Search

Even an originally revolutionary movement like psychoanalysis can become conservative and can take refuge, at last, in reactionary acquiescence. Many revolutionary minds, fighters of yesterday, are tired and now rest their cause on dogmas and preconceived ideas. The progress of science does not tolerate such refuge. The shape of psychoanalysis around the year 2000 of our era will be very different from the concept of the New York Psychoanalytical Society of 1945. No prophetic gift is needed to predict that it will be much more occupied with the total human personality than with the sexual components. The picture of psychoanalysis in the year 2000 will, I am sure, be nearer to that which neo-psychoanalysis sketches then to that of libido theory. It will be recognized then that the crude sex-drive cannot have the power attributed to it by Freud and that early mixtures of sexual and non-sexual urges are clearly to be observed in those very phenomena which impress us as "purely" sexual." (Reik, 1945).

In the preceding paper (Meissner, 2009a), I focused on aspects of the self and the sense in which they could undergo development along disparate lines and stages of development, and in their respective ways contribute to the integration of a functional self-system and human personality. In this paper I consider the developmental process sequentially from its starting in infancy through the rapprochement period. In a following paper (Meissner, 2009b) I focus on further development of the self beyond rapprochement, through oedipal and latency periods to adolescence. The literature is vast and my discussion will of necessity be highly selective, focusing on what seem to me the most salient findings and studies relevant to the development of the self. My discussion will be centered on the dimensions of the self I previously delineated. In general terms, Tyson (1996) has noted the decline in confidence in specifiable and differentiable stages of development, so that the idea of a clearly delineated oedipal phase, for example, has become anachronistic. Discriminable parameters of the developmental process are not always synchronous and the process may unfold with different degrees of delay, deviation, or deficit. As Tyson put it

I start this difficult paper on the accident of gender with a novel, because sexuality and gender unfold in novel ways, resisting and revealing assumed origins as fragile attempts to settle desire. Like a novel, in which pages are read to capture essences that words cannot grasp, gender hints at trauma that has no origin but is rather the result of the struggle to capture this very unknown, which one can only brush against through terms such as drive and desire. One cannot enter the novel’s narrative armed with the right knowledge to grasp its meaning, but one is affected by the novel’s aftershock, its meanings constructed retroactively. One cannot prepare for sexuality’s novelty, and its meanings can be made retroactively only after desire surprises, strays off familiar course, and forces an engagement with the open question of identity. The intention of this paper is to show how the very archaic nature of gender pushes for settlement, forcing a choice (to be a man or a woman) as a way to settle the traumatic nature of the self for which desire is not finite and where nothing can be settled once and for all. Gender in that way is a site of trauma in which an identification with what satisfies the Other (the phallic answer) is all one could hope for, making it extremely difficult to talk about gender outside of this split. I argue that psychoanalytic writings cannot escape the trauma of gender and that recent investigations into experiences of gender such as transsexuality have been marked by this trauma. Recent articles about transsexuality that purport to represent a postmodern model of gender (in contrast to the binary conception of biology) treat transsexuality as a disavowal of difference and a collapse to a binary. The transsexual is conceptual

“I do not invent in the least,” Thoreau insisted about his hallucinated mountain, “but state exactly what I see. I can see its general outline as plainly now in my mind as that of Wachusett” (Harding & Bode, 1974, p. 498). Thoreau’s hallucination of an enormous mountain (“in the easterly part of our town, where no high hill actually is”) recurred some twenty times over the years, and was often quite vivid; he acknowledged having ascended the mountain once or twice (Torrey & Allen, 1962, vol. 10, p. 141). An entry made in his journal two days before the hallucination and a poem about it help elucidate the mountain’s latent meaning. The hallucination, in turn, casts light on the cryptic parable or allusion: “I long ago lost a hound, a bay horse, and a turtledove”, as written in Walden. Thoreau claimed he kept the mountain to ride instead of a horse. Such rides, in the pre-Prozac era, enabled resourceful, innovative Thoreau to use the hallucination, not only for recreation, but also therapeutically.

Rebirth images have a long history. Ancient mysteries focused on moving from “lower” to “higher” consciousness. Biblical rebirth images involved healing damage or cleansing corruption— the blind will see, the lame will walk, the burden of sin will be lifted. Rebirth images are associated with the wish to live forever but are not limited to the latter. They are connected with changing states of being, moods, feelings, and growth processes, referring, for example, to shifts between feeling dead and awakening to life. Symbolic life is partly concerned with describing what its own activity feels like and discovering what it can do. Art, for example, disrupts itself in order to explore its processes and discover further possibilities. I have heard artists speak of killing their work (babies), repeatedly destroying what they do until what emerges feels closer to a birth they can say yes to. In such a process successive destructions and births fuse yet support and lend strength to what results. The psyche generates rebirth images to help organize sensitivity. To speak of a new spirit, new person, new soul implies something wrong with the old one, perhaps a perennial insufficiency built into experience. We refer to someone “getting better” not just as a movement from illness to health but as part of a drive to surpass or transcend oneself, a never-ending birth. Disruption supersedes disruption as one keeps stretching. We want to be better, to go beyond or correct ourselves. Rebirth images also track trauma. Sensitivity suffers wounds. We are very sensitive beings, more easily injured than we like to think. As Bion (1994) writes, “When two personalities meet, an emotional storm is created” (p. 321). At the same time, we are

This article discusses the use of certain traditional psychoanalytic models—in particular, Freud’s drive-theory-related conception of the unconscious—and attempts a theoretical reformulation of them. These considerations are based on a general theory of my own about the origins and development of mental structure, on which I have worked for some decades and which is presented in a number of books (Imbasciati, 1983, 1991, 1994, 1998a, 1998b; Imbasciati & Calorio, 1981). Mental structure is deemed to be a construction of functions resulting from the progressive formation of symbols codifiable in memory. A symbolopoietic process generates a structure that is itself symbolopoietic; psychic structure as a whole is a symbolopoietic construction that has built itself up symbol by symbol in contiguous and progressive connection from the fetal period on. The theory takes account both of the typically psychoanalytic affective vertex and of that of cognition. The term “symbol” is used in its widest sense. The main concept developed in this article is that the unconscious, regarded as the essence of the whole of psychic structure, can be identified in the symbolopoietic process. I must apologize at the outset for the large number of references to my own publications in this article—an inevitable consequence of the sheer volume of work I have devoted to the subject. I apologize, too, for any passages that those unfamiliar with my work may find difficult to understand, and, finally, for the fact that, owing to the need to condense many concepts into a few pages, little space may appear to have been left for comparisons with This article was translated by Philip Slotkin, MA, Cantab. MITI. In this article, his/he is used for simplicity and does not necessarily imply only that gender or preference for that gender.

Clinicians working with contemporary women with anorexia nervosa have commented on the ascetic component in anorexia, meaning their self-denial, heightened morality, opposition between body and spirit, asexuality, and denial of bodily death (Mogul, 1980; Palazzoli, 1978; Rampling, 1985; Sabom, 1985; Turner, 1984). While these clinicians have commented on the asceticism in contemporary anorexia nervosa, they have little to say about the role of culture in subjective experiences of this asceticism. As we have seen, Jane and Margaret used notions of asceticism about food and the body that are a part of their religious beliefs to create a personal meaning system through which they expressed their self-starvation. These cases, while supporting clinical studies that point to an ascetic component in modern anorexia, go further to suggest that in some cases, this asceticism may be encoded in religion. Religious anorectics like Jane and Margaret challenge models of anorexia nervosa that understand the condition exclusively in terms of cultural foci on "dieting" and secular ideals of beauty and bodily thinness for women (Bemporad, Hoffman,Herzog, 1989; Chernin, 1985; Garner et al., 1980; Orbach, 1986; Rost, Newhaus,Florian, 1982). They also suggest a continuing persistence into the twentieth century of an association between religiosity and self-starvation noted by historians during the early Christian, medieval, and late-Victorian periods in the West (Bell, 1985; Brown, 1988; Brumberg, 1985, 1988; Bynum, 1987). The above discussion points to the new directions in psychological anthropology which challenge a strict and opposing dichotomy between the conscious and unconscious, between culture (seen as "public") and the individual mind (seen as "private" and idiosyncratic). Obeyesekere's concept of "the work of culture," (Obeyesekere, 1990) and Stephen's concept of the "autonomous imagination" are especially useful in understanding how persons like Jane and Margaret use in imaginative ways cultural symbols, such as notions of asceticism about food and the body that are a part of religion, to give meaning to their personal concerns with growth, separation, and sexuality. We saw how Jane and Margaret transform cultural symbols and language to express their starvation and deep anxieties. These cases lend support to views that culture and religion, as symbolic systems, have underpinnings in deep motivation (Obeyesekere, 1981, 1990; Spiro, 1965, 1987). They also suggest that the relations between culture and the individual mind (and between culture and "illness," between "normal" and "abnormal") must be viewed as a moving continuum, with culture constantly worked and reworked by the individual imagination in innovative and creative ways.

Death dogged Vincent's footsteps throughout his life, and formed a core component of his unconscious fantasy system. It cast a lugubrious shadow over all of his undertakings--he found little joy and less love in life. It found its way onto his canvases, both directly--the grinning death's head--and indirectly. It found expression in his portrayals of sowers and reapers, in his representations of trees--especially the highly symbolic treatments of cypresses--in the menacing crows hovering over storm-darkened fields of wheat, and finally in the images of Christ, suffering and dead, held in the embrace of a loving and grieving mother. If death was a bottomless pit that haunted him with its terrors, it was also a siren song that drew him ever closer to his destiny, ever closer to the edge of the pit. The power of that attraction lies in his identification with the dead Vincent whose place he had taken and whose name he bore. It was through that identification, and through the passageway of suffering and death that he would surcease in the arms of a loving and accepting mother whose warm embrace he had sought throughout his odyssey, but in vain. It was to be gained only in and through death. It was only through death that he would find rest from his pain and would gain the heavenly reward of his suffering in eternal love and bliss.

Greenberg and Mitchell (1983) have suggested that the drive/structure model and the relational/structure model are mutually exclusive models of psychic life. We regard their contribution as an invaluable one, which makes explicit the fundamental divergences in psychoanalytic theory. We have examined a derivative tendency in the field, for drive and relational theorists alike, to present psychic life as a dichotomy between inner experience and outer experience. We see a tendency to equate the drive model with unconscious motivation, and to the primacy of internal experience. There seems to be an equivalent tendency to equate the relational model with conscious perception and motivation, and to the primacy of external experience. We are advocating, for drive and relational theorists alike, greater focus on the process of intermediation between internal and external experience in the psychic life of the individual. Within the context of the drive model, precedent for such a focus is found in Freud's conception of the preconscious, an essential third dimension whose function was to mediate between the conscious and the unconscious. Within the context of the relational model, Winnicott's notion of potential space serves as a bridge between interior experience and external reality in the life of the individual. Finally, we have argued that by constructing three-part models of psychic life, these theorists have laid the groundwork for a synthetic theory. Though for Freud the drive state is primary, and for Winnicott the relationship between the infant and its environment (mother) is primary, each theorist posits an intermediating zone that fulfills a similar function in the psychic life of the individual. Whether we choose to call that zone the preconscious or potential space, its function is to translate bidirectionally between the infinitely dimensioned realm of interior, or unconscious, experience and the time-and space-bound realm of external, or conscious, experience. By highlighting the parallel constructs, we are not claiming to have created a synthesis between the theories. Our claim is that the eventual road to synthesis appears to reside in the direction of a movement away from the dichotomy between the primacy of inner or outer experience, and toward the common meeting ground of the primacy of an intermediating function.