On Freud's Splitting of the Ego in the Process of Defence

Thierry Bokanowski, Sergio Lewkowicz, Thierry Bokanowski, Sergio Lewkowicz

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN:
  9780367106669
• eBook ISBN:
  9780429916892
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

This book includes the development of the concept of "splitting" from both metapsychological and clinical perspectives, emphasizing the great importance of this topic for contemporary psychoanalysis. Starting with the history of the concept, the book covers recent French, English and Latin American theorizations on the theme. In regard to clinical approaches it presents the relationship between the "splitting" and complex clinical cases such as borderline, perverse and psychosomatic conditions. The book also includes aspects of "splitting" and virtual reality, as well as in traumatic situations: factors so important in contemporary life. The premise behind this work was to invite authors from different regions and orientations to promote a fruitful debate on the theme, thus enriching one of Sigmund Freud's most seminal concepts.

Part I
“Splitting of the Ego in the Process of Defence” (1940e[1938])

Sigmund Freud

“Splitting of the Ego in the Process of Defence”

I FIND myself for a moment in the interesting position of not knowing whether what I have to say should be regarded as something long familiar and obvious or as something entirely new and puzzling. But I am inclined to think the latter.

I have at last been struck by the fact that the ego of a person whom we know as a patient in analysis must, dozens of years earlier, when it was young, have behaved in a remarkable manner in certain particular situations of pressure. We can assign in general and somewhat vague terms the conditions under which this comes about, by saying that it occurs under the influence of a psychical trauma. I prefer to select a single sharply defined special case, though it certainly does not cover all the possible modes of causation.

Let us suppose, then, that a child’s ego is under the sway of a powerful instinctual demand which it is accustomed to satisfy and that it is suddenly frightened by an experience which teaches it that the continuance of this satisfaction will result in an almost intolerable real danger. It must now decide either to recognize the real danger, give way to it and renounce the instinctual satisfaction, or to disavow reality and make itself believe that there is no reason for fear, so that it may be able to retain the satisfaction. Thus there is a conflict between the demand by the instinct and the prohibition by reality. But in fact the child takes neither course, or rather he takes both simultaneously, which comes to the same thing. He replies to the conflict with two contrary reactions, both of which are valid and effective. On the one hand, with the help of certain mechanisms he rejects reality and refuses to accept any prohibition; on the other hand, in the same breath he recognizes the danger of reality, takes over the fear of that danger as a pathological symptom and tries subsequently to divest himself of the fear. It must be confessed that this is a very ingenious solution of the difficulty. Both of the parties to the dispute obtain their share: the instinct is allowed to retain its satisfaction and proper respect is shown to reality. But everything has to be paid for in one way or another, and this success is achieved at the price of a rift in the ego which never heals but which increases as time goes on. The two contrary reactions to the conflict persist as the centre-point of a splitting of the ego. The whole process seems so strange to us because we take for granted the synthetic nature of the processes of the ego.¹ But we are clearly at fault in this. The synthetic function of the ego, though it is of such extraordinary importance, is subject to particular conditions and is liable to a whole number of disturbances.

It will assist if I introduce an individual case history into this schematic disquisition. A little boy, while he was between three and four years of age, had become acquainted with the female genitals through being seduced by an older girl. After these relations had been broken off, he carried on the sexual stimulation set going in this way by zealously practising manual masturbation; but he was soon caught at it by his energetic nurse and was threatened with castration, the carrying out of which was, as usual, ascribed to his father. There were thus present in this case conditions calculated to produce a tremendous effect of fright. A threat of castration by itself need not produce a great impression. A child will refuse to believe in it, for he cannot easily imagine the possibility of losing such a highly prized part of his body. His [earlier] sight of the female genitals might have convinced our child of that possibility. But he drew no such conclusion from it, since his disinclination to doing so was too great and there was no motive present which could compel him to. On the contrary, whatever uneasiness he may have felt was calmed by the reflection that what was missing would yet make its appearance: she would grow one (a penis) later. Anyone who has observed enough small boys will be able to recollect having come across some such remark at the sight of a baby sister’s genitals. But it is different if both factors are present together. In that case the threat revives the memory of the perception which had hitherto been regarded as harmless and finds in that memory a dreaded confirmation. The little boy now thinks he understands why the girl’s genitals showed no sign of a penis and no longer ventures to doubt that his own genitals may meet with the same fate. Thenceforward he cannot help believing in the reality of the danger of castration.

The usual result of the fright of castration, the result that passes as the normal one, is that, either immediately or after some considerable struggle, the boy gives way to the threat and obeys the prohibition either wholly or at least in part (that is, by no longer touching his genitals with his hand). In other words, he gives up, in whole or in part, the satisfaction of the instinct. We are prepared to hear, however, that our present patient found another way out. He created a substitute for the penis which he missed in females—that is to say, a fetish. In so doing, it is true that he had disavowed reality, but he had saved his own penis. So long as he was not obliged to acknowledge that females have lost their penis, there was no need for him to believe the threat that had been made against him: he need have no fears for his own penis, so he could proceed with his masturbation undisturbed. This behaviour on the part of our patient strikes us forcibly as being a turning away from reality— a procedure which we should prefer to reserve for psychoses. And it is in fact not very different. Yet we will suspend our judgement, for upon closer inspection we shall discover a not unimportant distinction. The boy did not simply contradict his perceptions and hallucinate a penis where there was none to be seen; he effected no more than a displacement of value—he transferred the importance of the penis to another part of the body, a procedure in which he was assisted by the mechanism of regression (in a manner which need not here be explained). This displacement, it is true, related only to the female body; as regards his own penis nothing was changed.

This way of dealing with reality, which almost deserves to be described as artful, was decisive as regards the boy’s practical behaviour. He continued with his masturbation as though it implied no danger to his penis; but at the same time, in complete contradiction to his apparent boldness or indifference, he developed a symptom which showed that he nevertheless did recognize the danger. He had been threatened with being castrated by his father, and immediately afterwards, simultaneously with the creation of his fetish, he developed an intense fear of his father punishing him, which it required the whole force of his masculinity to master and overcompensate. This fear of his father, too, was silent on the subject of castration: by the help of regression to an oral phase, it assumed the form of a fear of being eaten by his father. At this point it is impossible to forget a primitive fragment of Greek mythology which tells how Kronos, the old Father God, swallowed his children and sought to swallow his youngest son Zeus like the rest, and how Zeus was saved by the craft of his mother and later on castrated his father. But we must return to our case history and add that the boy produced yet another symptom, though it was a slight one, which he has retained to this day. This was an anxious susceptibility against either of his little toes being touched, as though, in all the to and fro between disavowal and acknowledgement, it was nevertheless castration that found the clearer expression….

* * * * *

Note

1. [See, for instance, a passage in Lecture XXXI of the New Introductory Lectures (1933a), Standard Ed., 22, 76, and an Editor’s footnote there, which gives a number of other references.]

Part II
Discussion of “Splitting of the Ego in the Process of Defence”

1
On splitting of the ego: a history of the concept

Ira Brenner

Human thought leads us to wonder about the origin and nature of things. While such curiosity is not the exclusive domain of our species, our primate cousins appear to be more concerned with the more basic issues of finding food and a suitable mate and of surviving. We, too, concern ourselves with such instinctual demands, and with more sublime themes. Our wonderment about such matters as human nature, our existence, and the origin of the universe have occupied us for millennia and promise to vex us for many more. Such ineffable questions spawn not only scientific inquiry but also challenge our imagination, activate primary-process thinking, and provide a canvas onto which projective phenomena may be painted. As these mental processes converge, resulting in richly textured ideas, theories, and belief systems, it cannot help be noted that certain patterns keep appearing in our attempts to understand and organize our world. One of these patterns is that a thing can change by becoming divided, separated, or split into two or more parts. For example, the division of cells—mitosis—is a basic pattern of life. It is a spatial model, which seems to be more readily understood than a model based on the more abstract but more comprehensive space-time continuum, which is less readily apparent to our minds (Brenner, 2002).

This principle of division may be invoked in many situations ranging from the mundane to the most supreme. For example, sacred texts and ancient traditions addressing the “big questions” inevitably espouse a creation myth utilizing a variation of this notion. In the Western world, for example, where the Judeo-Christian influence has prevailed, the all-familiar first chapter of the Hebrew Bible, Genesis, describes how God said “Let there be light!” and thereby created day and night by splitting the primordial darkness. As creation continues, God then splits the water above and below the heavens as well as on the earth by creating land masses that divide up the seas. Comparative studies of creation, such as those done by Neumann (1954), a disciple of Jung (whose own “split” with Freud, incidentally, is one of the more well-known stories in the creation of the psychoanalytic movement), reveal the universality of this formulation: “In all peoples and in all religions, creation appears as the creation of light. Thus, the coming of consciousness manifesting itself as light in contrast to the darkness of the unconscious is the real ‘object’ of creation mythology” (Neumann, 1954, p. 6). He therefore sees “creation” as a metaphor for the topographic theory of the mind.

Despite Freud’s being a “godlessjew” (Gay, 1987; Rizzuto, 1998), the impact of his own religious heritage has been the topic of considerable interest (Halpern, 1999; Ostow, 1989; Yerushalmi, 1991). It has even been speculated that the tradition of keeping things separate, such as those in the jewish dietary laws, may have subtly influenced Freud’s thinking about mental organization (Brenner, 2003-2004). He found the notion of a split in the psyche so compelling that in addition to splitting of consciousness and splitting of the mind (Freud, 1895d), he applied it in his formulations about neurosis (1940a [1938]), perversion (1923b), and psychosis (1940b [1938]). Although janet predated Freud with his theory of disaggregation, or dissociation, being caused by a fracture of the psyche (Janet, 1889), his model posited a passive disintegration based on trauma and constitutional factors as opposed to Freud’s dynamic model based on conflict, anxiety, and unconscious motivation. As Pruyser (1975) notes, “The lure of the split in the psyche …” has tempted many and has stood the test of time.

The evolution of Freud’s ideas

In Freud’s early writings, he and Breuer describe “splitting of consciousness” (Freud, 1895d, pp. 12, 67, 69, 123), in which there was a separation of mental contents from the dominant mass of ideas. It was a precursor to the “cornerstone” concept of repression. They also referred to “splitting of personality” (p. 45), where opposite behavioural states occurred. In addition, they wrote about “splitting of the mind” (pp. 225, 234), characterized by the simultaneous existence of conscious and unconscious ideation. This observation was particularly vexing because the patient could alternate between different states of mind, carrying on conversations, behaving in a volitional way, and having relationships one moment and then switching to another state and having amnesia for all of the above. Breuer described this phenomenon very well in the case of Anna O., whose “clouds”, surly agitated moods, and hysterical symptoms would fluctuate as she amnestically shifted from her very disturbed self to her usual self. Utterly devastated by the physical deterioration and death of her beloved father, this very ill, grief-stricken young woman required both high doses of chloral hydrate and the “talking cure”—a term she herself coined. When it was determined that “the motive for splitting of consciousness … was that of defence” (p. 166), psychoanalysis was truly born. (However, it would take almost another century for serious discussion to occur about combining psychoanalysis with pharmacotherapy, which Anna O. also pioneered.)

In contrast to janet’s contention of constitutional weakness and an inability to maintain a synthesis of the mind, Freud recognized that dividedness of the mind could be understood “dynamically”, from the conflict of opposing mental forces (Freud, 1910a [1909], pp. 25-26). However, his turning away from the study of altered states of consciousness, dissociation, and hysteria to repression, the structural model, and splitting of the ego was a decisive turn of events in the history of psychoanalysis, leaving much still to be learned from his earlier work.

A re-reading of his collaboration with Breuer suggests that he never fully embraced the former’s notion of the hypnoid state, even back then. His own individual contributions to their volume—his case reports and his section on the psychotherapy of hysteria—seemed from the start to reflect their theoretical differences. Breuer emphasized “hypnoid” hysteria and “retention” hysteria, whereas Freud preferred “defence” hysteria, which he believed was at the root of the other two subtypes. Moreover, Freud did not feel as proficient in hypnosis as Breuer did and perhaps was a bit eager to replace hypnotism with his own method. In so doing, he seemed to overlook his own observation that spontaneous, autohypnotic states may occur (Freud, 1891d) that may, in fact, be quite refractory to free association unless the analyst is aware it is happening and can work with the patient while in the trance (Brenner, 1994). As a result, much of Breuer’s work was never fully integrated into the mainstream or “dominant mass of ideas” of psychoanalytic thinking. However, the idea of a split in the psyche persisted and was reworked throughout Freud’s lifetime. Splitting of the ego came to be seen as an alternative defence to repression and a form of psychological damage control to possibly stave off total disintegration, “by deforming itself … and even by affecting the cleavage or division of itself. In this way, the inconsistency, eccentricities and follies of men would appear in a similar light to their sexual perversion, through acceptance of which they spare themselves repressions” (Freud, 1924b [1923], pp. 152-153).

In the “last account of the ideas of which he was the creator” (Freud, 1940e [1938], p. 143), Freud’s final written thoughts on splitting of the ego are summarized in Chapter VIII, “The psychical apparatus and the external world”, of An Outline of Psychoanalysis:

Two psychical attitudes have been formed instead of a single one—one, the normal one, which takes account of reality, and another which under the influence of the instincts detaches from reality. The two exist alongside of each other. The issue depends on their relative...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• CONTENTS
• CONTEMPORARY FREUD
• ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
• EDITORS AND CONTRIBUTORS
• FOREWORD
• PART I “Splitting of the Ego in the Process of Defence” (1940e [1938])
• PART II Discussion of “Splitting of the Ego in the Process of Defence”
• REFERENCES AND BIBLIOGRAPHY
• INDEX