Art vs. Reality
Valentine’s Day is coming soon and instead of something light and fluffy, it’s a good a time as any to do a deep dive into intimate relationships. Social connections and intimate relationships are the boogeyman for many people. Some prefer being alone and others feel that intimate relationships are worth it, even if there are a lot of conflicts. For them we are making social memories that last a lifetime. Love is always worth it! Then there are another group of people who treat it as a hobby and think that it’s not worth taking seriously. It’s a cynical game where most of the fun is in the anticipation. Consummation leads to boredom.
Fond as Freud was of artists and their depictions of what love is supposed to be, the important question still remained. What are the “necessary conditions for loving?” As always the difficulty for analysands undergoing psychoanalysis is how to “bring the demands of their imagination into harmony with reality.” In the world of love there’s a no bigger gulf than first dates. They often go nowhere, but some relationships begin here and radically alter the life paths of each partner. One of the biggest stressors for any human being is navigating between what people want and what is available. With “poetic license” writers can contrive results, which has its own form of satisfaction for the writer, who gets to write their dreams and fancies, and for the reader, who gets to imagine a more interesting world than their own. In the real world of love, contrivance is just a fancy word for manipulation. Most people loathe manipulation, but find it hard to avoid completely. Manipulation of others and of oneself is essentially conflict. In Freud’s three papers on the subject of Love, he moves in those directions that are more unpleasant and these unpleasant situations are mostly absent in many romantic novels. Of course the Neo-Freudian René Girard selected stories for his analysis that buck the trend and illuminate how difficult it is to maintain bliss in a real relationship. Freud warned that “science is…the most complete renunciation of the Pleasure Principle of which our mental activity is capable.” When we snap out of our romantic fog and use a scientific gaze, unsettling details come into focus, and no one is exempt. The one leveling feature of love is seeing patterns that can apply to “neurotics…people of average health or even those with outstanding qualities.” Finding quality partners is difficult and conflict over scarcity is omnipresent in dating circles. Regardless of status, everyone feels the internal command: “Act now, or else you’ll miss out!” It can lead to rash decisions, obsessive ambivalence, and a number of other neurotic consequences. We follow the pleasure principle, but find pain instead.
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
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
Object Choice
Freud focused on men in his first paper of the love trilogy in A Special Type of Choice of Object by Men, which has many patterns that can also be observed in the modern world with women and others with different sexual orientations. One of the first necessary conditions for love is envy. Like Girard emphasized, Freud was aware of the herd mentality of humans. We need social proof for our choices, even if we lose connection with facts, the only proof we actually need to make a good choice. Through transference we all rely on self-anointed experts, human idols and parental replacements to bless our decisions, but the freest person focuses on objective markers that consistently appear in reality. Whether the herd decides which properties to invest in, or which people we should marry, both objects and people can be over or under-valued. How this often appears in relationships is when couples are newly married. The social gathering, the wedding party and the wedding ring itself, all symbolize value to onlookers. Single people left on the side will never look as enticing as those already taken. “…The person in question shall never choose as his love-object a woman who is disengaged – that is, an unmarried girl or an unattached married woman – but only one to whom another man can claim right of possession as her husband, fiance or friend. In some cases this precondition proves so cogent that a woman can be ignored, or even rejected, so long as she does not belong to any man, but becomes the object of passionate feelings immediately she comes into one of these relationships with another man.” At some point somebody authentically chooses someone, and those who are ignoring on the side become jealous, when before the choice was made the third parties did not care enough to act. The scary thing is that this still applies for the newlyweds as well. The choices we make with who we marry tend to sparkle with all the excitement of marriage ceremonies. What is forgotten in all of our excitement with all the socially blessed choices is that social authorities are not living with these choices, we are. Social attention, what Otto Fenichel called Narcissistic Supply, is not always available. When all the chemical excitement of the marriage celebration and honeymoon dies away, boredom rears its ugly head. Boredom can appear with the repeated procedures of home-economics, that resemble many boring workplaces. Sex that was new, fails to reveal mystery. Depending on how mismatched the couple is, many will quite quickly seek for replacement excitements in the form of affairs. Just like in a workplace, employers and employees can take each other for granted. Exploitation can also follow boredom when partners need more and more to stave off the empty feeling associated with what is not mysterious anymore. Nothing is ever good enough and very quickly over-valuation turns into under-valuation. Partners are blamed for not succeeding in keeping the exciting chemicals flowing. Quite naturally blame and cheating and a need to win, replace all those beautiful vows that were made at the beginning. It’s a great lesson at match-making. Unless the match-maker actually knows a lot about the people being matched, it’s really just a guess. Intelligent partners work out life negotiations before they marry. Predictable red flags can be assessed before taking the plunge. A good meditation practice would be to watch how objects and people increase in valence in your perception, or how things standout, when social proof is being blessed on people or objects. The people or objects shine in a way that can distort actual value.
Fatal Attraction – “All the interesting guys are married.”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fBaXUdPo_2g
Stalking: https://rumble.com/v1gvhk1-stalking-world-narcissistic-abuse-awareness-day.html
Every breath you take – The Police: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMOGaugKpzs
The Love Triangle
The next precondition for lustul attraction comes from the first. “This precondition is to the effect that a woman who is chaste and whose reputation is irreproachable never exercises an attraction that might raise her to the status of a love-object, but only a woman who is in some way or other of bad repute sexually, whose fidelity and reliability are open to some doubt. This latter characteristic may vary within substantial limits from the faint breath of scandal attaching to a married woman who is not averse to a flirtation up to the openly promiscuous way of life of a cocotte or of an adept in the art of love; but the men who belong to our type will not be satisfied without something of the kind. This second necessary condition may be termed, rather crudely, ‘love for a prostitute.'” A lot of pleasure is the pleasure of winning, conquest and revenge. For many people conflict is a sadistic spice that adds to the flavour of desire. It’s an “…opportunity for gratifying impulses of rivalry and hostility directed at the man from whom the loved woman is wrested…” The sadistic motivation of rivalry is also boosted by jealousy caused by the flirtatious target “which appears to be a necessity for lovers of this type. It’s only when they are able to be jealous that their passion reaches its height and the woman acquires her full value, and they never fail to seize on the occasion that allows them to experience these most powerful emotions. What is strange is that it is not the lawful possessor of the loved one who becomes the target of this jealousy, but strangers, making their appearance for the first time, in relation to whom the loved one can be brought under suspicion. In glaring instances the lover shows no wish for exclusive possession of the woman and seems to be perfectly comfortable in the triangular situation.” Here we have René Girard’s triangular desire that he applies in all areas where there is a mediator of desire, or role model, but his theory was inspired by Freud’s love triangle. Instead René transformed love into a transference and with Girard transference worship is in any area where there’s fandom. Celebrity is simply celebrating role models. Social proof enhances people and objects. This hints at the importance for social rewards for survival and procreation and the mind is constantly searching for signs. We can own those signs, dress up in them and marry them. When people share the same symbols then there’s a hovering and potential for conflict. It’s both threatening and tantalizing. Like the ancient tribes, being the hero that hunts and brings back the kill confers social rewards so that the threat of conflict is offset by the promise of reward.
15 Celebrities meeting their Celebrities: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZaTJ4qAC1tU
Sometimes Freud’s third wheel sticks around longer than you would expect, enjoying the excitement of the triangle. “One of my patients, who had been made to suffer terribly by his lady’s escapades, had no objection to her getting married, and did all he could to bring it about; in the years that followed he never showed a trace of jealousy towards her husband. Another typical patient had, it is true, been very jealous of the husband in his first love affair, and had forced the lady to stop having marital relations; but in his numerous subsequent affairs he behaved like the other members of this type and no longer regarded the lawful husband as an interference.”
Jules and Jim – Truffaut: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nEtiba8_gsk
The English Patient – Minghella: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1c85kLE7Mk
This is how Austrians say goodbye – Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade – Spielberg: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q8oQhDSXnlM
That Obscure object of desire – Buñuel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gba_tu2-EMY
Daft Punk ft. Julian Casablancas: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5uQMwRMHcs
Boogie Nights – The Death of Little Bill – PT Anderson: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JFX-qfYbHKg
The Blue Angel – Sternberg: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANqGm-MiqQs
Triangular dog and cat: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_D84wPZ9BU
Lips like sugar – Echo and the Bunnymen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hGcJA8fXvU
This is the attractiveness of “sluts”, as Serge Pankejeff called them in Part 3 of The ‘Wolfman.’ This of course used to only apply to women, but men can be sluts too. These are the people who manufacture intensity with flirtation. As you can see in my video of René Girard’s theories, possession kills intensity. Flirtatious people who are otherwise attached, create the sense that they cannot be possessed. This increases intensity so that partners must be won back over and over again. It is why people can hover in toxic relationships, because the intensity isn’t always pleasurable and a lot of the pleasure comes from increasing intensity to get a pay-off of relief with consummation; to manipulate how the brain responds to conquests, to maximize the high of relief. This is how people can hover in these relationships even if it looks torturous. In fact it has to be torturous or there’s no anticipation of relief. It’s the typical stereotype of men chasing and women trying to get more attention. The greater the high, the greater the conditioning to repeat. It’s often said that people leave toxic relationships many times before they leave for good. One of the quickest ways to get out of the cycle of abuse, which is all about this manipulation of intensity, is to either cherish your alone time with interesting projects to reconnect again with the lost self, or to find the insight that peace away from all these ups and downs is happiness. If intensity always falls into boredom or stress it’s a never ending roller-coaster. People can get fed up, and if they have found a calling elsewhere, then the threat of loneliness that motivated desperate searches for a new relationship disappears. People can feel just as lonely in relationships and that realization leads one to make new choices with one’s time. The lonely feeling has more to do with having nothing meaningful to occupy your time, not that you need a romantic partner.
Bill Maher Explains why he never got married: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=INHKjO1rJao
You can go your own way – Fleetwood Mac: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ozl3L9fhKtE
The ‘Wolfman’ Part 3: https://youtu.be/ywoB8G3UvO4
Arnold Schwarzenegger in Brazil: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uerFZ2Z42nc
When people lose their drug of choice, and there’s no replacement, it’s easy to fall back on these dark relationships. The social brain becomes a trap and the individual self starts to fall apart. All their projects and goals take a backseat to the relationship, and self-esteem reduces. For example, if the person is objectively young and attractive, their allure increases with social competition. They become lustfully irresistible. The hunger and yearning starts to animate action that can often embarrass the pursuers as their self-esteem decreases with all the debasing they do to win over their target. Debasing is the abandoning of all one’s self-goals in order to get a social reward. Since self-esteem is modulated by social concerns, as Girard pointed out, the hunter becomes masochistic and the hunted, narcissistic. Typically this was the male chasing the female, but most modern people can detect this pattern in any sexual combination. Some Girardians like Jean-Michel Oughourlian, actually are tempted by the idea of increasing intensity with flirtation and threats to cheat. The idea is that if it’s done consciously, both partners can channel their lustful hunger back to each other and remain in the relationship. Of course this is not looking far enough down the road of consequences. Any intentional flirting will increase the energy of the person flirting and decrease the energy of the hapless target when they are no longer useful and discarded. That energy exchange can create conflict because you are using others as a battery. Also the brain knows which person is the old partner and who is the new target. There’s no guarantee that each individual will gain enough energy to continue the old relationship. Hence many Narcissists move on to endless partners until their social or objective value fades with age. Fidelity is rated so highly by so many people, but in the end “…passionate attachments of this sort are repeated with the same peculiarities…again and again in the lives of [persons] of this type; in fact, owing to external events such as changes of residence and environment, the love-objects may replace one another so frequently that a long series of them is formed.” The blindness of each subjective point of view is perceptively seen by Freud. The attention is away from the trap of the endless string of lovers and only focused on how to be of value to the next target. “What is most startling of all to the observer in lovers of this type is the urge they show to ‘rescue’ the woman they love. The man is convinced that she is need of him, that without him she would lose all moral control and rapidly sink to a lamentable level. He rescues her, therefore, by not giving her up.”
Freud then goes back into the childhood of these men, and sees the Oedipus Complex again. The 1st romantic triangle of rivalry with the father to obtain the mother. “Mother-surrogates.” In modern slang the term would be “Motherfuckers.” So the next time you see a conflict in a love triangle and someone is called a motherfucker, they may not actually be wrong and both men may be implicated depending on how similar the pursued female is to their mothers.
Samuel L. Jackson – Every Motherfucker Ever – Huffington Post: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0LBi1MHoaU
You can catch yourself being caught in the “motherfucker” template when you are attracted to a woman that has a similar profession to your mother, or has looks or body language that is familiar and comfortable like your mother. Notice sexual feelings arising when this happens. Familiarity reduces stress and increases sexual desire, and unfamiliarity increases stress and reduces sexual desire. Mindfulness helps you catch these embarrassing intentions. Now you don’t have to avoid women who are in that template, especially if they are good partners, but if it’s an unhealthy template, based on bullying and abuse, it’s an opportunity to try and appreciate women who might be better for you and move into a different trajectory in your life. The new object-choice may provide fresh challenges and if a person is secure if there is rejection and persistent in their search, they may find what they really need. Some people need to divorce first before they start considering more features of what they need in a partner than they did originally.
“My Spot!”
Freud goes back to the template of the Oedipus Complex, but Jean-Michel focuses on a different angle. He calls it possession. When you want your spouse back you are also wanting to be in the place of the new suitor. You are possessed by their rival personality. There’s a temptation to copy their winning tactics. It’s the main way people can get into your head, by taking your spot. It’s a territorial feeling, possibly connected with serotonin, where you desire to be back in that good comfortable spot. Like a cat in a sunbeam, or a bird perched up high above with a perfect view of the scenery and their prey. Humans are also animals and want a nice spot in relationships and also the workplace. Intensity is most felt when you are about to gain a spot or to lose one. The corresponding need for revenge is powerful. Notice how you can be obsessed with enemies in the workplace and catch yourself. Realize that you are obsessed because you want a spot that others want, or they are in a spot you used to have. Relief happens when you find a different spot that is open. Being open to a variety of spots will reduce your neurosis over others. Girard called it an “ontological disease”, or a being disease when one can’t help but obsess about rivals. Knowing that having a spot kills intensity also helps with relief. This means that the winner can only take pleasure in the conquest. When the loser is no longer around for comparison pleasure, the winner has to find new targets for competition to avoid boredom. A loser who is flexible can also find undervalued people and situations which leads to a social happiness that can be added to a meditation practice. This is a more Christian meditation where the belief of a permanent spot for happiness is abandoned. Winners are never completely satisfied. This is what allows for flexibility. Coveted professions and romantic partners are a fools gold leading to endless stressful conflict. It’s possible for a winner to actually be a loser in one’s emotional life. The neurosis of chasing a perfect spot leads to substitute pleasures in the form of addictions, entertainment, religion or politics as a means of escape. This fits the pattern of people looking for replacements when they lose their perch or valued partner. The so called “losers” of society have to learn flexibility, sublimate or breakdown. This is seen very acutely in bad economic times when lifestyles have to be curtailed. People grieve and go through withdrawal symptoms of their old life and start debasing themselves in preparation for blame and abandonment, when their partners don’t like the changes.
The problem with The Spot, and why it goes out of scope in this article and into another project on Group Psychology, is that people either get bored with the spot and start searching out other spots, mostly with an eye on a role model, and unconsciously, or in some cases consciously, this works to escalate conflict with the person already in The Spot. A lack of appreciation for the current Spot can be a problem and so is the blindness towards your new Spot that you want and the wrong belief that it isn’t already wanted by someone else. Again the Blue Ocean Strategy focuses more on spots that are undervalued and the perception improves with that attitude. Most people, like a stampeding herd, move into the most coveted spots which so many vie for and don’t realize the mental health problems they are running into, including obsessive thoughts about rivalry and PTSD. I’ve even run into random examples of this in my own life. For example, at a seminar in Phoenix, I went to a really good breakfast place. I was sitting next to another American and I casually mentioned that I was Canadian. He eventually started talking about another Canadian he knew. “There’s this lady from Ontario that’s working in a company here. I think to myself, why would a Canadian think she can work here?” The look on his face was a mild embarrassment mixed with envy and aggression. I felt like he was warning me. Why envy is my favourite subject is that it’s a taboo and people react to those feelings but try to disguise them, yet body language starts to betray them. Usually an embarrassed smile gives it away. I come from a Conservative background but this kind of Conservative, ethnic entitled socialism, is not for me. I responded that “Americans live in Canada and we try to treat them nicely. We live in a global economy. Americans work around the world.” Now this isn’t to pick on Americans, because this stuff is everywhere there are humans vying for a Spot in life. An example I clearly remember in Canada was an Accounting Seminar for a designation that I shall not name, where it was openly discussed that to change your name to an Anglophone equivalent would increase your chances of getting hired. The audience was depressed and murmuring, but we were just to accept this. There are other examples I remember, but I’ve linked to some intelligent ones below involving teaching in Vietnam and people’s experiences in Japan. The lesson is that one must eliminate any romantic notions of different countries and what they can offer you. Our standard of living is very interdependent on social hierarchies and what they will allow you to have. And even if you get disgusted with right wing politics, and you try the left, you will ultimately find the exact same concerns there. Unions have to limit the supply of labour to increase the cost of labour for their supporters. Hierarchies are there too. To be a free thinker in the end is to be an independent politically, where you are skeptical of power structures in any system. In the end all of us will end up in a Spot that is a coffin or an urn. The Spot, or heaven doesn’t exist on this planet, and this insight will keep repeating.
Group Psychology – War Pt. 3: https://rumble.com/v1gvcxr-group-psychology-freud-and-beyond-war-pt.-33.html
Case Studies: Little ‘Hans’: https://rumble.com/v1gu93b-case-studies-little-hans-sigmund-freud.html
Teaching English in Vietnam 5:00: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHr44dKglVQ
Why is Japan So ‘Racist’ Sometimes?: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZbNpW8f9IE
All About Eve: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NqpfxDUpnnU
A Beautiful Mind – Ignore the Blonde: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CemLiSI5ox8
Territorial Pissings – Nirvana: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMmrvDm-kYU
This is my picnic table!: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eh4-ye1UCqY
Debasement and impotence
Part of the difficulty in trying to move beyond relationship templates that are old and comfortable is the stress of taking a risk. The biggest risk a person can make is choosing an intimate partner, especially one that is more challenging in a good way. As Freud pointed out in many different ways, our stress can repress our cravings or libido. “If the practicing psychoanalyst asks himself on account of what disorder people most often come to him for help, he is bound to reply…that it is psychical impotence. This singular disturbance affects men of strongly libidinous natures, and manifests itself in a refusal by the executive organs of sexuality to carry out the sexual act, although before and after they may show themselves to be intact and capable of performing the act, and although a strong psychical inclination to carry it out is present. The first clue to understanding his condition is obtained by the sufferer himself on making the discovery that a failure of this kind only arises when the attempt is made with certain individuals; whereas with others there is never any question of such a failure. He now becomes aware that it is some feature of the sexual object which gives rise to the inhibition of his male potency, and sometimes he reports that he has a feeling of an obstacle inside him, the sensation of a counter-will which successfully interferes with his conscious intention.” Some of the reasons for impotence are inferred by Freud to be unconscious obstacles. “An incestuous fixation on mother or sister, which has never been surmounted, plays a prominent part in this pathogenic material and is its most universal content. In addition there is the influence to be considered of accidental distressing impressions connected with infantile sexual activity, and also those factors which in a general way reduce the libido that is to be directed on to the female sexual object.” These disturbances for Freud often started in childhood where the love and lust aren’t developed to a mature level. “Two currents whose union is necessary to ensure a completely normal attitude in love have…failed to combine. These two may be distinguished as the affectionate and the sensual current.” Like a lot of Freud’s theories there are libidinous currents that can ally together on an object or split off with different objects.
“The affectionate current is the older of the two. It springs from the earliest years of childhood; it is formed on the basis of the interests of the self-preservative instinct and is directed to the members of the family and those who look after the child…Then at the age of puberty [the affectionate current is] joined by the powerful ‘sensual’ current which no longer mistakes its aims. It never fails, apparently, to follow the earlier paths and to cathect [or attach] the objects of the primary infantile choice with quotas of libido [craving] that are now far stronger. Here, however, it runs up against the obstacles that have been erected in the meantime by the barrier against incest; consequently it will make efforts to pass on from these objects which are unsuitable in reality, and find a way as soon as possible to other, extraneous objects with which a real sexual life may be carried on. These new objects will still be chosen on the model [image] of the infantile ones, but in the course of time they will attract to themselves the affection that was tied to the earlier ones.” Of course the path from child to marriage is fraught with obstacles and “…the amount of frustration in reality which opposes the new object-choice…reduces its value for the person concerned. There is after all no point in embarking upon an object-choice if no choice is to be allowed at all or if there is no prospect of being able to choose anything suitable.” If you are mindful you can detect family templates being selected unconsciously and Freud here talks about these unconscious templates and how they continue to operate. “Secondly, there is the amount of attraction which the infantile objects that have to be relinquished are able to exercise, and which is in proportion to the erotic [investment] attaching to them in childhood.” It’s easier to venture for a comfortable familiar target than it is to risk rejection on other paths.
The Pleasure Principle – Freud: https://rumble.com/v1gurqv-the-pleasure-principle-sigmund-freud.html
In some cases rejection is total or very close to it. Freud describes what happens to the mind when reality is unsatisfactory. “The libido turns away from reality, is taken over by imaginative reality (the process of introversion), strengthens the images of the first sexual objects and becomes fixated on them. The obstacle raised against incest, however, compels the libido that has turned to these objects to remain in the unconscious. The masturbatory activity carried out by the sensual current, which is now part of the unconscious, makes its own contribution in strengthening this fixation.” Because the sexuality has turned to imagination as a replacement, Freud worried that it would result in “total psychical impotence” in real sexual relations. Of course this doesn’t mean impotence in the sexual organs, but that new realistic healthy templates are not approached. This can be seen in modern days with pornography inadequately filling the gap left by broken relationships. Rampant divorce and fewer people marrying have led to a dystopian sexual world. With sex dolls beginning to enter the market, sex becomes an unrealistic template where a passive partner just does whatever the excited customer wants in a one-sided way. The affective current stays with childhood oedipal templates and lust moves in different directions where there is no love. The sensual and the affective become split. “The whole sphere of love in such people remains divided in the two directions personified in art as sacred and profane love. Where they love they do not desire and where they desire they cannot love.”
For Freud the feature of how sexuality appears when sacred is separated from profane, consists in “…psychical debasement of the sexual object, the overvaluation that normally attaches to the sexual object being reserved for the incestuous object and its representatives. As soon as the condition of debasement is fulfilled, sensuality can be freely expressed, and important sexual capacities and a high degree of pleasure can develop.” This for Freud leads to perversions because sexuality is associated with the debased and the sacred locked in prohibition. It is why higher and virtuous forms of love can appear unsexy to many people. So for Freud the desire for mother from childhood and disgust in response to these desires in adulthood, when unconscious desires become conscious, can lead to being turned off. Debasing the partner becomes necessary to bring sexual desire back. “People in whom there has not been a proper confluence of the affectionate and the sensual currents do not usually show much refinement in their modes of behaviour in love; they have retained perverse sexual aims whose non-fulfillment is felt as a serious loss of pleasure, and whose fulfillment on the other hand seems possible only with a debased and despised sexual object.” Modern man for Freud only “develops full potency when he is with a debased sexual object…He is assured of complete sexual pleasure only when he can devote himself unreservedly to obtaining satisfaction, which with his well-brought-up wife, for instance, he does not dare to do. This is the source of his need for a debased sexual object, a woman who is ethically inferior, to whom he need attribute no aesthetic scruples, who does not know him in his other social relations and cannot judge him in them…It is possible, too, that the tendency so often observed in men of the highest classes of society to choose a woman of a lower class as a permanent mistress or even as a wife is nothing but a consequence of their need for a debased sexual object…” For Freud, the awareness of the sacred mother figure and the acceptance of incestual desires is actually the beginning of fusing together the affectionate and sensual currents. “It sounds not only disagreeable but also paradoxical, yet it must nevertheless be said that anyone who is to be really free and happy in love must have surmounted his respect for women and have come to terms with the idea of incest with his mother or sister.” The new partner’s countenance being like that of the mother is accepted, but relief is also obtained because that person ultimately is not the mother. The benefits of having sex with someone that is not a member of the family can be joined with the benefits of harmony with someone who is understood and familiar.
Young Lust – Pink Floyd: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGmIL2gtieU
This trap of separating debased objects from sacred ones has its effect on women as well. Sex is considered dirty and not good, so good girls remain chaste for too long. They become a wife where there is love but no lust, and the wife is denied full passion. “It is naturally just as unfavourable for a woman if a man approaches her without his full potency as it is if his initial overvaluation of her when he is in love gives place to undervaluation after he has possessed her.” Then when you add the prohibition of sex aimed at women, especially in Freud’s time, “they are subsequently often unable to undo the connection between sensual activity and the prohibition, and prove to be psychically impotent, that is, frigid.” The frigidity and debasing tendencies for Freud come from “consequences of the long period of delay, which is demanded by education for cultural reasons, between sexual maturity and activity.”
The Rolling Stones: She’s so cold: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jo34VhfcetU
This is a difficult problem for civilization, but Freud doesn’t advocate complete sexual liberation. “…If sexual freedom is unrestricted from the outset the result is no better. It can easily be shown that the psychical value of erotic needs is reduced as soon as their satisfaction becomes easy.” Just like with Csikszentmihalyi’s Flow, and countless other theorists that are influenced by Freud, there’s a sexual Flow that can become boring. “An obstacle is required in order to heighten libido; and where natural resistances to satisfaction have not been sufficient men have at all times erected conventional ones so as to be able to enjoy love.” A big part of the cycle of abuse is the debasing of objects to breakdown boundaries, increase excitement and surmount obstacles to sex. Milder forms of debasing appear in teasing and put-downs. Ease of sex leads to boredom and signs pointing to that insight appear in history. “This is true for both individuals and of nations. In times in which there were no difficulties standing in the way of sexual satisfaction, such as perhaps during the decline of the ancient civilizations, love became worthless and life empty, and strong reaction-formations [moving to a moral opposite] were required to restore indispensable affective values. In this connection it may be claimed that the ascetic current in Christianity created psychical values for love which pagan antiquity was never able to confer on it. This current assumed its greatest importance with the ascetic monks, whose lives were almost entirely occupied with the struggle against libidinal temptation.”
Simon of the desert – Buñuel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNrIUANm50s
Freud then later compares the value of social barriers, like those imposed by religions, with alcoholics who get a tolerance for their favourite wine but grow accustomed to it by habit because barriers for other choices of wine are too steep, such as distance, money and prohibition. If there’s enough prohibition of sex, including prohibition of infidelity, then available partners become habitual. “…Something in the nature of the sexual instinct itself is unfavourable to the realization of complete satisfaction.” Freud compounds the lack of satisfaction that people feel not just from external obstacles, but also internal ones. Freud surmises that satisfaction can’t be complete because many partners are surrogates for childhood templates, and also because some perversions have to be repressed in civilized society. Then he searches for more sexual limits in the human need for complete sexual satisfaction, by surmising that if all sexual desires could be satisfied completely, there would be no reason to develop culture. Here I think Freud didn’t explore enough avenues for why boredom exists. Humanity has had to struggle against nature to survive for so long that too much pleasure would weaken survivability. Humans were so busy with survival that it would be impossible to be copulating all the time, and indeed that was the case. René Girard also focused on later conceptions of happiness that Freud zeroed in on in his future On Narcissism, and the case study of The ‘Wolfman.’ This is his perception that to be in a floating oceanic religious experience, like prayer or meditation, is a re-creation of the womb. All needs are met there with no effort, but all of our worldly responsibilities make this impossible. All pleasure has a limit. The famous rat experiment where the rat preferred addiction over food, is a clear answer that too much pleasure interferes with survival. This supports Freud’s worry that too much copulation would lead to no development, but the rat in this case had a tool put into it’s head. Biology by itself will limit pleasure. The closest comparison would be a drug addiction where the brain biology is hacked, but even there one finds tolerance or overdose. The search for a heaven of endless pleasure will always fail because there are consequences for too much or too little pleasure. It all points to balance again.
Brain mechanisms of pleasure and addiction: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=de_b7k9kQp0
On Narcissism – Freud: https://rumble.com/v1gtgdl-on-narcissism-sigmund-freud-narcissism-1-of-4.html
The ‘Wolfman’ Part 1: https://rumble.com/v1gucp1-case-studies-the-wolf-man-13-freud-and-beyond.html
The ‘Wolfman’ Part 2: https://rumble.com/v1gug9n-case-studies-the-wolf-man-23-freud-and-beyond.html
The ‘Wolfman’ Part 3: https://rumble.com/v1gulsf-case-studies-the-wolfman-33-freud-and-beyond.html
This was a thread from the early to late Freud. Social goals and individual goals have always been a trade-off. “…The non-satisfaction that goes with civilization is the necessary consequence of certain peculiarities which the sexual instinct has assumed under the pressure of culture. The very incapacity of the sexual instinct to yield complete satisfaction as soon as it submits to the first demands of civilization becomes the source, however, of the noblest cultural achievements which are brought into being by ever more extensive sublimation of its instinctual components. For what motive would men have for putting sexual instinctual forces to other uses if…they could obtain fully satisfying pleasure? They would never abandon that pleasure and they would never make any further progress. It seems, therefore, that the irreconcilable difference between the demands of the two instincts – the sexual and the egoistic – has made men capable of ever higher achievements, though subject, it is true, to a constant danger, to which, in the form of neurosis, the weaker are succumbing to-day.” Conflicts over desire can manifest in civilization as macro demands for collective survival with large organizations, or in micro demands with partners and families.
The web of social dependencies
Naturally my next exploration will have to move onto mimetics, groups and the herd mentality. Early psychological thinkers loved staying with the forest and tantalizingly left the trees for other thinkers to focus on. Errors are found in the trees and new theories developed, but today we find ourselves lost in the trees and forget about the forest, or the big picture. Both the trees and the forest are important because as individuals we are still dependent on the stability of everyone else in society. A lot of what interferes in relationships is exactly that big picture of unforeseen influences. Oligarchies, politics, economics and social climbing are chaotic traffic we have to navigate. Girard said that “we are vaniteux.” In his literary studies he compared the story of Tristan and Isolde to the narcissism that couples force onto each other. A lot of your attractiveness is not only if people are pursuing you for a romantic relationship, but also being in demand in a career. If you are in demand in society and the money is flowing then you become more attractive by proxy with your lifestyle. This is part of the reason why royalty and celebrity is so attractive to people. People can day-dream themselves into your lifestyle, that you are paying for, and get excited. Tristan and Isolde “love each other, but each loves the other from the standpoint of self and not from the other’s standpoint,” which leads to “false reciprocity, twin narcissism.” Our attractiveness ebbs and flows with how our jobs change, age, health and also if we have a tantalizing potential. True love in the end is when people love their partner’s personality and good intentions, even when there’s little fanfare and demand from society. Life is going to take everything away from us, but we can still love what’s left.
Mirrors – Justin Timberlake: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uuZE_IRwLNI
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Sigmund Freud – The Standard Edition Vol XI: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780099426646/
Deceit, Desire, & the Novel – René Girard: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780801818301/
The Battered Woman – Lenore Walker: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780826143228/
The Woman and the Puppet – Pierre Louÿs: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9781912868124/
Oughourlian, J. (1996). Desire is mimetic: a clinical approach Contagion: Journal of Violence, Mimesis, and Culture 3 (1):43-49 (1996).
Psychology: https://psychreviews.org/category/psychology01/