Lou emphasizes that “we are, rather than we are.” To Lou’s credit, she saw the value of the Reality Principle, which was a big influence for Anna Freud.
Life needs preferences and ideals to support energy and motivation, so as to make good memories on this imperfect planet, while the wear and tear of life, old age, and disappointments bring back the desire for death, oneness and the ending of tedium. Lou’s ideal maybe an attempt to recreate the womb in all of our communities, our exchanges with others, building the comfortable cocoons we live in, but the closest to a permanent imperviousness we can achieve is when we return to the earth.
Frau Lou: Nietzsche’s Wayward Disciple – Rudolph Binion: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780691618609/
On Narcissism – Sigmund Freud: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9781780491080/
The Ego and the Id – Sigmund Freud: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780393001426/
My Sister, My Spouse – H.F. Peters: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780393007480/
Fiebert, Martin. (1997). Fiebert, M. S. In and out of Freud’s shadow: A chronology of Adler’s relationship with Freud.. Individual psychology. 53. 241-269.
Markotic, L. (2001). There Where Primary Narcissism Was, I Must Become: The Inception of the Ego in Andreas-Salomé, Lacan, and Kristeva. American Imago 58(4), 813-836.
Wang, B. (2000). Memory, Narcissism, and Sublimation: Reading Lou Andreas-Salomé’s Freud Journal. American Imago 57(2), 215-234.
The Freud Journal – Lou Andreas-Salomé: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780704300224/
Sigmund Freud and Lou Andreas-Salomé letters: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780393302615/
The Standard Edition Of The Complete Psychological Works Of Sigmund Freud – Volume XII (Types of onset of Neurosis): https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780099426653/
Victor Mazin – The Femme Fatale – Lou Andreas-Salomé – The European Journal of Psychoanalysis, Number 14, Winter-Spring 2002
The Language of Psychoanalysis – Jean Laplanche and Jean-Bertrand Pontalis: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780367328139/
The Psychopathic Mind – J. Reid Meloy: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780876683118/
Psychology: https://psychreviews.org/category/psychology01/