Self-Preservation at the Centre of Personality

Superego and Ego Ideal in the Regulation of Safety

Ralf-Peter Behrendt

• Publisher: Vernon Art and Science Inc.
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781622731213
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

The book discusses personality as a unified set of evolved and culturally developed structures that serves a single and definable purpose, to maintain the individual’s safety, in the context of dyadic relationships, group processes and more abstract and fluid social configurations. The infant-mother relationship remains the blueprint for modes of relating to the social surround, at whatever level of complexity, and for approximating the sense of safety originally provided by the mother. The personality is organized around the need to maintain self-esteem, thereby preserving the individual’s sense of safety and warding off deep-seated paranoid anxiety, which signals the potential of annihilation of the self. Paranoid anxiety is the counterpart of intraspecific aggression and the potential of the group as a whole to attack and annihilate the individual. Paranoid anxiety, which was recognized by Melanie Klein as playing a critical role in infant development, is not overcome as development proceeds but remains latent, buried under layers of personality organization that are essentially concerned with sourcing recognition and approval from the social environment, thereby inhibiting others’ aggression and guarding against annihilation of the self. The book adds to self psychology (Kohut) by showing how the principle of self-preservation underpins all aspects of normal and abnormal character dynamics. It integrates self psychology with other branches psychoanalytic theory and revives the link between psychoanalysis and ethology. Ethology (Lorenz, Hass, Eibl-Eibesfeldt) has provided insights into how interrelated intraspecific aggression and appeasement gestures are critically important for the evolution of social behavior in higher animals as well as for cultural evolution in humans, insights that allow, more generally, for a bridging of the gap between psychoanalysis and the biology of social behavior. Furthermore, an evolutionary approach to character dynamics and related social phenomena will have important implications for understanding psychopathological vulnerabilities and self-perpetuating processes in mental illness.

Compliance

Aggression against conspecifics, called intraspecific or offensive aggression, and related expressions of disgust, disdain, and contempt toward others are innate, phylogenetically ritualized behavior patterns that are elicited by certain stimulus constellations (Adler, 1927, p. 217; Fenichel, 1946, p. 139; Lorenz, 1963; Hass, 1968; Storr, 1968; Eibl-Eibesfeldt, 1970). Offensive aggression is often expressed in situations that involve dominance claims or resource disputes, including disputes over territory and ‘rights’ (Blanchard & Blanchard, 1989). Territoriality, rights, and ranking order define to a large part our identity (and ultimately self-esteem). Storr (1968) thought that “there exists within us an aggressive component which serves to define the territorial boundaries of each individual personality” (p. 77), that is, the boundaries of our identity and self. We respond to challenges to our social position or territorial boundaries with offensive aggression; and we employ the same aggression when we feel our self or identity itself is challenged. Others respond in the same way to our infringements of rules and deviations from the norm, because these infringements and deviations ultimately challenge their self and identity. Offensive aggression evolutionarily has the objective of inducing submission in the challenger, the induction of compliance with norms and rules being a cultural derivative. While others’ offensive aggression (in the form of punishment or retaliatory aggression) induces conformity in us, others’ nonconformity releases our own aggressive potential, which however has to be curtailed and expressed in socially appropriate manners to avoid ourselves becoming the target of the group’s aggression or the object of culturally sanctioned forms of punishment.

More deeply than fearing defeat in an agonistic encounter with a conspecific, which we can usually terminate by displaying submission and appeasement toward the opponent, we are afraid of becoming the target of the group’s joint aggression, as it carries with it the threat of our annihilation (as can be seen in the ‘expulsion reaction’ in primate groups [Hass, 1968]). As long as we are compliant and conduct ourselves in normative ways, we keep this fear of the group in check and out of awareness. Conversely, disorders of social conduct in others induce in us feelings of aversion and rejection (Lorenz, 1973, p. 244). Unfortunately, we have a tendency to feel distaste or even hostility for individuals who are handicapped or unattractive, although most of us restrain ourselves and repress this hostility (Berkowitz, 1989, p. 51) (or we develop a tendency, by way of reaction formation, to show kindliness). We have a tendency to laugh at others’ handicap. Laughter, evolutionarily, is a form of joint aggression by the group (Hass, 1968; Eibl-Eibesfeldt, 1970). Some children grow up in constant fear of appearing ridiculous and being laughed at (Adler, 1927). Ridicule “leaves a permanent mark on the psyche of children which resurfaces in the habits and actions of their adult lives” (Adler, 1927, p. 68). We can become quite readily the target of others’ ridicule, disgust, contempt, or distrust unless we inhibit these reactions through our compliance and normality (Laing, 1960). Expressions of ridicule, disgust, or contempt directed toward ourselves are powerful aversive stimuli that reveal our deepest anxiety, that related to the threat of annihilation. Instinctive aggression discharged jointly against outsiders and those who are unable to conform would have served an adaptive purpose in the evolution of primates as well as in early cultural evolution. Nonconformity was selected against, as was the inability to inhibit anger and aggression in accordance with norms that pertain to a particular social situation. Money-Kyrle (1961) spoke of “the elimination since the dawn of civilisation of those whose undisciplined aggression rendered them least adapted to it”, which “may have reinstated innate inhibitions, or developed in us an innate disposition to acquire them” (p. 41).

The social position or status we occupy essentially demarcates our access to narcissistic supplies in complex social configurations. Successful induction of submission in a challenger not only reaffirms our social position and rights (of access to narcissistic supplies) but also means that we receive submissive and appeasing signals from the challenger, signals that are evolutionarily related to approving and praising signals. Either type of signal provides narcissistic nourishment, enhancing our self-esteem and restoring our feeling of safety. Furthermore, the display of submissive and appeasement gestures, too, is a way of attaining safety. Appeasement gestures, signaling submission to a victor in an agonistic confrontation, are ritualized escape behaviors; their purpose is to attain safety (Eibl-Eibesfeldt, 1970). Submission to an authority (or to a dominant other in a social dependency relationship [pp. 219, 245]), visually communicated by submissive gestures (and verbally by praises of the other’s authority), is ritualized escape behavior, too (Rado, 1956). For instance, smiling (having evolved to be as dissimilar as possible from the ‘expressive movement’ signaling aggressive intent) powerfully inhibits the other’s aggressiveness and is frequently used in greeting gestures and to communicate contact readiness (Hass, 1968; Eibl-Eibesfeldt, 1970). Culturally ritualized forms of appeasement gestures (originally used in agonistic confrontations) include bowing and nodding (Hass, 1968; Eibl-Eibesfeldt, 1970). Sandler (1989) pointed out that “[w]e are dependent to an enormous degree upon others for the minute nods of agreement and approval, for signs that friendliness rather than hostility is present, for safety signs” (p. 81). Attainment of safety by displaying submissive gestures toward another and witnessing the other’s peacefulness or pacification can be an enduring personality feature, one that is particularly evident in persons of a submissive and morally masochistic disposition. Similarly, compliance with social norms, laws, and traditions or with the demands of those who are in a position of authority (compliance that is verbally avowed at suitable social and cultural occasions) protects against anxiety, because it prevents us from being dislodged from or deprived of our position or status (and potentially being made an outcast and having to face joint aggression from the group or society). Compliance, again, not only has the effect of inhibiting others’ or the group’s innate aggressiveness but also protects our rights of access to narcissistic supplies and preserves our self-esteem.

1.1 Conditionality of Parental Love

Freud (1930) thought that the child’s motivation for yielding to parental commands and expectations and for foregoing the satisfaction of his drive impulses is to be found in his helplessness and dependence on his parents for survival (preservation of the self). For reasons of self-preservation, the child fears to lose the love of his parents. The child learns that what is ‘bad’ is whatever causes him to be threatened with the loss of parental love (Freud, 1930). The child’s self-esteem is tied up with parental love. As Fenichel (1946) remarked, the “child loses self-esteem when he loses love and attains it when he regains love” from his parents (p. 41). Children “need supplies of affection so badly that they are ready to renounce other satisfactions if rewards of affection are promised or if withdrawal of affection is threatened” (p. 41). “The promise of necessary narcissistic supplies of affection under the condition of obedience and the threat of withdrawal of these supplies” makes children educable (Fenichel, 1946, p. 41). The child has to learn to fulfill parental demands and meet their expectations in order to access narcissistic supplies and maintain his self-esteem. The child’s self-esteem is “connected with his capacity to avoid doing what the parents do not want him to do” as well as “with his capacity to do what his parents want him to do” (Arieti, 1970, p. 21). Fulfillment of parental demands and expectations raises self-esteem precisely insofar as it creates conditions conducive to receiving narcissistic supplies from the parents. Mastery of developmental milestones is another source of parental approval. As the child develops, “the most ordinary, most commonplace steps in development become the subject of expressions of approval and/or disapproval” (Arlow, 1989, p. 151). Every act the child performs “becomes for the child fraught with a sense of judgment, approval, or disapproval” (p. 151). What the mother approves becomes ‘good’, and what she disapproves becomes ‘bad’. Pleasurable (narcissistically gratifying) experiences of having done the ‘right thing’ and the unpleasure associated with having been ‘bad’ “become the dynamic background against which later, more highly developed concepts of good and evil are examined and processed” (Arlow, 1989, p. 152).

Self-control of desires and impulses, as it is acquired by the infant, is intended to avoid separation from the mother and keep at bay separation anxiety, the anxiety that developmentally arises when the infant becomes aware of the mother’s separate existence (Lebovici, 1989, p. 429). The sacrifice of desire and impulses is “the means of assuring oneself of the persistence of parental love” (p. 424), of narcissistic supplies (Lebovici, 1989). Internalization of parental expectations, demands, and prohibitions means that activation of a mental representation of the parent (of ‘the adult authority-love object’) becomes sufficient to suppress or encourage the child’s actions (Arlow, 1989, p. 153). What the child thinks of is the mother’s potential affective response to his behavior. Thinking of “the possibility of pain from the threatened loss of the mother’s love and the fear of punishment by her” suppresses the wish and inhibits its enactment (Arlow, 1989, p. 153). As the superego forms, the child becomes less dependent on narcissistic supplies from the outside (p. 41); the superego becomes the provider of narcissistic supplies and the regulator of self-esteem (Fenichel, 1946, pp. 105-106). “What was formerly a wish to maintain or reestablish harmonious relations with the important objects now appears as a pursuit of inner harmony” (Arlow, 1989, p. 155), the harmony between ego and superego (representing “a freedom of tension experienced as guilt, fear of punishment, and loss of love” [Arlow, 1989, p. 155]). It is the fundamental dependence of the child on the mother for narcissistic supplies that renders the individual, for the rest of his life, fearful of losing the approbation of his social surround or superego and that makes him work toward establishing and maintaining that approbation, whereby the approval or recognition he obtains from others or from the superego is essentially equivalent to the love of the mother (who has been internalized as the benevolent superego, the unconscious ‘omnipotent object’ [Bursten, 1973], which is reprojected, throughout life, onto external figures or organizations [Flugel]).

For the c...

Table of contents

• Introduction
• Chapter 1 Compliance
• Chapter 2 Exhibitionism and Ambition
• Chapter 3 Assertiveness and Aggressive Control
• Chapter 4 Display of Helplessness and Appeal to Pity
• Chapter 5 Detachment
• Chapter 6 Idealization and Identification
• Conclusions
• References
• Index