Americanization of Nnarcissism
Americanization of Nnarcissism
Americanization of Nnarcissism
o f N A RC I S S I S M
The
A M E R I C A N I Z AT I O N
o f N A RC I S S I S M
Elizabeth Lunbeck
London, England
2014
CONTENTS
Introduction
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T h e A M E R I C A N I Z AT I O N
o f N A RC I S S I S M
INTRODUCTION
It is a commonplace of social criticism that America has become, over the past half century or so, a nation of narcissists. Greedy, selfish, and self-absorbed, we narcissists are thriving,
the critics tell us, in the culture of abundance that is modern, latecapitalist America. The disciplined, patriarchal Victorianism under
which our stalwart forebears were raised has purportedly given way
to a culture that asks nothing of us while at the same time promising
to satisfy our every desire. Plentitude reigns where privation was
once the norm, and self-indulgence has displaced self-control. Reckless Wall Street bankers, philandering politicians, charismatic CEOs,
talentless celebrity wannabes, shopaholic women and abs-obsessed
men, the vacuous young and the Botox-dependent old: in this regularly invoked gallery of narcissists in our midstspanning the spectrum from ruthless to patheticwe can see the seeds of too much
self-esteem and too little self-discipline come to warped fruition.
Narcissism has proven the pundits favorite diagnosis, a morally
freighted term with appealing classical resonances, a highfalutin
name for the old-fashioned complaint that modernity means a loosening of restraint and that modern satisfaction is to be found in, as
Philip Rieff put it nearly fifty years ago, nothing so much as a plentitude of option. Narcissism has figured importantly in psychoanalytic thinking from the appearance of Freuds landmark essay, On
Narcissism: An Introduction, in 1914, but it did not enter the popular lexicon until the 1970s. Then, as a shorthand for Me Decade
Introduction
Introduction
tion, and claims for gay liberationto collectively warn of the unraveling of Western society and the undermining of its most cherished ideals. The countercultural young came under especially sharp
scrutiny, cast by their elders as hedonists questing for self-realization
and reveling in an Elysium of instantly gratified desires. What might
be seen as their more ascetic impulsestheir rejection of the house
in the suburbs, the cars in the garage, and (for men) the secure niche
in the corporate hierarchywere altogether missing from this portrait of the American character gone amok. Also missing was that
the capitalist system, aligned in the minds of the critics with the
values of hard work, individual initiative, and entrepreneurial bravado, depended for its vitality on the ever-expanding consumer demand that these same critics deplored.
The critics turn to narcissism was not simply a reaction to changes
they perceived in American society, nor did it merely reflect the
ever-increasing prevalence, noted by clinicians, of character disordered individuals. Critics might never have latched on to the term
and its meanings if not for the appearance of pathbreaking works
on narcissism, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, by the Viennese
migr analysts Heinz Kohut and Otto Kernberg, which generated
both excitement and fierce controversy among psychoanalysts. Celebrating what others condemned, Kohut boldly reframed narcissism
as a desirable, even healthy, dimension of mature selfhood. He consistently underscored narcissisms positive aspects, arguing that it
fueled individuals ambitions, creativity, and fellow-feeling. He rejected the pejorative attitude toward narcissism he saw both in his
disciplinary colleagues and in the culture more generally, going so
far as to suggest that the emptiness and fragmentation critics saw as
characteristic of modernity resulted not from too much narcissism
but from too little. Kernbergs stance could not have been more different. He focused on narcissisms darker side, in precise and vivid prose
describing narcissists destructiveness, rage, and aggression as well as
the masterful ways in which they exploited and enslaved their hapless
victims. Kernbergs narcissists were charming and seductive, expert
at eliciting admiration and tribute from those they would invariably
Introduction
devalue and discard. The most creative and intelligent of them enjoyed a level of worldly success that fueled the critics complaint
that the culture not only tolerated but rewarded narcissistic traits,
enabling those skilled at manipulating interpersonal relations and
deft in sustaining the illusion of their own limitless possibilities to
prevail within the drab conformism that was the bureaucratic world
of business, politics, and government.
Narcissism was thus both normalized and pathologized at the moment of its Americanization. Analysts had wrestled long and hard with
the concepts doubleness. Glancing back to Freud in the 1970s and
beyond, they could argue that from the start he had conceived of
narcissism as both normal (present in everyone and necessary to sustain life) and pathological (a state of self-love to be overcome in the
course of development). In the half-century-long unfolding of narcissisms post-Freudian history, however, it was narcissisms pathologies
that for the most part drew analysts attention, even as some of them
made stabs at conceptualizing it more neutrally as a repository of
self-feeling and others proposed that an inflated sense of self was
inescapably part of the human condition. Kohut and Kernberg together broadened narcissisms remitin their wake it could refer to
both destructiveness and self-preservation, and could be seen as expressive of both selfish entitlement and patently selfless altruism
and brought some clarity to a concept that analysts complained was
ambiguous, baffling, and elusive. Delineating healthy narcissism,
Kohut brought clearly into view a thread of analytic thinking that
cast narcissism as a form of self-esteem. And, although analysts had
long used narcissism and narcissistic in reference to feelings, traits,
and behaviors someone might experience or display, the narcissist as
a specific character type eluded their conceptual grasp. Pressing the
newly coined diagnostic term narcissistic personality disorder into
service, Kohut and Kernberg were able to provide a description of the
narcissist as a type of person that was at once bracingly new and instantly recognizable. This move marked narcissisms psychoanalytic
coming of age and, beyond the discipline, endowed it with a concreteness and specificity appealing to critics. The narcissist was now an
identifiable character open to attack.
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Introduction
Introduction
and it has offered a way to bring needs and wants not rooted in biology into the analytic conversation. Within psychoanalysis, in the
1970s, narcissism was the occasion for full-scale revisionism if not
revolution in its name. Beyond psychoanalysis, from the 1970s on it
has offered a conceptual space in which irresolvable tensions in the
human condition have been identified and negotiated: between love
of self and love of others, between independence and dependence,
between renunciation and gratification, and between asceticism and
abundance. Narcissism has always been simultaneously pathological and normal, and debates over selfishness, hedonism, and vanity
have not arisen out of the idea of narcissism but, rather, are among
the oldest questions we have asked ourselves. Indeed, however various its meanings and applications, narcissism allows us to enter into
a discussion of who we are and what we value both collectively and
as individuals.
Pa r t i
One
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the solipsistic retreat into the self promoted by a new breed of popular therapeutic mastersWerner Erhard of EST, L. Ron Hubbard of
Scientology, Reverend Sun Myung Moon of the Unification Church,
among otherspromising a transformation of humanity and portending the rise of a new narcissism.2
Others joined Wolfe and Marin. Articles in Time magazine chronicled the collective narcissism of the pot-smoking, self-absorbed
young, of newly minted Californians in search of themselves, and of
a generation of aging womenin the golden twilight of their 30s
inexplicably still attractive to men, smarter, funnier, sexier, and
more self-sufficient than before. A popularizing sociologist saw invitations to self-absorption springing up all over, in courses such
as Understanding the Struggle to be ME, in workshops on achieving self-realization, and in industries peddling various awareness
schemes. Philip Slater, in his best-selling The Pursuit of Loneliness, a
paean to the pleasures of gratification, celebrated the turn to the self
and the satisfaction of its needs that others condemned, his argument
documenting the cultural schism afoot. Lasch gathered all of this
under the rubric of narcissism, arguing that the concept holds the
key to the consciousness movement and, more expansively, to the
moral climate of contemporary society. Along with his Culture of
Narcissism, a host of books with titles such as Generation of Narcissus, The Narcissistic Condition: A Fact of Our Lives and Times, ME:
The Narcissistic American, and The Self Seekers collectively made
the case that narcissism was becoming endemic in the population
while at the same time their popularity testified to the allure of the
obsessive self-scrutiny they patently condemned.3
In popular usage, narcissism often referred simply to selfishness.
Wolfe and Marin used it in this way, describing a late 1960s and
early 1970s therapeutic landscape awash in charlatans and poseurs
appealing to peoples appetite for self-transformation. But the narcissism of popular parlance also referred to dimensions beyond the
straightforwardly selfish and self-absorbed, over the course of the
two decades becoming ever more closely intertwined with a critique
of American consumerism. Prior to the 1970s, there had been scattered references to narcissism as signaling an indulgent, sensuous,
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promiscuously from papers not only on narcissism but also on borderline personality and schizophrenia in support of his cultural analyses and that it glossed over important debates among the authorities
on whom he relied did nothing to diminish its rhetorical persuasiveness. To the contrary: he was giving his audience what it wanted.
Today, when psychoanalysis can be casually dismissed as an outdated or even fraudulent practice, it is perhaps hard to appreciate
how central it was to mid-twentieth-century intellectual and cultural
life. Analysis was the lingua franca of the educated middle class. Ego
and id, instinct and drive, libido and repression, neurosis and the Oedipus complex appeared regularly in magazine and newspaper discussions of personal pathology and social relations. To be educated in the
1950s and 1960s was to bandy about Freudian terms and ideas, and
to be understood in doing so. In 1955, Newsweek featured a Los
Angelean saying that everyone talks about his analysis or analyst
and that conversation is pervaded by psychoanalytic jargon. Lionel Trilling noted the same year that there is scarcely a play on
Broadway that does not make use of some version of some Freudian
idea, which the audience can be counted on to comprehend.7
The appeal of The Culture of Narcissism thus was based in part
on readers aspirations to fluency in this most beguiling of idioms.
The book was an immediate sensation, and talk of narcissism was
suddenly everywhere. It cast a spell over the chattering classes and
would soon stand alongside classics, like David Riesmans Lonely
Crowd, that were widely thought to have captured the spirit of the
age. Readers today continue to be convinced of Laschs brilliance
and prescience, pointing to the current signs of cultural disaster he
prophesied more than thirty years ago and lauding him for his profound, penetrating, and definitive indictment of American society.8
Few books have enjoyed this sort of staying power, yet even when
it appeared it seemed to certain readers outdated. The commentator
who noted of Lasch, immediately following the books publication,
that he has preached back to us precisely what we already believed
and the one who maintained twenty years later that Lasch says
nothing that others havent said a million times were ungenerous
but surely on to something. This is hardly original stuff, sniffed
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of this new order made for a motley crowd, ranging from beatniks and
hippies to student radicals to black militants and New Age self-seekers.
Like Riesmans and Whytes exemplary figures, their immediate
forebears, they championed release instead of the Protestant ethics
restraint and immediate gratification instead of self-denial. Their enthusiastic embrace of hedonism and gratification was variously cast
in accounts of the new culture as an addictive force, an inherent human passion, and a natural inclination offering impossible-to-resist
instant gratification of every type and variety of passion.14
Gratification marked the divide between the old and new, with the
old enjoining its postponement and the new its immediate fulfillment. Philip Slater saw the old order clamping down on gratification
in every sensesexual, emotional, material. He argued that in an age
of abundance gratification was only artificially beyond reach, thwarted
by an outdated ideology of scarcity. Laschs argument was the mirror
image to Slaters, a diatribe against the fraudulent promises of immediate gratification and an extended lament for lost virtues of selfrestraint. Lasch argued that the whole cultural revolution was a
failure. He reduced it to hedonism and caustically remarked that the
revolution was a terrific thing for American capitalism, which needed
hedonistsconsumers of culture, sex, and enjoymentto sustain its
new markets. And he moved easily from this mass culture of hedonism to the development of pathological narcissism.15 Where Slater
attacked a lost individualism as but a fantasy covering a basic human
interdependence, Lasch mourned its passing as cultural ideal. Their
differences notwithstanding, on the sharp distinction between old and
new they agreed.
Arguing that the nations decline was linked to narcissisms rise,
Lasch cast narcissisms threat to the body politic as external, a series
of affronts to enduring American values of asceticism, restraint, and
serene self-possession. Riesman, Whyte, and later Bell, in contrast,
suggested that it was as much the erosion of the old order from
within as it was assaults from without that could explain the displacement of repression by gratification. In 1960, Riesman was already seeing hedonism on the rise among precisely those who in an
earlier age, enacting the prudential asceticism of the Protestant ethic,
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between the sexes. Surveying the erosion of renunciation as both cultural ideal and practice, Henry, like Bell, lamented what Dichter promoted, the almost total seduction of the consumer by the adman
pedaling a hedonistic morality of pleasure, play, and easy credit.
Critics delighted in describing what were to their minds egregiously
sexualized advertisements culled from newspapers and mass-market
magazines to underscore just how far from Puritanism the country
had strayed.17
To Riesman, Whyte, and Bell, capitalism itself, not a new, postwar
hedonism, was the root cause of the displacement of renunciation by
gratification. As framed by Bell, capitalisms distinctive, originary
dynamic was its boundlessness, its restless Faustian drive that
aspired to nothing less than the complete transformation of nature.
Bells capitalism had at one point had a moral component as well.
It had historically counseled self-control and delayed gratification
while at the same time enabling the individuals self-realization in
releasing him from the ties of family and birth so that he could
make of himself what he willed. The restraining balance between
capitalisms two impulses had in times past limited individuals
consumption while enabling the accumulation of capital. But the
balance was fated to be undermined, Bell noted, because any tension creates its own dialectic. In the twentieth century, the radical
individualism at the heart of capitalist economic relations and the
destruction of all inherited social forms in the name of a profitseeking freedom for capital and its masters transformed the realm
of culture. The ascetic dimension of the bourgeois social compact
faded in the face of a culturally celebrated, rampant individualism
that enshrined self-realization and self-fulfillment as its guiding
precepts.18
Bell was disdainful of the instant gratification championed everywhere in the 1970s. He was as caustic as Lasch on the counterculture,
in his view an ephemeral if noisy movement that produced little culture and countered nothing. Yet he was consistent enough in his
argument to allow that bourgeois culture vanished long ago, blaming
its demise not on the counterculture or on psychoanalysis but on the
free market that, in the eighteenth century, had first allowed its
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in the body and the latter in psychology. When man has satisfied
his physical needs, then psychologically grounded desires take over,
he wrote, adding that these can never be satisfied.23
Bell invoked Aristotle in support of his characterization of the
ancient Greek householdthe word economics, he explained, derived
from oikos, the householdas a self-regulating and self-sufficient entity geared to meeting the biologically derived, limited and satiable
needs of its inhabitants. Production was directed not at the market
but at these inhabitants. Simple sharing ruled in this exemplary
household, a veritable socialist paradise in which each is given in accordance with his needs. Bourgeois society, by contrast, entertained
wants, which Bell explained, similarly to Galbraith, were psychological, not biological, by their nature unlimited and insatiable. Critics
looked with nostalgia to the sumptuary laws, dating to medieval
Europe, that had regulated the consuming habits of the poor and the
rising bourgeoisie, restricting vain and idle expenditures on food,
clothing, and luxury items to favored classes of aristocrats. The commercial revolution of the eighteenth century had rendered these laws
obsolete, unleashingas Bell saw itthe menace of insatiability that
was part and parcel of the utilitarian, hedonistic calculus characteristic of bourgeois societies.24
Both Galbraith and Bell cast needs as absolute, knowable, and
integral to the self while characterizing wants as exogamous, not
natural but in the nature of a contrivance imposed on individuals
from without. Wants were open to manipulation, to the psychological
persuasion of advertisers eager to expand the market for the goods
they hawked. Galbraith saw the postwar individual, awash in goods
in the unprecedentedly affluent postwar United States, as putty in the
admans hands, a stranger to his own desires. Lasch concurred, seeing
the expansion of consumer desire abetted by a vast effort of reeducation, dating to the 1920s, that instilled in once-satisfied individuals a
taste for the frivolous. Both envisioned a subject unconflicted by unmet need and free of superfluous wants, grinding poverty having
become less an issue in the midst of postwar plenty. Wantsfalse,
beguiling, sensuous, insatiableassumed a feminine cast in this literature, aligned with elegance, eroticism, extravagance, and ostentatious
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aristocratic display against the sobriety of Galbraiths useful citizen and average guy.25
We can see in these midcentury critiques of consumer culture a
profound distrust of desire and fantasy, as well as of the capacity of the
average guy to resist the blandishments of both. But, we may ask,
were needs ever so readily separated from wants, limits so faithfully
honored, and reason so reliably hegemonic in the realm of economic
behavior as the critics imagined? Galbraiths complaint was precisely that conventional economic wisdom, fixed as it was on production and output, failed to partition consumer demand between
needs and wants, treating the sum of such demandwhether sated
on necessary or frivolous goodsagnostically. Indeed, he argued
that among economists this refusal to assess the legitimacy of one
desire as opposed to another was considered a mark of scientific
virtue. But with the increasing ubiquity of frivolous consumption,
which he defined as that consumption propelled by individuals quest
for psychic satisfactions, he argued, it was all the more imperative
that economic theory be able to distinguish between what was necessary and what was not. Galbraith pointed to John Maynard
Keynes, who in an essay from 1930 had bucked disciplinary norms
in dividing needs between the absolute and the relative, the former
capable of being met within a century and the latter possibly insatiable, in that their satisfaction lifts us above, makes us feel superior
to, our fellows. Keyness position was echoed by the London-based
analyst Ian Suttie, who, writing in 1935, characterized all needs as
relative and potentially insatiable. Suttie faulted Freud for failing to
recognize social need, over and above the sum of material, sensorial cravings and satisfaction, in considerations of possessiveness,
the wanting and having of property. It was not enough to have what
one needs, Suttie explained, only to have more than one needs
whereas others have less than they need.26 That is, needs were not
readily quantified and absolute but nonrational and plastic, shaped
byhere the analyst weighs inthe inevitable anxieties and scarcities of childhood and negotiated in the social competition of
adulthood.
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Fenichel argued, had little to say about money, work, and the basics
of existence: eating, housing, clothing.30
Fenichels call for a normalized analytic perspective on people and
their possessions went largely unheeded within the discipline. He saw
needs he called narcissistic as expected and unexceptionable in
everyone, but the few analysts who wrote about individuals needs
for things tended to conceptualize those needs in terms of psychic
weakness and pathology. They reflexively saw acts of consumption as
expressive of inner emotional states, most often as displaced expressions of hard-to-tolerate feelings that in their estimation brought only
temporary relief. Analysts told of adults whose bids for feeling alive
took the form of cravings for things that they mistakenly believed
would bring them security and fulfillment, arguing that such persons were misrecognizing their desires and dooming themselves to
loneliness and hopelessness. Exemplary of this line of argument is
one analysts contrasting of medieval societies, in which the production of goods met real needs, with our own, in which attachments to
possessions have become more important than recognizing and fulfilling inner emotional and authentic needs and deeper longings.31
The analytic literature documents a range of sometimes astonishingly freighted spending behaviorsstingy, punitive, guilty, compulsive, destructive, childishand offers a gallery of types in whom
the relationship to money is disturbed. Yet it was the upbeat advice
to spend sensibly, flexibly, and even sometimes frivolously, to enjoy
money while not exaggerating its significance, offered by the aptly
named American analyst Smiley Blanton, that elicited visions of psychoanalysis at its nadir, an unwitting captive of the consumer society and its ideology. To convert money into usefulness or pleasure,
it is almost always necessary to spend it, Blanton matter-of-factly
wrote, with his observation that Americans were good at making
money, and theres nothing wrong with that drawing a fellow analysts opprobrium.32
The analytic tradition almost by default cast individuals desires
for things as but paltry compensation for unmet, less objectionable,
and more authentic emotional needs. This left analysts little conceptual space in which to consider ordinary, run-of-the-mill, and
30
Me and Mine
Like Bell in the 1970s, Fenichel in the 1930s arrived at a sophisticated understanding of capitalism, writing that the capitalist, under
penalty of his own destruction, had to accumulate.33 Among other
analytic commentators there was some gesturing toward the notion that greed could be, if not good, conceived of as necessary
when directed at the productive growth that sustained the economy,
but Fenichel was the prime mover behind this idea in the discipline.
Fenichel proposed an alternative to the straitened, censorious view
of the relationship between persons and things espoused by many
analysts of his time and that would be taken up by social critics in
the coming decades. Possessions are an expanded portion of the
ego, he wrote, explaining that the psychic feeling of self could encompass not only the body but also clothing and other like property, all of which could enhance ones ego-feeling and contribute to
the narcissistic pleasure of an enlarged self-compass. Fenichel was
herelikely unwittinglyechoing William James, as well as prefiguring the postwar American adman. It is clear that between what
aman calls me and what he simply calls mine the line is difficult to
draw, wrote James in his monumental work, The Principles of Psychology, published in 1890. The boundaries of the self fluctuated,
James suggested, with the same object being sometimes treated as a
part of me, at other times as simply mine, and then again as if I had
nothing to do with it at all. A mans self was the sum not only of his
body and psychic powers but also of his clothes and his house, his
wife and children, his ancestors and friends, his reputation and works,
his land and horses, his yacht and bank-account. All these things give
him the same emotions. Blind, instinctive impulse fueled the drive to
possess, as James saw it, with a sense of nothingness, a shrinkage of
our personality, following from the loss of things that had become
part of ourselves. James had little truck with the stoicism that would
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be championed by Rieff as a solution to the problem of distinguishing between legitimate and illegitimate needs, seeing it as a recipe
for a preemptively diminished, narrow and unsympathetic, even
hateful self. To James, the expansive individuals who could be characterized by their positive outlook, magnanimity toward others, and
enthusiastic embrace of lifes offerings were far more attractive and
proved far more resourceful in the face of lifes many demands than
the crabbed and disdainful stoic.34
Neither critics nor psychoanalysts showed much interest theorizing a fluid relationship between the self and its possessions. In the
1950s, the British analyst D. W. Winnicott explored the infants use
of its first possession (for example, a blanket or teddy bear), arguing
it did so in a transitional space between the me and the not-me.
Winnicott observed that babies displayed very rich patterns in relating to such objects, over which they assumed the right of possession
and through which they expressed creativity and developed capacities
for symbolic thinking. The object was neither inside nor outside the
infant, and pleasurable for being at once illusionary and real. Winnicotts paper, subtitled The First Not-Me Possession, consistently
ranks among the most popular of psychoanalytic journal articles
and has been widely discussed and cited, and the object relations
school of analysis of which he was a central figure was more focused
than classical analysis on individuals materiality. However, psychoanalysts on the whole shied from what to the student of consumer
behavior was abundantly clearthat we regard our possessions as
parts of ourselves or, what to the critic might appear more crassly
stated, that we are what we have. Research conducted by leading
psychologists in the 1950s on the ways that people related to objects
in their environment supported Jamess contentions. Psychologists
subjects readily and without difficulty ranked everything from parts
of the body (skin, fingers, genitals) to abstract ideas (morals, democracy, the law) to other people (father, workmates, neighbors) to belongings (clothing, tools, cars) on hierarchical scales measuring
selfness and located them on continuums ranging from not-self
to self. Possessions were uniformly categorized within the borderline of the self, and in one study, subjects placed my belongings
32
closer to the core of the self than my friends. In this and subsequent research, the line between what is me and what is mine is as
porous as James asserted it was over a century ago.35
Research psychologists tell us, then, that not only do we assemble
our identities in a Jamesian or Winnicottian in-between space, but
we also confer identities on the objects with which we surround
ourselves. Noting that psychology had largely overlooked the real
expressive powers objects have, Dichter proclaimed in his 1960s
treatise that objects have a soul. The materialism that critics decried was to Dichter simply a fact of life and the goods with which
we surrounded ourselves were but the expression of an only too
human desire. The problem to him was that we steadfastly refuse to
accept ourselves the way we actually are, hypocritically condemning
our desires as immoral while living day-to-day amid the very goods
and possessions we profess to disdain. Both the findings of research
psychologists and Dichters perspectivestill roundly condemned
by critics of advertising and its creation of frivolous wantsfind
updated expression in the writings of Bruno Latour, sociological
provocateur par excellence, who turns the critics usual critique on
its head, asserting that things do not exist without being full of
people.36
Thus, the psychologist argues that in claiming that something is
mine, we also come to believe that the object is me. The admans
focus groups demonstrate that the moment products appear in our
lives, theyfurniture, houses, bread, cars, bicyclesare related
to us, they are human. And the contemporary theorist of things rejects the strict subject/object divide between the human and the inanimate, instead seeing the world full of quasi-objects and quasisubjects. Persuasive or not, that these diverse outlooks converge
on a century-old Jamesian perspective that sees our possessions,
invarying degrees of intimacy, becoming parts of our empirical
selves, suggests how impoverished the prevailing popular and analytic conversation centered on people and things has been.37
Lasch voiced analysts objects-as-compensatory line of argument,
maintaining that consumption, sold as the antidote to the age-old
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In psychoanalysis, as in cultural criticism, the 1970s were the decade of the new narcissism. Over the decades since Freud had put
narcissism on the analytic map, psychoanalysts and psychiatrists
had noted a precipitous rise in the number of patients complaining
of vaguely defined discontentsloneliness, emptiness, boredomin
place of the dramatic paralyses, anesthesias, and phobias exhibited
by Freuds hysterics. The number of papers and books on narcissism
by psychoanalysts, psychiatrists, and psychologists rose just as quickly.
By the 1970s, public interest in narcissism was running high. Kohut
was regularly featured in newspaper and popular magazine articles.
Dubbed the modern day Freud and the Freud of today, Kohut
was putting the world on the couch. His followers hailed him as a
charismatic genius, the first truly American analyst, while detractors derided him as a self-styled messiah, a guru at the center of a
cult. Many of Kohuts colleagues objected to his departures from the
Freudian mainstream, even as they acknowledged the electrifying effect of his work. Some, surveying the analytic field, sensed revolution
was in the air; others demurred, maintaining nothing had fundamentally changed since Freuds time.1 Yet, even the most skeptical could
see that the intellectual ferment around narcissism was reviving their
disciplines fortunes and ensuring its continuing cultural relevance. If,
as many worried, psychoanalysis thirty years after Freuds death was
languishing, its creativity spent, then narcissismfor or against, it
mattered littlewas just what the doctor ordered.2
Narcissism Americanized
In a series of analytic papers published in the 1960s and in two
landmark books published in the 1970s, Heinz Kohut reframed narcissism as a desirable rather than pathological dimension of mature
selfhood, establishing it in analytic and popular discussions as, in his
words, a very broad kind of concept with a positive not pejorative
valence that deals with preoccupation with ourselves. Alert to
popular opportunities for psychoanalysis, especially for his version
of it, Kohut joined the discussion of whether the American people
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were becoming more narcissistic. In a widely syndicated 1978 newspaper article, he adduced as evidence of narcissisms rise one Fred,
exemplary of a growing population of sufferers, a lonely man, plagued
by feelings of abandonment and worthlessness, a man who felt his
self was crumbling and falling apart. The drugs, alcohol, and wild
sexual flings to which the Freds of the world typically resorted were
no match for their despair, Kohut argued. The emptiness of life
troubles people, he told People magazine the next year. Parental
distraction or, worse, emotional rejection produced children fated to
lifetimes of fruitless searching for the approval of which they would
never get enough. To this point, Kohut and the critics were on the
same page. But then he added, Some say these people are narcissistic . . . but actually they are not narcissistic enough. They need food
for their self-esteem all the time.3 Not narcissistic enough? So singleminded were the critics that they barely registered that Kohut was
not in fact their ally but, rather, an antagonist, as apt to champion
narcissism as he was to worry about its prevalence.
Kohut consistently sided with gratification over renunciation, emotional satisfaction over frustration. He decried the culturally mandated altruism that disparaged concern for ones self and, through
the 1960s and 1970s, amid the tumult convulsing Chicago, he sounded
themes associated more with the young than with his own generation. He championed the potential of the self and the liberation of its
energies in the service of the common good, and he celebrated the
preoccupation with the self that social critics found intellectually
bankrupt and morally suspect. He defended interiority against critics
who lamented it as so much navel gazing, arguing that such inwardlooking contemplation could be the source of fulfilling gratification.
And he applauded the rising generations search for intense inner
experience, whether abetted by surrender to the intoxications of
drugs and music or by immersion in the teachings of Eastern philosophy, maintaining that the countercultural young grasped better than
their parents that the path to psychic health lay in responding with
a full range of emotions to the challenges presented by a rapidly
changing world.4 Kohut chose to celebrate the younger generations
40
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analytic revisionism in America, he formulated an optimistic alternative to Freudianisms bleak pessimism in language his detractors
dismissed as sentimental and mawkish. Kohut understood what he
called the basic cultural value systems that supported American
psychoanalysis, with its ties to psychiatry and its distinctive if diluted
emphasis on interpersonal healing, helping, and reforming, which
he found utterly foreign to the weltanschauung of the refugee European analysts. Adapting psychoanalysis to American culture, he reinvented himself as a trailblazing analytic pioneer, inhabiting one of
the most venerable of his adopted nations archetypical personas.
Bold where others had proven timid and self-satisfied, he would chart
daring new paths into new territories.6
In the space of three decades, then, Kohutknown by many as
Mr. Psychoanalysismoved from high priest to excommunicated
heretic to founder of the new church of self psychology; from
president of the resolutely orthodox American Psychoanalytic Association in the 1960s to banished deviant to widely celebrated spokesman for what many deemed the fields new scientific paradigm in the
1970s. The precise moment when Kohuts apostasy became evident
is a matter of some dispute. Some see it as early as his 1959 paper on
introspection and empathy as modes of observation in psychoanalysis, which, in proposing that the Freudians drive was not an observable entity but an abstraction derived from introspection, occasioned more than a few angry responses from analytic colleagues.
Others see him struggling, with varying degrees of success, to negotiate between Freud and his own evolving new perspective through
the period that eventuated in The Analysis of the Self, published in
1971. Most agree that with the 1977 appearance of The Restoration
of the Self, the rupture with Freuds drive-based metapsychology
was complete and irreparable. In making his journey, Kohut broke
not only with the American keepers of the Freudian faith, among
them his training analyst and important mentors, but also with
what he argued was the Freud living on in the analysts breast as a
constraining and curbing force. The death of this archaic and idealized Freudand, more important, the deaths of those analysts who
were charismatically tied to him by virtue of having known him
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work, and showcased in the obituary that ran in the New York Times
upon his death in 1981.9
More significant than Freuds departure from Kohut on that day
in 1938, however, was Kohuts monumental departure several decades later from Freud and Freudian psychoanalytic orthodoxy.
Freed of his inner need for Freud as a father figure on whom he could
lean for self-confirmation or support, Kohut spelled out what was
at stake in his abandonment of classicism. In papers published and
in interviews granted before his death, he spiritedly took on, among
other targets, orthodoxys closed system thinking, its covert moralism, and its developmental telos. Kohut proclaimed that the orthodoxs vaunted independence was chimerical and that becoming an
independent self was a wrong-headed, impossible aim. He dismissively referred to the unconscious, a centerpiece of Freudianism, as a
fancy idea. He questioned the centrality of the Oedipus complex,
that other analytic mainstay, reminding his colleagues that Oedipus
was in the first instance a rejected child who was abandoned in the
wilderness to die.And he combatively suggested that psychoanalysis
still in its childhoodneeded to grow up, to internalize Freud in
the way a growing child would internalize a parent, and to turn from
the study of Freud to the study of man.10
Kohut, explaining that Freud was not exuberant enough for his
tastes, crafted a psychoanalysis that was organized around the development of a cohesive self capable of articulating its ideals, pursuing its ambitions, and relating to others around it. A good part of his
achievement consisted in recasting narcissism as a desirable, even
necessary, dimension of personhood. The Freud who had conceived
of narcissism as in part normal was quickly overshadowed by the
Freud who had conceived of it as an early stage in a developmental
sequence that began in infantile solipsism and culminated, ideally, in
the sovereign self. Within this framework, narcissism, once abandoned,
was a fallback position to which one might revert under threat. Freud
and his followers generally argued that the infants narcissism was
optimally displaced by object-love, setting up an opposition between
immature love of oneself and mature love of another. Freud held
44
that individuals were endowed with fixed quantities of psychic energy that they distributed between self and other, such that love of
oneself precluded love of the other and, conversely, love of another
depleted the capacity for self-love. This is exemplary of what Kohut
deemed Freuds closed system thinking; Kohut objected not only to
it but also more generally to analysts preference for object-love
over self-love. However much analysts might maintain their stance
on narcissism was morally neutral, psychoanalytic locker-room chitchat assigned it a negative valence. To brand someone a narcissist
was, he argued, to say down with him; to envision someone capable of object-love meant up with him.11
Against Freudian orthodoxy, Kohut argued that object-love, as
well as any other intense experience, strengthened the self, which
in turn could then experience love more intensely. Kohut maintained
that Freuds model could not account for the fact that reciprocated
passionate love did not diminish but, rather, enhanced self-esteem.
Where Freud had seen childish narcissism superseded by mature
object-love, Kohut argued it was instead transformedthat archaic
forms of it, such as grandiosity, were remobilized and reintegrated
in the service of ideals, self-esteem, creativity, and other useful attributes of a healthy personality. Object-love did not replace narcissism, as Freud had argued; rather, narcissism followed its own line
of development, from the primitive to the most mature, adaptive,
and culturally valuable, assuming different forms at different points
in the curve of life. Complex forms of it provided the very basis for
civilized life.12
To start with the most primitive, infantile forms: Kohut admired
Freuds analytic colleague Sndor Ferenczis portrayal of infantile
grandiosity, and his infant was as much a fantasist as was Ferenczis.
Both were cared for, in ideal circumstances, by an empathic maternal
figure who accepted the childs idealization of her as perfect and allpowerful while mirroring the childs grandiosity, enabling the child
to delight in his own feelings of omnipotence and to revel in his exhibitionism. This empathic figure smoothed the childs confrontation
with the inevitable frustrations of reality, allowing him to maintain
pleasurably narcissistic feelings of power and fullness where he might
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growth, and adjustment, and their focus on the selfs potentials instead of its pathologies, marked a break with the austerity of analytic orthodoxy and a reorientation of the analytic field.
The cult of personal relations and the ideology of personal
growth that drew the withering criticism of Lasch and his confreres
were the stuff and substance of Kohuts self psychology. Kohuts questioning of whether the world of the present was really worse than the
one in which hed grown up set him apart from the critics who were
disposed to see decline everywhere. He historicized the conflicts between man and civilization that Freud had cast as timeless. For all
their professed disdain for the therapeutic ethos and psychological
man, social critics were insistently drawn to the Freudian notion that
civilization was built on the repression of human drives and was, as
such, antithetical to the fulfillment of human desire. In Das Unbehagen in der Kultur, which was translated by Freud himself as Mans
Discomfort in Civilization but famously rendered in English as
Civilization and Its Discontents, Freud argued that the demands of
society were antagonistic to the individuals claim to personal gratifications, in particular to sexuality but also to the expression of aggression. Civilization imposed sacrifices on man such that it was difficult
for him to find happiness in it. In fact, Freud suggested, though
primitive man enjoyed little security, he was better off in knowing
no restrictions of instinct. Adopting Freuds rough economic calculus, critics would follow him in arguing that civilization rested on
renunciation and inhibition, an imperative that in Philip Rieffs words
was the price of entry into every real satisfactionreal here referring to the Freudian dialectic that held there were no pleasures
unpaid for in parallel pains. Culture ruled over man not by sublimation but by a more draconian repression. If Western civilization
was premised on what Philip Slater called the control release dialectic, then liberation was at best only apparent, at worst a means to
more efficient manipulation of the populace. This line of argument
was developed by Frankfurt school theorists and adopted by Herbert
Marcuse and Lasch, among others.18 From this perspective, increased
liberties in the sexual and other spheres were procured at the price of
intensified societal domination and bureaucratic control.
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Social critics brandished the sociological Freud to excoriate student radicals for their utopianism, holding that to bridle against limits
was to protest the very essence of humanity. Kohut would have none
of this. Where is the Unbehagen? he asked. Maintaining that culture had to be thought of as more than drive taming, he argued that
discomfort resulted not from civilization itself but from situations in
which people were not supported in civilizationfor example, when
they were bereft of the sustaining comforts provided by language,
music, and art or by familiar voices and the endearing habits of
friends. Freuds model of homo natura at war with his surroundings, if marvelously consistentlovely to behold . . . an esthetic
pleasurewas at bottom mechanistic: There is a certain tension,
and when the tension rises you put the lid on. Kohut argued that the
murderous, drive-fueled man of Freuds theorizingman wants to
kill, man wants to fuck, man wants to eat ravenously, and then he
has restrictions slapped on himwas not the norm but the exception, explaining as perhaps only a lapsed Freudian could that Freud
had seen the essence of man in what was in fact the breakdown of
civilized relations. Only when the self was not supported did the
lust and hate that Freud took as foundational come to the fore.
Oedipal conflicts were not universal but arose only when the childs
caretakers failed to meet his exhibitionism and assertiveness with
pride and joyful acceptance and responded to his gropings for affection with sexual stimulation. The intergenerational strife, mutual
killing wishes of Freuds theorizing represented, to Kohut, a deformation of a normality that in idealized form was characterized by
parental pride in their offsprings growth and development as well
as joyous mirroring of their ambitions and grandiosity.19
Revolution in Chicago
Throughout the 1970s, Kohut was widely celebrated as a luminary
purveyor of an optimistic creed that would humanize Freuds severe
science of man. Kohut relished his status as public psychoanalyst,
regularly granting interviews to major publications while at the
same time complaining that his work was sensationalized and
50
distortedturned topsy-turvyby the mass media and misunderstood by apublic that thought of narcissism as synonymous with
selfishness. Kohut could be at once annoyed and pleased by the
popularity of psychoanalysis. Though every Tom, Dick, and Harry
was tossing around psychoanalytic terminology and, playing analytic parlor games, subjecting friends to ill-informed and often malicious interpretations of their behavior, this was nonetheless evident
to Kohut that psychoanalysis would prove more than a passing
fashion, more even than the persisting cultural style he thought it
already was. Kohuts aims for psychoanalysis were ambitious. He
wanted to establish it as nothing less than a new investigative science of subjective experience, a science in the service of expanding
mans consciousness and nurturing human creativity.20
Kohut had the political skills to do so. By the mid-1970s, he had
established a thoroughgoing alternative to Freuds drive-based theory. Called self psychology, it had a new toolkit in introspective
empathy and a new metapsychology organized around developmental deficits. It had an institutional apparatus to rival orthodoxys, with
journals, regular meetings and conferences as well as foundational
texts. It had a charismatic leader in Kohut and an entourage of followers to spread the word. Kohut by his own telling shook up the
American analytic establishment, advancing what was widely hailed
as a new psychoanalysis powerful enough to rival that of Freud and
his acolytes.21
One of the most striking aspects of Kohuts analytic career is that
he managed to attack the fundamentals of Freudianism while escaping both the banishment from the analytic mainstream and the marginalization that was the fate of so many of his dissenting forebears,
among them Carl Jung, Alfred Adler, and Sndor Ferenczi. Despite
the audacity and fierceness of his attacks on Freud and Freudian
analysis, Kohut and self psychology are very much part of a pluralistic analytic mainstream today. Kohut in fact ensured the survival
of Freud both externally, in making psychoanalysis newly relevant
to the culture at large, and internally, nourishing, even healing, the
analytic field as he laid the groundwork for the reincorporation in
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the 1980s and 1990s of once-vilified analytic forebears and marginalized perspectives. He fashioned himself a revolutionary while at
the same time channeling spectral presences that had long haunted
the discipline of psychoanalysis.
Kohut only gradually warmed to the role of revolutionary leader.
He made his theoretical moves deliberately, always attentive to what
was at stake in his dissensions. Aware of his outsider status as a culturally advantaged and educated European analyst, he felt that understanding America was central to his vision. He thought it significant that, as he saw it, the country had but little past, that it had no
mythology, hardly any fairytales. Surveying the American analytic
scene in the 1960s, he concluded that its animating values were a
distinctive mix of the psychiatric and the social reformist: the former
the province of the East European Jews only recently arrived from
the ghetto, who found in medicine a whole new world of freedom,
and the latter the contribution of progressively minded Protestants,
with their emphasis on healing through love and interpersonal
support. In that decade, he was little inclined to rock the American
boat, content to busy himself performing non-revolutionary daily
spade work.22 Within the space of a few years, however, rebellion, if
not revolution, was afoot.
The analytic orthodoxy that serves as foil to Kohuts heresy was
itself a moving target in these years. Although the notion of orthodoxy was bandied about in the early days of psychoanalysis, analysts only began to talk about classical analysis and technique in
the 1950s and, with even greater frequency, the 1960s. Freud and
his colleagues had invoked orthodoxy to police the boundaries of
their discipline, but it was in reaction to the revisionism of the midcentury period that the twin concepts of classicism and orthodoxy
gained in urgency, with the publication of the twenty-four volume
Standard Edition of Freuds works from 1953 through 1974. The
translation, undertaken in 1946, under the direction of the English
analyst James Strachey, is a monument to the positivist orientation
of postwar Anglo-American psychoanalysis. Strachey and his team
jargonized Freuds fluid Viennese-German prose with the coining of
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ment. Kohut, writing to a younger Ferenczi enthusiast in 1966, allowed that Ferenczis gifts were second only to Freud. This young
analysts retrospective discovery of hints (and more than hints) in
Ferenczis work of what later came to fruition in the development of
analysis was valuable, Kohut wrote, a perspective that resonates
with Kuhns statement that only in retrospect, with a new paradigm in place, can scientists appreciate and interpret the importance
of the anomalous results. Here the forgiving stance of Heinz Hartmann backs up Kohut with a commonsense position on the issue.
Defending the work of a popularizing historian of psychoanalysis to
whom Jones had objected, Hartmann maintained that what happened to the historian has happened to other historians before:
looking at even the greatest work from the angle of precursors
only, one cannot help finding similar ideas in the history of human
thought.27
New Freudian or post-Freudian, dangerous apostate or brilliant
visionary, destructive radical or deliberate meliorist: contemporaneous appraisals of Kohut run the gamut. Half a century later, the
passions of that moment having cooled, the magnitude of Kohuts
achievement can be assessed. Without attempting to settle the oncecharged question of whether his work constituted a new paradigm,
we can appreciate the many ways in which he expanded the disciplines scope and shifted its emphases. His conviction that self psychologys overthrow of classicism was necessitated not primarily in
order to explain this or that clinical observation but by the ambition to encompass a whole dimension of man that psychoanalysis
had yet to address captured something of the grandiosity fueling his
vision. In his hands, narcissism referred not only to pathology but to
ambition, creativity, and, most expansively, ones feelings about oneself as a person. It provided a framework within which subjective
inner experience could be described at a deep gut level, for example
in reference to the sense of emptiness and fragmentation of which
some patients complained.28 Analysts in Kohuts wake increasingly
used narcissism to discuss salutary aspects of individuals capacities
and their relationships with others, issues slighted in the orthodox
tradition.
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Just as significant was that through narcissism Kohut offered solutions to a range of problems internal to psychoanalysis. He provided a resolution to the contentious issue of the relationship between narcissistic love of self and love of others that had occasioned
dispute within psychoanalysis since the publication of Freuds essay
on Leonardo da Vinci in 1910. He pulled together the strands of an
alternate tradition within the discipline that had long questioned the
valorization of independence as the aim of development, proposing
instead that dependency was neither necessarily infantile nor shameful but a natural fact of life. He revived and expanded upon Ferenczis explorations of empathy, bringing the banished analyst back
into the analytic fold while at the same time taking on the asceticism
of the orthodox analytic setting, imbuing once-suspect gratification
with a positive valance.29 Together with Otto Kernberg, he delineated the narcissist as a type of person who was not hopelessly defective but, rather, who could be helped. A theorist of internal plentitude and abundance, he brought into view positive, life-sustaining,
and even enjoyable aspects of narcissism, knitting together a range
of disparate analytic threads supportive of its delights. And, while
objecting to his fellow immigrant analyst Erik Eriksons notion of
identity, Kohut incorporated something of the exuberance and vitality that Erikson associated with itso at odds with ego psychology
into his own conceptualization of the positive dimensions of narcissism. Some of his solutions have proven provisional and, to be sure,
not all were accepted. Yet, that the analysts narcissism at the end of
the Me Decade was a different entity than it had been a mere twenty
years earlier was due in large part to him.
By the end of the Me Decade, social critics were united in contending that narcissism as they defined it was dangerously on the
increase. Some analystsKohut most vocally among themjoined
the popular conversation, appearing as authorities in newspaper and
magazine articles chronicling the rise of narcissism apparent in everything from disco dancinga singularly narcissistic activityto
womens enjoyment of fashion. Newspaper headlines across the
country at once exploited and editorialized against narcissisms ascent, their warningsNarcissism on Upswing, According to Ex-
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57
perts, Me FirstIts the Rule More People Are Living By, and
Too Many of Us Are Looking Out for No. 1supported by analysts quotable but often more tempered appraisals of the issue.
Kohuts statement that narcissism is the leading illness of our
times was widely cited. But few social critics recognized that his
remedies differed from theirs, entailing positive support of individuals strivings for specialness and of their shaky self-esteem. And few
realized he was as apt to argue for more narcissism as he was to
condemn the deficiencies of the modern self. Further, for his professional colleagues, Kohut hedged his pronouncements, cautioning in
his Restoration of the Self that what appeared to be an increase in
narcissistic disorders, in absolute numbers or proportional to the
growing population, might be an artifact of clinicians shifting interests. It was possible, he allowed, that the narcissists of Freuds day
were now visible, either having declined to seek treatment or having
sought it from clinicians who did not recognize their pathology as
narcissistic, so focused were the early analysts on the neuroses. Kohut was adamant, however, that it was ludicrous to assume that the
narcissistic disorders had arisen de novo since Freud formulated
the basic theories of psychoanalysiswhich is precisely what the
overheated headlines were suggesting.30
It is hardly surprising that Kohuts fragmented, malaise-ridden
narcissists and Kernbergs destructive, malignant narcissists were featured in the popular media as exemplary of the deficiencies of the
present while Kohuts healthy narcissist was completely ignored. To
journalists, decline-and-fall jeremiads made for good copy. They made
for good books, too. But there is a more basic reason the critics did
not see normal narcissism: they simply did not want to. Kohut
consistently making the case for vitality, hopefulness, and buoyancy
celebrated precisely what they condemned. Here we might turn once
again to Kuhn. Kohut was able to effect a paradigm shift within
psychoanalysis but not within the social criticism of his time. Philip
Rieff, Daniel Bell, and Christopher Lasch were, it might be said,
members of a discipline. Kohuts ideas could not be squared with
their orthodoxyan orthodoxy that reflexively considered the past
a purer, more moral time than the present. Policing the boundaries
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Three
OTTO KERNBERGS
N A RC I S S I S T I C
DY S T O P I A
60
others. And the popular press turned to him for pithy quotes that,
set beside Kohuts optimism, could appear judgmental and reproving. Yet Kernberg would not be so easily conscripted into the culturalist critique around narcissism. He hedged on the relationship between narcissism and the culture of our time and, while allowing
that there might be interesting correlations between narcissistic
pathologies and social trends, declined to offer any explanations for
them.1 Critics may have imagined themselves channeling the rigorous spirit of Kernberg as they condemned their fellow citizens and
slighted narcissisms positive aspects, but it was often more on their
own predispositions than his on which they drew.
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for fulfillment in life turned not on their intelligence or accomplishments but, rather, on their relations with their fellow humanshow
they managed to get along with others at home, at work, and in society. Gellner maintained that in his time relations with other people
stimulated anxieties akin to those that nature had visited on our
ancestors. Over the long sweep of history, our natural environment
had been proven subject to intelligible and impersonal laws while
our social environment seemed ever more precarious and uncontrollable, due to incomprehensibility of other peoples attitudes, feelings, and actions.5
In Civilization and Its Discontents, Freud characterized these relations as shot through with aggression and hostility that were of
necessity disavowed, posing as they did a constant threat to civilized
life. Freuds human beings were not, in his words, gentle creatures
who want to be loved but savage beasts easily tempted to sate their
aggression in exploiting anothers capacity for work without compensation and prepared to use him sexually without his consent,
to seize his possessions, to humiliate him, to cause him pain, to torture and to kill him. Strife, competition, and enmity were to be expected among men, Freud believed, and civilization relied on laws
totemper the crudest excesses of brutal violence of which humans
were capable. What he called the more cautious and refined manifestations of human aggressiveness were lamentably beyond the laws
reach. As Freud saw it, each of us, in the course of our lives, had to
abandon youthful optimism about our fellows and confront how
much difficulty and pain the ill will of others caused us.6
Freud argued that unleashing aggression brought individuals satisfaction but was at odds with civilizations demands for stability
and security. Humans had long ago traded the anarchy of unchecked
aggression for the stability of authoritarian rule, and Freud proposed
that in submitting to a charismatic leader offering to love and rule
them, harmonious relationslove, evenamong men and women
would supervene. In this Freudian historical fantasy, mutual enmity
was at a stroke displaced by mutual love, competition among individuals by cohesion. At the same time, Freud envisioned humans
constrained from within, their drives for pleasure and destruction
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tic idealization. Alert to the tragedy of such patients lives, the emptiness and loneliness they experience as a consequence of their incapacity for relationships, he will refrain from moral exhortation and
offer instead sustained, neutral interpretation. What he called the
transitory nature of human life was in his clinical experience an
affront to narcissists. As he saw it, the limitations and loss that accompanied normal aging forced narcissists into catastrophic confrontations with their lonely, empty inner selves. They are empty
because, caught in binds of their own making, they are plagued by
their immense needs but devalue as worthless whatever they receive
from others to avoid feeling envious of what others had to give; in
consequence, Kernberg wrote, they always wind up empty.13 The
tyranny to which they subject others is replicated within, as they
experience themselves as subject to the control of frightening, tormenting internalized others and, in the analytic setting, of the tormenting
analyst.
Narcissists All?
Arguing there was real evil in the world, Kernberg insisted on distinguishing between narcissismwhich in his mind the critics wrongly
condemnedand abnormal, pathological, or, in his terminology,
malignant narcissism. He objected to construals of narcissism as a
phony pathology for wealthy patients that have nothing to do but
to go to a psychoanalyst. Kernbergs malignant narcissists were severely impaired, unable to maintain both professional and intimate
relations. Their pathology ruined their own lives and wreaked havoc
on those around them. They were not everywhere, as Lasch claimed,
but rather formed a discrete group. Kernberg thus resisted easy answers to questions such as the one put to him in 1978 by an interviewer: Arent we all narcissists? Dont we all, secretly or not so
secretly, love ourselves, take our own lives more seriously than the
lives of those around us, enjoy feeding and grooming ourselves, and
spend a great deal of effort at soliciting the admiration and approval
of others? We do, Kernberg replied, but only if ones self-esteem
needed constant feeding in the form of tributes from others is there
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a problem. When your internal mental structures tell you that you
are doing all right and that you deserve to think well about yourself, you can be proud of yourself, when you in consequence are
able to operate effectively in the world, pursuing your tasks, ambitions and ideals, you are displaying normal narcissismeverything
is in order.14
Seeming to echo Kohut, Kernberg argued that it was normal
through the course of life to experience pleasure in self-fulfillment
and creativity as well as in dedicating oneself to loved ones and
to the ideals for which one stands. The issue as Kernberg saw it
was not whether individuals appeared self-absorbed or felt inordinately good about themselves. Rather, it was the nature of their internal object relations and the ways these found expression in the
interpersonal realm that mattered. Normal narcissism and normal
object relations tend to go hand in hand, he argued. To assert that
contemporary culture was narcissistichowever tempting it might
be to declaim and condemnwas to simplify a relationship between
the individual and society that he believed was indirect and complex. Were the roots of the narcissists subjective experience of futility and emptiness to be found in the widely decried breakdown
of cultural values and changing sexual mores? Were contemporary
Americans really less capable than their forebears of establishing
and maintaining deep, intimate relationships with others? Or were
the perennial deformations of early childhood development to blame,
then as now?15
Lasch invoked Kernbergs skepticism as typical of the clinicians
objections to the notion that changes in cultural patterns could affect individuals internal object relations. Yet this proved no impediment to his instrumental marshaling of Kernbergs clinical portrait
of the pathological narcissistgrandiose, exploitative, parasitic, shallow, emptyto support the framing premise of The Culture of Narcissism: that individual pathology was an exaggerated expression of
the underlying character structure of the age. Lasch explained
that psychoanalysis tells us most about society when it is least
determined to do soan intriguing if debatable proposition that
underwrote his books argument. Where Lasch was confident and
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they are beautiful, admired, have shining clothes, bright cars and
not because they live up to adult values of maturity, intelligence,
depth, compassion, friendliness, tact, and concern invested in others have not outgrown their normal infantile narcissism. Their
ideals are those of the child. Consumer culture may exploit their
narcissistic needs but it did not follow from this that the culture
was necessarily narcissistic. The most Kernberg was willing to grant
was that social norms could render serious pathology superficially
appropriate and provide cultural rationalizations for the narcissists experience of emptiness and dissatisfaction. But social patterns
would inevitably change and narcissists, unhappy and unfulfilled,
would remain.17
The Kernbergian subject ideally sought satisfaction, even transcendence, through deep relationships with others. It mattered little
what society prescribedhumans would seek connection and find
fulfillment in the sense of extending beyond oneself and feeling a
sense of unity with all others who lived and loved and suffered before. The socially sanctioned sexual permissiveness that was among
Laschs btes noires, in offering a cultural rationalization for sexual freedom over lifelong monogamy, might shield pathological narcissists unable to form relationships with others from the emptiness
and meaningless of their lives, but not indefinitely. Social mores
would eventually change, and a human nature seeking satisfaction in
deep relatedness to others would assert itself. The danger of which
Lasch and other critics warnedthat narcissists would overwhelm
societywas to Kernbergs mind overblown; whatever society mandated, he wrote, individuals will simply continue to choose the patterns that fulfill them. Like Kohut, he saw normal narcissism as essential to the selfs functioning and defended the love of self and
self-esteem with which it was popularly identified as consonant
with psychic health and social citizenship. And, like Kohut, at
times he could sound every bit the countercultural mysticfor
example, in his invocations of a human striving toward union
with people throughout historyand appear to invoke cultural
values, condemned by Lasch, as exemplary of the narcissistic moment. Lasch faulted Americans for the superficiality of their desires,
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for wanting to get in touch with their feelings and for wanting
to learn how to relate.18 This, however, was but psychoanalysis
101and Kernberg, known as among the sternest, the least indulgent, and the most exacting when it came to handling narcissists in
the analytic setting, would not have done other than to have assented
to the validity, even the necessity, of the quest for self-knowledge
Lasch censured.
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74
in the committed couple, not in the promiscuous or rebellious, telling, for example, of his hospitalized adolescent patients puzzlement
at his failure to condemn sexual behavior they had expected to be
forbidden. Indeed, defiant but discreet seeking of sexual intimacy
among such patients was a sign of health to Kernberg. It was the
mature, loving couple that was at odds with society, a combat
zone marking the divide between the sides. Kernberg described conventional moralitys constant pressure on the couple, its ritualization of love, commitment, marriage, and family tradition, as so
much static warfare against them. The richness of their private experience was, to him, a rebuke to the flatness of all conventionally
tolerable sexuality.24
Lasch, too, saw sex as a battlefield, but where Kernberg saw the
committed couple at war with society and barely affected by shifts
in sexual mores, Lasch saw, variously, all-out war, escalating war,
and intensifying sexual combat newly prevalent between men and
women. Lasch argued that the comity between the sexes that courtly
convention had ensured in times past had been crumbling since the
1920s in the face of womens increasingly insistent demand for sexual fulfillment and their brandishing of sexual performance as a
weapon of warfarea war in which women, endowed with what the
sex researchers William H. Masters and Virginia E. Johnson had
shown in the 1960s was an inexhaustible capacity for orgasm, were
destined to prevail. As Lasch told it, chivalrys vaunted but long
dead male gallantry traded in illusions, promising women protection against mens wildness and savagery while at the same time
tolerating and even institutionalizing brutally predatory treatment
of them, evidenced by the ubiquity of rape and seduction and by the
exploitative custom of droit du seigneur. A faade of mutual obligation, institutionalized in rituals of gender deference and conventions
of politesse, usefully obscured mens monopolistic and organized
political, economic, and sexual oppression of women, which, Lasch
offered consolingly, if nothing else made exploitation easier to
bear. Patriarchy lived on even as the last foundations of feudalism that supported this sexual regime were ultimately destroyed by
the democratic revolutions that swept Europe in the eighteenth and
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nineteenth centuries, during which women finally rejected their sentimental but confining exaltation on the pedestal of masculine adoration and noisily demanded that female sexuality be demystified.
Sexual antagonism sharpened once the veil of courtly comity was
stripped from womens subordination. It was now more difficult
than before for men and women to confront each other as friends
and lovers, let alone as equals, Lasch proclaimed, adding that men
were now free to assert their domination more directly, in fantasies
and occasionally in acts of raw violencea history of violence that
strangely construes the chivalrous sexual order whose ruling conventions he has just eviscerated as a prelapsarian Elysium of gender
harmony and female dominion. The gist of the problem, Lasch
ever the gallantproclaimed, was that men no longer treat women
as ladies.25
Lasch was most of the time adamant about the necessity of distinguishing between illusion and reality, seeing the inability to do so
symptomatic of narcissism. But, given the choice, he strongly preferred the illusions of gallantrywhich in his own telling barely
contain mens animal strength and barely disguise brutality, savagery, and rapeto those of the present. He dismissed as illusory
the new intimacy between the sexes registered by sociologists
and feminists alike and, if the experts strenuous propaganda was
to be believed, fervently desired by his contemporaries. This intimacy was premised, in short, on the reconceptualization over the
course of the twentieth century of marriage as more an emotional
than legal bond, as well as on the severing of sex from procreation
unexceptionable enough in light of the deceptions and miseries of
the past. Yet the possibilities this intimacy opened for couples mutual emotional exploration, as well as for valuing the erotic for its
own sake, for conceiving of sexual pleasure as an end in itself,
drew from Lasch only withering scorn.26
His argument here is worth spelling out, in part because it captures something of the confusions of the moment when second-wave
feminism began to call into question the many dimensions of what
he called masculine ascendancy. Faced with women tactically advantaged by their orgasmic capacities, women who would lay claim
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reciprocity, romance, passion, tenderness, and sexual fulfillment between men and women for which not only does he lack evidence but
which is also utterly at odds with the scripted emptiness, even the
brutality, of the sexual arrangementsagain, by his own telling
against which they were a reaction.28
The Laschian sexual landscape looked in some ways like a Kernbergian nightmare, an ungovernable dystopia of emotional manipulation, bottomless need, intense hunger, feral calculation, intolerably menacing desire, and the blind and impotent rage of one sex
against the other. Women, no longer averse to sex and tactically advantaged in intimate combat by their orgasmic capacities, taunt and
intimidate men. Men, while in actuality still on top, irrationally fear
the castrating, sexually voracious women who, modeled on the overwhelming preoedipal mother, would eat them alive. Narcissists
here figured as maletraverse this landscape patently free of needs
and connection, their cynical detachment and indifference linked
paradoxically to an inordinate demandingness. Such were the wages
of freeing sex from its moorings in patriarchy.29
Kernberg, by contrast, was unperturbed in surveying the same
landscape of sexual revolution. His own readings in history convinced him there was little if anything novel in the new lifestyles
that so unsettled Lasch, lifestyles that to his mind bore a striking
resemblance to the sexual mores of the past. Eighteenth-century
aristocratic and bourgeois cultures cast marital fidelity as outdated
and sexual jealousy as an awkward complication, considered the
search for permanence a spoiler of erotic passion, and supported
the mutually agreed upon sharing of partners as a graceful enactment of modernity. The so-called sexual revolution of the present
represented but one oscillation in a long saga of shifts in sexual regimes between the puritanical and the libertine, in Kernbergs words
a mere swing of the pendulum. Kernberg was as skeptical as was
Lasch of the how-to genre of sexual enlightenment and the sexual
utopianism of new lifestyles, but not like Lasch because they drained
sex of emotion and meaning. Rather, the problem was that emotional
and sexual intimacy was fatefully at odds with conventionality of
any sort, including the militantly nonconventional. For example,
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of the full range of emotions offers those able to risk it, a transcendence Lasch yearns for but can locate only in some unspecified,
mythical past.
It seemed to many who reflected on the passing of the 1970s that the
word narcissism best captured the decades confusions and paradoxes. Writing its epitaph, the noted Time magazine journalist Lance
Morrow pointed to the cold Splenglerian apprehension that had
enveloped the nation between the 1973 Arab oil boycott and the
dawn of the 1980s. Dark prophecies of decline, diminution, deterioration, and limits imposed by vanishing resources had challenged
Americans traditional optimism. One could, he wrote, construct a
kind of worst-case scenario to prove that the U.S., along with the
rest of the West, has fallen into dangerous decline. The work ethic
dead and hedonism ascendant, religion having ceded its customary
ground to narcissistic self-improvement cults, American societyor
so the pundits claimedhad lost it moral compass. Yet from the
vantage of the decades end Morrow could suggest the indictment
had been overblown. A mere ten years earlier things had looked
much worse, with the Viet Nam War, the ghetto riots, the assassinations, the orgasmic romanticism of the counterculture fueling a
palpable national rage. The country and its institutions were now
healing, and many of its citizens had never been as well off as they
were at the moment. The country was still wealthy, the economy
was booming, and incomes were rising at a rapid clip. Still, the national mood was suffused with an unsettling contradictoriness.32
To Morrow, it was the widespread preoccupation with the self
and its fulfillment, evident in self-awareness movements that counseled fumigating, refurnishing and redecorating the inner space of
the American psyche, that defined the decade more than anything
else. The narcissism of popular commentary reflexively conjured up
this landscape of dreamily obsessive self-regard, in the words of
Tom Wolfe. And yet, after what critics decried as a decade-long orgy
of self-indulgence, abetted by therapists promoting self-realization
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from Freud to the Me Decade and Beyond
Four
S E L F - L OV E
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In his 1914 essay On Narcissism, Freud maintained that narcissism was not a perversion but normal, a form of self-interested egoism found in every living creature. Some early analysts wrestled
with this and followed suit. Freuds colleague Isidor Sadger emphasized that self-love was at work in all love, proposing that everyone,
both homosexual and heterosexual, sought aspects of themselves in
others in addition to the characteristics of the individuals who are
loved. As he explained, everyone is in some degree in love with
himself. Early analysts also linked narcissism in men to homosexuality, which they considered a sexual deviation. As one of them
proclaimed to his assenting colleagues, everyone knew that intensive autoerotism must lead to homosexuality.2 Freud, discussing
narcissism in print for the first time, in his 1910 book Leonardo da
Vinci and a Memory of His Childhood, argued that Leonardos homosexuality was rooted in a narcissistic love of self and that a disabling incapacity for relationship followed from this. Leonardo
sealed the deal. Narcissism and homosexuality were fatefully intertwined. Not all of the narcissistically inclined were homosexual, but
it quickly became an analytic commonplace that all homosexuals
were narcissistic.
Analysts labored for decades to free narcissism from the developmental telos that cast it as a stage to be transcended and, in cases of
developmental arrest, as an impediment to mature object love. That
Freud himself never resolved the tension between his contradictory
understandings of narcissism as both normal and pathological, as a
disposition both found in everyone and seen only in developmentally arrested homosexuals, made this all the more difficult. A number
of analysts working in Freuds wake pointed to the unsettled nature
of his legacy around narcissism to authorize their theoretical forays
beyond the bounds of orthodoxy; some conceptualized narcissism in
terms of normal self-esteem regulation. Heinz Kohuts reorientation
of the analytic field in the 1960s and 1970s brought their efforts into
focus and eventually into the mainstream of psychoanalysis. He attacked the Freudian developmental model that saw narcissism superseded by object-love, arguing instead that narcissism followed its own
developmental course from the primitive to the adaptive and mature.
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All Leonardo
Freud first described the opposition between love of self and love of
the other in Leonardo. In Freuds account, which figured centrally in
analytic discussions of male homosexuality for more than half a
century following its publication, homosexuals were characterized
by a preference for sameness over difference in their choice of love
object. Freud located the psychic roots of this preference in a surfeit
of maternal attention combined with a deficient paternal presence.
The growing boys very intense erotic attachment to his mother,
first nurtured by too much tenderness and then of necessity repressed, survived in his identification with her. Putting himself in
her place, he was fated to seek love objects modeled on himself,
whom he could love as his mother had once loved him. Unable to
make the correct decision, to love someone of the opposite sex,
the boy, Freud wrote, has become a homosexual. Choosing autoeroticism over object-love, from that point on he traveled the path
of narcissism.4
Freud had long been interested in Leonardo and, notably, in Leonardos homosexuality. He read widely in the Leonardo literature,
poring over biographies; the Russian novelist Dmitry Merezhkovskys biographical study appeared in 1907 on a list of books he
had most enjoyed reading. By the autumn of 1909, the subject was
by his own telling an obsession, and soon after he embarked on his
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Freud explained why this was so in a virtuosic if highly speculative reading of the childhood memory of the vulturea memory he
saw as a passive homosexual fantasy of taking the penis in the
mouth and sucking on itthat took readers on a wild ride from
Richard Krafft-Ebings Psychopathia Sexualis to a discussion of the
vulture-headed Mother Goddess in Egyptian mythology. Of everything Freud gathered from his varied sources, the most significant as
he saw it was that in ancient natural histories the vulture was a female creature, impregnated only by the wind. Freud confidently concluded that Leonardo, taken from his mother to join his father and
Donna Albieri, had transformed pleasurable memories of being
nursed by his mother into the unmistakably homosexual fantasy of
taking the vultures penis-tail in his mouth and sucking on itin
this reminiscence substituting the vulture for the mother who had
suckled him. Writing that he was completely ignorant of the age at
which Leonardo actually exchanged his poor, forsaken, real mother
for life with a parental couple, Freud argued that it fits in best
with the interpretation of the vulture phantasy if that age were to
be set at three at the least, at five at most. That early experiences
were determinative of lifelong patterns underwrote Freuds favoring
the later age, which rendered Leonardo fatherless longer; paternal
absence figured centrally in the histories of his and his colleagues
homosexual patients. Further, contended Freud, surely only years
of disappointment would have persuaded the barren Donna Albieri
to accept the illegitimately born boy into her household as her own;
it would have been highly unusual for her to have adopted him earlier. To put Freuds account in its simplest terms: Leonardo was
raised by his real mother, andlike legions of homosexuals subjected to analytic scrutinydeformed by her attentions, in Freuds
words robbed of a part of his masculinity.9
In Freuds theorizing, the bliss and rapture enjoyed mutually
bymother and infant was in the nature of a completely satisfying
love-relation, fulfilling at once a mental wish and physical need. So
satisfying is this love that even in happy families fathers see their sons
as rivals for womanly attentions, calling forth a deep-rooted antagonism against their male offspring and suggesting it was not only the
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boy who had to master his oedipal feelings. The suckling child at the
maternal breast, Freud had written five years before Leonardo appeared, was the prototype of every relation of love. The mutually
enjoyed erotic bliss on display in this first and most significant
ofall sexual relations between mother and son was, in the normal
developmental sequence, inevitably succeeded by loss in the process
of weaning and separation, culminating in the oedipal moment of
renunciation of childish things.10 It was a species of satisfaction that
in Freuds view would never again be attained.
Freud held that men, both those who would turn out homosexual
and their heterosexual brethren, eventually repressed their mother
attachments. The latter, subjected to paternal authority and oedipal
terror, identified with their fathers and entered the company of civilized men. The former, prompted by motive forces Freud argued were
not yet understood, narcissistically identified with their mothers and
put themselves in her place, fated forever to love boys as their mothers
had loved them, forever faithful to their mothers in running away
from erotic engagements with other women.
Maternal attention, in the Freud of these years, was a doubleedged sword. He conceived of it in his other writings as blissfully
erotic and completely satisfying, a foundation for worldly success in
later life. Those fortunate enough to grow up as their mothers favorites, he wrote, often exhibited an enviable if peculiar self-reliance
and an unshakeable optimism that could appear as indubitably
masculinist heroic attributes. But in Leonardo he focused on the
violence of the maternal caress, the menace of the single mothers
tender seductions, the excessive tenderness visited on the hapless son by the unsatisfied mother-without-a-mate. Starved for a
husbands caresses, the poor forsaken Caterina, like all unsatisfied mothers, . . . took her little son in place of her husband, with
this move determining his destiny and the privations that were in
store for him.11 Attempting to satisfy her own unmet longings, she
awakened Leonardos eroticism too early.
Freuds construal of mother love as menace here is striking, especially because it coincided with his normalization of paternal aggression in the Oedipus complex. In Leonardo Freud cast the mother,
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not the father, as the real threat to the boy. Freud positioned Woman
in opposition to civilization, a masculine enterprise held together by
social feelings . . . of a homosexual nature, arguing in a presentation
to his colleagues in 1912 that she rendered man asocial, representing
both unbridled nature and what he later specified as the retarding
and restraining interests of the family and sexual life. The menacing,
seductive, and unsatisfied mother of Leonardoa masculine woman,
able to push the father out of his proper placestands here in
sharp contrast to the pure and tender mother found elsewhere in
Freuds writings.12 The germ of the overbearing Mom of midcentury
American analysis and popular criticism, who in her ministrations
spawned a generation of homosexual sissies, can be glimpsed in the
predatory preoedipal Caterina.
Sitting Pretty
Concurrent with the writing of Leonardo, the seeds were being sown
of a fateful confrontation between Freud and his epistolary intimate
Ferenczi, a confrontation in which self-sovereignty and mastery, dependency and homosexuality figured centrally. Freud would emerge
from the clash proclaiming his independence and mastery, while Ferenczi would agonize over the rupture that followed until the day he
died. By the time the two embarked on their Italian journey at the
end of the summer of 1910, the dynamic that would characterize
their relationship for the next twenty years had already been established. Freud would repeatedly offer himself up as the plenitudinous
father to Ferenczis needy baby, exacting from Ferenczi a constant
stream of idealizations, and would then castigate him for the same,
claiming to have no need of them.
Lets go to Sicily together, then, Freud wrote to Ferenczi in the
spring of 1910, finding himself correcting Leonardo and otherwise
doing nothing. They had met two years earlier when Ferenczi traveled to Freuds consulting room in Vienna from his home in Budapest,
where he had been lecturing on psychoanalytic topics and treating
patients for years. They immediately entered into an easy and increas-
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ingly intimate correspondenceplayful, engaged, and, for a pen-andink age, remarkably contemporary in its urgent, rapid-fire feel. Freud
was fifty-two, Ferenczi thirty-five. By the time Freud proposed the Sicilian trip, 150 letters had passed between the two, and Ferenczi had
sailed with Freud and Jung to the United Statesthe occasion of
Freuds lectures at Clark Universityin September 1909. As was so
often the case in Freuds life, however, with intimacy came conflict,
notwithstanding his expressed desire on the eve of their travels for
a companion between whom and myself not a hint of discord is
possible.13
The month before the trip to Sicily, Freud and Ferenczi wrote
each other almost daily in excited anticipation of camaraderie and
friendship. The holiday loomed importantly in Freuds mind, he
wrote, especially in its promise of the fairy-tale feeling of living in
freedom and beauty. Ferenczi, for his part, was counting the days,
daydreaming about the trip during some of the more monotonous
analyses.14 Talk of anticipation, yearning, and longing to be together
on the beautiful island is scattered through the letters Freud and Ferenczi exchanged.
The men were together four weeks, setting out from Leyden, where
Freuds family was on holiday, stopping first in Paris for a minute
examination of the Leonardos in the Louvre, and then in Florence,
Rome, and Naples before sailing on to Palermo. The city is an incredible feast, Freud wrote to his wife, Martha: Such a wealth of
color, such views, such fragrant smells, and such a sensation of wellbeing I have never experienced all at once. They spent two weeks in
Sicily, by day visiting ruins and exulting in the beauty of the surroundings. The evenings were another matter. Ferenczi expected they would
continue discussing the matters of mutual concern that had filled
their letters, but Freud acted otherwise. He had brought along Daniel Paul Schrebers Memoirs of My Nervous Illness, a book Jung had
recommended, which provided ample material to fuel Freuds developing speculations on the connections between homosexuality and
paranoia. He and Ferenczi had apparently talked about the book at
some length while traveling. One evening in Palermo, Freud invited
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Decried as a Homosexual
Accounting for the origins of homosexuality and identifying the laws
that governed its emergence were major preoccupations of Freud
and his colleagues. Leonardo notwithstanding, Freud was famously
known to be tolerant of homosexuals, holding they were not sick
persons and that homosexuality was, as he wrote in 1935 to an
American mother concerned about her sons sexuality, neither vice
nor degradation. In 1921, Freud opposed Jones, backing a manifest
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Freuds texts and statements in fact oscillate between characterizations of the homosexual as capable ofindeed, defined by
loving others of his sex on the one hand and on the other as utterly
incapacitated for love by solipsistic devotion to the former self his
mother had once loved. Freud observed homosexuals attempting to
relate to others, pursuing boys and seeking to be lovers, but the logic
of his argument ensured that he would theorizeand make literal
only the sameness (the qualities shared between self and other) in
such relations despite his observations and his consistently allowing
that there were many types of homosexuality.
Freuds argument that homosexuality consists in a relation to oneself instead of to another was at odds with the developing analytic
truism that homosexuality lay at the root of social life. Psychoanalysts spoke with one voice on this issue, with Jung, for example, seeing tremendous advantages in homosexuality, suited as it was to
large agglomerations of males (businesses, universities, etc.), and
Ferenczi seeing it in friendship leagues, in club life, etc. Freud even
suggested that homosexuals were perhaps better suited than heterosexuals to social life, for while the latter competed with their peers
for women, the former had early on overcome their rivalrous impulses
toward their fellows. A colleague, for example, might be thought
agreeable on account of his well-sublimated homosexuality. Exclusive and private interests fueled heterosexuality, while public and
communal interests were consonant with homosexuality. Invoking
what was apparently common wisdom among his fellow analysts,
Freud observed that highly developed social instinctual impulses
were to be found in many homosexuals, characterized by their devotion to the interests of the community. He later elaborated on
this idea, arguing that as love for women disrupted the bonds of
race, nationality, and social class, homosexual love was far more
compatible with group ties, even when it takes the shape of uninhibited sexual impulsionswhich he himself thought a remarkable
fact. Freuds argument was that social feeling was premised on sublimated homosexuality, which made for good collegial relations.28
Woman, more than the homosexual, was the disruptive force in social life.
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One year after his and Freuds Sicilian trip, Ferenczi was theorizing homoerotism, a term he preferred to homosexuality in its
foregrounding of the psychical over the biological, taking the measure of how much had been lost in mens avoidance of mutual
affection and amiability, the enthusiasms of male friendship that
the ancients had so unselfconsciously enjoyed. Ferenczi could see
around him but slight vestigial traces of what had once been a robust mode of male relations, in its positive instantiations in club
and party life and in its negative in the barbarous duels of the
German studentsnone of which could compensate men for losing the love of friends. Instead, as he saw it, men displaced their
unappeased homoerotism onto women. Obsessively heterosexual,
these men became the slaves of womenunnaturally chivalrous
and idolatrous toward themas the price of freeing themselves
from their fellows. Ferenczi, perhaps the first theorist of heteronormativity, argued that repression of homoerotism, of mens natural
affection for one another, produced obsessive reinforcement of
hetero-erotism. He saw the same dynamic at work in his own person. Probing what he called his homosexual fixation, he explained
to Freud that there was in him a woman and only behind her [is]
the real man, his own heterosexuality a reaction formation against
homosexuality.29
The ubiquity and even the necessity of homosexuality were thus
common coin among early analysts. From the perspective of the
London-based analyst J. C. Flgel, who introduced the terms homosocial and heterosocial in a 1927 publication, this was common
sense. A man who falls in love with a woman, he argued, was obviously less gregarious with his friends than was the single man. The
exigencies of sexual lovecharacterized by private, secretive and
absorbing affectionwere at odds with societys demands. As an
analytic colleague summarized Flgels argument: that sexuality
and sociality are antagonistic made social relationship [sic] between
members of the same sex easier than between members of the opposite sex. Yet homosexuality was from the start routinely cast in
the analytic literature as an objectless, even autistic or masturbatory,
form of sexual expression. By the middle of the twentieth century,
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Healthy Narcissism
That narcissistic, developmentally arrested love of self was opposed
to mature love of the other quickly became analytic wisdom in the
wake of Freuds Leonardo. Yet from the start this straitened view of
narcissism elicited objectionsat least when love among heterosexuals was at issue. Immediately upon reading a draft of On Narcissism, Ferenczi questioned Freuds suggestion that self-love and objectlove made competing claims on individuals. The person in love, Freud
wrote in the essay, seems to give up his own personality in favor
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of investing his libido in the other; put more technically, the subjects
ego-libido and object-libido in Freuds view formed a closed system,
as the more of the one is employed, the more the other becomes
depleted. Libido, that is, was allocated either to the self or to the
other. It could not reside in both at once. In a letter to Freud, Ferenczi
disagreed, arguing that the self in love was enhanced, bringing objects into its compass and using them as sources of pleasure through
the mechanism of introjection, a concept that Ferenczi had introduced in his 1909 paper, Introjection and Transference.33 Self-love
and object-love were from his perspective mutually reinforcing.
Other analysts went public with their challenges to Freuds conception of narcissism. His Viennese colleague Paul Federn coined
the term healthy narcissism in the 1930s to denote a range of observed narcissistic phenomena that the ascendant understanding of
Freuds position on narcissism could not account for. Federns aim
was to wrest narcissism from the realm of pathology to which he
suggested it had been unjustifiably restricted. He pointed out that
while in the rigid dictionary sense the term denoted pathology
and could never be used to refer to any sort of object relationship, in
fact even in the hands of Freudwhom he noted invoked common
everyday senses of critical words to convey technical meaningsit
referred to normalcy and to relations with objects. Federn maintained that there were aspects of the healthy, normal self rooted in
narcissism, better conveyed in laymans language than in the psychoanalysts idiom. General well-being, self-assurance, self-assertion,
satisfaction with ones own personality, the inner resources and
equanimity that underwrote the adults capacity to weather the
frustrations of daily lifeall were sustained by pleasurable and
narcissistically gratifying positive investment in the self. Individuals fantasies of love, greatness, and ambition, in which narcissism
and object strivings were both visible, were often the basis of worldly
accomplishment and creativity. Federns point was that these desires
were not to be castigated but understood; progressively tempered in
the course of life by the demands of reality, they took the form of
useful planning and pondering.34
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The term healthy narcissism was absent from Freuds oeuvre. It fit
uneasily with his developmental scheme, which saw the mature self
transcending its early narcissism. Healthy narcissism referred to a
different dimension of personhood, whether it was an experiential
orientation or a capacityfor exuberance, for liveliness and resourcefulness, for inner freedom and vitality. Federn and the few
other analysts who invoked the concept before its popularization in
the 1970s used it in reference to the selfs needs for growth and
mastery, to its feelings of triumph over difficulties, and, more capaciously, to the capacity to enjoy life. They noted variously that
mental harmony in the adult corresponded to adequate self-love,
that healthy narcissism was protective of the self, that feelings of
self-liking with which healthy narcissism was associated sustained a
subjective sense of well-being, and that healthy narcissism was critical not only for creative work but also for full mutuality in mature
object relationships.35
Self-esteem was central to this conversation. A venerable term, it
had long appeared in the vernacular as a synonym for positive feelings about the self. In On Narcissism, Freud used the word Selbstgefhlself-feeling, translated by the editors of the Standard Edition as self-regardrepeatedly, writing near the end of the essay
that it appears to us to be an expression of the size of the ego and
that it was increased by everything a person possesses or achieves
as well as by remnants of the primitive feeling of omnipotence
confirmed by experience. Notably, Freud speculated that in loverelations ones Selbstgefhl was raised by being loved and lowered
by nota formulation that confused his colleagues in contradicting
what he had written about the more mechanistic workings of libido
but that approximates the understandings of self-esteem developed
from the late 1920s on. Some English-speaking analytic readers of
the German Freud rendered Selbstgefhl as self-esteem; writing in
1946, Erik Erikson simply assumed that Freud was talking about
self-esteem in On Narcissism. Other native German speakers also
traded easily in self-esteem, among them Otto Fenichel and Annie
Reich, endowing it with a positive valence and, taking its presence
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and importance for granted, focusing attention on its sources, regulation, and maintenance. The term self-esteem appeared sporadically in
the English language analytic literature beginning in the 1920s. A
turning point of sorts is captured in the editors note to a 1928 paper
by Sndor Rdo explaining his decision to render Selbstgefhl, which
he noted was usually translated by the neutral word self-regard,
variously as self-respect, self-esteem and self-satisfaction, as well as
by self-regard because, in his estimation, Rdos usage of it was
more positive than could be conveyed by the word self-regard alone.
In this paper, Rdo observed that the self-esteem of strong individuals, premised realistically on their own achievements, barely fluctuated in response to the trivial offences and disappointments of
everyday life, while their weaker counterparts relied on the approbation and recognition of others for the narcissistic gratifications
they needed to maintain their self-esteem in the face of lifes many
challenges. Self-esteem was, in Rdos hands, a condition of healthy
independence of others, its absence sparking strong cravings for
love and external supports. Fenichel similarly envisioned self-esteem
as a fungible quantity subject to regulation, whether internally or
externally, highlighting the ways in which some regulated their selfesteem in dependence on others for external supplies and love.
And Annie Reich saw narcissistic disturbance not in high self-esteem
but only in its poor regulation, as visible in the self-inflation of
those who could not realistically bend to realitys demands and accept their limitationsgiving voice to the analytic view that development demanded of individuals that they relinquish their infantile
omnipotence, nurtured in a context of perfectly responsive maternal
care that saw to their every need, for the more realistic self-appraisals
of mature adulthood. From the 1920s through the 1960s, laboring at
the margins of the analytic field, Rdo, Fenichel, and Reich, among
others, in effect recouped for analysis, in the form of self-esteem, the
self-feeling that constituted the largely overlooked positive narcissism Freud briefly outlined.36
It fell to Kohut to bring healthy narcissism and the self-esteem on
which it was premised from the periphery of the analytic conversation to the center, to celebrate what defenders of Freuds orthodoxy,
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problem was not that the narcissist is too much in love with himself, as it was put to Kernberg in a 1978 interview, or that they
love only themselves and nobody else but, rather, their self-hate a
significant factor, that they love themselves as badly as they love
others. Envious of what they could not themselves enjoy, they had
to spoil, depreciate, and degrade the capacity others had to find
emotional gratification in love.40
Once narcissism became healthy, the psychoanalysts homosexual narcissist quickly and quietly dropped from view. And once self-love was
recast as self-esteem, it was transformed into a popularif almost immediately contestedideal. Common wisdom circa 1970 held that it
was a simple psychological fact that you cannot love anyone unless
you love yourself first. Psychotherapist Nathaniel Brandens 1969
book, The Psychology of Self-Esteem (the latest editions subtitle reads
A Revolutionary Approach to Self-Understanding That Launched a
New Era in Modern Psychology), retrospectively credited with getting the self-esteem ball rolling, exhorted readers to love themselves before anything else. Other books with titles like How to Be
Your Own Best Friend and articles with titles like What Makes
a Woman a Good Lover touted the virtues of self-love and selfesteem as well as the foundational role both played in the making of
remarkably productive citizens able to value themselves and others,
too. Popular magazines invited readers to measure their self-esteem
by taking quizzes featuring statements such as People generally admire me and I see myself as a good-looking person, with strong
agreement indicative of an estimably high self-esteem. Keep up the
good work, counseled one author to those who scored the highest.
And Essence editorialized in the early 1980s that it was time for we
Black folk to start celebrating the self, to experience and hold on to
the glorious feeling of self-love. You can have a sense of purpose
if you adopt an inner attitude of personal esteem, counseled the
magazine. No one can nurture or bolster your self-esteem better
than you! One analysts observation that mental harmony in the
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narcissism referred to to self-love, or self-esteem. To a public debating the pros and cons of self-esteem, however, narcissismof the
decidedly pathological varietycame into play only when too much
self-esteem was at issue. In the popular conversation, narcissism was
not normalized in the 1970s analytic revolution, only becoming
healthy some thirty years on.45
Five
INDEPENDENCE
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Hallucinatory Independence
Freud first used the term primary narcissism in reference to a hypothesized early developmental state of aloneness and self-sovereignty
that he argued preceded the infants connectedness to anyone other
than itself. Babies, he held, were blissfully oblivious to reality, capable of attaining satisfaction merely by hallucinating its achievement,
just as one might experience pleasurable feelings in dreams. The Freudian infant was fundamentally invested in loving itself, autoerotic in
its taking of itself and no one else as a love object. It felt itself to be
omnipotent, overestimating the efficacy of its thoughts and imagining its needs might be met by so much screaming and beating about
with its arms and legs. It was nothing short of sovereign: His Majesty the Baby, in the estimation of its besotted parents the centre
and core of creation.2
The infants autarkic sovereignty was, of course, a fantasy. As
any mother then or now can tell you, no one is more needy and
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dependent than an infant. Writing in 1911, shortly after the appearance of Leonardo da Vinci and a Memory of His Childhood, Freud
conceded as much, qualifying his description of the infants enviable
capacity to meet its own needs by adding the words provided one
includes with it the care it receives from its mother. The mother and
her ministrations quickly dropped from Freuds view, however, and
the infant of his telling emerged as increasingly sovereignand fictional. Not for another twenty years, in his essay Female Sexuality, would he theorize, let alone mention, the childs dependence on
its mother. It is worth noting that in Civilization and Its Discontents, published in 1930, Freud wrote that he could not think of any
need in childhood as strong as the need for a fathers protection, a
remarkable statement that was consistent with his view of the mother
as a hallucinatory presence in the infants life.3
Sndor Ferenczi, by contrast, hypothesized that it was only the
fetus that was without wants, bringing the mother into the infants
ambit as a real, not hallucinatory, presence. In the womb, he wrote,
when all care fell to the mother, when the human lived as a parasite
of the mothers body, the fetus had everything it could want. Beyond the womb, Ferenczi consistently saw a hovering maternal presence, whether of mother or nurse, that enabled the infants sense of
omnipotence, its feeling that it had all it could want and that there
was nothing left to wish for. As portrayed by Ferenczi, this maternal presence was a master illusionist, instinctively intuiting the infants wishes for return to the state of complete satisfaction it had
enjoyed in utero and fulfilling them by her swaddling, rhythmical
rocking, and monotonous lullabies. That the infant had no knowledge of or interest in the nurses existence and activity only underscored how perfectly calibrated her attentions were. The infant was
irreducibly solipsistic in its expectation that the mothers interests
would always be the same as its own, an expectation that Ferenczis
fellow Hungarian Alice Balint would later analyze in On Love for
the Mother and Mother-Love, a brilliant but little noted paper.
For all of us it remains self-evident that the interests of mother and
child are identical, she wrote, adding that the generally acknowledged measure of the goodness or badness of the mother is how far
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she really feels this identity of interests. Notably, Balint argued that
motherhood offered its own intense gratifications. In her hands, the
relation between mother and child was characterized by a Ferenczian mutuality and interdependence.4
Freud acknowledged in On Narcissism that the childs primary
narcissism was not in fact directly observable and could only be inferred. He envisioned its existence in observations of the moving but
childish quality of parental love, which in its overvaluation of the
childs gifts and capabilities, he argued, was but a revival and reproduction of the parents own abandoned childhood narcissism. And
he hypothesized that the megalomania of adult schizophrenics, primitive peoples, and children alike was not a new creation but a
magnification of a previously existing infantile condition. This megalomania, consisting in an over-estimation of the power of their
wishes and a grandiose belief in the omnipotence of their thoughts,
was kept under control in normal adults. Freud had already proposed that love of self and love of others were inversely related,
arguing that as one was enhanced, the other was depleted and that
the homosexuals overweening self-love ruled out object-love. Now,
in 1914, Freud was arguing that it was not only homosexuals who
narcissistically sought themselves as a love object but, rather, everyone. We say that a human being has originally two sexual objects,
Freud explained, himself and the woman who nurses him.5 Freud
was now convinced that the ego was from the start self-loving, invested in itself and not in others, without wants and without desires, a
proposition that his colleaguesthen and for many years afterward
found utterly bewildering. How could the self love the self? Who or
what was doing the loving in this construal?
The concept of primary narcissism has proven particularly problematic in the history of psychoanalysis. Critics have cast it as, at
best, inconsistently used, complex, and highly theoretical and, more
devastatingly, as purely hypothetical, even tautological, an unnecessary concept descriptive of no recognizable state. Analysts focused
on the mother, especially those analysts based in Britain and in
Hungary, were among the first to register objections to the concept,
focusing on its occlusion of the maternal role. Arguing that the
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credited the households harmony to his wife Marthas gentle nature. Yet another, gesturing to the division of labor that worked to
Freuds advantage, lightheartedly observed that if he had a wife
like Martha he too would have written all those books. Intelligent
young men, Freud wrote from the wisdom of middle age, knew to
choose a wife not for physical beauty but for cheerfulness and the
talent to make their life easier and more beautiful. Martha Freud
was abundantly endowed with that talent, completely devoted to
her husbands welfare. After his death, she would claim that in fiftythree years of marriage the two had never exchanged an angry word
and that she had done all she could to remove from his path the
misery of everyday life.9 Managing the large household with methodical and unobtrusive efficiency, she allowed Freud what was
even by the conventions of bourgeois households of the time an extraordinary measure of freedom from domestic concerns. The care
of the six children, the preparations and presentation of meals, the
management of the staffall this fell to Martha.
Much has been written of Martha Freuds devoted domesticity.
Her evident contentment in fulfilling her husbands expectation that
women fashion themselves as, in Joness words, ministering angels
to the needs and comforts of men has occasioned discomfort among
some feminists who would prefer to discern some nobler calling or
spark of rebelliousness in this exemplarin psychoanalytic terms
ofnormal femininity. Indeed, the management of the household that
Sigmunds fellow analysts and idealizing biographers have portrayed
lyrically, stressing the couples complementarities, takes on a darker
cast in the hands of Katya Behling, a recent feminist chronicler of Marthas life. All observers are in agreement that order and punctuality
regimentation, in Behlings characterizationwere seen as special
virtues in the household, and that the professor lived by the clock.
Rising every morning at seven to dress himself in clothes Martha
had laid out for him, Sigmund was said to have been given a helping hand in getting washed and dressed, Behling writes, adding that
rumor had it she would even put the toothpaste on his brush for
him. Following a quick breakfast and a glance at the days news, he
was off to his study where, from eight oclock until one, he saw pa-
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tients for sessions, each lasting fifty-five minutes. Every spare moment between analyses he devoted to catching up on his voluminous
correspondence. Lunch, the main meal of the day, was a precisely
choreographed production during which Freud, in the company
of his chatting wife and children, sat in a preoccupied silence that
puzzled the occasional guest. After lunch, Freud took his near-daily
constitutional through the neighborhood, stopping to visit publishers or to replenish his supply of cigars. Coffee was served by the
households maids at four. More patients followed, often until nine
at night. Finally, after relaxing a bit with his family at supper, he returned to solitary work in his study, writing letters and analytic papers, until heading to bed at one or later. Through all this, Martha
was quietly and efficiently organizing, managing, coordinating, cleaning, shopping, and entertaining, overseeing the household with what
Behling sees as almost military rigor.10
The only unconventional aspect of the house was that it was, of
course, the incubator for the new and sometimes scandalous science
of psychoanalysis, from which Martha, by one account considering
it a form of pornography, distanced herself. The production and
transmission of psychoanalytic knowledge was an immensely laborintensive undertaking. As was typical in such home-centered enterprises, family members were pressed into service. There were manuscripts to be written out and copied by hand. When Freud wanted
to send a colleague a snippet from a published paper, someone had to
laboriously transcribe the text. Packets containing unpublished manuscript materials had to be entrusted to the post and might be lost.
Possessed of what Jones termed a feminine ineptitude for making
travel arrangements, Freud relied on his son Oliver to read train
timetables and to book cabins with steamship companies for his
frequent travels. His daughtersnow my secretary, he remarked
of Sophie in 1910, when she was fifteen years oldhelped distribute
analytic publications to colleagues across Europe and, when he was
in his seventies and not up to the physical demands of writing, Anna,
the mistress of the typewriter, stepped in. At the center of this hive
of productive activity was Freuds sister-in-law Minna Bernays, Marthas younger sister, who moved into the Freud household in 1896,
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ten years after the death of her fianc. Bernays oversaw much of the
logistics of Freuds professional life, from mailing packages to corresponding with hotels about lodgings for participants in analytic
gatherings. I cant take care of anything myself, Freud once wrote
to Ferenczi when Bernays was away and unable to helpthus assuming the feminine position that he would find so distasteful in his
epistolary intimate.11
Freud took for granted the dependence on womens labors that
made his immersion in productive work and enjoyment of a world
of homosocial pleasures possible. Dependence on men, however,
unsettled him. Jones, who could no more tolerate Freuds dependencies than the master himself could, discussed the issue at length in
his biography. It comes up first in his account of Freuds passionate
friendship with Wilhelm Fliess, which traces an arc from dicey dependence to heroic freedom, culminating in Freuds manful overcoming of his needs for companionship and embarking alone on the
self-analysis that would prove to be the foundational moment for
his new science of psychoanalysis. At the end of this chapter of his
life, by Joness telling, Freud stands alone, his need for personal dependence forever vanquished.12
Jones attempted to downplay Freuds manifest thralldom to Fliess
by declaring it a sign not of inner weakness but of a terrifying
strength, assuring the reader it was the complete opposite of the
more familiar type of dependence of the weak on the strong before
going on to disavow it altogether as the manifestation of a decadelong psychoneurosis. These assertions notwithstanding, Jones admitted that Freud more than Fliess had a need of psychological dependence. Joness account of the dynamics of the relationship, for all
its insistence on the gratifying mutual admiration that sustained
the two, insistently returned to the imbalance of need that he found
so unsettling. In the end, even for Jones, there was no getting around
the fact that Freuds need was great.13
We can see the arc of Freuds relationship with Fliess replicated in
his relationship with Jung. The two analysts carried on an intense,
tumultuous correspondence that opened in 1906 with warmth and
self-revelation before descending into disillusionment, hostility,
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parasitism that shadowed her past the midpoint of the twentiethcentury period and whose reliance on her husbands family wage
obscured his own economic dependence on his employer. As her
dependency was highlighted, his was occluded. By the end of the
nineteenth century, dependencys compass had shifted to refer less to
an individuals social, economic, or political status than to his or her
characterological disposition. It took on a psychological dimension,
referring to an excessive emotional neediness and to a childish
refusal of independence.16
Enter Freud and his colleagues, many of whom from the start
linked dependency with women and children, reflexively qualifying
the term with infantile or childish when using it in reference to
adults. When it was a mans dependency that was at issue, it was
deemed girlish, morbid, or even paralyzing. The boys task, as Freud
saw it, was to renounce infantile pleasures and join the company of
men. Within the world of the analysts Oedipus, the boy is not dependent on the mother; rather, he desires her. To be really progressive, free and independent, an individual must shake off his infantile
attachment to, and dependence on, the parentswhether as real individuals, as memories of these individuals, or as incorporations of
these individuals within the self, one analyst wrote in 1927, paraphrasing the Freudian perspective. The girls task, by contrast, was
to accede to her biologically determined inferiority, manifest in her
lack of a penis. The sovereign separateness that was the boys aim
was an option closed to her, who in transforming her stymied wish
for a penis into a wish for a child took her father in the place of the
disappointingbecause penislessmother as her love object. That
is, while the boy emerged from the oedipal moment without attachments, the girl emerged dependent on a manher father. Freud and
his colleagues proposed that womans dependence on man was not a
social fact but, variously, biological, physiological, or natural. Jones,
for example, claimed that women, for obvious physiological reasons, depended more on their partners of the opposite sex for sexual gratification than did men. In the social sphere, it was far more
common to see traits associated with independence such as enterprise, responsibility, initiative, and self-reliance in men than in
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Self-Sufficiency
Dependency figured centrally in Laschs indictment of 1970s
American culture. Freud and his colleagues located the origins of
dependency in the earliest stages of human development. Lasch,
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Lasch critiqued consumer society from the perspective of the selfsufficient subject with few needs and no superfluous wants. He argued that people would still be able to provide for their own needs
as they had once done had they not, since the 1920s, been subjected
to reeducation at the hands of advertisers intent on discouraging
home production to stimulate consumer demand. Invoking handicraft production as an ideal, without, however, specifying what
goods he envisioned individuals actually crafting, he maintained
that Americanssurrounded by objects they had not themselves
madewere weak and dependent where they had once been masterful and independent. In Haven in a Heartless World, published in
1977, Lasch called for the restoration of paternal sovereignty in the
household, sovereignty that he thought had been too readily yielded
to the feminizing agents of the helping professionssocial workers,
educational reformers, temperance advocatespromising to liberate women from the oppressions of the family.27 He began to round
out his vision of familial autarky in The Culture of Narcissism, supplementing the political and emotional dimensions outlined in Haven in a Heartless World with a material dimension that was anachronistic and austere, even grandiose, in its scope. His vision would
have families living on the farm and off the grid and men meeting in
the town square while women cooked, cleaned, sewed, andrecall
those consequencesreared children, all without recourse to technology or the marketplace.
Phony Independence
Kohuts combative claim, shortly before he died, that independence
was a phony value was a frontal assault on one of the core principles of Freudianism. In his view, classical analysis mistakenly took
for granted that independence was the goal of development, and that
children naturally matured as they overcame their helplessness and
dependencies. Kohut recognized throughout his writings individuals strivings for independence, and he was attuned to the pleasures
of experiencing oneself as an independent self, assertive and alive.28
But he argued that Freudsand, by implication, Laschsstress on
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cruel ventriloquism of what he took to be Freuds pessimistic philosophy, I care for nobody and nobody cares for me. That Freud
fashioned himself fiercely independent while being unable to tolerate the same in his followers has long been noted; the gist of Jungs
complaint that Freud kept his analytic colleagues in a state of infantile dependency recurs regularly in the literature. His Dependence on Men, Erich Fromms provocatively titled chapter in his
popular book, Sigmund Freuds Mission, published in 1959, challenged Freuds self-portrayal, as well as the portrait sketched by the
idolizing Jones. Fromm charged that Freud was ashamed of, and
hated his dependencies on his male intimates. A reader of his voluminous correspondence with these intimates cannot but be struck
by how pressing is the issue of who can admit to needing what, and
by the assiduousness with which Freud managed the closeness and
intimacy of those relationshipsaided, to be sure, by the fact they
were epistolary, not face-to-face.34
Kohut recognized that analysts unexamined commitment to independence values was based not only on Freudian ideals but also on
the centrality of these values to the western tradition. He objected to
their distorting influence and abiding primacy in the hierarchy of
Mans values. Kohut was largely successful in his campaign to dethrone independence as an unquestioned analytic ideal. Desperately
committed to an illusory sovereignty and self-sufficiency, narcissists
were defined by Kohut and his colleagues not by their dependency
but by their fiercely held, fantasized independence. Lasch thought of
himself as a student of the new narcissism, but on the question of
independenceas on othershe was more classically Freudian than
he knew. He cast the narcissist as dependent and saw narcissism sustained by the dependent way of life that he argued was the new
cultural ideal, and saw nothing of what analysts might have considered narcissism in his own valorizations of self-sufficiency.35
Freuds primary narcissism corresponds to the fantasy of the
freestanding, sovereign male self of the social theorists, the self without needs and without attachment. Analysts working in the classical
tradition pathologized dependency, gratification, and satiation,
contrasting them to the much vaunted independence, renunciation,
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and asceticism that were their own ideals. In favoring the latter over
the former, mainstream analysts were arguing from the same position as were the social critics who eviscerated their contemporaries.
Revisionist analysts situated the human person in a relationship of
dependence from the start and, in contrast to their classical colleagues, stressed the inevitability of dependence and the therapeutic
value of gratifications. Advancing their critiques of the modal Americans lack of independence, quest for instant gratification, and immersion in the pleasures of the moment, social critics blamed psychoanalysis for offering a vision of life without restraints. In doing
so, they misread mainstream psychoanalysis, which held dependency and gratification in as much contempt as they themselves did,
blaming it for loosening the restraints of tradition and undermining
the social order.
Six
VA N I T Y
Vanity, long referring to a female taste for frivolity and desire for admiration, has been associated with narcissism
from the start. What Freuds colleague Otto Rank called normal
feminine vanity entered the psychoanalytic conversation in 1911,
making its debut linked to the narcissistically tinged love of ones
own body that Rank suggested was especially evident in women and
feminized homosexuals. Maintaining that woman was more narcissistic than man, analysts in the next several decades confidently theorized womanly narcissism as compensatory and biologically determined, derivative of the castration girls underwent at puberty. As
one explained, a young womans physical beauty makes up to her
for the lost penis she had once virtually possessed. Her masculine
strivings renounced with the loss of the male organ, woman was
fated to prize the beauty of her figure and face and was destined
to sexually and aesthestically excite the desire of men.1
Female narcissism, whether expressive of beauty and charm or of
lack and deformity, was in early analysts construals an acceptable if
inescapable accommodation to womans subordination to man, an
adaptive response to the cold facts of anatomical difference mobilized in the service of heterosexual desirability. Freud, however, in
his essay On Narcissism gives us a female narcissistin his estimation the purest and truest type of womanconceptualized in
terms not of biological lack but of an enviable psychic plentitude. In
contrast to his colleagues, Freud was focused primarily not on the
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self reveling in sensuous experience of the world that was too often
denied to men, or that men denied themselves. They saw clothing
not as mere frippery but as a site for individuals to experience a
range of distinct pleasures, at once material and emotional. Among
these, in the words of one psychologist, was the sense of power, of
initiative, of individuality, and of making a thing ones own. Narcissism would soon enough be associated with selfish ruthlessness,
arrogance, vanity, and ingratitude, but for the moment, in this conversation, pleasure and narcissism were aligned, much as they were
in Freuds On Narcissism. The early-twentieth-century psychoanalysts and psychologists who made the case for narcissistic enjoyments were challenging the negative moral valence that had historically trailed vanity.4
Over the next several decades, however, the distress occasioned
by penis envy overshadowed the delights offered by vanity in analytic discussions of womens narcissism. Womens anatomical lack,
inferiority, and handicap were widely seen to account for womens
psychological makeup through the 1960s, within psychoanalysis
and beyond. Then, challenged by feminists and some revisionist analysts and subjected to public scrutiny, penis envy lost some of its
explanatory power. With the debut of the new narcissism in the
1970s, linked to a critique of consumption, commentators increasingly associated vanity with material plentitude, not physical lack.
That womens defining anatomical disability is nowhere to be found
in Christopher Laschs critique of vanity, and that he did not see it as
a specifically female disposition, testifies to how decisively the conversation around it had changed. Rather, Lasch invoked an expansively conceived vanity as symptomatic of narcissism, seeing it, and
the associated sins of pride and acquisitiveness, in modernsboth
male and femalecraving for the empty pleasures of riches, fame,
and power.5
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vanity, which was grounds for their relegation in the male imaginary
to decorative if alluring objects.
As such, women were trapped in the gilded cage constructed by
the analysts hermetic reasoning. According to analysts, women, by
definition narcissistic and lacking, compensated by lavishing attention
on their bodies, rendering themselves objects of display and enhancing in turnin a vicious circle, the London-based analyst J. C. Flgel observedthe narcissistic self-regard that was their psychic and
bodily inheritance and that, moreover, set limits on their full participation in civic life. As Flgel explained, laying out but not critiquing
the vicious circle, the admiration women enjoyed impeded any capacity they might have had for love of the other, the lack of which was
symptomatic of their original narcissism. Flgel plaintively added that
men would be able to compete with womanly narcissismthat is, to
distract women from their admiration of selfin the marketplace of
affection, attraction, love, and sex only if they expended the effort to
make themselves more sexually appealing. Mens appearance, too
often neglected, mattered to womens estimation of thema proposition exemplified, according to Flgel, in womens disappointment
upon seeing a man in civilian clothes after first meeting him in
uniform.9
In his 1930 book, The Psychology of Clothes, Flgel highlighted
the feminine indifference to male opinion that so vexed and fascinated Freud. Flgel maintained that female vanity and the follies of
ruinous competition with other women, not a desire to please men,
largely determined womens choice of attire. Womens interest in eliciting the admiration of men was inversely related to the excessive
modishness of modern-day fashion; that the admiration of men
was so little in evidence accounted in part for fashions excesses.10
When it came to dressand the sexual titillation and attraction it
was intended to effectwomen were narcissistically independent of
male opinion, whether positive or negative.
It was this independence of the other that Freud highlighted in his
1914 portrait of the female narcissist. Freuds woman coolly refused
risking anything of herself in the name of love, which he characterized
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and dissatisfaction with self that analysts and others saw as peculiarly female. Clothing, she wrote in 1916, resulted from mans attempt to remedy the deficiency, to replace what he has lost.14
But in this early conversation, more often than not the meanings
of fashion were considered in a more capacious register. Some observers saw clothing as critical to the survival of the species, with the
exquisite attire of those young persons active in the sexual marketplace cast as the equivalent of the animal kingdoms manes,
beards, crests, tusks and antlers that accompanied sexual maturity
and reproductive readiness. Others, alternately, construed clothing
as a battleground in a brewing sex war between men and women
that saw, along lines later suggested by Flgel, newly emancipated
woman disarming and even vanquishing man, having commandeered his weapons for herself. Womans supremacy was both artistic
and hygienic, testified to by her adoption of fashions more graceful,
varied, and comfortable than the constricting Victorian garments
she had recently discarded even as men consigned themselves to the
dullness that Flgel, among others, condemned. If men suffered from
a sexual apathy at odds with the exhibitionistic possibilities of
clothing, women had embraced them, trading slothful effeminacy
for an ascendant virile self-regard. The distribution of gender power
reversed, woman posed no longer as the weak, dependent creature.15
Womans sartorial emancipation mirrored and enabled her social
emancipation.
In this early-twentieth-century conversation, clothingmost
daringlywas also seen as a site for the sort of self-exploration and
self-expression that would elicit the condemnation of dour moralists. That clothing yielded narcissistic satisfactions was beyond dispute, but whereas the analysts focused on womans insatiable need
for admiration would locate them in a nexus of heterosexual exchange, other commentators, many of them psychologists, saw these
satisfactions as independent of the other, located in the self. As one
put it, it was not mere vanity aroused by the admiration of others
that accounted for humankinds habits of bodily adornment but,
rather, the ways that clothing enhanced and refined the wearers selffeeling. Clothing was from this perspective a source of pleasure,
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heightening and ennobling vital feelings and exciting inner sensations, an extension of personality conditioned by inner necessity.
It might produce the distinctly pleasurable tang of power and initiative, and it might sustain an illusory but experimentally verifiable
sense of expansiveness, of the sentient self beyond the limits of the
body. Along these lines, one psychologist advised his readers to
think of various forms of high headgear and lofty coiffures as pleasurably lengthening the rod of self. And as Bliss wrote, endorsing the
masque as an arena for exploring fantasy and aspiration, other selves
within us must have their setting.16
Most of the young women attending a Normal School in New
York State surveyed in 1905 by the Clark University psychologist
Louis W. Flaccus, as well as a majority of the Britons responding
to a questionnaire Flgel distributed in 1928, in effect agreed with
the notion that clothing was a legitimate form of vanity and selfexpression that could enhance self-esteem and self-confidence and
produce pleasurable bodily sensations. Tight clothing, while spurned
by most, offered gratifications to its devotees, who felt themselves
energized and, as one put it, ready for all contingencies when
subjected to its mild discipline. Attractive dress tends to make one
happy and contented, wrote one respondent; I work more confidently when pleasingly dressed, noted another. Ones spirits respond to ones personal appearance, wrote yet another. Dressed for
an outing, I feel a rise in my animal spirits, noted a nineteen-yearold woman. Her classmates associated dressing well with power,
mastery, and a feeling of equality, as a twenty-year-old put it. The
looser garments favored by most produced the heavenly sensations of air and sun on the skin, and more than a few respondents
contrasted the pleasures of silks to the abominations of scratchy
woolens on sensitive skin. Contra Freuds fantasy of womens herdlike submission to fashions dictates, a higher proportion of male
(35 percent) than female (29 percent) respondents indicated they did
not resist fashion, with those who did citing comfort and economy
as their reasons. Flaccus observed that some men were known to
spend as much as half of their incomes on ordering new suits to replace those barely worn, simply because they preferred novelty to
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wearing the same attire day in and day out. Nor did Flgel find any
gender difference in the time invested in buying and fitting clothes;
men and women alike rated themselves slightly below what they
imagined was average on this score.17
Clothing, as Flgel saw it, was a site of sex war and gender inversion and, for many of those he surveyed, of enjoyments both psychic
and physical, of self-discipline and self-expressionnotably, and in
contrast to most of his fellow analysts, for men as well as for women.
The least conflicted about finding happiness in clothes among his
subjects had successfully transferred the narcissistic pleasure of skin
and muscle erotism from their bodies onto their clothing. The men
in this group had also struck the right balance between the freedom
afforded by loose clothing and the phallic power imparted by stiff
clothingespecially items that project from the surface of the
body. Articulating this tension, one man admitted to a willingness to
sacrifice the physical comforts of soft, silky garments for the sake of
an idea that he associated with snug, tight clothingan idea Flgel
spelled out in a psychoanalytic publication: the idea, that is, of
having a continuous erection. Women more readily than men got
the balance between freedom and constraint right, Flgel argued,
due to the greater scope allowed them to express their narcissism,
but it was an issue everyone had to negotiate. If there was lack here
of the sort that would be breezily invoked as the source of feminine
vanity, or clothes fetishism of the sort Freud saw normative in
women, it was to be found not in the dress as substitute penis but in
that hated but defining article of male attirethe stiff collar that appeared to render him more potent.18
In this extended early-twentieth-century discussion, obscured
from historical view by the post-Flgel hegemony of an analytic consensus that saw clothing as compensation for biological lack and
vanity as a lamentable feminine disability, sartorial satisfaction was
serious business. Fashion, with its insistent novelty and expressive
possibility, was a form of self-making open to women and too often
denied to men, an incitement to male envy. Neither mere caprice
nor mercenary contrivance, fashion in this construal was creative
and generative, replete with notions of fantasy and masquerade. In
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books with titles like The Eternal Masquerade (1923) and Narcissus: An Anatomy of Clothes (1924), the case was made. Dress is an
ever-apparent symbol of personality, wrote the author of Eternal
Masquerade. There is a purpose in what the Puritan loves to denounce as empty vanity, added the author of Narcissus. In the masquerade, Bliss suggested, conditions and occupations actually
closed to us are for the moment, through the medium of clothes,
made our own. The fashion industry might exploit female narcissism
in the pursuit of profits, but, as Flgel pointed out, the transaction
between creator and consumer was two-sided, and its psychology
was difficult to explain.19 In his and others commentary it is easy to
see clothing as the occasion for negotiating the fantastic play of aspiration and power, exuberance and exhibitionism, joy and animal
spiritsin all, as the material expression of narcissistic pleasures.
Female vanity was by the 1930s so well established as a popular
and analytic factand linked to the peculiarly female proclivity for
narcissismthat few questioned whether a similar dynamic might
be found among men. We must learn to tolerate the male body, and
perhaps even to admire itif only as a counterpart to the female
body, which we already idolise, wrote Flgel, who in addition to
lamenting mens slavish conventionality in dress deplored a related
disdain for their own sexual bodies. His solution was for men to
abandon austerity in dress and instead make themselves more sexually appealing to women through their clothing, thus offering men a
relational alternative to the narcissistic bodily self-admiration that
was womans natural state. He proposed then quickly dismissed the
idea that men might adopt a narcissism derivative of bodily selfadmiration, seeing in it a tendency to homosexuality. Appearance
was the province of woman, and when man tended to his own he
was adopting feminine armor. The focus of mens self-admiration,
then, was best located beyond the body.20
For Flgel this meant clothing, but soon enough the automobile
would provide another option. The automobile was recognized
early on as symbolic of virility and male power and by the 1970s
would be conceptualized as a sometimes-magical narcissistic extension of the masculine self, a predatory male body that enabled the
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Secrets of Women
In the mid-1930s, the London-based psychoanalyst Joan Riviere
joined the analytic debate that was seeing female lack and female
narcissism knitted ever more tightly together by proclaiming that
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Freuds view of women was neither credible nor the ordinary judgment of mankind. The feminine fate that Freud could then envision
only in terms of lack, disappointment, and loss, stemming from the
traumatic moment of discovering the absence of the penis, she saw
as offering full and overflowing satisfactions and narcissistic gratifications. In a lengthy review of Freuds New Introductory Essays,
Riviere reminded readers that in his 1914 paper on narcissism Freud
had placed on record the characteristics of what he had called the
purest and truest feminine type. She reproved him for not mentioning these now: the typical female self-sufficiency, inaccessibility, the
relative lack of object-love and satisfaction of women in being loved.
She took the measure of how much had been forfeited in the twenty
years between the Freud of On Narcissism, who had revealed himself as at once fascinated and mystified by womans enigmatic capacity for blissful self-possession, and the Freud who could don the
mantle of science and declare that woman feels inferior and lacking
all her days. Riviere charged Freud with abjuring the analysts duty
in analyzing only what was visible and external. Then, he had seen
masculine envy and retreated in respectful confusion before the
enigma of woman. Now, however, he dismisses the greater narcissism of woman in a word and couples it with feminine vanity as an
overcompensation for the lack of a penis.22
Rivieres pointed assessment of Freuds bafflement in the face of
woman, his dismissive coupling of female vanity and narcissism, returns us to the contentious ground of lack, envy, and possession
worked by the theoreticians of dress. Riviere, much like Flgel, her
colleague in the British Psycho-Analytical Society, saw womans purportedly greater narcissism as cause for celebration, not condemnation. But where Flgel optimistically envisioned women triumphing,
their freedom in attire anticipating a coming social emancipation
and enhanced civic presence, Riviere, concerned with the contrast
between womens inner freedoms and the external difficulties and
disappointments that plagued them, more soberly envisioned women
embracing secretly enjoyed narcissistic pleasures as a solution to the
intractable problem of gendered social subordination. Seeing these
pleasures as incorporative and possessive, modeled on the receptive,
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that incorporation is the foundation for the independence of external love-objects that Freud, in his 1914 essay, had seen as characteristic of the narcissistic woman. Others may have believed the
narcissist incapable of relating to objects, but Riviere saw the narcissist as capable of intensely relating to themif only in their incorporated instantiation. To accept that difficulties and disappointments
were womens lot was to overlook their capacities for satisfied
possession.24
Riviere was a theorist of possession and attachment. To her narcissism was not about emptiness and compensations for it but about
the quality of attachment and the ways in which people related to
one another. She resisted simple equations of narcissism and vanity,
maintaining that while women may enjoy their clothing and their
good looks, this was but an aspect of the self-possessed emotional
autarky she championed as an ideal. Narcissism, as Riviere saw it,
referred to an economy of needs, in which the individual holds and
cherishes within all that she wants and is thereby freed from actual
dependence on anyone or anything. Worldly disappointment is transformed into secret satisfaction in this reading of womans destiny.
Consider Rivieres treatment of the bereaved wife. Dispensing quickly
with the grief that everyone acknowledged the tragedy of losing a husband occasioned, Riviere turned to the widows who had wanted marriage and children but who had not particularly wanted or enjoyed
a man in their lives. For such women, she wrote, widowhood was a
perfect solution, more especially if it brings with it a pension.25
Riviere was here taking on a philosophical tradition that for centuries had cast men as independent, self-contained, and masterful
free agents while envisioning women enmeshed in sustaining webs
of relationships and obligation. Her narcissistic woman is as independent, contained, and masterful as any man. This womans secret was to be found in her narcissism, in the fact that her life was
lived pleasurably, and in her bodywhich Riviere defined broadly
to include her clothes and house as well as her husband and children.
Envisioning these objects held inside, Riviere rendered womans
lack of a penis irrelevant. Satisfied within, Riviere writes, she does
not need a penis without. Woman does not betray her secret, but,
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her subjects psychology, showing how they gratified their narcissism in retreating into a fantasized omnipotence.28 Rivieres work
may be read as an ongoing, if episodic, exploration of narcissism, in
which both its pleasure and terrors are unflinchingly delineated. She
better than anyone else conveyed the experience of living within the
narcissists skin, bringing the narcissists inner landscape fully to life.
Riviere is better known as a pioneering theorist of gender. Feminists have mined her Womanliness as a Masquerade, finding in
her an early, proto-Lacanian theoretician of a nonessentialist womanhood and its public and private strategies. Rivieres subjects are
the intellectual women who disguise their masculine ambitions,
competence, and desires for worldly efficacy behind a masquerade
of femininity that is meant to help them avoid both the anxiety they
experience at the prospect of being found in possession of stolen
phallic trophies and the retribution they unconsciously fear their
possession will elicit from men. It used to be, Riviere writes, that
women with intellectual interests were classified as masculine. Now,
however, in University life, in scientific professions and in business
could be found women who were capable of combining professional
success with conventionally realized femininity. Rivieres professionally accomplished subjects fashion themselves female, attending to
their appearance, dressing in womanly attire, and displaying virtues
traditionally associated with femininitydevotedly caring for others
and acting the part of the mother substitute to friends and relatives.
Women of this type, she held, were especially difficult to classify in
an analytic world in which passivity was associated with the feminine
and activity with the masculine.29
Riviere tells of a highly accomplished intellectual, a speaker and
writer, who, following every public performance, finds herself in the
incongruous position of compulsively ogling and coquetting with
male father figures in the audience, attempting to seduce them into
making sexual advances. In Rivieres account, to lecture in public
was to be in possession of the fathers penis, which the woman could
have obtained only by an act of theft; her flirting and coquetting
were meant to preemptively propitiate the avenger and to disguise
her power, allowing her to appear as merely a castrated woman.
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The Material Me
Writing in the first decade of the new century, the psychologist Louis
W. Flaccus held that certain mental states were so complex and
subtle as to be at the ragged edge of scientific analysis. Among these
complex mental states were the feelings, ranging from the pleasure of
sensations felt on the skin to the more elusive effects on the self
engendered by clothing. Neither a love of praise nor a straightforward impulse to spend money for the sake of spending it could
explain why a man would spend lavishly on clothing. What his sartorially extravagant subject was seeking, Flaccus wrote, was a change
in his material me with whatever subtle emotional displacements
that brings.33
How the material me incorporates objects external to the person
and makes them part of itself was the question taken up by Riviere
and her colleagues in London, among them D. W. Winnicott. Founding members of the British school of object relations, Riviere and
Winnicott traded in internal objects cast more robustly than Freuds.
Both were interested in possession and in the psychic maneuvers by
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others had seen only lack. This active psychic interior allowed
Kernberg to account for some contradictory aspects of narcissistic
behavior that had long puzzled analysts. In his narcissism, nothing
was what it seemed. High self-esteem could mask low self-esteem.
Excessive self-love may be a sign of self-hate. Heightened grandiosity may point to feelings of worthlessness. A manifest dependence
on the analyst may coexist with a desperate fear of relying on anyone. To grapple with this malignant narcissism, it was not enough
to look at isolated narcissistic traits; understanding the whole of a
patients psychic interior as well as the dramas enacted there was
necessary. Kernberg consolidated the project, on which Riviere had
embarked, of conceptualizing the inner world as active, if at times
terrifying.
Heinz Kohut, with his championing of healthy narcissism and its
pleasures, in effect developed another dimension of Rivieres work
her attempt to normalize narcissism and the strong emotions associated with it. He saw healthy expressions of self in childhood exhibitionism and grandiosity where others had seen these behaviors as
pathological. He argued that they were not to be rooted out and
destroyed but, rather, transformed into realistic self-esteem and ambitions. More suggestive is his debt to Winnicott. Kohut singled out
the Winnicottian concept of man as the most congenial with his
own conceptions. He was early on interested in Winnicotts transitional object and drew on it in formulating his own concept of the
selfobject, the other experienced narcissistically within that enabled
the child to gradually assume an existence separate from the mother.
Winnicotts transitional object was a material possession, appearing
to the observer as an inanimate thing, whereas Kohuts selfobject was
a wholly internal construct. Winnicotts transitional object eventually lost its special meaning to the child, while Kohuts selfobjects
sustained individuals throughout their lives.40 Yet both were under
the childs control, experienced narcissistically as part of the self,
and both the transitional object and the selfobject encapsulated a
theory of the selfs experience of the other as supportive, sustaining
presence. Many psychoanalysts since Kohut have treated the transitional object and the selfobject as referring to the same thing and as
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Seven
G R AT I F I C AT I O N
Gratification figured centrally in social commentators jeremiads, encapsulating the contest between excess, satisfaction, and pleasure on the one hand and asceticism, restraint,
and control on the other. Gratification Now Is the Slogan of the
70s, Laments a Historian, reads the title of a 1979 People magazine profile of Christopher Lasch, who singled out the countercultures celebration of living for the moment, immediate gratification,
opposition to the work ethic as exemplary of Americas culture of
narcissism.1 Critics spoke with one voice in condemning what they
argued was an ascendant culture of personal gratification that celebrated self-fulfillment and self-realization at the expense of venerable
habits of abnegation and self-control, and pointed to the narcissist
as an avatar of the unconstrained need and desire that appeared
suddenly so problematic.
From the critics perspective, psychoanalysis was a site of unrelieved
indulgence and gratification, an incubator of the reckless impulsiveness blighting the cultural landscape. Within the discipline, however,
the status of gratification was more complex. Both ubiquitous and
controversial, gratification was central to Freudian theory: the proposition that the mind will seek pleasureinstinctual gratificationand
avoid unpleasure was foundational to classical Freudian drive psychology. But gratification was also at the center of heated debate about
proper analytic technique. Freud recommended that an encompassing
emotional abstinence govern the treatment setting, holding that
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patients wishes, desires, and demands were to be frustrated in the service of the cure. Sndor Ferenczi, dissenting on this as on other issues,
argued that this technique too often inhibited rather than furthered
patients recoveries from their illnesses, and advocated a principle of
indulgence and a gratifying empathy that would act as a counterweight to Freudian frustration. By the late 1920s, Freud and Ferenczi
were bitterly divided over the question of what patients needed and
what analysts should provide them. Freud prevailed; Ferenczi was censored, and banished from the psychoanalytic fold. Their splitwhich
many analysts considered tragic, even traumaticburdened the discipline, dividing it for decades between orthodoxy and revisionism. The
questions that Ferenczis banishment was meant to suppress persisted,
however, and were aired in debates that picked up in the 1950s. These
debates, which in effect converged on the question of whether patients
like Ferencziswho, everyone agreed, were sicker than Freuds, difficult, hopeless, and narcissistically inaccessiblewere properly within
or beyond the analytic compass, testified to how unsettled the field remained thirty years after his expulsion.2
With Heinz Kohuts rise to prominence, psychoanalysis restaged
the traumatic conflict between Freud and Ferenczi. The outcome was
different this time. Under the banner of empathy, Kohut challenged
the asceticism of the midcentury classical analytic setting, deftly if
quietly managing to bring orthodoxy and revisionism together
most effectively, we shall see, on the issue of technique. Recuperating
the Ferenczian project and the Ferenczian patient for psychoanalysis
proper, Kohut began the process of salving psychoanalysiss selfinflicted wound. He imbued the once-suspect gratification with a
neutral, even positive, valence. And Ferenczis difficult patients, now
called narcissists, were rendered fit subjects for the analysts couch.
While not abandoning the Freudian prohibition on sexual gratification between patient and analyst, psychoanalysis quietly abandoned
many of the constraints of its self-imposed austerity.3
Social critics aligned narcissism with indulgence and prescribed
austerity both emotional and material to dampen its efflorescence
and to combat its manifestations. Revisionist analysts from Ferenczi
to Kohut, by contrast, located the roots of narcissism not in material
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Cures of Love
To appreciate how high the gratification stakes are, we need only
peer over Ferenczis shoulder as he put furious pen to private paper,
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casting himself as an enfant terrible in revolt against his oncebeloved but now irredeemably hypocritical Freud. The year was 1932.
At this point, Freud and Ferenczi had been colleagues for more than
twenty years, having traveled together extensively and having exchanged more than twelve hundred remarkably intimate letters. Ferenczi had been able to sustain a relationship with Freud where
other teachers, collaborators, and acolytes had failed and been cast
asideJosef Breuer in 1895, Wilhelm Fliess in 1904, Carl Jung in
1912, Otto Rank in 1924. But he had done this at great personal
cost, learning early on that Freud, while claiming to want mutuality,
would brook neither independence nor dissension. Ferenczis submission, exemplified in his stance of abjectionacceding to Freuds vision of their relationshipfollowing the crisis in Palermo in 1910
described in Chapter 4, had secured his position as Freuds favorite,
his proclaimed crown prince (as Freud had earlier called Jung) and
the most perfect heir of his ideas. Through the 1920s, however,
the wise baby of psychoanalysis had played the part of unruly
adolescent to Freuds coolly restrained pater familias, adopting and
advocating a number of experimental technical innovations that
pushed against the limits of a developing psychoanalytic orthodoxy
and in consequence strained their relationship. Where Freud famously
mandated that analysis was to be carried out in a state of frustration, Ferenczi would respond to his patients wishes.5
It took a particularly disdainful, even mocking, letter from Freud
dated December 13, 1931to push Ferenczi to the break he knew
was the price of his intellectual and emotional freedom. Three weeks
later, he embarked on the Clinical Diary, a long-suppressed document published only in 1985, which, in the very condition of its secret existence, testifies to how difficult it was for Ferenczi to confront
Freud directly, how dangerous even suppressed and hidden revolt
could feel. Indeed, in his last entry, written eight months before he
died of pernicious anemia at the age of fifty-nine, Ferenczi linked the
onset of his blood-crisis to the realization that Freud, a higher
power upon whom he long relied for protection, would no longer
protect but would on the contrary trample him under foot as
soon as I go my own way and not hisas Freud had in fact repeat-
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much like a telephone receiverprepared to receive the transmitting unconscious of the patient, and, provided the analyst had undergone a psycho-analytic purification in the course of a training
analysis, the risk of his distorting what the patient produced would
prove minimal.7
Freud would admit to Ferenczi in a 1928 letter that the recommendations on technique he had made fifteen years previously were
essentially negative, allowing that they had emphasized what one
should not do, to demonstrate the temptations that work against
analysis. Freud wrote that then he had left everything positive unspecified and claimed that he now realized that he had implicitly
relied on the analysts tact, his capacity for empathy, a concept
Ferenczi had recently spoken about, in 1927, in a lecture to his Hungarian colleagues. What had happened in the intervening years, however, was that the excessively docile among analysts had failed to
understand the elasticity required of them and subjected themselves
to Freuds donts [sic] as if they were taboos. In 1928, Freud did
allow that his recommendations were in need of revision. And he
applauded his correspondents advocacy of elasticity in technique,
the term referring to the analysts yielding, like an elastic band, to
the pulls of the patient while pulling back himself, a give-and-take
account of the analytic encounter that Ferenczi, in the same lecture,
said had been suggested to him by a patient. But Freud would not
follow Ferenczi in what he saw as the latters concession to an arbitrary, impossible-to-control subjectivity on the part of the analyst.
Those analysts without a capacity for empathy, Freud worried,
would exploit the analytic situation, giving rein to their own unrestrained complexes. The analytic process consisted first and foremost in the analysts quantitative assessment of the dynamic factors in the situation, not in the nonscientific mysticism that he
worried Ferenczi was promoting.8
Ferenczi replied to Freud that his own approach required that the
subjective factor be strictly controlled: the analyst was to put himself in the patients position. One must empathize [einfhlen], he
proclaimed. Ferenczi went so far as to formulate his own psycho-
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analytic rule, the empathy rule, as an alternative to Freuds fundamental rule. Empathy, Ferenczi explained, invoking imagery borrowed from the pathological laboratory, was knowledge derived
from dissection of many minds, most notably the analysts own,
that allowed the analyst to envision the whole range of the patients
conscious and unconscious thoughts and associations. The analyst
was to be guided not by feelings but by this capacity for coolly mobilized empathy. In the consulting room, he would find his mind
here the elasticity of technique comes into playcontinuously
swinging from empathy to self-observation and from self-observation
to making judgments.9
As the back and forth between Ferenczi and Freud on the subject
in 1928 shows, empathy was not a concept entirely foreign to Freud.
The concept was native not to psychology but to the field of aesthetics,
with the word Einfhlungliterally feeling intofirst appearing
in the 1873 doctoral dissertation of the German philosopher Robert
Vischer. Vischer used the term to characterize the relationship between the viewer of art and the art object itself, arguing that whatever aesthetic qualities the former would claim to see in the latter
were not inherent to it but, rather, projected onto it by the viewer.
Theodore Lipps, professor of philosophy at Munich, endowed the
term with more broadly psychological meanings in his Zur Einfhlung, published in 1913. Freud, an avid if at times envious reader of
Lipps, in whose works he admitted he had found the substance of
my insights stated quite clearly . . . , perhaps rather more so than I
would like, used the word eight times in his Jokes and Their Relationship to the Unconscious, published in 1905, a book inspired in
large part by Lippss own 1898 Komik und Humor. Einfhlung, as
Freud later put it, refers to the process, similar to identification,
which allows a person to understand another person, to take up
any attitude at all towards another mental life. Although after
Jokes Freud used the term twelve more times in his published writings, in only three of those instances did the word empathy
consensually established as the English equivalent of Einfhlung by
around 1920appear in the English language Standard Edition, in
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part because James and Alix Strachey, who supervised the translation, found the word distasteful, in Alixs estimation a vile word,
elephantine, for a subtle process.10
The Stracheys idiosyncratic aversion to the word empathy likely
contributed to the received wisdom that empathy was alien to the
emotionally cold and distant Freud of the consulting rooma view
of Freud that is clearly in need of some qualification. Most notably,
in one of his Papers on Technique, Freud advised analysts that it
was imperative to the success of a psychoanalytic treatment that
they approach the patient with empathy or Einfhlung, which appears as sympathetic understanding in the Standard Edition translation, a less subjective and robust emotional stance than he actually had in mind.11 But to posit an empathic, responsive, and nimble
consulting-room Freud on the basis of misguided translation practices is to go too far, for Freud was also consistent in calling primarily on the intellectual dimensions of the term and was throughout
his life suspicious of the analysts own emotions in the analytic setting. If he was familiar with empathy, he did not enthusiastically
embrace it.
Informing the minor contretemps over empathy between Freud
and Ferenczi was the formers urgent recommendation to his colleagues sixteen years earlier, in 1912, that they model themselves on
the surgeon, who puts aside all his feelings, even his human sympathy. The emotional coldness of Freuds enjoining stood in
stark contrast to Ferenczis recommended empathy, and it was altogether consonant with his advocacy of the analyst as mirror to the
patients psyche and, more broadly, of psychoanalysis as primarily
an intellectual exercise of interpretation. Freud maintained that the
analysts coldness allowed for maximal exploration of the unconscious material produced by the analysand while at the same time
protecting the analysts own emotional life. The analysts own
individuality and any intimate attitude he might want to bring to
the treatment were not aids to its progress but, rather, dangers that
brought the specter of suggestion into the consulting room.12 Suggestive influences might induce patients to produce material to
please the analyst, but such influences were of no utility in uncover-
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ing what was unconscious, the psychoanalysts quarry. Only the analysts opacity to the patient would ensure that unconscious material
material of which the patient was by definition unawarewould
be made available for use in the treatment. Objectivity, neutrality,
and disinterestedness on the part of the analyst were the watchwords of analytic technique as presented by Freud in his Papers on
Technique.
Yet, Freud was well aware that emotional coldness was in many
cases inadequate to the task of gaining the patients compliance. The
cure is effected by love, he had written to Jung years earlier, noting
that only transference, by which he then meant the patients love for
the analyst, could provide the impetus necessary for patients to engage in the difficult process of analysis. Patients give up their resistances to please us, Freud told his Viennese colleagues the next
year: Our cures are cures of love, he said, once again underscoring
the instrumentally seductive nature of the analytic encounter. Freud
first characterized the love for the physicianspecifically, in an early
case of hysteria he treated, a female patients desire that he might
kiss herthat he witnessed among patients in treatment as in the
nature of a false connection, explaining that the patient in question harbored an unconscious wish that a certain man in her past
might boldly take the initiative and give her a kiss.13 By 1915,
when he published his paper on the phenomenon, Observations on
Transference-Love, the patients love had been transformed into a
highly explosive force and endowed with a measure of reality, turned
from a false connection into a genuine phenomenon.
Transference-Love was Freuds favorite among his technical
papers, a tour de force that in ten briskly argued pages interrogates
not only the nature of the analytic encounter but also of love itself.
Written in the aftermath of what Freud called the showdown with
Jung, it was in Freuds estimation more honest, bolder, and more
ruthless in presentation than his earlier work. The love that in On
Narcissism is strained and pinched, a fixed quantity mechanistically distributed between self and other, is in Transference-Love a
crazy-making, unpredictable, and destabilizing force lacking in
normalitywhich is what makes it, paradoxically, normal. Being
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years from 1893 through 1896, when he was working his way toward the conclusion that the origins of the neuroses were exclusively sexual. Freuds first mention of abstinence in his correspondence with Fliess refers to his own sexual deprivation, he and his
wife having decided to live in abstinence following the birth of
six children in as many years of marriage. Every subsequent mention, however, refers to the indescribably bleak miseries of abstinence not from sex but from smoking. It appears that Fliessin
this respect a Freudian avant la lettreresponded to his friends
repeated reports of troubling cardiac symptoms by issuing a prohibition, more than once, on smoking his favored cigars. Freud complained that this made his life unbearable. In one instance, he was
able to honor Fliesss absolutist edict for seven weeks, but the deprivation left him feeling so outrageously bad . . . completely incapable of
working, a beaten man that he resumed the habit. Three weeks into
this period of abstinence, Freud reported suffering a severe cardiac misery, characterized by violent arrhythmia, constant tension, pressure, burning in the heart region in addition to shooting
pains down his left arm and feelings of depression which took the
form of visions of death and departure. The episode, he claimed,
was worse than he had ever experienced while smoking. It was as if
abstinence had heightened his underlying anxieties, bringing them
to light for inspection by his physician Fliess. Two months later
Freud was half ironically referring to the narrative of his symptoms
as my case history.16
The mechanism of symptom formation visible here is strikingly
similar to the one Freud later outlined in issuing his recommendation that analytic treatment be carried out in a state of frustration.
Just as Fliess denying Freud the consolation of smoking resulted in
more-frightening-than-normal cardiac symptoms and amplified his
self-described neurosis, the Freudian analyst seeks, by refusing the
patient all gratifications, to sharpen her conflicts, to raise them to
their highest pitch so that she will have the motivation and energy
necessary to address them. Abstinence is in the service of the cure. It
is worth noting that Freud broached then immediately dropped the
thread of his own sexual abstinence in his correspondence with
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Fliess. The issue surfaced time and again, however, in displaced form,
in his narrative of his own struggles to cease smoking. Freud plaintively complained to Fliess in 1894 about the absence of anything
warm any more between the lips. The first, bowdlerized edition of
the letters rendered Freuds complaint as nothing lit between my
lips, prompting Erik Erikson to comment drolly, It is hard to see
why Freud is censored here.17
In 1896, following two years spent complaining that Fliesss
prohibition on smoking was robbing his life of enjoyment and
preventing him from working, Freud changed his tune and admitted that abstinenceredefined now as limiting himself to between
one and four cigars dailydid him good. He turned his inner
unrest in a productive direction, back to resolving the problem
of hysteria. It was as if Freud had found in these tightly rationed
cigars the surrogate satisfactions that, he wrote, partially appease
the need and longing experienced by patients subjected to the
deprivations of analytic treatment. He went on to endow abstinence with charismatic power, proclaiming that it attracts people
by holding out the promise of plentitude to those waiting for the
riches it held to be finally distributed. We can only speculate on
the degree to which Freud might have drawn on his own experience of abstinence in formulating his technical recommendations
in the years from 1911 through 1914. Throughout his life, he
consistently disparaged the sexual abstinencevoluntary or socially mandated as the price of civilizationthat he held was the
root cause of anxiety. But he also saw a more broadly construed
abstinence as potentially transformative of the self, the renunciation and privation that constituted it serving as a means to
power. Religiously prescribed asceticism did not constitute a
withdrawal from the world but was gratifying and empowering.
Examining the chastity of the religious virtuosi, Max Weber, in his
1922 treatise The Sociology of Religion, similarly cast abstinence
as in the service of charisma.18 As Freud saw it, asceticism in the
analytic setting was not simple privation but a means to self-discovery
and mastery.
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Analytic Censorship
Throughout his career as psychoanalyst, Ferenczi was subjected to
censorship, not all of it externally imposed. In his Diary he analyzed
his long-standing self-censorship, both in his literal subordination
to Freud and in his total inhibition about speaking in his presence
until he broached a subject. Ferenczi learned that submission to
Freuds authority coupled with empathic attunement to his needs
would allow him to hold Freud close and, although he silently seethed
for years, it was not until he was in his midfifties that he mustered
the wherewithal to publicly assert his independence from Freud. By
1922, it was clear their relationship was cooling. Ferenczi, by his
own telling older and more sensible than he had been in Palermo,
was belatedly weaning himself from Freud in the guise of substitute father and finding himself forced to intellectual self-reliance.19
Ferenczi would focus increasingly on the technique of psychoanalysis and would increasingly find himself questioning the rationale for
and the efficacy of Freuds technical recommendations. Through the
1920s, he published a series of papers in which he documented his
therapeutic experimentation. Although his Clinical Diary would not
come to light for decades, these papers voiced many of the concerns
central to that document, attacking analytic privation and the hypocrisy of subjecting patients to suffering in the name of treatment.
According to Ferenczi, it was Freuds indifference to the therapeutic dimension of the analytic project that prompted his own apostasy.
Freuds indifference is by now well documented. His correspondence
is punctuated with references to the toll exacted by patients, whom
he characterized variously as boring, disgusting, and insatiable. He
was saturated with analysis as therapy and fed up, he wrote to
Ferenczi. He was eager to limit how many patients he saw, with the
clear intent of tormenting myself less. He once remarked in Ferenczis presence that patients are a rabble, serving only to provide analysts with their livelihoods and material to learn fromexpressing
the therapeutic nihilism that Ferenczi found especially troubling.
Freuds patience with neurotics in analysis was limited, he told Ferenczi, and in life I am inclined to intolerance toward them. To
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the paper to be heard. Freud tried to stand between the paper and
publicationto censor itwriting to Ferenczi a few days after their
meeting of his hopes that the latter would recognize the technical
impropriety of the procedures outlined in the paper and his belief
that Ferenczi would fail to rectify himself. Although the paper was
published the following year in German, it was not until 1949 that
it appeared in English translation in a Ferenczi Number of the
International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, Ernest Joness promise to
Ferenczi he would publish it immediately notwithstanding.25
Ferenczi was soon enough branded as psychotic and posthumously
considered as such by all but a few of his fellow analysts. He was
marginal to the mainstream analytic tradition, cast as a once-faithful,
sometimes-brilliant disciple who regrettably had lost his way. The
Confusion of Tongues was long adduced as evidence of his madness, characterized as the work of a dying analyst. His writings were
censored by Freuds faithful acolytes. Much of what has been written concerning this episode and of its traumatic effects on the analytic community follows Freud in focusing on Ferenczis theoretical
backward glance. But it was their clash over love and provision in
the analytic setting that matters here. Freud was happy to use love
instrumentally in analysis, in Transference-Love seeing the patients love for the analyst first elicited in the service of compliance
with the treatment and then of necessity left unresponded to, coolly
transformed in the name of proper technique from something genuine to something unreal. In his Diary, Ferenczi objected to Freuds
construal of transference love, chalking it up to the analysts narcissistic, specifically erotomaniacal delusion. In contrast to Freud,
who held that this love was a spontaneous phenomenon, Ferenczi
argued it was an artificially produced effect of the analytic situation,
a response to the analysts technique, inherently narcissistic, of interpreting every detail of the patients response as expressive of her
feelings regarding him, as well as of his expectation, even explicit
exhortations, that the patient manifest such strong, passionate feelings for him. Ferenczi held that in so exhorting the patient, the analyst was unwittingly setting up a situation in which the childs relationship vis--vis the parents was replicated, as parents similarly
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exhorted her to feel loving and passionate feelings that were possibly nonexistent, given her young age. The analysts mechanical and
egotistical stance strengthened patients inhibitions and curtailed their
ability to speak freely and to contradict or criticize the analyst, whose
feelings they did not want to offend and upon whose friendliness they
were dependent. Ferenczi thought that however adoring of the analyst patients were, they longed to free themselves of the analysts oppressive demands for love, of the over-burdening transference. The
transference, Ferenczi argued, was not always the means of the cure
but sometimes an impediment to it. The Freudian analytic setting
was a hothouse of ethical, technical, and erotic danger threatening to
the professionalism of the analyst and the recovery of the patient. The
Ferenczian setting was ideally by contrast characterized by a mild,
passionless atmosphere that freed patients in making no covert demands on them.26
Freuds technical recommendations, organized around abstinence
and privation, were of a piece with his construal of the analytic encounter and its dangers. For his part, Ferenczi saw the dangers of
analysis, a cruel game with patients as practiced by the orthodox,
in the very withdrawal of emotion that Freud prescribed.27 There
was, to be sure, a paradox here, a paradox at the heart of the disagreement between the two analysts: Freudian cool objectivity is allied with the passionate intensity of transference love, while the Ferenczian setting, awash in empathy and warmth, is, if Ferenczi is to
be believed, passionless. In an ironic twist of historical fortunes, Ferenczi, who attempted to drain the analytic atmosphere of the heightened passion with which Freud imbued it, has been branded in the
literature as driven by an inordinate desire to cure through love.
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adhered more stringently to Freuds recommendations than did orthodoxy, insisting that interpretation was the self psychologists, like
the Freudians, mtier. But he also questioned the prescribed analytic
stance of minimal responsiveness, contrasting the warmly empathic
analyst fully engaged in the analytic process with the silent, datagathering analyst-as-computer who emits interpretations. Neutrality was in practice often grossly depriving. He insisted that while
the muted and sometimes emotionally barren atmosphere with
which it was consonant was perhaps suitable for the sexually overstimulated hysterics who were Freuds early patients, it was neither
appropriate nor helpful for the deprived, character-disordered patients with narcissistic issues who were increasingly seeking psychoanalysts help. Kohut argued that analysts should respond to patients
in a way befitting a person whose life work it was to help others,
drawing on deep layers of their own personalities. With Ferenczi no
doubt in mind, Kohut emphasized that analysts should not attempt
to make up for the traumatic failures that their patients had experienced in childhood with an extra measure of love and kindness.
Rather, they should immerse themselves empathically in their patients inner lives, while calling on their technical knowledge of the
same to tactfully interpret and offer support for patients strivings.41
Kohut offered analysts theoretical justification for what he and
others suggested they were already doing. A good part of the success
of his analytic revolution was premised on his ability to assuage his
fellow analysts guilt about their deviating from Freuds recommendations to act naturally in the treatment setting.42 How he managed
to do this is a story perhaps best told through the lens offered by
Janet Malcolms 1981 book, Psychoanalysis: The Impossible Profession, an account in which orthodoxy and revisionism, austerity and
gratification, neurosis and narcissism dramatically and satisfyingly
square off.
A sensation when it first appeared, The Impossible Profession
now reads as a brilliant ethnography of a tribe of healersthe New
Yorkbased orthodox Freudian establishmentfitfully attempting to
comprehend, and parry, the threat to their sovereignty posed by a
fervid cult in Chicago. Arrivistes worshipping the new god Kohut
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surprised at how well they had actually done in analysis. Kohut resolved the issue by, in effect, recasting the venerable but disqualifying narcissistic transferences as treatable self-object transferences.
It was the work of analysis to see them transmuted, he argued, to
reactivate the developmental potential of the defective self. Green
credited Kohut with convincing his fellow analysts to treat all of
their patients behaviors, including their tendency to idealize the
analyst one moment and treat the analyst like dirt the next, as
transferential and therefore legitimate, part of the analytic process
not undermining of it. This was a good thing to say. It needed to be
said. But Green also faulted Kohut for using this as the pretext for
inventing a whole new psychoanalytic psychology.46
Greens ambivalence toward Kohut is on display in his impassioned account of the first time he read, with utter amazement,
Kohuts controversial 1979 paper, The Two Analyses of Mr. Z. In
it, Kohut contrasted the dead end of a by-the-book classical analysis
and its many empathic failures with the hopefulness and joy generated by a reanalysis conducted along self-psychological lines. The
paper came under withering criticism, even before it was revealed
after Kohuts death that it was autobiographical, that Mr. Z was
Kohut himself. Skeptics from the orthodox camp argued that the
first analysis was wrongly carried out and that it presented a distorted picture of classical technique. Green objected that the first
analysis just didnt make sense, adding that in the second, Kohutian analysis, he finally did what any one of us classical analysts
would have done in the first place. His description of the first analysis reads like a caricature of analysis, while the second analysis is
made to seem rich and profound, subtle and empathic, humanistic
and humane. That is, self psychology was just orthodoxy by another name. Or, was it the reverse, some askedthat orthodoxy at
its best had succeeded because it was using self-psychological
methods without knowing it was doing so?47
Even those analysts who rejected Kohuts theorizing, then, were
influenced by his approach to the analytic encounter. Kohuts technique is very beguiling, said one skeptic, adding that it probably
represents a general corrective to what a lot of analysts have done.
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But then, if thats all youve done, youre really a good bartender.
The question of whether Kohut offered patients traditionally proscribed Ferenczian gratifications instead of Freuds recommended
interpretations divided analysts, with some finding him guilty and
others innocent of the charge. Supporters explained that what Kohut did was interpret patients insatiable demands for gratifications
as expressive of legitimate needs that were to be understood not
necessarily overcome. To the public they explained that replacing
analytic aloofness with Kohutian empathy legitimized more
human approaches in analysis. Patients are not pleasure-seeking
infants clinging to their fantasized omnipotence, Kohut argued, but
adults desperate for confirmation and support. Kohutian analysts
were to appreciate their patients strivings and narcissistic needs and,
with nothing more than imaginative attentiveness, gratify these needs
in the analytic setting. Green scoffed at the idea that his version of
analysis would have to assimilate Kohuts renegade systematizing,
but in his and his colleagues sniffing claim there was nothing new in
self psychology, we can see enacted the incorporating impulse that
led to Kohuts eventual absorption intoand reshaping ofthe
mainstream of analysis in the United States.48
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patently reasonable in advocating attention to patients maturational needs. Yet his polarities leave no place for individuals yearnings for love, desires for adoration and success, and expressions of
grandiose ambitions and omnipotent fantasies, all seen in the analytic tradition since Freuds time as narcissistic and normalized as
constitutive of healthy narcissism by Kohut. Strean could only characterize the dimensions of the self that the counterculture celebrated
and that the Kohutian analyst focused on as irritating intrusions
into what ideally was a well-modulated analytic space devoted to
strengthening patients egos. He invoked the Freud pessimistic about
societys capacity to manage the aggressiveness and gratifications that
we as humans have found so difficult to renounce. But he was unable to characterize the dimensions of the self that Freud and others
in his wake associated with narcissism as other than vaguely illicit
and supplemental add-ons.54
Streans censorious stance toward his patients wishes and desires
is exemplary of the straitened perspective of mainstream classical
psychoanalysis on the eve of its 1970s reorientation around narcissism. Under the banner of healthy narcissism, Kohut normalized the
desires that Strean pathologized, seeing them as critical aspects of
the person fully engaged in the world. Ascetically minded critics and
ascetically minded psychoanalysts alike complained of Americans
inordinate desire for gratifications and of a rising inability to defer
them. The inhibition that Rieff saw as the price of entry into every
real satisfaction, they argued, was giving way to pleasures unpaid
for in parallel pains. Conservatively-minded analysts argued that
the societal repression consonant with the Freudian notion that civilization was built on repression and the non-satisfaction . . . of
powerful instincts was under assault. Frustration was giving way
to gratification as the culture withdrew institutional support from
repression, celebrating hippies, permitting homosexuality, and tolerating self-discovery through psychedelic drug use that eventuated
in an inward-looking narcissism. The happiness hippies found in
analysisdeep dependency gratifications and a plethora of narcissistic suppliescould even spark envy in their analysts, who, one
reported, wished they could partake of some of this good stuff.55
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Even the most censorious, it appears, were not immune to the pleasures of gratification.
Freuds personal physician Max Schur tells us that smoking was the
one area in which Freuds vaunted self-control failed him, the only
realm in which he was unable to establish the supremacy of the
ego. Smoking was for Freud, by his own telling, a source of gratification, a habit he was unwilling and unable to renounce even at the
cost of the repeated and painful surgeries for cancer of the jaw he
underwent in the last two decades of his life. Defiantly invoking
Lord Bacon, in 1931 he wrote in a letter thanking a colleague for
sending him a shipment of cigars, I wont be plucked of my feathers. Freud could admit that abstinence from smoking enhanced his
well-being. But it is sad, he added. Over the years, his colleagues
and physicians pleaded with him and issued prohibitions, but to no
avail. Freud was disarmingly frank in owning up to his cravings. As
Freud told several of his Viennese colleagues, speaking of his pipe:
She is a good friend of mine, my counselor, my comfort, my guide,
who smoothes my way.56
From the vantage of old age, Freud allowed that he had been
faithful to my habit or vice and credited it with redoubling his
already prodigious capacity for work, enhancing his self-mastery,
and sustaining his creativity. Schur saw Freuds smoking as a means
to relieve tension. Freud himself made the same point in his admission that smoking definitely produces a slight narcosis, a relaxation
of the nerves. Drugs, drink, and tobacco were in his estimation but
substitutes for masturbation, the single great habit, the primal addiction, a perspective to which Schur assented with his observation that for Freud nicotine may have been essential for continuous
sublimation. Amid a raucous conversation with his colleagues,
Freud related the words of a young female smoker, I smoke so much
because I am kissed so little, which prompted one of them to remark on smokings intimate sexual connotations and another to
exclaim that the delight in nicotine appears to diminish our want
of love. Freud exclaimed that this explains the eternal hostility our
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Eight
INACCESSIBILITY
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narcissist as a particular, if paradoxical, type of person. He described the types behaviors and provided a precise account of a
frighteningly disturbed inner landscape, weaving all of this into a
characterological portrait. Kernberg argued that narcissists were indeed capable of establishing transferential relationships with analysts, arguing that their resistance to treatment was an expected, diagnostic dimension of this transference. At the same time, Kohuts
analytic revolution dealt a blow to the consensual, and increasingly
indefensible, view of the goal of analysis as fine-tuning for the worried well. Opinion had already begun to shift by the time Kernberg
and Kohut were writing: analysts talked of their disciplines widening scope, and surveys as well as anecdotal evidence showed that
more than a few patients considered narcissistic were in treatment.
Both Kernberg and Kohut gave analysts permission to throw off
the yoke of analyzability. Kernberg, arguing that some narcissists in
treatment could improve dramatically, focused on the personality
structure of such patients, systematically analyzing what he called
their pathological self-structure as well as their aggressiveness, rage,
and envy. Kohut, taking a gentler approach, focused on what he saw
as the legitimate but too often thwarted needs of narcissistic patients. As we have seen, even observers hostile to his self psychology,
like Aaron Green, could agree that he was working with the difficult
patient who had been kept off the orthodox analysts couch, narcissists who had long existed. Both Kernberg and Kohut held that the
narcissistic transferences were not disqualifying, and that it was possible instead to deploy what both considered general psychoanalytic
principles to the demanding, controlling, and tyrannizing patients
analysts had long disdained.6
There is no denying the frustrations and difficulties such patients
presented. Perhaps the most vivid testimony on the subject comes
from Ernest Joness and then Freuds failed analyses of Joan Riviere.
From around 1916 through 1922, the three engaged in a fraught
and well-documented psychoanalytic triangle. Riviere figures in the
analytic tradition as at once theoretician and patient, known for
her classic 1936 paper, A Contribution to the Analysis of the Negative
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That Riviere wrote from experience when she wrote on narcissism and its treatment can only be known from the tangled correspondence among her, Jones, and Freud. Rivieres letters to Jones
and his to Freud document the ferocious currents stirred by her first
analysis. It appears that Jones by his account underestimated the
uncontrollability of her emotional reactions and from the start
treated her with a collegial friendliness that was in part instrumental. As he conceded to Freud, seeing that she was unusually intelligent I hoped to win her for the causethe cause being psychoanalysis. Jones ignored Freuds stated recommendation that the analyst
foreswear an intimate attitude and adopt an attitude of emotional coldness to the patient, like the surgeon, who puts aside all
feelings, even his human sympathy. He instead assumed the prerogative, upon which Freud himself acted repeatedly, of sustaining
what would come to be seen as extra-analytic intimacies alongside
of analysis proper, in this case confiding to Riviere details of his tumultuous personal life. In the first years of her analysis, Jones broke
off relations with the maid of his former common-law wife and, in
1917, eager to find a wife to install in his nearly purchased country
home, married another woman. Prior to his marriage, Jones had given
Riviere the use of the house, she having nowhere to go for a holiday.
By Joness telling, a declaration of lovewhich he rebuffed
followed her sojourn in his home. The mistress of a number of men,
Riviere, broken-hearted, claimed to Jones she had never before been
rejected.11
Rivieres relations with Jones were from this point dominated by
the vicissitudes of an eroticized transference with which he conceded
he was unequipped to deal. From his perspective, Riviere, a fiendish sadist, as he characterized her to Freud, devoted herself to
torturing me without any intermission and with considerable success and ingenuity. One or both of them broke off the analysis, and
the apparently friendly camaraderie that had existed between them
prior to Joness marriage came to an abrupt end. Entering a sanitarium for seven weeks, Riviere was thrown into turmoil. She left
and then, with difficulty, resumed analysis. Her letters to Jones turned
angry and accusatory. She charged him with refusing to discuss the
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impasse that the analysis had reached, with nursing his wounded
professional pride and meeting her despairingness of life with a
hard and indifferent silence. Continuing analysis under such circumstances was painful and pointless. You and I are too incompatible to ever carry it out, she wrote.12
Even as Riviere was bitterly lambasting Jones for his impassivity,
she was at the same time casting him as the sometimes-perfect analyst, endlessly patient and generous, in whom she could still hope
tofind everything she sought. This suggests that the transference in
whose grip she was caught was not only erotic but also what Kohut
would later conceive of as idealizing. Riviere, of course, did not have
access to the language of self psychology, but she was enough the
intuitiveor practicedtheorist of narcissism to recognize her idealizations for what they were. She wrote to Jones that she had expected perfection in him, having endowed him with so many virtues. But she was powerless to analyze her predicament. Please
remember that I am completely in the dark and dont know or realize anything, she implored him, adding, if only you would tell me
what it is. Riviere claimed that she didnt care to go on if she could
not be cured: If I didnt die I should have to kill myself.13
Riviere lived, but Joness new wife suddenly died. Relations between Riviere and Jones grew even more fraught, with both the excoriating and idealizing streams of her transference to him intensifying. Two weeks after she had heard the news, Riviere wrote the
grieving Jones that she herself had so often thought lately of how
enviable his now-dead wife wasan indication of her solipsism, as
well as of the torture she was capable of inflicting. Joness mourning
made him unavailable to her. While she could, in passing, acknowledge his suffering and distress, she could also write bitterly of the
sacrifices she had been called upon to make for him and, one week
later, could cruelly describe his grief as too extravagant. Just now
you are not yourself, she observed, inviting Jones to analyze why
the very greatness of his suffering was so clearly all that you are
living for now. Riviere noted her agitation about analysis in her
diary, but she did not capture there how all-consuming it had become.
Did she realize that her sense of external reality was distorted
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and defective, and could she see in herself the contempt, depreciation, and attempts to tyrannically control the other that she would
later argue in her 1936 paper were at the core of narcissistic pathology? I am always painfully wondering how you are in mind and
body, she wrote to Jones. Wondering, but also analyzing: I have
done a lot of analysisof you and myself.14
Faulting Jones for being insufficiently analytic with respect to his
own state, she told him of at last having the satisfaction of completely understanding him. Analyst would become patient, patient
analyst. Broken and pitiable, he would learn a lot from all this.
Conceding the possibility that he had more insight than she had assumed and allowing that she will herself seem hard to him, she
could ask, of his excessive grief, has it shown you the power and
the value of the idealizations which in other people you have spent
your life in dispersing? And can you bring on yourself the objective
light which you have shed on other tragedies?Now you will know
how we all think our case is different and our view is true! Pleased
that he had at last, as Riviere wrote, reached the greatness that I
always knew was in youthe greatness . . . of real feeling you do at
last know, she assured him of her faith in him. She would not, she
maintained, adopt the stance of analytic objectivity and omniscience
with which he had met her agony of rejection but would instead rely
on her capacity for seeing truths of all kinds, with which he himself had credited her, and take satisfaction in her singular knowledge
of him.15
The narcissistic patients of Rivieres 1936 paper oust the analyst
from his position and claim to do his work better themselvesan
observation that resonates with the mean, self-satisfied and defiant stance she adopted vis--vis Jones at this point. It is possible
that she felt the first stirrings of her lifes vocation as she turned her
penetrating intelligence to analyzing him. Understanding everything
was her aim, pursued relentlessly, even recklessly. Before, she had
feared hurting him; going forward, she would be forthright. As she
saw it, Jones identified her with the oedipal mother, for whom desire
was overwhelming but could not be directly expressed. He had long
refused to acknowledge the depths of his feelings for her and was
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now at this moment of crisis ensnared in their net. His very indifference to her was vindication: of her conviction he was in love with
her and of her certainty he had married his now-dead wife as a substitute for herselfit added very much to my pain that you should
imagine that there could be any substitute for me. His grotesque
and dreadful blunderings at the time of the marriage forced her
into the role of Patient Griselda, the old story acted out in real life
in the 20th century, a sadly hopeful note in that Griselda eventually
took her rightful place as wife to her sadistic spouse.16
Rivieres claim to femininity was a point of heated contention between her and Jones. You have not seen the woman in me. You will
not see it, she angrily protested to him. In this she was undoubtedly
right; writing to Freud, Jones explained that Riviere was not the
type that attracts me erotically, while allowing I certainly have
theadmiration for her intelligence that I would have with a man.
In the evolving psychoanalytic idiom, intelligence was coded masculine, present in women but in unseemly proportions associated
with a masculinity complex. Jones once exclaimed to her, What a
pity you are not more of a woman, prompting Rivieres retort that
she was a great deal more of a woman than he knew. Then, once
again assuming the analysts position, she charged him with being
patronizing and afraid, with defending himself, and with having
conducted a failed analysis. I have done most of it, she claimed of
the treatment.17
Rivieres interpretations did little to assuage her mounting anxiety and despair and nothing to alter the balance of power in their
unequal relationship. Her analytic gambit failed, turning Jones resolutely against her. Yet, however vexed their relations, Jones thought
enough of Rivieres analytic capacities to act as her patron. He wrote
to Freud that Riviere had a far-reaching insight and that she understood psychoanalysis better than any other member of the British Psycho-Analytical Society except perhaps Flgel. Jones had been
happy to put her to use. When he visited Switzerland in March of that
year, he took along with him a pen Riviere had bought for Freud, a
gesture both practical, in light of the shortages plaguing the postwar
Viennese, and symbolic, given that writingtranslatingwould
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prove the most enduring of the several registers in which her relationship with Freud was conducted. Four days after Jones left for
the continent, Riviere embarked on what would become her career
as the preeminent English-language translator of Freuds works,
starting with the Vorlesungen zur Einfhrung in die Psychoanalyse,
a work exceeding five hundred pages that appeared in English in
1922 with an introduction by Jones under the title Introductory
Lectures on Psycho-Analysis. The day after Riviere started work on
the translation, Jones wrote Freud from BerneI brought you a
new penand offered to have his old ones repaired in London.18
Jones apologized to Freud for the inconsequence of his thoughts.
But to Freud, who had been writing through bodily pain caused by
a bad pen, the new pen mattered, the only item among the fifteen
kilos worth of goods Jones had brought from England for Freud
and his daughter Anna that merited a specific mention. A pen had
once before passed from Jones to Freud, who had incorporated it
into the 1912 edition of The Psychopathology of Everyday Life.
Briefly told, Jones had written Freud of his early attachment to
an attractive male surgical intern who carried a stethoscope and,
prompted by this, of his memory of being in love with his childhood
physician, whose frequent examinations of him with a straight
stethoscopewith the accompanying rhythmic to-and-fro respiratory movementaroused voluptuous feelings within. Jones allowed
that he must have symbolized the instrument as the physicians penis, equating it with both sword and pen. Freud related this story in
detail in the Psychopathology, adding that Lord Lyttons line the
pen is mightier than the sword had greatly impressed the boy
(Jones, but not identified as such), who became a prolific writer.
Jones, who used an exceptionally large fountain pen, giving as the
reason that he had so much to express, thus knew well not only
the pens practicality but also its generative and phallic resonances.19
He was also aware of the erotic meanings such professional appurtenances could carry in relations between men. Was his mention of
this pen, given to Freud, so abashed because he knew it really came
from Riviere?
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Having reached an impasse in his analysis of Riviere, for two years
Jones held out the possibility of an analysis with Freud, to which she
finally agreed, contacting him in 1921 to make arrangements. She
has a most colossal narcissism imaginable, Jones wrote Freud. After negotiating preliminaries with Freud, such as fees and discussing
with him by post the cost of lodgings, Riviere traveled to Vienna at
the end of February 1922 to begin analysis anew. Her transference
to Freud was in Joness estimation already strongly positive, her stated
position on analytic technique at this point echt Freudian. Analysis,
she wrote, is a scientific inquiry, not the emotional experience into
which the patient will attempt constantly to transform it; analytic
work demands kindness and patience, but also indifference, including to the prospect of the patients recovery. To proffer assurances
of the sympathy and esteem of the physicianof the sort Riviere
had constantly demanded of Jonesis to vacate the position of analyst, whose judgments are necessary, but whose feelings and opinions
are always irrelevant, as she put it. Rivieres conception of analysis
was as austere as orthodox technique would ever prescribe, more
uncompromising than Freud would himself practice.20
Riviere would later write of the consulting-room Freud that his
self functioned only as an instrument, echoing his injunction (translated by her) that the doctor use his unconscious in just that manner.
This, however, is an idealization, for we know that Rivieres analysis
with Freud was not nearly as free of extra-analytic considerations as
she would have wished. Jones faulted her for cleverly introducing
into her analysis with Freud the same difficulty as happened with
me, namely the intermixture of analytical considerations with external actual ones. But, given that among Joness professed motives in
referring Riviere to Freud was that a valuable translator and member of the British PsychoAnalytical Society not be lost to psychoanalysis, it is clear that from the outset external considerations would
inevitably intrude on the analysis. Riviere, for example, would later
admit to hating the fact that Freud would open their hour together
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woman who overemphasized the importance of the slightest features yet was right. For all, though, I think our friendship has gone
through a severe test, and has fairly well stood it.22
What of Riviere in this drama of imperiled and then reconstructed
male friendship? There is evidence to suggest that in this analytic
triangle sheand her invaluable skills as translatorwas but an object of exchange, the medium of barter, through which the two male
principals negotiated the terms of their conflicting agendas and, sacrificing her particular interests, cemented their own mutual bond.
Freud, seeing in Riviere an uncommon combination of male intelligence with female love for detailed work, prevailed in persuading
Jones, against his wishes, to install her as translation editor of the
International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, which he edited. In the
midst of the negotiations, Freud charged Jones with a resentful and
unbecoming jealousy incompatible with his high position in the
case. You need not be afraid of her, Freud assured him; she is
ready to work under your commands. She will relieve you of drudgery, acting as a skilled secretary and being the strongest power at
work, while you continue to be the directing mind of the whole.
Freud drove the point home, writing I can imagine no better combination. Jones vehemently rejected the charge of jealousy as absurd. Yet he later theorized jealousy in terms suggestive of this moment in his relations with Freud, writing in his 1927 article on the
subject of the classic situation of the eternal triangle that saw two
male rivals jockeying for a womans love as a reenactment of the
boys rivalry with his father over possession of the mother. Jones
quickly moved on, however, to argue that the morbid jealousy in
men that distorts, misreads, misjudges evidencecentral to Freuds
charge against himwas, in a perverted expression of a repressed
homosexuality, driven more by desire for the rival than for the
woman. Jones could barely tolerate Freuds attentions to Riviere, in
effect charging Freud with infidelity as he nervously pictured Riviere
replacing him in the masters affections. Freud salved Joness
wounded narcissism by assuring him he would enjoy a satisfying,
gender-appropriate domination over Riviere if he would only accede
to Freuds wishes. Still, referring to the editorial issues that provided
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the context in which they negotiated this severe test, Freud also
chided Jones for his suspicions that Riviere had wanted to put herself in your place.23
Just over two months into his analysis of Riviere, Freud confided
to Jones that his strategy was to be kind to her, to spare no concessions in order to make her open her mind and disclose the access
to the deeper layers. Writing of Riviere, Freud confidently advised
Jones, along similar lines, you have not to scratch too deeply the skin
of a so called masculine woman to bring her femininity to the light.
But Riviere would have nothing of this analytic scratching; the analysis with Freud did not go very deep, she later said. Perhaps recognizing his self-professed diplomacy for the strategy it was, she never
developed the positive transference to him that she argued narcissistic patients resist at all costs, instead parading a substitute friendliness. She succeeded in keeping her emotions to herself, even on
one occasion when Freud had sought to deliberately provoke her by
reading aloud to her a letter Jones had written him that was full of
criticism of her character. And Freud, who conducted that analysis
along libidinal lines and who was especially focused on penis envy,
failed to consider her aggression and her persecutory fear of her
impulses. Freud never got to the love that, she argued, lay beneath
her more manifest guilt and pain, wistfully envisioning brilliant
success where in fact she had at the last minute deployed her chosen methods of projection and denial to evade it. Rivieres implied
critique of Freud, that he had allowed consciousness and external
circumstances to blur his understanding of the true aggressive character of her love and her unconscious guilt about it finds vindication in his writing to Jones that she is a real power and can be put to
work by a slight expenditure of kindness and recognitions. 24
Writing of the negative therapeutic reaction in 1936, Riviere
introduced at the outset the issue on which her analysis with Freud
had foundered and that he had publicly worried in a footnote in
The Ego and the Id, published the year after her analysis with him
ended (and translated by her): the analysts (Freuds) failure to comprehend the patients (Rivieres) desperate masking of guilt, depression, and love for those she relentlessly attacks.25 She almost certainly
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read as a criticism of his handling of her analysis, of his having allowed himself to have been tricked and deceived by her wickedness.
Writing to her in 1923, Freud stressed her agonistic disposition,
charging her with perceiving so much of [sic] conflict and opposition
where others would not see it. On another occasion he rather gratuitously commented that it suits you well when you are so kind.
And, several years later, he accused her of partisanship for siding
with Melanie Klein against his daughter Anna on the question of
child analysis, using Rivieres analysis against her in highlighting her
weakness . . . a tendency toward aggression and informing her he
had reproached Jones for not having restrained her. That sounds
intolerant, looks like censorship and tutelage, Freud admitted. But
what else can one do. Riviere was left feeling injured and disappointed, even full of rage, by Freuds use of her. But she had the
lastif self-defeatingword, with her falseness and deceit in the
analysis denying him the successful outcome of the treatment he so
desperately wanted.28
Hostile Brothers
Freuds charge that Jones was jealous of his relations with Riviere
must have stung, for jealousy was freighted with gendered associations. Freud, claiming that it played a far larger part in the mental
life of women than of men, explained that jealousy was but penis
envy displaced from its true object and enormously reinforced
in the growing girl. Jones, for his part, argued that women were
more given to jealousy than men because they were usually physiologically and psychologically more dependent on their partners approval. Love was optional for men, he held, with the normal men
who sought it propelled by desire notlike in womenneed.29
Yet the excesses of jealousy would not so easily be sequestered on
the distaff side. Nor was jealousy foreign to relations among Freud
and his colleagues, Joness memories of them as a happy band of
brothers notwithstanding. Rather, freely admitted-to jealousy was
common coin in the brothers relations with Freud, a vehicle for
establishing intimacy and performing an abject sort of honesty. In
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cissistically damaged. The efforts Kohut and Kernberg made to describe and treat such patients allowed analysts to retrospectively
assemble genealogies of revisionist clinicians who had tried to bring
the outcast patient within their compass. To the tradition represented by Ferenczi, Balint, and Winnicott we might now add Rivieres name. She was not as well known as the others, giants within
the analytic tradition, and neither did she write as much. Yet with
her acute clinical sensibility and singular capacity for translating
feeling states into prose, she did as much as anyone to illuminate the
narcissistic interior.35
Nine
IDENTITY
In the 1940s and 1950s, psychoanalysts and cultural critics delineated a newly subjective concept of identity that
they argued was integral to the achievement of authentic selfhood,
a concept that found immediate and deep resonance with popular
notions of the self. Analysts and popular writers told of mans suddenly urgent quest for identity and of his search for himself, and of
the emergence of a new late-adolescent rite of passage, the crisis of
identity, while Betty Friedans The Feminine Mystique, the opening
salvo in second-wave feminism, published in 1963, maintained that
women of her generation were collectively facing an identity crisis
of unprecedented proportions, living in a terror of indecision about
who they were and who they would become.1 The word identity,
and that to which it referredthe ideal of a robustly conceived and
fully realized selfwere soon everywhere, the holy grail of selfhood
prompting countless quests and searches as well as the publication
of popular books with titles such as Mans Search for Himself, On
Being a Real Person, and several dozen more offering variations on
the search for identity that collectively made the case that Americans no longer knew who or what they were.
Analysts, having helped create this new vision of identity, quickly
brought it into discussions of narcissism, proposing that infantile
narcissism provided a foundation for the healthy adults identity and,
conversely, that the narcissist suffered from identity disturbance, loss,
and confusion. By the 1960s, identity had become an indispensable
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Identity
227
substituting the narcissist for the Eriksonian person-bereft-ofidentity and using it to explain the precipitous rise in the number of
narcissists. The identity conversation was in some respects a trial
run for the conversation about narcissism. The popular quest-foridentity literature Eriksons work inspired in the 1950s and 1960s is
strikingly similar to the culture of narcissism literature of the 1970s
and 1980s. Both trace a historical arc from the certainty of tradition
to the confusions of modernity. Both tell of the appearance of a new
type of patient in the consulting room, suffering from the vaguely
defined complaints of emptiness, futility, and discontent. And both
confidently link clinical phenomena to the temper of the times.
Identity thus brought psychoanalysis to the center of a wide-ranging
cultural conversation about the American self. As significant, it was
the occasion for integrating important but marginalized analytic
theories that were not concerned, as was classical analysis, with the
egos defensive operations, but rather with the selfs growth and
masterynot with drives but with capacities. Two decades before
Heinz Kohut delineated the positive aspects of narcissism, Erikson
was laying the groundwork for analysts to embrace the Kohutian
project. Freudian psychoanalysis was focused on introspective honesty in the service of enlightenment, Erikson observed, but he noted
it had attended little to the varieties of cultural expression that
made for zestful participation in life as well as those that cultivated
self-abandon and supported individuals passions. The English objectrelations analysts similarly wrestled with how to bring creativity
and aliveness into the analytic ambit, addressing the question, as put
by Winnicott, of what life itself is about. As Winnicott explained
to a fellow analyst, We differ from Freud. He was for curing symptoms. We are concerned with living persons, whole living and loving. This was Eriksons position as well, though he differed from
his English colleagues in that he took on Freuds followers, not
Freud himself. Loyal to his Viennese forebear, when he invoked
Freud it was often his Freudthe phenomenological Freud, the culturalist Freudnot the straitened master worshipped by systematizing disciples. Erikson turned to his Freud as an authorizing touchstone even as he staged a quiet revolution against foundational
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Freudian precepts, with analysts only later realizing that they, and
psychoanalysis, had become Eriksonians without anyone noticing.6
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id and the superego), and the second, more expansive, the self,
ones own person, and the total individual human being. Ego
psychologists maintained that Freud had been guilty of a similar offense, using the term das Ichthe I, translated as ego in the
English of the Standard Editionas ambiguously as Erikson later
did. As Heinz Hartmann, the doyen of the ego psychologists, explained, Freud used it in more than one sense, and not always in
the sense in which it was best defined. It was sometimes but not
always clear if, in invoking the term, Freud had meant the mental
agency or the whole person; Eriksons critics charged that he, like
Freud, simply ignored the distinction. Hartmanns orthodox colleague Kurt Eissler declared that Erikson, while he might qualify as
a psychotherapist, was no psychoanalyst, and other leading analysts
agreed.10 There is something comic in their critique: the egopsychological defenders of the Freudian faith cleaning up after the
masters sloppiness and then using their purified and systematized
theory to discipline the sloppy Erikson as insufficiently Freudian.
It is in part Eriksons inattention to the obsessive boundary policing of his colleagues, his exploiting of the ambiguity inherent in
Freuds texts, that accounts for his popularity. Erikson identified with
the phenomenological aspects and the literary qualities in Freud, with
his intellectual freedom and enjoyment of inquiry, not with the
Freud as former laboratory worker, the scientist who traded in
transformable quantities of drive. Eriksons kinship with Freud
was cemented by what he saw as their common interest in mans
total existence: the individual as he radiated outward to the community, fueled by the anticipation of new potentialities and engaged in understanding the enigma of consciousness as much as
the inner depths that were also the subject of Freuds grim pursuit.
Erikson challenged the analysts single-minded focus on the origins
of patients problems in early childhood. To him, it was just as important that the analyst look outward to the world patients shared
with others, at where they were going from where they were, and
who was going with them.11
The concept of identity, to Eriksons mind a conceptual necessity, thus revived an aspect of Freuds thought that eluded the
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orthodox analysts grasp. But it was not only to Freud that Erikson looked for inspiration. His distinctive experience as a youth
and his experience as an immigrant to America, which he shared
with his generation of analysts, many of them from Vienna, were
just as formative. Born in 1902 in Frankfurt to a Jewish mother of
Danish descent and a father he never knew, the young Erik was
adopted by his mothers second husband and, deceived by his parents about his true parentage, harbored doubts from the start, as
he told it, about his own identity. Making his way to Vienna, he
trained as a psychoanalyst, working with children and entering
analysis with Anna Freud. He emigrated to the United States in 1933,
and within six years had taken the surname Erikson, imaginatively
becoming his own fatherthe son of Erik. America, with its
strangely adolescent style of adulthood, offering the possibilities
for new roles and stances, as he saw it, called forth a whole new
orientation to patients troubles, as much social as individual.12
The stateless American Indians among whom he did early fieldwork,
the World War II veterans plagued by the symptoms of shell shock,
the young patients with whom he worked at the Austen Riggs
Center in western Massachusetts: all were suffering from confusions of identity, questioning who they were and what they would
become.
Erikson allowed that it was almost self-evident that his experience of the hard and heartless experience of emigration and Americanization, which made many identities into a super-identity, nurtured his interest in identity and its crises. We begin to conceptualize
matters of identity at the very time in history when they become a
problem, he wrote elliptically in 1950, taking stock of the personal,
political, and moral cataclysms wrought by the war and their effects
on those who survived them. His turn to identity, he suggested,
seemed naturally grounded in his own life history. Erikson presented
himself as a conduit through which flowed historical currents, and
the dislocations that opened up for him and millions of others who
survived the war as new forms of identity.13 The concept, he was
suggesting, was forged in the cauldron of history, not in the byways
of psychoanalytic theory.
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Yet it was more Eriksons curiosity and gift for observation than
the historical accident of being in the right place at the right time
that accounts for the widespread appeal of his work. His writings
were accessible, his style lucid, and his tone almost conversational.
He brought an eye for the telling detail to the big questions he addressed, invoking iconic cultural types (the Western rancher, the overprotective Mom) and colorful slogans drawn from American
folkways (where seldom is heard a discouraging word) to drive
home just how different were the American and European cultural
milieus. In Europe, for example, he had heard talk among clinicians
of American patients relative ego weakness. What he saw in
America was not a weak ego but a different ego. It was not the synthesizing machine that was the old-world psychoanalysts ego, the
ego that Anna Freud cast as an emotionless and reliable mechanical
apparatus, but rather an ego that in popular usage denoted unqualified if not justified self-esteem. He was struck by the American
penchant for ego-inflating behaviors, and characterized the tendency to engage in what he argued was fruitless but routine ego
bolstering for the sake of making people feel better as a national
practice. Boisterous bantering was everywhere, in speech, gesture,
and interpersonal relations. The not inconsiderable ego strength
ofAmericans was forged in opposition to the larger group, he suggested, adding what is popularly called an ego in this country,
seems to be the defiant expression of the owners conviction that he
is somebody without being identified with anybody in particular. In
the United States he discovered a dynamic nation of extreme contrasts and abrupt changes, of proud autonomy and exuberant initiative, and of a fashionable and vain ego which is its own originator
and arbiter. This self-made ego was neither European nor Freudian, but distinctively American in its ability to reshape itself in interaction throughout life.14
Reflecting in 1968 on identitys rapid adoption, Erikson deemed
it a term for something as unfathomable as it is all-pervasive. Eriksons decrying of the faddish equation of identity with the question Who am I is suggestive of his desire to rein in the terms popular referents. As with other such new and protean terms, however,
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233
once loosed, its meanings and uses were not Eriksons, or anyone
elses, to control. In the twenty-odd years following the terms introduction, psychoanalysts sporadically attempted to delineate its several, sometimes competing, dimensions. Yet, however carefully they
drew distinctions between the metaphysical and psychological dimensions of identity, and however much they warned of its internal inconsistencies and contradictions, they were powerless to prevent its
use in what Erikson called the demonstrative, desperate, and almost
deliberately confused search that was consuming so many. The
term made intuitive, if not strictly technical, sense.15 That its popular
meaning became self-evident so quickly suggests that it struck a deep
cultural chord. From this perspective, Eriksons invention appears
to be an inspired consolidation of cultural forces that were already
sending many on quests, searching for their identitiesor, at the
least, prompting many to buy books telling them they should be
searching.
Erikson maintained that Freud had used the term identity only
once, leaving Erikson free, one observer has noted, to invent it almost without reference to his authority. Unburdened with analytic
associations, identity, in Eriksons hands, was also a relatively nonideological term, free of any roots in the Marxist social psychology
of the 1930s. Employing a concept of social character, which Erich
Fromm defined as the essential nucleus of the character structure of
most members of a group nurtured by common emotional and
material experience, popular yet controversial works in this vein
such as The Authoritarian Personality, Wilhelm Reichs Character
Analysis, and Fromms Escape from Freedom had probed the lower
middle classs attraction to fascism, arguing that petty-bourgeois
sexual repression and economic insecurity made the father figure
promised by fascist movements attractive.16 Eriksons identity, by
contrast, represented a fresh start, a term with no class referents
and one that could be applied to normal as well as disturbed
individuals.
Reconstructing the evolution of his own thinking on identity, Erikson pointed to two conceptual ancestors, Freud and William
James, his characterization of them as bearded and patriarchal
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237
had not really lived at all but had been maintaining a pseudoself, her
real self stifled by her neurosis. Was it possible, she asked, that I
had touched the key to the universe in realizing that selflessness
the fact and fear of not having a self, of not-beingwas the
secret of wretchedness? Before, beholden to the relentless system
of shoulds which dominated her, she had known nothing, understood nothing because she did not exist. Now everything rushed to
fall into place. The purpose of life was to live and grow and express
ourselves; Sum ergo sum was enough to live by.22
The identity Mrs. B. discovered through her questingshe characterized it as a long journeymight be thought of as Jamesian
not Freudian, subjectively felt rather than historically anchored. Both
dimensions of identity would be developed more fully in the tumult
of the 1960s, sometimes in tandem, sometimes separately. The ethnic or cultural dimension to which Freud gave voice would fuel various forms of identity politics, from black to womens to homosexual
movements of liberation. The Jamesian tradition was taken up by
Horney and other neo-Freudians, who rejected Freuds more stoic
and tragic view of the inevitably compromised self, the self as constituted out of conflicting inner demands, in favor of a distinctively
American liberationist notion of a creative self. This was the authentic self that was to be found doing what it wanted to do, rather than
heeding the shoulds and oughts imposed by civilization. It was the
self of Mrs. B. and the self of Mademoiselles Lynd, distinguishing
What I Am from What THEY Demand. This self found expression
in analytic conceptions of the self that centered on an intuitively felt
sense of realness. In a Jamesian vein, for example, Winnicott described a True Self that did no more than collect together the
details of the experience of aliveness. As he wrote, Feeling real is
more than existing; it is finding a way to exist as oneselfMrs. B.s
sum ergo sum.23
Being Real
That Mrs. B. could so exuberantly locate her identityher real
selfin an experience of little more than what Winnicott called
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239
he says is really real isnt real, really. Riesman wrestled with this
issue in his 1952 portrait of a thirty-two-year-old divorced woman
who could talk a good game: what appeared on the surface as
realness could be, misleadingly, a learned, not-altogether-real cultural style. Isabelle Sutherland, Riesmans subject, was highly literate, a Ph.D. psychologist training to be a psychotherapist and undergoing analysis. Asked to name her best trait, Sutherland ventured it
was that she was alive and struggling, looking for things, pursuing
ideals. Asked to name her greatest achievement, she said it was that
she had come out of the worst of my neurosisRiesman explained
that shed had a character neurosisand become a real person.
Riesman judged her consciousness of internal growth and change
rare and was struck by her capacity to look at and reveal the self.
He characterized her as thoughtful, discriminating, and perceptive.
Yet while commending her for achieving a very considerable degree
of self-transparency, he wondered whether she might have had it
thrust on her by analysis. Having caught glimpses of what he took
to be the real Isabelle Sutherland shining through her vocabulary,
he was not wholly convinced that what he was hearing from her
was real and not a creation resulting from her mastery of the language of introspection and self-making. How, he wondered, was one
to get behind talk of autonomy to autonomy itself? Or behind behavior calculated to appear spontaneous to spontaneity itself?26
Riesman, like Turner, saw that part of the difficulty in faithfully
conveying the modern expressive selfs travails and triumphs lay in
the inadequacy of the sociologists descriptive tools and in the necessarily limited nature of his world view. He admitted to ambivalence
toward Sutherland, characterizing her as a colorless exemplar of pedestrian other-direction, a woman whose bland, psychiatrically inflected contentment he interpreted as a dull lack of the sense of the
tragic. He acknowledged the difficulty of comprehending the texture of undramatic autonomous living such as hers, preferring as
he did the nineteenth-centurys heroic, inner-directed figures, violent
and grandiose as they may have been, to modernitys milder types.27
How deeply people actually felt the anxieties that professionals
saw burdening them is difficult to determine. In the early 1950s, as
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part of a larger study of self-understanding, the educational psychologist Arthur T. Jersild asked two hundred students enrolled in a
New York City college to write compositions on the topics what I
like about myself and what I dislike about myself. Jersild reported that the students wrote in mostly positive terms about their
physical appearances and intellectual abilities. What really animated them, however, were the positive and negatives dimensions
of their personalities, social attitudes, and relationships. Approximately 60 percent, both men and women, commented positively
on qualities in themselves that Jersild classified under the rubric
inner resources, qualities such as inner strength and drive, contentment, and self-respect that he thought spoke to individuals sense of
their inner selves. Yet more than 70 percent faulted themselves for
deficiencies around the same issues. Jersild judged his subjects
well versed in the universal language of the self and commended
them for holding rather mature self-conceptions. Many, he wrote,
spoke from a secure sense of their own basic integrity and from
inner conviction.28
Jersilds findings hardly portray the self in crisis. As he reported,
none of his subjects was unable to say who he or she was. Whether
or not his subjectsso comfortable psychologizing, so focused on
their inner selveswere undergoing what another generation of college students would call identity crises is impossible to determine.29
The concept of an identity crisis, even of an identity, was not yet in
circulation. What is clear is that, when prompted to engage in selfreflection, they expressed psychological not moral dimensions of the
self, and that Jersild saw this as something new.
Twenty years later, the sociologist Turner addressed the identity
question head on, surveying groups of adults and college students in
order to determine whether they were as preoccupied with the quest
for identity as social critics and psychiatrists assumed. He found that
80 percent of nearly one thousand adult Los Angelenos sampled
never asked the question, Who am I really? Fourteen percent asked
it sometimes, 3 percent often. By contrast, an overwhelming majority of UCLA students acknowledged that they were concerned with
self-discovery and questing, confirming the popular stereotype in
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241
American Superego
If the ego in the land of democracy was strong, defiant, and inflated, its overlord the superego was, according to the psychoanalysts writing for both professional and popular audiences who were
charting its fate, dangerously enfeebled, feckless, and feminized. The
superego was understood as an agency of the personality that in its
supervisory role was something like the conscience; as Wheelis explained, it was judicial department of personality. In analysts accounts, it was usually described as a harsh, prohibiting, and repressive agency that transmitted through the generations not only what
was best but also what was most coercive and threatening in the
past. According to analytic orthodoxy, the boys superego originated
at the moment when he staved off castration at the hands of his father by renouncing his desires for his mother and identifying with the
would-be castrator. In this identification, the boy made clear his desire to be like his father and at the same time took on the fathers
superego, making the parents strictness and severity, their prohibiting and punitive function, his own.31
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of the superego, and knew well from his clinical work the triumph
of depreciation its injunctions and disparaging inner voices could
inculcate in adolescents unsure of their identities. From the start he
voiced his dissatisfaction with analysts relentlessly negative construal of the superegos functioning, arguing that Freud himself had
stressed the ways in which it transmitted from one generation to the
next not only prohibitions but also defining aspects of the social
milieu in which individuals lived, from the tastes and standards of
their social class to the characteristics and traditions of the race
from which they spring. The Freudian superego, that is, was inescapably laden with the social. Eriksons analytic predecessors, he
claimed, were too focused on mans enslavement to the superego,
too focused on what society denied the growing child. By contrast,
his aim was to emphasize what society, channeled through the superego, granted to the child: it kept him alive and seduced him to
its particular life style. For all its enriching potential, the superego
conveying mighty disapprovalwas yet a formidable adversary.
Still, the fact that the father in America was less forbidding meant
that the boy struggling to establish his identity faced a less fearsome
opponent in the Americanized superego. Erikson thought this was
not an altogether bad thing.36
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tute was treated as a foil against which mens travails were played
out, with her own subjectivity mostly ignored. In the decades following, however, discussions of her personality were organized
around authenticity and realness. One analyst charged in 1945 that
prostitution was pervaded by falseness: neither party revealed his or
her true self, with everyone hiding behind pseudo-personalities
and disavowing their identities. Another analyst, looking at the connections between nonprocreative sexuality and the emergence and
maintenance of identity in man, told of a young womanthe only
woman his comprehensive paper discussedwhose identity as a prostitute was layered over her morally alert real self. Periodically,
mounting feelings of despair, inner isolation, and loneliness would
propel her to prostitution, even as she knew this identity was not
hers. She thereby exemplified the confusion women of her sort faced.
Her doubled identityat once whore and not whoreallowed her
to protect something of what she considered her real self. She allowed men to use her body as if it were theirs, a thing or organ belonging to them, but kept her sanity by imagining her real self
separate from her consummated body. She thus enacted quite dramatically the split between real and false selves that drew the censure
of so many commentators. And she was evidence of the falseness of
what the author characterized as the feminine surrender to a man
that writers and poets insist on ascribing to prostitutes.37
Eventually, psychoanalysts and psychiatrists would probe the
identity of the normal woman, just as, following Eriksons lead
and starting to explore identity as an aspect of personhood worthy
of their attention, they probed the identity of the normal man, examining him at work, in the community, and in the family. It was far
easier for analysts and social commentators to see work and sex,
public and private, in balance when they looked at men. When they
examined women, however, they connected everythingwork, ambition, childrearingto sex.
Christopher Laschs bitter contention that, in his time, the prostitute exemplified the qualities indispensable to success in American
society continued a long tradition of professional and popular commentary concerning the prostitutes falseness, aggressiveness, and
246
Dimensions of Narcissism
hostility to men. Writing in 1978, Lasch highlighted what he considered the many contradictions that characterized her: a loner, she
depended on others only as a hawk depends on chickens; frigid, she
attempted to move others while remaining unmoved herself; and
hostile and scornful, she perfectly symbolized the ethos of the moment, in which hedonism was linked not to pleasure but to the war
of all against all, and in which even the most intimate encounters
become a form of mutual exploitation.38
Lasch framed the prostitute as a central figure in modernity. He
saw her displacing the salesman, the Willy Lomanesque figure who
in the postwar period wanted more than anything to be well liked.
In his exemplariness, the salesman was symbolic of what C. Wright
Mills called the master occupational change of the twentieth century that saw the prototypical man go from business entrepreneur
and free farmer to white-collar employee, and from heroic to tragic.
The white-collar employee was insecure, tormented, and powerless
a little man.39 The prostitute was not even that. Laschs choice of her
to symbolize modernity is even more interesting in that by all accounts, mens resort to prostitutes over the course of the twentieth
century was, if anything, diminishing. Whereas visiting a prostitute
had been almost a rite of passage early in the century, by the time
Lasch was writing young men were far more likely to have their first
sexual experiences with women of their own social class. The actual
prostitute was fading as her cultural profile grew.
Betty Friedans assertion, in her 1963 classic, The Feminine Mystique, that identity lay at the core of the woman problem came just
as psychoanalysts and psychiatrists were beginning to discuss what
a normal sense of identity in women might look like. For much of
the century, as we have seen, psychoanalysts had fiercely and divisively debated the question of femininity and its relation to lack.
Shifting the grounds of the question or inquiry from femininity
to the gender neutral identity promised women access to, among
certain positive gains, the same sorts of issues and problems that
plagued men. Addressing the problem of womens identity, Friedan
wrote, in language echoing Wheeliss, of the American woman not
Identity
247
knowing who she is, or can be, or wants to be.40 Critiquing Erikson for having defined identity as a male issue and for organizing his
account of the life cycle around the crises men faced as they grew
and aged, crises in which new beginnings were forged, Friedan argued that the issue for women was the absence of any such progression past adolescence. There was nothing to which women could
aspire except marriage.
Charged by Friedan with reinscribing the gender polarities that
she was critiquing, Erikson nevertheless attempted to provide an account of womens development focused not, like those of his analytic forebears, on the so-called genital trauma but on womens
productive interior. It was womens vital inner potential that he
highlighted, observing that analysts, with their obsessive attention
to feminine lack and envy, had made of womanhood an ubiquitous
compensation neurosis marked by a bitter insistence on being restored. Construals of female identity were biased toward what a
woman cannot be and cannot have, when analysts might better
consider what she is, has been, and may yet become. Young women
uncertain of whether or not they could have an identity without
yet having a mate could, he argued, develop themselves as workers,
citizens, and persons, thereby forestalling the fulfillment of what all
assumed was their destinymotherhood. No woman need define
herself by motherhood alone; modern conditions allowed her to
choose, plan, and even renounce her somatic tasks. Erikson waxed
lyrical in contemplating the singular loveliness and brilliance of
young women not yet subjected to the constraints of maternity, their
activity a transcendent aesthetic phenomenon symbolizing the selfcontainment of pure being. But he also envisioned lives for women
marked by development continuing beyond the task of childbearing
that popularly, and psychoanalytically, sealed their fate. In most endeavors the equals of men, women in Eriksons expansive vision were
defined, as were men, by their interests and capabilities, not by their
biology alone. As he saw it, engineering, science, and a range of humanitarian endeavors touched by both would be enriched by womens
full and equal participation.41
248
Dimensions of Narcissism
Identity
249
250
Dimensions of Narcissism
Identity
251
CONCLUSION:
N A R C I S S I S M T O D AY
Conclusion
253
analytic community had woven the concept of a normalized narcissism, necessary to sustain life, into their practice. Only recently have
cultural commentators caught up with them.
Narcissism has lately found its champions. The figures of the vacuous consumer, the ego-addled brat, and the preening celebrity are
alive and well in best-selling books with titles like The Narcissism
Epidemic: Living in the Age of Entitlement and The Mirror Effect:
How Celebrity Narcissism Is Seducing America and in articles like
Generation Whine and The Online Looking Glass that excoriate
Americans for their inflated self-esteem and shallow materialism. Yet
we can see how much has changed since narcissisms 1970s public
debut in New York Times columnist David Brookss recently voiced
lament that grandiosity is out of style. Collectively chastened by a
financial crisis that was fueled by people who got too big for their
britches, Brooks argues that we have traded boldness for caution,
and calls for a grandiosity rebound to encourage the unpleasant,
ridiculously ambitious people who can revive the nations onceformidable prosperity. Most of all, he writes in a challenge to the
Laschians still among us, there has to be a culture that gives two
cheers to grandiosity, even as he highlights the character flaws and
limitations of the grandiose. Bold and creative, ruthless and soulless:
Brookss cultural ideal, the entrepreneurial wizard as twenty-firstcentury narcissist, has the vices of his virtues.1
Many other cultural commentators have been wrestling with the
virtues of narcissists vices, trying to comprehend why it is that the
people we consider narcissists are those, as one put it, who attract
as well as repel us. Why is it that we are susceptible to narcissists
charm even as we suffer their contempt? How can someone appear
infectiously, intoxicatingly self-confident and self-sufficient one day
and angrily aggressive, manipulative, and needy the next? Welcome
to the contradictory universe of narcissism, reads the subtitle of an
article in Psychology Today. Variations on the notion that if narcissists
were just jerks, they would be easy to avoid point to a sophisticated
understanding of the narcissists paradoxical nature, a Kernbergian
figure commanding our fascinated attention. Do we really find selfish,
narcissistic jerks more attractive? asks an article reporting on the
254
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Conclusion
255
256
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257
258
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impression that theyre leading the way, have some knowledge you
dont have. Mademoiselle, telling its readers how to get it, highlighted the animal magnetism and capacity for self-transcendence
displayed by charismatic individuals, the ease with which they made
others feel valued. And Good Housekeeping, defining charisma as
that special something that attracts us to certain people even if
we cant understand why we are attracted, counseled optimistically
that even dullards could one day hope to possess it given the right
mix of enhanced self-confidence and released inner joy.11
In the 1970s, theorists of leadership began exploring the charismatic narcissism of the successful leader. Arguing that narcissism
was a key trait in some of the worlds most creative and generative
leaders, they maintained that only those with ambition, high selfesteem, and deep reservoirs of narcissism were at all likely to reach
the top. The leaders task was to draw on the stores of healthy
narcissismambition and creativitythat had fueled his rise while
not giving full rein to the grandiosity and aggression that in equal
measure enabled his ascendance. These scholars adopted a stance of
brutal realism in the face of what they suggested were sentimental
and fantasy-driven desires for caring, empathic, and sensitive consensus leaders. The model of leadership advocated in Daniel Golemans Emotional Intelligence, Jim Collinss Good to Great, and
Stephen Coveys The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People was fine for
conservative times and for conservative industries but ineffective in
times of change and flux. Bland, opaque, and gray in demeanor and
personality, leaders in this tradition had neither the vision nor the
internal resources to lead organizations in a time of dizzying technological change and globalization.12
Charismatic leaders, by contrast, were exciting, compelling, and
fascinating. Emerging at times of opportunity and crisis, they were
figures of obsessive interest and intrigue, able to conscript others
to join in their grandiose visions and to lull them into submissionto
extract from them awe, devotion, and reverenceby offering to
gratify their needs. Such leaders were skilled in the use of empathy
to figure out what others wanted, endowed with, in Kohuts words,
the uncanny ability to exploit, not necessarily in full awareness, the
260
Conclusion
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261
262
Conclusion
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263
264
Conclusion
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265
266
Conclusion
Gendered Vanity
Just how limited the popular conversation about narcissism is can be
glimpsed in the current conversation about female vanity, which barely
registers analytically but figures centrally in popular condemnations of
modern women as narcissistic: overly obsessed with outward appearances, entitled and self-absorbed, holdingas one woman admitting
to guilt of the same put itan inflated sense of our own fabulousness. Condemnations of fashion and the female vanity on which it
purportedly depends are everywhere, and it is easy to cast women as
hapless victims of media-fueled bodily narcissismbeautifully
painted and clothed with an empty mind is how one woman recently
surveyed characterized how people are becoming.25
Vanity, aesthetic appreciation, envy, self-possession, beauty, exhibitionism: this is where talk of female narcissism started and where,
in much of popular discourse, we are today. The dictum that
narcissismand the self-admiration symptomatic of itis more pronounced in women than in men went largely uncontested in the
theorizing of Freud and his colleagues. And the purportedly greater
female disposition to exhibitionistic displayespecially evident in
the project of self-making around clothingis a staple of both the
historical and contemporary discussions. But the continuities these
similarities suggest are illusory. The earlier discussion was as much
concerned with the pleasures as with the pathologies of narcissism.
It envisioned a self reveling in sensuous experience of the world, and
examined the ways individuals brought the objects among which
they lived into the Me. In place of the richness of the early analysts explorations of vanity and expressiveness, we now have censoriousness and disdain for womens desires.
The psychoanalyst J. C. Flgel argued in 1930 that clothing engendered envy, jealousy, petty triumph, spitefulness, struggle, and
painful contests for superiority among women. Men were almost
completely indifferent to female attire, Flgel argued. Women dress
Conclusion
267
much more to please their own vanity and to compete with other
women than to elicit male admiration, he observed, wistfully imagining women tempering their self-satisfied narcissism and turning
their attention to menother than their dressmakers. Flgel worried that womens capacity for heterosexual object relations was diminished by the narcissistic satisfactions offered by wearing, displaying, and competing with one another through the medium of
their attire. Some recent psychoanalytic commentators in effect assent to Flugels observation while adding a positive dimension to it,
exploring the many ways in which the circulation of clothing among
womenshopping, dressing, admiring, evaluatingconstitutes a
concretely apprehensible and highly ambivalent form of object
relations expressive of the emotions rooted in the earliest relationship to the motherlove, hate and envy. Clothing shoulders a
heavy expressive load in womens lives from this perspective, serving as a way of displaying the body, as an indicator of economic
power, as an incitement to envy, and as a sexual enticement.26
For all of Generation Mes lifetime, clothes have been a medium
of self-expression, writes Twenge in Generation Me, highlighting
the individuality that now is expressed through dress in contrast to
the rules and conformity of the past. Raised on a free to be you and
me ethos that advocates wearing what one wants to, not just what
other folks say, todays young are interested in things that satisfy
their personal wants and help them express themselves as individuals. People increasingly dress for themselves, Twenge argues, for
comfort rather than to elicit the approval of others. Narcissists today are inordinately interested in new fads and fashion, and like
to both display and look at their bodies. Vain and self-centered, they
spend a lot of time focused on looking good.27
All of this here presented as new and alarming would have been
familiar to Louis Flaccus, our early-twentieth-century psychologist
of clothing, who more than a century ago surveyed students about
clothings relation to the self. Flaccus and his subjects celebrated the
material pleasures of clothing. He expounded on the ways certain
sorts of clothing were allied with a slackening of self-restraint and
recognized the sensual delight in ones body as body as an exemplary
268
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269
at root a deferred reaction to anxiety over castration, the first cognizance of the lack of a penis. Market researchers and the social
scientists who study them are a step ahead of disapproving social
critics, having devised elaborate and largely value-free taxonomies
to classify shoppers and their habits: apathetic or recreational, indifferent or gratified, browsers or buyers. They have shown that women
tend to cast shopping for clothingincluding window-shopping
without purchasingas a legitimate indulgence and a harmless means
to pursue pleasure, much as did the early theoreticians of dress. Recall that in that early discussion, men as well as women indulged in
the sensuous delights of clothing. Since then, however, men have
managed to define shopping as work not play, enabling them to satisfy their impulses to consumecars, appurtenances of household
and yard, electronic gadgetseven as they disavow them by associating them with women and feminine desire.29
Flgel took comfort in observing that women did not on the whole
laugh at men for their prickliness about clothing, though he had to
admit this was likely due more to indifference than to any kindly
regard they might have had for men. Now, however, as men emulate
the clothes and body consciousness that were once solely womens
province, the laughter prompted by the narcissistic baby boomer
males ungraceful descent into middle age is audible. Expensive
antiaging potions disguised as shaving cream; plastic surgery promoted not as cosmetic but as an investment that pays a pretty good
dividend; diet advice parading as tips for eating outits almost
impossible to tell whether youre reading a copy of Mens Health or
Mademoiselle, writes a female journalist, gleefully observing of the
men subjected to the tyranny of impossible beauty ideals that has
long been womens lot that at least the burden of vanity and selfloathing will be shared by all. Writing of the vogue for uncomfortably tight, low-rise jeans among his peers, a male journalist contends that American men have come to vanity late and practice it
with the zeal of the newly converted. He sees men co-opting a peculiarly female vanityeven, more concretely, their jeans, with men
scouring womens departments for suitably low cut varietiesand
decrees, we need to suffer to look good, testifying to their narcissism
270
Conclusion
in spending stupidly on hair cuts and shirts rather than car stereos
and television sets. Flgel would not have been surprised at these
mens seeking out the erotic, masochistic feelings imparted by the
too-tight pants that drew this journalists ire, and he might not have
fully comprehended but surely would have approved of the superfucking macho orientationor, at the least, of the heterosexual side
of the phenomenonthey signified, his concern always that men
were insufficiently invested in their own attractiveness to women.
Maybe men, a contemporary journalist muses, are finally copying
women, now that women wield real power in the world.30
We are told that todays young narcissistsmuch like the MeDecade narcissists of the social criticshave been coddled from birth
and have grown into entitled, materialistic, shallow adults, obsessed
with their appearances and addicted to shopping. What is to be
done? The critics remedy, in the 1970s, was in part to reinstate a
culture of remissive shalt nots and shoulds whose passing was
lamented by Philip Rieff and Lasch. The fixed wants of times past
associated in Rieffs history with obedience, limitations, renunciation, abstinence, and deprivationwere to be restored through a
program of asceticism in those who had tasted the delights of impulse release. Writing in 1960, the adman Ernest Dichter suggested
in effect addressing social critics recuperative fantasythat those
who decried their own materialism on Sundays while living in a
world of material plenty the rest of the week were guilty of a mild
hypocrisy. Agreed, we should drop our interest in worldly possessions, he wrote. But how were we to actually renounce this only
too human desire? Dichters charge that we steadfastly refuse to
accept ourselves the way we actually are is as apt today as it was
more than fifty years ago.31
In The Triumph of the Therapeutic, Rieff ruefully expressed his
doubt that Western men can be persuaded again to the Greek
opinion that the secret of happiness is to have as few needs as possible, voicing the narcissistic fantasy of the self without needs that
animates the literature of lament.32 The position of self-sovereignty
Conclusion
271
that Rieff and other critics ascribe to the nineteenth-century bourgeois is descriptive of an unrealizable fantasy of independence and
autonomy that serves as foil to the moderns purported neediness
and enmeshment. This popular strain of commentary is nothing
but the narcissism of the theorist, revealing his desire to inhabit a
persona without needs and attachments. Such was Freuds fantasy
as well. In short, the culture of narcissism might in the end be more
the province of the orthodox analyst and the ironic, detached, and
contemptuous critic of modernity than of the self-absorbed adolescent, the shopaholic woman, and the aging Boomer still in search of
his self.
A B B R E V I AT I O N S
Ferenczi,
Contributions
Ferenczi, Diary
Ferenczi, Final
Ferenczi, Further
IJP
JAPA
Jones, Freud
274
Abbreviations
The Last Phase, 19191939. New York: Basic Books,
19531957 (page numbers in notes refer to the edition
in the Psychoanalytic Electronic Publishing Digital
Archive).
Kohut, Curve
Kohut, Lectures
Kohut, Search
Kohut, Seminars
Minutes
Standard Edition
Abbreviations
275
NOTES
N o t e s t o Pa g e 1 5
277
278
N o t e s t o Pa g e s 1 5 1 7
N o t e s t o Pa g e s 1 8 1 9
279
of indictment for most of my life, adding and I wasnt born, alas, yesterday.
Warmed-over: Maurice R. Green, The Culture of Narcissism, Journal of
the Academy of Psychoanalysis and Dynamic Psychiatry (1981): 330331, at
330. Explanatory: Edward M. Weinshel, The Mind of Watergate: An Exploration of the Compromise of Integrity, International Review of PsychoAnalysis 8 (1981): 121124, at 122. Dour critic: Gratification Now Is the
Slogan of the 70s, Laments a Historian, People, 9 July 1979. Among critics of
Lasch for inconsistency, getting it wrong, and so on, are Colleen D. Clements,
Misusing Psychiatric Models: The Culture of Narcissism, Psychoanalytic Review 69 (1982): 283295, arguing at 284 that Lasch uses narcissism in a psychiatrically incorrect way; and Paul L. Wachtel, The Poverty of Affluence: A
Psychological Portrait of the American Way of Life (Philadelphia: New Society
Publishers, 1989), chap. 10. See also A Symposium: Christopher Lasch and the
Culture of Narcissism, Salmagundi 46 (Fall 1979): 166202; John Alt and
Frank Hearn, eds., Symposium on Narcissism: The Cortland Conference on
Narcissism, Telos 44 (Summer 1980): 49125. For a relentless critique of Laschs
own relentlessness, see Paul Zweig, Collective Dread: The Literature of Doom,
Harpers, July 1979.
11. Imperial self: Lasch, The Minimal Self: Psychic Survival in Troubled
Times (New York: Norton, 1984), 15. Exaggerated form: Culture of Narcissism, 8, approval at 40, wealth at 39.
12. Daniel Bell, The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism (New York: Basic Books, 1978 [1976]); Richard Sennett, The Fall of Public Man: On the Social Psychology of Capitalism (New York: Vintage, 1978 [1977]). Free himself: David Potter, People of Plenty: Economic Abundance and the American
Character (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1954), 135, symbolized
plenty at 166. John Kenneth Galbraith, The Affluent Society (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1958). On Potter, see Daniel Horowitz, The Anxieties of Affluence:
Critiques of American Consumer Culture, 19391979 (Amherst and Boston:
University of Massachusetts Press, 2004), a superb guide to the postwar landscape of affluence-induced cultural anxiety; and Robert M. Collins, David
Potters People of Plenty and the Recycling of Consensus History, Reviews in
American History 16 (1988): 321335. Brook Lindsay, The Age of Abundance:
How Prosperity Transformed Americas Politics and Culture (New York: Collins, 2007), offers an updated view, from the right. For an example of concern
about affluence in the media, see Alienated Youth Called Isolated, New York
Times, 12 May 1967, quoting a psychiatrist who regards affluence as a real
stress, a very serious problem.
280
N o t e s t o Pa g e s 1 9 2 2
13. David Riesman, in collaboration with Reuel Denny and Nathan Glazer,
The Lonely Crowd: A Study of the Changing American Character (New Haven,
CT: Yale University Press, 1950); William H. Whyte Jr., The Organization Man
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1956). In love: The Man with the Rotary
Hoe, Time, 21 January 1957.
14. Theodore Roszak, The Making of a Counter Culture: Reflections on the
Technocratic Culture and Its Youthful Opposition (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1969).
15. Slater, Pursuit of Loneliness. Slater was enough the Freudian, however,
to observe at 106 that it is a paradox of the modern condition that only those
who oppose complete libidinal freedom are capable of ever achieving it.
Whole cultural revolution: William Braden, The Age of Aquarius: Technology and the Cultural Revolution (Chicago: Quandrangle Books, 1970), 257
258, quoting a conversation with Lasch.
16. Serene self-possession: Perry Miller, The Shaping of the American
Character (1955), in Miller, Natures Nation (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press
of Harvard University Press, 1967), 3. Hedonism on the rise: David Riesman
with Robert J. Potter and Jeanne Watson, Sociability, Permissiveness, and Equality: A Preliminary Formulation (1960), in Riesman, Abundance for What?
(New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1993 [1964]), 218; cited by Lasch,
who vehemently disagreed with the authors interpretation of the hedonism
they observed, deeming it a fraud that disguised a struggle for power in
Culture of Narcissism, 66. Bank account: Riesman, Lonely Crowd, 141
142. Permitting the average: Whyte, Organization Man, 1718, quoting Ernest Dichter, a Viennese immigrant, on sanctioning hedonism. Goal of life:
Ernest Dichter, The Strategy of Desire (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 2001
[1960]), 112. Symbols: Horowitz, Anxieties of Affluence, 51, animalistic,
61. I am indebted here to Horowitzs account of Dichters work in Anxieties of
Affluence, 4864.
17. Jules Henry, Culture against Man (New York: Vintage, 1965), first commandment at 19 (italics in original), resistance at 20; urge at 93; imaginative monetization at 84. Henry describes at 84 an ad from 1960 for a mens
electric shaver featuring a woman seductively draped on a red background, one
leg extending from under her white dress while her expression conveys a honeyed atmosphere of enticement and exploitation, saying Gimme, gimme,
gimme. Seduction of the consumer: Bell, Cultural Contradictions, 71.
18. Boundlessness: Bell, Cultural Contradictions, xx, self-control at xvi,
tension creates at xxv.
N o t e s t o Pa g e s 2 3 2 5
281
19. Produced little: Ibid., 81, bourgeois culture at 79, breakup at 55.
Dichter, Strategy of Desire, argued at 169 that if we were to rely exclusively on
the fulfillment of immediate and necessary needs, our economy would literally
collapse overnight, assenting to Bells understanding of capitalisms dynamic.
See Russell Jacoby, Narcissism and the Crisis of Capitalism, in Alt and Hearn,
Symposium on Narcissism, for a fluent articulation of the left critique, which,
in contrast to Bell, sees hedonism supplanting Puritanism: The imperative to
buy and enjoy displaced the religion of save and sacrifice. Jacoby does not, like
Bell, see the hedonism in Puritanism but is among the few to see the restraint
within the new hedonism, positing that in its inner structure . . . the hedonism
of narcissism is parsimonious (6364).
20. On Freud and the economics of his day, see the suggestive paper by Bernard Shull and Silas L. Warner, Viennese Zeitgeist and the Economics of Sigmund Freud and the Psychology of Austrian Economics, Journal of the American Academy of Psychoanalysis and Dynamic Psychiatry 14 (1986): 113; see
also Lawrence Birken, Freuds Economic Hypothesis: From Homo Oeconomicus to Homo Sexualis, American Imago 56 (1999): 311330. There is a
voluminous literature on Freuds economic point of view; for a concise overview, see J. Laplanche and J.-B. Pontalis, The Language of Psychoanalysis, trans.
Donald Nicholson-Smith (London: Karnac Books, 1988 [1973]), s.v. economic. Salman Akhtar, Things: Developmental, Psychopathological, and Technical Aspects of Inanimate Objects, Canadian Journal of Psychoanalysis 11
(2003): 144, a fascinating paper, is a notable exception to the general slighting
of materiality in analytic writing.
21. Later generation: David Riesman, The Themes of Work and Play in
the Structure of Freuds Thought, Psychiatry 13 (1950): 116, at 2. Genuine
affinity: Philip Rieff, Freud: The Mind of the Moralist (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1979 [1959]), 17.
22. Endless ambiance: Rieff, Triumph of the Therapeutic: Uses of Faith after Freud (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987 [1966]), 12, more substantial at 243. Mass production: Rieff, Freud, 371. Gorgeous variety:
Rieff, Triumph of the Therapeutic, 241. Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the
Spirit of Capitalism, trans. Talcott Parsons (New York: Scribners, 1958 [1904
1905]), serves as authorizing touchstone for critics on the issue of asceticism. For
an analytic perspective, see Peter C. Shabad, The Unconscious Wish and Psychoanalytic Stoicism, Contemporary Psychoanalysis 27 (1991): 332350.
23. Man has satisfied: Galbraith, Affluent Society, 117. See also John
Kenneth Galbraith, Economics in the Industrial State: Science and Sedative.
282
N o t e s t o Pa g e s 2 5 2 6
N o t e s t o Pa g e s 2 7 2 9
283
27. See Harvey A. Kaplan, Greed: A Psychoanalytic Perspective, Psychoanalytic Review 78 (1991): 505523, at 516, on the disciplines early focus on
restraint.
28. Freuds Berlin colleague Karl Abraham wrote foundational papers on the
oral and anal characters: Contributions to the Theory of the Anal Character,
IJP 4 (1923): 400418, objects of all kinds at 413; and The Influence of Oral
Erotism on Character-Formation, IJP 6 (1925): 247258.
29. Social facts: Otto Fenichel, The Drive to Amass Wealth, Psychoanalytic Quarterly 7 (1938): 6995, at 70.
30. Narcissistic requirement: Ibid., 77, real significance at 85. Would
not conceive: Paul Schilder, Psychoanalysis of Economics, Psychoanalytic
Review 27 (1940): 401420, at 406. Fenichel in Drive to Amass Wealth observed along similar lines at 93 that money has certainly not originated because people for unconscious reasons needed a faeces-corpse symbol. Instead
money was made necessary only by the development of an economic system.
Eating, housing, clothing: Fenichel, abstract of Schilder, Psychoanalysis of
Economics, Psychoanalytic Quarterly 12 (1943): 293295, at 294.
31. Arthur Nikelly, The Pathogenesis of Greed: Causes and Consequences,
International Journal of Applied Psychoanalytic Studies 3 (2006): 6578, esp. 66
69. For examples of disturbed spending behaviors, see Edmund Bergler, Psychopathology of Bargain Hunters, in Ernest Borneman, The Psychoanalysis of Money
(New York: Urizen Books, 1976), 271, and Abraham, Anal Character, 411.
32. Psychoanalysis at its nadir: Borneman, Psychoanalysis of Money, 63
64; Smiley Blanton, The Hidden Faces of Money, in Borneman, Psychoanalysis of Money, to convert money at 267, good at making money at 266.
Blanton was an American analyst and the author of Diary of My Analysis with
Sigmund Freud (New York: Hawthorne Books, 1971). Among analytic papers
on greed are Robert Waska, Craving, Longing, Denial and the Dangers of
Change: Clinical Manifestations of Greed, Psychoanalytic Review 89 (2002):
505531; Ryan Lamothe, Poor Ebenezer: Avarice as Corruption of the Erotic
and Search for a Transformative Object, Psychoanalytic Review 90 (2003):
2343; Frances Bigda-Peyton, When Drives Are Dangerous: Drive Theory and
Resource Overconsumption, Modern Psychoanalysis 29 (2004): 251270. For
a variety of psychological, psychiatric, and psychoanalytic perspectives on
pathological consumption, see April Lane Benson, ed., I Shop, Therefore I Am:
Compulsive Buying and the Search for Self (Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson,
2000); see also Shirley Lee and Avis Mysyk, The Medicalization of Compulsive Buying, Social Science and Medicine, 58 (2004): 17091718.
284
N o t e s t o Pa g e s 3 0 3 2
N o t e s t o Pa g e s 3 3 3 8
285
38. Age-old Lasch, Culture of Narcissism, 7273. Synthetic desire: Galbraith, Affluent Society, 127.
39. We all began: Michael Beldoch, The Therapeutic as Narcissist, Salmagundi 20 (SummerFall, 1972): 134152, at 139. Short essay: Freud, Libidinal Types (1931), Standard Edition 21:216220. On the conceptual confusion surrounding narcissism from Freuds time on, see the essays collected in
Freuds On Narcissism: An Introduction, eds. Joseph Sandler, Ethel Spector
Person, and Peter Fonagy (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1991).
40. Rieff, Triumph of the Therapeutic, 241. On needs as a narcissistic humiliation, see Nancy McWilliams and Stanley Lependorf, Narcissistic Pathology of Everyday Life: The Denial of Remorse and Gratitude, Contemporary
Psychoanalysis 26 (1990): 430451.
41. Personality of America: Miller, Shaping of the American Character,
13. Psychiatrists contemporaneous dictum: Benda, Image of Love, 86. Concise characterization: Paul L. Wachter, The Politics of Narcissism, The Nation, 310 January 1981. Individuation: Abraham H. Maslow, Toward a
Psychology of Being (Princeton, NJ: D. Van Nostrand, 1962), 22.
42. Constance Rosenblum, Narcissism: An Old Habit Comes Back, Van
Nuys Valley News, 24 September 1978. Riesman in Kenneth Woodward, The
New Narcissism, Newsweek, 30 January 1978, and Barbara Utley, The New
Narcissism Reflects an Image of Social Change, Chicago Tribune, 25 February
1978.
286
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N o t e s t o Pa g e s 4 2 4 4
287
288
N o t e s t o Pa g e s 4 5 4 9
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289
290
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to 1960; between 1960 and 1980, it appeared in 378 papers included the Psychoanalytic Electronic Publishing digital archive. It quickly became associated
with narcissism; the New York Times dubbed narcissism modernitys paradigmatic complaint. For optimistic readings of the scientific status of psychoanalysis, see also Maxwell S. Sucharov, Chapter 11: Quantum Physics and Self
Psychology: Toward a New Epistemology, Progress in Self Psychology 8
(1992): 199211; and Elizabeth Lloyd Mayer, Changes in Science and Changing Ideas about Knowledge and Authority in Psychoanalysis, Psychoanalytic
Quarterly 65 (1996): 158200. Jeremiahs: Kohut, Future of Psychoanalysis, 332.
25. Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970 [1962]). Litmus test: Knight, Paradigms and
Crises, at 610, discusses analysts use of the concept as a kind of . . . litmus
test for separating science from nonscience. Revolution: Kohuts Restoration of the Self: A Symposium, Psychoanalytic Review 65 (1978): 615. Physics: Kohut, Restoration, 31. See K. R. Eissler, Irreverent Remarks about the
Present and Future of Psychoanalysis, IJP 50 (1969): 461471, proclaiming
that only in Freuds writings does one find paradigms, that Freud had extracted all the paradigms that could be gained from the observation of patients
on the couch, and that the psychoanalytic situation was depleted with regard
to research possibilities, it having yielded to science all it contained. Since
Freuds death, Eissler maintained, psychoanalysis had entered a period of normal science, where it would forever remain, with analysts busying themselves
proposing variations and permutations on Freuds paradigms. If there was
indeed a crisis in the field, it was only that of theoretical lethargy sparked by
the recognition that all possible psychological phenomena were explicable
within the parameters of Freuds theorizing.
26. Welcome absence: Martin James, The Analysis of the Self: A Systematic Approach to the Psychological Treatment of Narcissistic Personality Disorders, IJP 54 (1973): 363368, at 363. See Kohut to James, 18 June 1973, in
Kohut, Curve, 278280, written upon receiving an advance copy of Jamess review, in which the charge of unconscious plagiarismsubsequently excised
before publicationwas leveled, with the qualification that such was an endemic force in psychoanalysis. James was recycling a charge he had earlier
made, that plagiarism is endemic in the world of ideas, and in psychoanalysis
priorities are especially hard to place: James, The First Year of Life, IJP 48
(1967): 118121, at 118. Strangely unable: Gerald J. Gargiulo, Kohuts Restoration of the Self: A Symposium, Psychoanalytic Review 65 (1978): 616
N o t e s t o Pa g e s 5 5 5 6
291
617, at 616. Failing: Saul Tuttman, Kohuts Restoration of the Self, Psychoanalytic Review 65 (1978): 624629, at 625. Criticism of Kohut for the
inadequacies of attribution may be found in Ruth R. Imber, Reflections on
Kohut and Sullivan, Contemporary Psychoanalysis 20 (1984): 363380; Gudrun Bodin, From Narcissism to Self-Psychology: An Introduction to Heinz
Kohuts Authorship, Scandinavian Psychoanalytic Review 20 (1997): 134
136; and Neil McLaughlin, Revision from the Margins: Fromms Contributions to Psychoanalysis, International Forum of Psychoanalysis 9 (2000): 241
247. Honors thesis: Strozier, Heinz Kohut, 56. Optimal: Kohut to unnamed,
12 September 1972, in Kohut, Search 2:867869. Retrospectively locate: Kohut, Originality and Repetition in Science, in Kohut, Search 3:227.
27. Not on nature: Kuhn, Structure, 35. His gifts: Kohut to John E.
Gedo, 26 October 1966, Kohut, Curve, 153; Yours is a youthful review,
Kohut wrote. Only in retrospect: Kuhn, Structure, 35. Has happened:
Heinz Hartmann, The Development of the Ego Concept in Freuds Work, IJP
37 (1956): 435438 (cited by Kohut in self-defense: Originality and Repetition in Science, 227), discussing Maria Dorer, Historische Grundlagen der
Psychoanalyse (Leipzig: Meiner, 1932): Her statement that Freuds psychology
was in the main derived from earlier sources is quite obviously wrong, and
Joness objection to it is indisputable. What happened to that historian of preanalysis has happened to other historians before: looking at even the greatest
work from the angle of precursors only, one cannot help finding similar ideas
in the history of human thought. There can be no doubt that the so-called Ferenczi renaissance in the 1990s that saw his work newly translated in English,
the subject of countless books, analytic papers, and conferences, was due in
some part to Kohuts channeling of his work, which complicates the charges
leveled against him. Kohuts new paradigm made Ferenczi newly visible, and
the Kohut who borrows from Ferenczi and builds on his work is perhaps best
considered a good Kuhnian rather than a morally compromised plagiarist. The
charge concerning Kohuts use of Ferenczi was common: Arnold Goldberg,
Response: There Are No Pure Forms, JAPA 47 (1999): 395400, writes at
397: I cannot possibly count the times I have read that Kohut neglected
Ferenczi.
28. Gut level: Eagle, Recent Developments, 74.
29. A typically enthusiastic appreciation of Ferenczis readmittance to the
discipline argues that his creative research has suddenly been catapulted to the
center of current clinical interest and characterizes him as the underground
clinician, the uncelebrated psychoanalysts psychoanalyst, going on to place
292
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him at the center of the field c. 1990 and arguing that his work is one, if not the,
major precursor to the psychoanalysis of the day: Benjamin Wolstein, The
Hungarian School, Contemporary Psychoanalysis 27 (1991): 167175, at 167.
30. Kohut, Restoration, 290.
N o t e s t o Pa g e s 6 4 6 7
293
7. Brunner, Freud and the Politics of Psychoanalysis, 6061. Primary mutual hostility: Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents, 112.
8. Kernberg in Most-Cited Psychoanalyst Continues Pioneering Ways,
Psychiatric News 43, no. 7 (2008).
9. Chandra Rankin, An Interview with Otto Kernberg, MD, psychotherapy.net (2006), at http://www.psychotherapy.net/interview/otto-kernberg; the
colleague was Herman van der Waals, author of Problems of Narcissism, Bulletin of the Menninger Clinic 29 (1965): 293311. Traces of Kernbergs early
work at Menninger may be found in Robert S. Wallerstein, 42 Lives in Treatment: A Study of Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy (New York: Other Press,
2000 [1986]), the report of the Psychotherapy Research Project of the Menninger Foundation, 19541982.
10. Jay R. Greenberg and Stephen A. Mitchell, Object Relations in Psychoanalytic Thought (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983), 339. See
Kernberg, Love Relations: Normality and Pathology (New Haven, CT: Yale
University Press, 1995), 2021, for his own succinct summary of his position.
Milton Klein and David Tribich, Kernbergs Object-Relations Theory: A Critical Evaluation, IJP 62 (1981): 2743, offers a critique, as well as a summary
of critiques, of Kernbergs synthesizing impulse. Primary autism: Kernberg,
Freud Conserved and Revised: An Interview with David Scharff, in The Psychoanalytic Century: Freuds Legacy for the Future, ed. Scharff (New York:
Other Press, 2001), 46.
11. Carry around: Greenberg and Mitchell, Object Relations, 11. One
patient: Kernberg, Structural Derivatives of Object Relationships, IJP 47
(1966): 236252, at 237238. This was Kernbergs second publication in the
analytic literature. He diagnosed this man as borderline; I use this example
to illustrate his early turn from classicism to the British object relations
tradition.
12. Harsh and haughty: Kernberg, Structural Derivatives, 238. Loved
and admired: Kernberg in Narcissism. The American Contribution: A Conversation of Rafaelle Siniscalco with Otto Kernberg, JEP, number 1213
(Winter-Fall 2001). Patients displaying: Kernberg, Structural Derivatives.
Bite the hand: Kernberg, Notes on Countertransference, JAPA 13 (1965):
3856, at 50. See also Kernberg, Borderline Conditions, 243248.
13. Center of things: Kernberg, Factors in the Treatment, 72. Narcissistic idealization: Kernberg, Contrasting Viewpoints Regarding the Nature
and Psychoanalytic Treatment of Narcissistic Personalities: A Preliminary Communication, JAPA 22 (1974): 255267, at 260, transitory nature, at 265.
294
N o t e s t o Pa g e s 6 8 7 2
N o t e s t o Pa g e s 7 3 7 6
295
21. Fuller life: Pines, New Focus on Narcissism. Eternal youth: Kernberg, Contrasting Viewpoints, 265. Doing their own thing: Kohut, in Timnick, Kohutian Movement Denied. Spitefully aggressive: Kernberg in
Why Some People Cant Love, 56. On the patient as victim, see Jerome Saperstein and Jack Gaines, A Commentary on the Divergent Views between Kernberg and Kohut on the Theory and Treatment of Narcissistic Personality Disorders, International Review of Psycho-Analysis 5 (1978): 413423, at 420, an
interpretation of Kernberg with which I am in agreement. Michael Robbins,
Current Controversy in Object Relations Theory as an Outgrowth of a Schism
between Klein and Fairbairn, IJP 61 (1980): 477492, at 487, also takes this
position; Randolf Alnoes, Understanding and Treatment of Narcissistic Personality Disturbances: The Kernberg-Kohut Divergence, Scandinavian Psychoanalytic Review 6 (1983): 97110, at 105, argues similarly. This professional
commentary is echoed in the somewhat incoherent comments made by a reader,
Mark Levy, 3 April 1910, of Borderline Conditions on amazon.com: My main
objection here; the patient is shown rather on the guilty side rather than on the
victimized by the family side. . . . Society is not responsible, the patient is. This
position is not sustainable in 2010.
22. Inner program: Kohut in Timnick, Kohutian Movement Denied.
To hate well: Kernberg, Borderline Conditions, 308310.
23. Concerned only with aggression: Kernberg in Rankin, Interview
with Otto Kernberg. Trivialization of personal relations: Lasch, Culture of
Narcissism, 187.
24. Aggression: Kernberg, Love Relations, 2225, failure to condemn
at 180181, combat zone at 91, flatness at 187.
25. Lasch, Culture of Narcissism, 187194.
26. Ibid., 188191.
27. Masculine ascendancy: Ibid., 190, cult of personal relations at 51,
sexual revolution at 200. G. D. Bartell, Group Sex (New York: Signet Books,
1971); Ingrid Bengis, Combat in the Erogenous Zone (New York: Knopf,
1972); Nena ONeill and George ONeill, Open Marriage: A New Lifestyle for
Couples (New York: Avon Books, 1973); Gay Talese, Thy Neighbors Wife
(Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1980); James R. Smith and Lynn G. Smith, Beyond Monogamy: Recent Studies of Sexual Alternatives in Marriage (Baltimore:
Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974); Anna K. and Robert T. Francoeur, Hot
and Cool Sex: Cultures in Conflict (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich,
1974); Alex Comfort, The Joy of Sex: A Gourmet Guide to Lovemaking (New
296
N o t e s t o Pa g e s 7 7 8 4
York: Simon and Schuster, 1972). On the sexual revolution, see David Allyn,
Make Love, Not War. The Sexual Revolution: An Unfettered History (Boston:
Little, Brown, 2000).
28. Lasch, Culture of Narcissism, 187203.
29. Ibid., 201205.
30. New lifestyles: Kernberg, Love, the Couple, and the Group: A Psychoanalytic Frame, Psychoanalytic Quarterly 49 (1980): 78108, at 104106.
So-called sexual revolution: Kernberg, Love Relations, 186. Hysterical,
masochistic: Kernberg, Adolescent Sexuality in the Light of Group Processes, Psychoanalytic Quarterly 49 (1980): 2747, at 4244. Pure sexual
object: Kernberg, Mature Love: Prerequisites and Characteristics, JAPA 22
(1974): 743768, at 752.
31. Instinctual desires: Lasch, Culture of Narcissism, 202. Kernberg,
Love Relations, 3842.
32. Lance Morrow, Epitaph for a Decade, Time, 7 January 1980, and
The Fascination of Decadence, Time, 10 September 1979.
33. Fumigating, refurnishing: Morrow, Epitaph. Only seventeen percent: Daniel Yanklovich, New Rules: Searching for Self-Fulfillment in a World
Turned Upside Down (New York: Random House, 1981), 59.
34. Lawrence Friedman, Kohut: A Book Review Essay, Psychoanalytic
Quarterly 49 (1980): 393422, at 407, a reading of Kohut that I find especially
persuasive. On Kohut as theorist of relationality, see also Stephen A. Mitchell,
Twilight of the IdolsChange and Preservation in the Writings of Heinz Kohut, Contemporary Psychoanalysis 15 (1979): 170189. For a dissenting view,
see Lynne Layton, A Deconstruction of Kohuts Concept of the Self, Contemporary Psychoanalysis 26 (1990): 420429.
4. Self-Love
1. The Moral and Historical Works of Lord Bacon, ed. Joseph Devey (London: George Bell & Sons, 1882 [1619]), 207. On the terms coining, see Havelock Ellis, The Conception of Narcissism, Psychoanalytic Review 14 (1927):
129153, esp. 135137, and Freud, On Narcissism: An Introduction (1914),
Standard Edition 14:73n.1. Exquisite: Ellis, Conception of Narcissism,
134, voluptuous at 135. Being enamoured of oneself: Freud (10 November
1909), in Minutes 2:311312.
2. Every living creature: Freud, On Narcissism, 7374. In addition:
Isidor Sadger (10 November 1909), in Minutes 2:307. Everyone: Sadger, Die
N o t e s t o Pa g e s 8 5 8 9
297
298
N o t e s t o Pa g e s 9 0 9 4
might retain through life the triumphant feeling, the confidence in success, which
not seldom brings actual success along with it: A Childhood Recollection from
Dichtung Und Wahrheit (1917), Standard Edition 17:156. Violence: Freud,
Leonardo, 116, tender seductions at 131, excessive tenderness at 135, poor
forsaken at 116, like all unsatisfied mothers at 117, his destiny at 115.
12. Social feelings: Freud (11 December 1912), in Minutes 4:136. Retarding and restraining: Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents (1930), Standard Edition 21:103. Push the father out: Freud, Leonardo, 99.
13. Lets go to Sicily: Freud to Ferenczi, 24 April 1910; between whom
and myself: 14 August 1910.
14. Fairy-tale feeling: Freud to Ferenczi, 1 May 1910; monotonous analyses: 27 June 1910.
15. Minute examination: Jones, Freud 2:81. Incredible feast: Freud to
Martha Freud, 15 September 1910, in Letters of Sigmund Freud, ed. Ernst L.
Freud, trans. Tania and James Stern (New York: Basic Books, 1975), 147148.
Daniel Paul Schreber, Memoirs of My Nervous Illness, trans. and ed. Ida Macalpine and Richard A. Hunter (New York: New York Review Books, 2000 [orig.
trans. 1955; orig. pub. 1903]). Deferential respect: Ferenczi to Groddeck, 25
December 1921, in The Sndor Ferenczi-Georg Groddeck Correspondence, ed.
Christopher Fortune, trans. Jeannie Cohen, Elisabeth Petersdorff, and Norbert
Ruebsaat (New York: Other Press, 2002), 89. Never stops admiring me:
Freud to Jung, 24 September 1910.
16. Riddle of paranoia: Freud to Abraham, 18 December 1910. Freud
analyzed the case of Schreber in Psycho-Analytic Notes on an Autobiographical
Account of a Case of Paranoia (Dementia Paranoides) (1911), Standard Edition
12. In the matter: Ferenczi to Freud, 17 January 1930. Blindly dependent
son: Ferenczi, Diary, 185.
17. Good intentions: Ferenczi to Freud, 28 September 1910. Often felt
sorry for: Freud to Ferenczi, 2 October 1910.
18. Not that superman: Freud to Ferenczi, 6 October 1910; gave no
cause: 17 October 1910.
19. Mutually gratifying: Freud to Fliess, 28 December 1887. Oases:
Jones, Freud 1:331. Slaking: Freud to Fliess, 30 June 1896; continual: 2
May 1897; strengthened: 3 April 1898; no one: 7 May 1900.
20. This paragraph is indebted to the insights in Breger, Freud: Darkness in
the Midst of Vision (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 2000), 126152, caring
at 130. Cannot write: Freud to Fliess, 18 May 1898. Your praise: 14 July
1894.
N o t e s t o Pa g e s 9 5 9 8
299
300
N o t e s t o Pa g e s 9 9 1 0 1
beings: Freud, Three Essays, 144n.1, added 1915. Extremely happy and
Prussian woman: Fritz Wittels (18 November 1908), in Minutes 2:58. Alcoholism: Hans Sachs (31 March 1915), in Minutes 4:289. Suicides: Adler
(27 April 1910), in Minutes 2:503. Philosophers: Edward Hitschmann (1
April 1908), in Minutes 1:355356. Ancient art: Hitschmann (3 November
1909), 298. Have accomplished: Wittels (18 November 1908), in Minutes
1:58.
26. Precarious achievement: Roy Schafer, Problems in Freuds Psychology of Women, JAPA 22 (1974): 459485, at 469. On homosexual men and
objects, see Freud (13 February 1907), in Minutes 1:118, explaining that Havelock Ellis uses the term autoerotism when only one person is involved . . . ,
whereas Freud uses it when there is no object; for example, those who masturbate with images [Bilderonanisten] would not be considered autoerotic (brackets in original). In functions: Kohut, Lectures, 40. Road to homosexuality:
A. A. Brill, The Conception of Homosexuality, Journal of the American Medical Association 61 (1913): 335340, at 338, cited in Gustav Bychowski, The
Ego of Homosexuals, IJP 26 (1945): 114127, at 114.
27. Always preferred boys: Freud (27 May 1908), in Minutes 1:405.
Freud invoked this scenario of rivalry transformed into love in Some Neurotic
Mechanisms in Jealousy, Paranoia, and Homosexuality (1922), Standard Edition 18:232. A year later: Freud (26 May 1909), in Minutes 2:258.
28. Large agglomerations: Jung to Freud, 20 February 1910. Friendship
leagues: Ferenczi, The Nosology of Male Homosexuality (Homoerotism)
(1914), in Ferenczi, Contributions, 296. Freud to Abraham, 17 January 1909:
Hirschfeld is certainly an agreeable colleague because of his well-sublimated
homosexuality. Social feeling: Freud, Some Neurotic Mechanisms, 232.
Freud to Jones, 8 March 1920: The social instincts are indeed made up of
both, libidinous and selfish, components, we always considered them as sublimations of the homosexual feelings. Love for women: Freud, Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego (1921), Standard Edition 18:141. Reginald
O. Kapp, Sensation and Narcissism, IJP 6 (1925): 292299, at 296297,
notes that a whole number of the worlds greatest thinkersall of them at
the narcissistic end of the scalehave never married, among them Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Kant, Newton and many more.
29. Mutual affection: Ferenczi, Nosology of Male Homosexuality,
315317. Homosexual fixation: Ferenczi to Freud, 17 January 1916. Jones
would later remark of Ferenczi that he had a great charm for men, though less
so for women: Freud 2:178.
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301
302
N o t e t o Pa g e 1 0 6
N o t e s t o Pa g e s 1 0 7 1 1 0
303
potentialities; a fraction of which our pretensions are the denominator and the
numerator our success.
37. Theoretical embarrassment: C. Hanly and J. Masson, A Critical Examination of the New Narcissism, IJP 57 (1976): 4966, at 50. Kohut, Forms
and Transformations of Narcissism, JAPA14 (1966): 243272. Grossly put:
Kohut, Lectures, 280. Narcissism disappears: Kohut, Seminars, 89, social
workers at 19, the sign at 5 (emphasis in original). See also Kohuts comments at a panel on narcissism at the 1961 annual meeting of the American
Psychoanalytic Association, in which he held that value judgments frequently
seemed to interfere in considerations of narcissism, adducing as an example
the assertion that object love is good and narcissism bad: James F. Bing and
Rudolph O. Marburg, Narcissism, JAPA 10 (1962): 593605, at 603.
38. Homosexuality and narcissism: Kohut, Lectures, 40, narcissistic
glow at 41. Worlds greatest lovers: Kohut, Seminars, 19, bucked analytic
wisdom at 2930, and Kohut, Seminars, 279280.
39. Kohut, Lectures, 43.
40. Images in our mind: Kernberg, A Contemporary Reading of On
Narcissism, in Joseph Sandler, Ethel Spector Person, and Peter Fonagy, eds.,
Freuds On Narcissism: An Introduction (New Haven, CT: Yale University
Press, 1991), 143. Too much in love: Kernberg, interviewed by Linda Wolfe,
Why Some People Cant Love, Psychology Today, June 1978. Love only
themselves: Kernberg, Love Relations: Normality and Pathology (New Haven,
CT: Yale University Press, 1995), 145. Spoil, depreciate, and degrade: Kernberg in Why Some People Cant Love. It is worth noting that Kernberg (in
A Contemporary Reading, 141143) sees self-esteem regulation as a significant aspect of Freuds essay, while Paul H. Ornstein credits Kohut with offering a new view . . . in which self-esteem regulation plays a dominant role:
From Narcissism to Ego Psychology to Self Psychology, in Sandler et al.,
Freuds On Narcissism, 191.
41. Recast as self-esteem: using Googles ngram viewer to graph self
love and self-esteem (in American English) from 19602000 shows that the
usages of self-love remain constant while those of self-esteem steadily increase. Simple psychological fact: Frieda Porat, How Much Do You Like
Yourself? Good Housekeeping 186 (June 1978), 184185. Nathaniel Branden,
The Psychology of Self-Esteem: A New Concept of Mans Psychological Nature
(New York: Bantam Books, 1971 [1969]). Wikipedia and other websites credit
Branden with founding the self-esteem movement, as do Jean M. Twenge and
W. Keith Campbell, The Narcissism Epidemic: Living in the Age of Entitlement
304
N o t e s t o Pa g e s 1 1 0 1 1 4
(New York: Free Press, 2009), 63. Mildred Newman, How to Be Your Own Best
Friend: Conversations with Two Psychoanalysts (New York: Random House,
1971). Maj-Britt Rosenbaum, What Makes a Woman a Good Lover, Mademoiselle, September 1981. Remarkably productive: Phyllis Lee Levin, How to
Succeed as a Teenager, New York Times Magazine, 18 April 1965. Quizzes in
Porat, How Much Do You Like Yourself?; Alan D. Hass, Do You Like Yourself? Catholic Digest, September 1978; and Marsha Rabe-Cochran, How
High Is Your Self-Esteem? Seventeen, April 1978. We Black people: Susan L.
Taylor, Personal Notes on Self-Love, Essence, July 1982. Have a sense of purpose: Wayne M. Dyer, You Are What You Think! Essence, March 1982. No
one: Wista Johnson, Self-Esteem: How to Grow (and Glow) on Your Own
Love, Essence, October 1982. Mental harmony: Brierley, Psycho-Analysis
and Integrative Living, 91. Believe me: Porat, How Much Do You Like Yourself? 184.
42. Poll: America Seems to Feel Good about Self-Esteem, Newsweek, 17
February 1992. California: David Gelman, Pondering Self-Esteem, Newsweek, 2 March 1987; Siobhan Ryan, The Self-Esteem Task ForceMaking
California Feel Good, Newsweek, 1 June 1990. Minnesota: Jerry Adler, Hey,
Im Terrific, Newsweek, 16 February 1992. Lasch, For Shame: Why Americans
Should Be Wary of Self-Esteem, The New Republic, 10 August 1992.
43. Record of a psychologist: H. H. Schroeder, Self-Esteem and the Love
of Recognition as Sources of Conduct, International Journal of Ethics 19
(1909): 172192, at 173. General prescription: Adler, Hey, Im Terrific.
Professional view: Gregg Levoy, Mirror, Mirror . . . Do I Look Sick to You?
Cincinnati Enquirer, 21 December 1978.
44. Vital for satisfaction: James Masterson in Daniel Goleman, Narcissism Looming Larger as Root of Personality Woes, New York Times, 1 November 1988. Mental well-being: Robert Michels in Goleman, Analyzing the
New York Syndrome, New York Times Magazine, 4 November 1984. Such a
thing: Susan Price in Alexandra Penney, Showing Some New Muscle, New
York Times, 15 June 1980.
45. Robert Michels in Goleman, New York Syndrome.
5. Independence
1. Enlightened childrearing: Christopher Lasch, The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations (New York: Norton, 1978), 230. There is no such thing: Heinz Kohut, Self Psychology and
N o t e s t o Pa g e s 1 1 5 1 1 8
305
306
N o t e s t o Pa g e s 1 1 9 1 2 1
Did not exist: Pearl King and Riccardo Steiner, eds., The Freud-Klein Controversies, 194145 (London: Tavistock/Routledge, 1991), 253. See also Michael
Balint, Primary Narcissism and Primary Love, Psychoanalytic Quarterly 29
(1960): 643; and The Basic Fault: Therapeutic Aspects of Regression (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1999 [1969]), 6472. In Primary
Narcissism, at 10, Balint wrote that it is remarkable that the paper, On Narcissism, which introduced this theory does not contain a concise description of
primary narcissism. Nevertheless, it is well known that primary narcissism became the standard theory used in describing the individuals most primitive relationship with his environment, and in this connection Freud referred to it repeatedly in his later writings.
7. For a reading of primary narcissism focused on the paradoxes of authority and nurturance, see Jos Brunner, Freud and the Politics of Psychoanalysis
(Oxford: Blackwell, 1995), esp. 149151. Both infant: Peter Hammond
Schwartz, His Majesty the Baby: Narcissism and Royal Authority, Political
Theory 17 (1989): 266 290, at 273, two at 267.
8. Freuds life blood: Jones, Freud 2:467. Lordly feeling: Jones, Freud
1:335, letter to Fliess, 16 April 1896 (translated by Masson, editor of the Freud/
Fliess correspondence, as a cocky feeling). Like a woman: Freud to Jung,
24 September 1910.
9. Freud insisted: Jones, Freud 2:467. Anybody who had the privilege:
Fritz Wittels, Freud: His Life and His Mind, Psychoanalytic Quarterly 17
(1948): 261265, at 262. Dazzled by the beauty: Oskar Pfister to Frau Freud,
12 December 1939, in Psychoanalysis and Faith: The Letters of Sigmund Freud
and Oskar Pfister, ed. Heinrich Meng and Ernst L. Freud, trans. Eric Mosbacher (New York: Basic Books, 1963), 145. Had a wife like Martha: Ernst
Simmel, cited in Katya Behling, Martha Freud: A Biography, trans. R. D. V.
Glasgow (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2005), 67. Talent to make life easier:
Freud to Mathilde Freud, 19 March 1908, in Freud, Letters of Sigmund Freud,
ed. Ernst L. Freud, trans. Tania and James Stern (New York: Basic Books,
1975), 271272. Remove from his path: Lisa Appignanesi and John Forrester, Freuds Women (New York: Basic Books, 1992), 43.
10. Ministering angels: Jones, Freud 2:468. Occasioned discomfort:
Jenny Diski, The Housekeeper of a World-Shattering Theory, London Review
of Books (23 March 2006), 1314. See Peter Gay, Freud: A Life for Our Time
(New York: Norton, 1998), at 157, on Freuds daily routine. Helping hand:
Behling, Martha Freud, 67. Voluminous correspondence: Ernst L. Freud,
Preface, Letters of Freud, ix. On Freuds writing, see also Steven Marcus,
N o t e s t o Pa g e s 1 2 2 1 2 3
307
308
N o t e s t o Pa g e s 1 2 4 1 2 6
N o t e s t o Pa g e s 1 2 6 1 3 0
309
Physiological: Benjamin, Oedipal Riddle, 204. Obvious physiological reasons: Jones, Female Sexuality, 462. Enterprise, responsibility: Jones,
Some Problems of Adolescence (1922), in Papers on Psycho-Analysis, 396.
Annie Reich theorized what she termed Hrigkeit (extreme submissiveness) as a
particular pathology of womanhood: A Contribution to the Psychoanalysis of
Extreme Submissiveness in Women, Psychoanalytic Quarterly 9 (1940): 470
480, and Narcissistic Object Choice in Women, JAPA 1 (1953): 2244.
18. Psychic dependency: Suttie, Love and Hate, 173. Anxious consideration: Jones to Suttie, 14 June 1923, cited in Vincent Brome, Ernest Jones:
Freuds Alter Ego (New York: Norton, 1983), 144. Mature dependency:
W. R. D. Fairbairn, Psychoanalytic Studies of the Personality (London: Routledge, 1999 [1952]), 3442; the concept was not discussed in the analytic literature until the 1970s.
19. Consumption: Lasch, The Minimal Self: Psychic Survival in Troubled
Times (New York: Norton, 1984), 33, hedonistic at 15. On Lasch and dependency as feminine, see Lasch, The Emotions of Family Life, New York
Review of Books, 27 November 1975, cited in Benjamin, Oedipal Riddle,
222.
20. Lasch, Culture of Narcissism, 7174.
21. Complete dependence: Lasch, Minimal Self, at 34, elderly at 42.
22. Important consequences: Ibid., 36, housekeeping at 43. On feminist
scholarship, see Victoria de Grazia, Introduction, to The Sex of Things: Gender and Consumption in Historical Perspective, ed. de Grazia with Ellen Furlough (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1996), 7.
23. I am here indebted to de Grazias Introduction, and her Changing
Consumption Regimes, in de Grazia, Sex of Things, esp. 14, both masterful
overviews.
24. Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class (New York: Penguin
Books, 1994 [1899]), 8183.
25. Poultry-raising: U. G. Weatherly, How Does the Access of Women to
Industrial Occupations React on the Family? American Journal of Sociology
14 (1909): 740765, at 740742. Large leisure class: Maurice Parmelee,
The Economic Basis of Feminism, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 56 (November 1914): 1826, at 19. Partners to parasites: Ray Strachey, The Cause: A Short History of the Womens Movement in
Great Britain (London: Virago Press, 1978 [1929]), cited by Hilary Land, The
Family Wage, Feminist Review 6 (1980): 5577, at 57. Both Lorine Pruette,
310
N o t e s t o Pa g e s 1 3 1 1 3 2
The Married Woman and the Part-Time Job, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 143 (May 1929): 301314, at 303, and
Amey E. Watson, The Reorganization of Household Work, Annals of the
American Academy of Political and Social Science 160 (March 1932): 165177,
at 168, used the term parasite in reference to the modern housewife. The charge
also surfaced in Rosalind Cassidy, Careers for Women, Journal of Educational Sociology 17 (1944): 479491, at 484: The Russians have long been
disdainful of our parasite class of women, who, she wrote, demand great
luxury and give nothing in return to the social process.
26. Done for love: Watson, Reorganization of Household Work, 169173
(emphasis in original). Buy everything: The American Family in Trouble, Life
Magazine, 26 July 1948, cited in Selected Studies in Marriage and the Family,
ed. Robert F. Winch and Graham B. Spanier (New York: Henry Holt, 1974), 19.
Drudgery of housecleaning: Arnold W. Green, The Middle Class Male Child
and Neurosis, American Sociological Review 11 (1946): 3141, at 37. Large
and satisfying world: Ferdinand Lundberg and Marynia F. Farnham, Modern
Woman: The Lost Sex (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1947), 126. Alva Myrdal
and Viola Klein, Womens Two Roles: Home and Work (London: Routledge and
Kegan Paul, 1956), at 5, noted that in the cultural figure of the middle-class Lady
of Leisure, the parasitism of women was valorized. Ernest R. Groves, The American Woman: The Feminine Side of a Masculine Civilization (New York: Emerson
Books, 1944), at 370, argued that parasitism was more rare than people suppose,
even in families of great wealth, testimony to the commonness of the charge.
David Potter registered the argument, writing in 1959 that some embittered critics have retorted that modern woman, no longer a processor of goods, has lost her
economic function. He argued that women had become consumers rather than
producers and that managing a familys consumption was no mean task:
American Women and the American Character, in American Character and
Culture in a Changing World: Some Twentieth-Century Perspectives, ed. John A.
Hague (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1979), 218219.
27. Provide for their own needs: Lasch, Minimal Self, 33. Lasch, Haven in
a Heartless World: The Family Besieged (New York: Basic Books, 1977). Lasch
became well known for his hostility to feminism; consider, as exemplary, his
explanation for feminisms appeal to professional women in his Revolt of the
Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy (New York: Norton, 1995): Female careerism provides the indispensable basis of their prosperous, glamorous,
gaudy, sometimes indecently lavish way of life (cited by Michiko Kakutani,
N o t e s t o Pa g e s 1 3 2 1 3 5
311
Sounding Like Quayle Blasting Cultural Elites, New York Times, 13 January 1995).
28. Phony value: Kohut, Self Psychology and the Humanities, 262, alive
at 234. In Kohut, Search 3:377, for example, Kohut writes of Mr. Xs need
to develop an independent and vigorous self. Kohut wrote to an unnamed
colleague in 1978 that from the perspective of self psychology, a value-laden
demand for psychological independence is nonsensealmost as nonsensical as
would be a demand that the human body should be able to get along without
oxygen: Kohut, Search 4:572. Michael Balint, Three Areas of the Mind
Theoretical Considerations, IJP 39 (1958): 328340, at 337, used air to make
a similar point; writing of the infants primary relatedness, he argued that we
use the air, in fact we cannot live without it, we inhale it and then exhale it . . .
without paying the slightest attention to it. For independence in the egopsychological tradition, see Otto Fenichel, The Psychoanalytic Theory of Neurosis (New York: Norton, 1945), 464.
29. Fearful or stubborn: Kohut, Introspection, Empathy, and Psychoanalysisan Examination of the Relationship between Mode of Observation
and Theory, JAPA 7 (1959): 459483, at 475. In Search 1:173 (1953), Kohut
argues that dependence is among the analytic terms leading a sham existence
in the no-mans-land between biology and psychology.
30. Remobilized: Kohut to Robert Sussman, 8 April 1967, Kohut, Curve,
165166. Moral view: Kohut, Search 3:324. See also Kohut, Search 4:521,
573.
31. Independent self: Kohut, Self Psychology and the Humanities, 262.
Vibrantly alive: Kohut, Search 3:133. David Riesman, The Themes of Work
and Play in the Structure of Freuds Thought, Psychiatry 13 (1950): 116, at 6,
registers the strangeness of Freuds view that man needs to be driven into reality. . . . Children, [Freud] felt, naturally did not want to grow up; they must be
forcibly socialized, forcibly adapted to reality. . . . In all this, Freud patronizes
infancy and childhood. Supposedly joyous: Kohut, Search 4:702. Severe
psychopathology: Kohut, letter to unnamed conference participant, September
1978, in Kohut, Advances in Self Psychology, ed. Arnold Goldberg (New York:
International Universities Press, 1980).
32. Psychological abstraction: Kohut, Search 1, 180. Not bother you:
Kohut, Seminars, 1011.
33. Kernberg in Kenneth Woodward, The New Narcissism, Newsweek,
30 January 1978. Normal needs: Kernberg, Factors in the Psychoanalytic
312
N o t e s t o Pa g e s 1 3 6 1 3 8
6. Vanity
1. Normal feminine vanity: Otto Rank, A Contribution to the Study of
Narcissism, abstracted in Leonard Blumgart, Jahrbuch fr psychoanalytische
N o t e s t o Pa g e s 1 3 9 1 4 1
313
314
N o t e t o Pa g e 1 4 2
ground of pleasure and erotic exchangesuggesting the womans exhibitionistic act of undressing offered gratifications both to her and to the man she
enticed therebybefore turning to what would become the more familiar
ground of womanly lack and male horror.
7. Psychic consequences: J. Hrnik, The Economic Relations Between
the Sense of Guilt and Feminine Narcissism, in The Tenth International Psychoanalytic Congress, Psychoanalytic Review 15 (1928): 85107, at 95. For
castration as a truism, consider the comments of Karl Abraham, Manifestations of the Female Castration Complex, IJP 3 (1922): 129, and Sndor Rad,
Fear of Castration in Women, Psychoanalytic Quarterly 2 (1933): 425475;
Rad writes, at 425,n.35 that illustrating his contentions by reference to case
histories would be a hopeless task, so widely distributed and available to
all practicing analysts was the clinical material. For a later example, see Heinrich Meng and Erich Stern, Organ-Psychosis, Psychoanalytic Review 42
(1955): 428434, at 430: Freud already has said that narcissism is more pronounced in females than in males. Authentic type: Freud (21 February
1912), in Minutes 4:5355. Freud further developed the argument, broached in
the meeting, that characterizes maternal love as narcissistic, a love of self, in
On Narcissism, 8990where love of the child is the pathway to complete
object-love available to women.
The fact of castration and the development of the castration complex, at
first thought to exist only in men, is a complex issue. To his colleagues, Freud
explained on 20 March 1912 (Minutes 4:8081) that the woman has no need
of this fantasy [of castration], since she has come into this world already castrated, as a woman; they meanwhile discussed the womans fantasy of cutting
off the penis, here referring to the mans penis, not hers, as well as their finding
in male castration fantasies the wish to be a woman. In both of these instances
the penis is male, not the fantasized female analogue. Abraham, Manifestations,
27, proposed a tidy theory of the girls sexual development, focused on the narcissistic injuries caused by her poverty in external genitals and her hope of
getting a child from her fatheras a substitute for the penis. Observation
showed, however, that the normal end-aim of developmentthe girls acceptance of her passive sexual role and longing for a childwas frequently not
attained. Freuds fellow analysts applauded his solution to the obscurities of the
issue in his 1925 Some Psychical Consequences of the Anatomical Distinction
between the Sexes (19231925), Standard Edition 19:241258, commending
him for substituting penis envy for the logically implausible female castration
complex in the girls developmental schema; see Rad, Fear of Castration, for
N o t e s t o Pa g e s 1 4 2 1 4 5
315
316
N o t e s t o Pa g e s 1 4 6 1 4 9
N o t e s t o Pa g e s 1 4 9 1 5 2
317
318
N o t e s t o Pa g e s 1 5 3 1 5 8
in Formations of Fantasy, ed. Victor Burgin, James Donald, and Cora Kaplan
(New York: Methuen, 1986), 4561; Mary Ann Doane, Masquerade Reconsidered: Further Thoughts on the Female Spectator, Discourse 2 (FallWinter
19881989): 4254; and Emily Apter, Feminizing the Fetish: Psychoanalysis
and Narrative Obsession in Turn-of-the-Century France (Ithaca, NY: Cornell
University Press, 1991), chap. 4. On coquetry, see the suggestive comments of
Ellen Bayuk, Fear of Fashion; Or, How the Coquette Got Her Bad Name,
ANQ 15, no. 3 (Summer 2002): 1221.
24. On female self-sufficiency in the analytic tradition, see Kofman, Enigma
of Woman, esp. 5065.
25. Holds and cherishes within: Riviere, New Introductory Lectures,
337. Turned to the widows: Riviere, The Bereaved Wife, in Fatherless Children: A Contribution to the Understanding of Their Needs, ed. Susan Isaacs,
Joan Riviere, and Ella Freeman Sharpe (London: Pouskin Press, 1945), 17.
26. Riviere, New Introductory Lectures, 335337.
27. On Riviere as translator, see Peter Gay, Freud: A Life for Our Time
(New York: Norton, 1998 [1988]), 465; Appignanesi and Forrester, Freuds
Women, 353; and Nina Bakman, She Can be Put to Work: Joan Riviere as
Translator Between Freud and Jones, Psychoanalysis and History 10 (2008):
2136. Biographical information from Diary of Joan Riviere, Joan Riviere collection, Archives of the British Psychoanalytical Society, P02-C-03.
28. Ernest Jones, The God Complex: The Belief That One Is God, and the
Resulting Character Traits, in Jones, Essays in Applied Psycho-Analysis, vol. 2
(London: Hogarth Press and Institute of Psycho-Analysis, 1951), 244265.
Dominant note: Riviere, The Private Character of Queen Elizabeth, IJP 3
(1922): 256259, at 259.
29. Riviere, Womanliness, 304.
30. Ibid., 305306.
31. Foolish and bewildered: Ibid., 308. Transgressive scene: Joan Scott,
Fantasy Echo: History and the Construction of Identity, Critical Inquiry 27
(Winter 2001): 284304, esp. 293297. Mask of womanly subservience: Riviere, Womanliness, 311.
32. Inner emotional needs: Riviere, Hate, Greed and Aggression, in
Melanie Klein and Joan Riviere, Love, Hate and Reparation (London: Hogarth
Press and Institute of Psycho-Analysis, 1937), 50.
33. Flaccus, Psychology of Clothes, 64.
34. Possess, acquire: Riviere, The Unconscious Phantasy of an Inner
World Reflected in Examples from English Literature, IJP 33 (1952): 160172,
N o t e s t o Pa g e s 1 5 9 1 6 3
319
320
N o t e s t o Pa g e s 1 6 4 1 6 7
Humor, Psychoanalytic Review 53B (1966): 4555, at 50. On the debut of gender
neutrality, compare, for example, Philip Weissman, Psychosexual Development
in a Case of Neurotic Virginity and Old Maidenhood, IJP 45 (1964): 110120,
and John E. Gedo, Notes on the Psychoanalytic Management of Archaic
Transferences, JAPA 25 (1977): 787803. On this question, I am indebted to
the reading offered by Frank M. Lachmann, Narcissism and Female Gender
Identity, Psychoanalytic Review 69 (1982): 4361.
44. Pegg Levoy, Mirror, Mirror . . . Do I Look Sick to You? Cincinnati
Enquirer, 21 December 1978.
7. Gratification
1. Christopher Lasch, Gratification Now Is the Slogan of the 70s, Laments
a Historian, People, 9 July 1970.
2. On the ubiquity of gratification in psychoanalysis, consider that it is discussed in circa 13,000 analytic papers and letters between Freud and his disciples. The corresponding numbers for several other key terms are narcissism
(19,000), identity (14,500), and omnipotence (9,000). See Otto Fenichel, The
Psychoanalytic Theory of Neurosis (New York: Norton, 1972 [1945]), 508, for
gratification as unexceptionable: The ego learns that it protects itself best
against threats and procures a maximum of gratification if it judges reality objectively. Principle of indulgence: Sndor Ferenczi, The Principle of Relaxation and Neocatharsis (1929), Final, 115; Ferenczi writes that this principle
must often be allowed to operate side by side that of frustration. On Ferenczis
sicker patients, see his Child Analysis in the Analysis of Adults (1931),
Final, 128: I have come to be a specialist in particularly difficult cases.
3. For a comprehensive treatment of the restaging, see Arianne B. Palmer
and William S. Meyer, Gratification versus Frustration: The Legacy of the
Schism between Ferenczi and Freud, Clinical Social Work Journal 23 (1995):
249269. See also Michael Balint, The Basic Fault: Therapeutic Aspects of Regression (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1999 [1969]), chap. 23
(The disagreement between Freud and Ferenczi, and its repercussions).
4. If the world: Balint, Primary Object Love and Psycho-Analytic Technique (London: Liveright, 1953), 63, in Bernard Brandchaft, British Object
Relations Theory and Self Psychology, Progress in Self Psychology 2 (1986),
245272, at 245. Iatrogenic illness: Samuel D. Lipton, The Advantages of
Freuds Technique as Shown in His Analysis of the Rat Man, IJP 58 (1977):
255273, at 266. Tacitly encouraged: Peter C. Shabad, The Unconscious
N o t e s t o Pa g e s 1 6 8 1 7 2
321
322
N o t e s t o Pa g e s 1 7 2 1 7 4
in German Aesthetics, 18731893 (Santa Monica, CA: Getty Center for the
Humanities, 1994), 185. On Lipps, see M. J. Blechner, Epistemology: Ways of
Knowing in Psychoanalysis (Panel Presentation)Differentiating Empathy
from Therapeutic Action, Contemporary Psychoanalysis 24 (1988): 301310,
at 302303. Stated quite clearly: Freud to Wilhelm Fliess, 31 August 1898.
Take up any attitude: Freud, Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego
(1921), Standard Edition 18:110n.2. Vile word: Alix Strachey to James
Strachey, 2 January 1925, in Bloomsbury Freud: The Letters of James and Alix
Strachey, 19241925, ed. Perry Meisel and Walter Kendrick (New York: Basic
Books, 1985), 170171; also cited in George W. Pigman, Freud and the History of Empathy, IJP 76 (1995): 237256, at 244. Pigman cites other English
renderings of Einfhling in the Standard Edition: have the feelings of, feel
his way into, understand, and have an understanding sense.
11. Sympathetic understanding: Freud, On Beginning the Treatment
(Further Recommendations on the Technique of Psycho-Analysis I) (1913),
Standard Edition 12:140. See Pigman, Freud and Empathy, 246, on the shortcomings of sympathetic understanding.
12. Puts aside: Freud, Recommendations to Physicians, 114, own
emotional life at 115, intimate attitude at 118. The reflexive association of
analysis with the practices of suggestiontelepathy and mediums, both of
which he and Ferenczi discussed at length in their correspondencethreatened
to undermine the hard-won scientific standing of psychoanalysis. Indeed, the
British analyst Marjorie Brierley equated empathy and true telepathy, both of
them indispensable to sound analysis: Affects in Theory and Practice, IJP
18 (1937): 256268, at 267.
13. Effected by love: Freud to Jung, 6 December 1906. Please us: Freud
(30 January 1907), Minutes 1:101 (emphasis in original). False connection:
Freud, The Psychotherapy of Hysteria in Studies on Hysteria (1993), Standard Edition 2:303.
14. Showdown: Freud to Abraham, 29 July 1914. Lacking in normality: Freud, Observations on Transference-Love (1915), Standard Edition 12:
168169.
15. Forget: Freud, Transference-Love, 170, charms at 161, suppress at 164, abstinence at 165. Beate Lohser and Peter M. Newton, Unorthodox Freud: The View from the Couch (New York: Guilford Press, 1996),
192, argue that Strachey, in translating Freuds ein schnes Erlebnisa
beautiful experienceas a fine experience, betrayed his own yearning for
asepsis. It bears emphasizing that Freud conceived of abstinence as of a piece
N o t e s t o Pa g e s 1 7 5 1 7 6
323
324
N o t e s t o Pa g e s 1 7 7 1 7 8
N o t e s t o Pa g e s 1 7 8 1 8 2
325
day; Freud to Ferenczi (16 December 1917), I work all day . . . with nine
fools.
21. Therapeutic enthusiast: Freud, New Introductory Lectures on PsychoAnalysis (1933), Standard Edition 22:151. Cool: Strachey, Editors Note to
Freud, Analysis Terminable, 212. Sufficiently elucidated: Freud, ibid., 221.
Need to cure: Freud, Sndor Ferenczi (1933), Standard Edition 22:229.
Boundless course: Freud, New Introductory Lectures, 153. Out of reach:
Freud, Sndor Ferenczi, 229.
22. Ferenczi, Diary, 9295.
23. Coolly aloof: Ferenczi, Relaxation and Neocatharsis, 118. Expectant silence: Ferenczi, Child Analysis, 129133. To be adopted: Ferenczi,
Relaxation and Neocatharsis, 124 (emphasis in original).
24. Ferenczi, Confusion of Tongues between Adults and the Child (1933),
in Ferenczi, Final. The earlier reference to hypocrisy, in this case of the parents,
who in many passages in the essay are interchangeable with the analyst, is in
Child Analysis, 133.
25. Thunderstruck: Freud, The Diary of Sigmund Freud, 19291939: A
Record of the Final Decade, trans. Michael Molnar (New York: Scribners,
1992), 131, citing Freud to Anna Freud, 3 September 1932. Real rape: Ferenczi, Confusion of Tongues, 161. On the meeting, see Ferenczis report,
given to Izette de Forest, author of The Leaven of Love (New York: Harper and
Brothers, 1954), who in turn passed it on to Erich Fromm, who published it in
his biography of Freud, Sigmund Freuds Mission: An Analysis of His Personality and Influence (New York: Harper and Row, 1972 [1959]), 6265. On censoring, Freud to Max Eitingon, 29 August 1932: He must be prevented from
reading his essay. . . . Either he will present another one, or none at all, unpublished letter in Arnold W. Rachman, The Suppression and Censorship of Ferenczis Confusion of Tongues Paper, Psychoanalytic Inquiry 17 (1997): 459
485, at 471. Confused, contrived: Freud to Anna Freud, 3 September 1932, in
Freud, Diary, 131. Harmless but stupid: Freud to Eitingon, 2 September 1932,
unpublished telegram in Rachman, Supression and Censorship, 473. Affectionate adieu: Fromm, Freuds Mission, 65. Technical impropriety: Freud to
Ferenczi, 2 October 1932. Joness promise: Rachman, Suppression and Censorship, 474475.
26. On the fate of the essay, see Harold P. Blum, The Confusion of Tongues
and Psychic Trauma, IJP 75 (1994): 871882. Ferenczi proved prescient in his
characterization of Jones as an unscrupulous tyrant who does not disdain the
weapons of slander (Ferenczi to Freud, 25 December 1929), for Jones, who
326
N o t e s t o Pa g e s 1 8 2 1 8 4
alone at the time had access to the unpublished correspondence between Ferenczi and Freud, did indeed slander him in his Freud biographywhether it
was that Ferenczi strayed too much or, more insidiously, that late in his life he
had developed destructive psychotic manifestations that were revealed in his
turning away from Freud and his doctrines (Jones, Freud, 3:47), a charge
conflating mental health and loyalty to Freud. Narcissistic: Ferenczi, Diary,
95. Over-burdening transference: Ferenczi, Confusion of Tongues, 164.
Mild, passionless atmosphere: Ferenczi to Freud, 27 December 1931.
27. Ferenczi, Diary, 178.
28. Otto Fenichel, Problems of Psychoanalytic Technique, Psychoanalytic
Quarterly 8 (1939): 5787, esp. 63, was the first to use the term; references to it
are sparse through the 1950s.
29. Freud, Lines of Advance, 162, distinguishes between analytic abstinence and popularly conceived abstinence, refraining from sexual intercourse.
On analyst-patient sexual relations, see Glen O. Gabbard, The Early History
of Boundary Violations in Psychoanalysis, JAPA 43 (1995): 11151136; Lisa
Appignanesi and John Forrester, Freuds Women (New York: Basic Books,
1992), esp. chap. 7; and Forrester, Casualities of Truth, in Proof and Persuasion: Essays on Authority, Objectivity and Evidence, ed. Suzanne Marchand
and Elizabeth Lunbeck ([Turnhout] Belgium: Brepols, 1996): 219262. Luciana
Nissim Momigliano, A Spell in Viennabut Was Freud a Freudian?An Investigation into Freuds Technique between 1920 and 1938, Based on the Published Testimony of Former Analysands, International Review of PsychoAnalysis 14 (1987): 373389. Robert J. Leider, Analytic NeutralityA
Historical Review, Psychoanalytic Inquiry 3 (1983): 665674, at 668, concludes, after reviewing Freuds statements on and practices around neutrality,
that from any viewpoint, Freuds technique is considerably less austere and
abstemious than one would expect.
30. Momigliano, Spell in Vienna, 376, cites Freuds saying to one such
analyst, I prefer a student to a neurotic ten times over (Joseph Wortis, Fragments of an Analysis with Freud [New York: Simon and Schuster, 1954]).
Must be celebrated!: Momigliano, Spell in Vienna, 383 (H. D., Tribute to
Freud [New York: New Directions Books, 1984]). Arms of his chair: Roy R.
Grinker, Reminiscences of a Personal Contact with Freud, American Journal
of Orthopsychiatry 10 (1940): 850854, 851. Was not silent: Blanton, Diary
of My Analysis, 45 and 53. On the Wolf Man, see Gay, Freud, who at 291,
writes that this was one of Freuds boldest, and most problematic, contributions
to psychoanalytic techniquea contribution that was in effect completely
N o t e s t o Pa g e s 1 8 4 1 8 6
327
disavowed by his successors. Horney: Blanton, Diary of My Analysis, 65, Ferenczi at 67. Adler: Kardiner, My Analysis with Freud, 70, too painful at 71.
Jung: Grinker, Reminiscences, 852. You will see: Blanton, Diary of My
Analysis, 42.
31. Authorities: Siegfried Bernfeld, On Psychoanalytic Training, Psychoanalytic Quarterly 31 (1962): 453482, at 462. Sovereign readiness: Gay,
Freud, 292, sense of mastery at 303.
32. Freedom and naturalness: Otto Fenichel, Problems of Psychoanalytic Technique, Psychoanalytic Quarterly 8 (1939): 164185, at 184. Kurt
Eissler, in a widely cited paper published in 1953, offered an austere vision of
the analytic process, outlining what he called the basic model technique
with basic here interchangeable with the textbook Freudian. He argued that
verbal interpretation was the analysts mtier, and a salutary insight the normal
neurotic patients response thereto. Eissler allowed, however, that for some patients insight was not sufficient (puzzling over why a human being should refuse to make maximal use of the riches insight offered), and for the treatment
of these he introduced the concept of parameter, a term referring in his usage to
the advice or commands an analyst might introduce into the treatment of more
disturbed patients. For example, a phobic might be commanded to expose himself to the dreaded situation despite his fear of it and regardless of any anxiety
which might develop during that exposure, and it might be necessary to threaten
to break off treatment if he refused to do sothe model here being once again
Freuds treatment of the Wolf Man. See K. R. Eissler, The Effect of the Structure
of the Ego on Psychoanalytic Technique, JAPA 1 (1953): 104143; and Remarks on Some Variations in Psycho-Analytical Technique, IJP 39 (1958):
222229.
33. Leo Stone, The Psychoanalytic Situation: An Examination of Its Development and Essential Nature (New York: International Universities Press,
1961), is the locus classicus of this line of critique. Superfluous deprivations:
ibid., 21. Overzealous and indiscriminate: Stone, The Psychoanalytic Situation and TransferencePostscript to an Earlier Communication, JAPA 15
(1967): 358, at 3. Arbitrary authoritarianism: Stone, Psychoanalytic Situation, 52, robotlike at 39, Vermont at 48.
34. Schematic perfection: Stone, Psychoanalytic Situation, 107108, at
80, essential gratifications at 80.
35. Kohut, Introspection, Empathy, and PsychoanalysisAn Examination
of the Relationship Between Mode of Observation and Theory, JAPA 7 (1959):
459483.
328
N o t e s t o Pa g e s 1 8 7 1 9 3
N o t e s t o Pa g e s 1 9 3 1 9 4
329
for example, Hans W. Loewald, On the Therapeutic Action of PsychoAnalysis, IJP 41 (1960): 1633, at 2728: In the narcissistic neuroses the libido remains in or is taken back into the ego, not transferred to objects. . . .
[These] neuroses were thought to be inaccessible to psycho-analytic treatment
because of the narcissistic libido cathexis. Psycho-analysis was considered to be
feasible only where a transference relationship with the analyst could be established. Narcissistically split: Ferenczi, Child Analysis, 135136. Demanding: Leo Stone, The Widening Scope of Indications for Psychoanalysis, JAPA
2 (1954): 567594, at 584587. Developmental potential: Kohut, How Does
Analysis Cure?, 4. Treat the analyst: Malcolm, Impossible Profession, 117.
For one example among many documenting the analytic treatment of widening scope patients, see Sandor Lorand, Modifications in Classical Psychoanalysis, Psychoanalytic Quarterly 32 (1963): 192204, esp. 202. Stephen
Mitchell, Wishes, Needs, and Interpersonal Negotiations, Psychoanalytic Inquiry 11 (1991): 147170, at 151, captures the post-Kohutian evolution of analytic thinking on abstinence: The more ominous the diagnosis, the less ascetic
the experience.
47. Utter amazement: Malcolm, Impossible Profession, 118. Kohut, The
Two Analyses of Mr. Z, IJP 60 (1979): 327. Geoffrey Cocks, in his introduction to Curve, claims the paper is autobiographical, at 46. Skeptics: Randolf
Alnoes, Treatment of Narcissistic Personality Disturbances: The KernbergKohut Divergence, Scandinavian Psychoanalytic Review 6 (1983): 97110.
Didnt make sense: Malcolm, Impossible Profession, 118. Succeeded: Arnold M. Cooper, Review of How Does Analysis Cure? JAPA 36 (1988): 175
179, at 178.
48. Kohuts technique: Philip Holzman in Susan Quinn, Oedipus v.
Narcissus, New York Times Magazine, 9 November 1980. Morris Eagle, Recent Developments in Psychoanalysis (New York: McGraw Hill, 1984), 68,
finds him guilty; Robert M. Galatzer-Levy, Chapter 1: Heinz Kohut as Teacher
and Supervisor, Progress in Self Psychology 4 (1988): 342, at 30, finds him
innocent, writing that in his own experience, Kohut was entirely classical, in
the sense that only interpretation was given to the patient. The difference was
that demands for direct gratification were not generally interpreted as resistances to insight but rather as attempts, often legitimate, to receive needed supplies from the analyst. On Kohut and needs, see Anton O. Kris, Helping Patients by Analyzing Self-Criticism, JAPA 38 (1990): 605636, at 610616;
and Lawrence Friedman, Kohut: A Book Review Essay, Psychoanalytic Quarterly 49 (1980): 393422, at 416. Aloofness: Morton Shane in Lois Timnick,
330
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Rift May Threaten Freudian Theory, Los Angeles Times, 27 October 1979.
Pleasure-seeking infants: Kohut to E (1981), in Search 4:702. Have to assimilate: Malcolm, Impossible Profession, 118. On the simultaneous acceptance of Kohuts technique and rejection of his theory, consider Kriss statement
that however much he disagreed with some aspects of Kohuts theories of the
self, he believed that Kohut helped psychoanalysis embrace a more generally
affirmative analytic stance: in Steven H. Cooper, Modes of Influence in Psychoanalysis, JAPA 45 (1997): 217229, at 218. Kris, Helping Patients, at
611, argues that the analyst Michael Basch was right in stating that there has
been: widespread, albeit tacit, acceptance of Kohuts technique side by side
with a very vocal rejection of the theoretical implications behind those same
refreshingly efficacious clinical recommendations. Robert S. Wallerstein, How
Does Self Psychology Differ in Practice? IJP 66 (1985): 391404, argues, from
the perspective of a sharp critic of self psychology, that it and classical analysis
do not differ as much in practice as was often claimed and that classical analysts all along had engaged in many of the maneuvers they saw as beyond the
bounds of orthodox craft.
49. Ideologies: Lasch, The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an
Age of Diminishing Expectations (New York: Norton, 1978), 74. Immediate
gratification: Daniel Bell, The Cultural Contradiction of Capitalism (New York:
Basic Books, 1978 [1976]), 81, one thing at 78, economic system at 37.
Economy: Ernest Dichter, The Strategy of Desire (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 2011 [1960]), 169, first few minutes at 171.
50. Spoiled brats: James L. Titchener, The Day of a Psychoanalyst at
Woodstock, Psychoanalytic Study of Society, vol. 5, ed. Werner Muensterberger and Aaron H. Esman (New York: International Universities Press, 1972),
153. Needs: Lasch, Culture of Narcissism, 162163, optimal frustration at
171. Laschs tendentiousness can be glimpsed in his confident assertion that
love of the child came to be regarded not as a danger but as a positive duty
(162). On optimal frustration, see Kohut, The Analysis of the Self: A Systematic
Approach to the Psychoanalytic Treatment of Narcissistic Personality Disorders
(Madison, CT: International Universities Press, 2001 [1971]), 64.
51. Picked-up generation: William Braden, The Age of Aquarius: Technology and the Cultural Revolution (Chicago: Quandrangle Books, 1970), 22.
Unite one: Jules Henry, Culture against Man (New York: Vintage, 1965), 84.
Seeking transcendence: Nathan Adler, The Underground Stream: New Life
Styles and the Antinomian Personality (New York: Harper and Row, 1972),
118 and 90; The devouring of sensation is a characteristic hippie motivation,
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332
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8. Inaccessibility
1. Quite specific: Christopher Lasch, The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations (New York: Norton, 1978), 32,
tensions and anxieties at 50.
2. Anomic personalities: David Riesman, Reuel Denny, and Nathan
Glazer, The Lonely Crowd: A Study of the Changing American Character (New
Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1950), 90. So-called character neuroses: Lionel Trilling, Sincerity and Authenticity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 1971), 167. Underlying structure: Lasch, Culture of Narcissism, 50.
3. Aloof and supercilious: Leo Stone, The Widening Scope of Psychoanalysis, JAPA 2 (1954): 567594, at 584585. Love hungry: Jan Frank in
Leo Rangell, Panel Reportthe Borderline Case, Psychoanalytic Quarterly 3
(1955): 285298, at 291. Narcissistic supplies: Ralph R. Greenson, On
Screen Defenses, Screen Hunger and Screen Identity, JAPA 6 (1958): 242262,
at 255. More sophisticated: Barbara Easser Ruth and Stanley R. Lesser,
Hysterical Personality: A Re-evaluation, Psychoanalytic Quarterly 34 (1965):
390405, at 390. This type: Peter Giovacchini, Psychoanalysis of Character
Disorders (Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson, 1975), cited in Lasch, Culture of
Narcissism, 42.
4. Not indifferent: Freud, Some Character Types Met with in PsychoAnalytic Work (1916), Standard Edition 14:315. Our analytic art: Freud to
Eduardo Weiss, 22 May 1922, in Harald Leupold-Lwenthal, A Discussion of
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333
the Paper by Anton O. Kris On Wanting Too Much: The Exceptions Revisited, IJP 57 (1976): 9799, at 99. On this patient as typical, consider Kris,
On Wanting Too Much: The Exceptions Revisited, IJP 57 (1976): 8595, at
85: Today the exceptions are very nearly the rule; and Leupold-Lwenthal,
Discussion, 99, on Weisss patient, who would be a relatively common occurrence in an analysts practice today.
5. Karl Abraham, A Particular Form of Neurotic Resistance against the
Psycho-Analytic Method (1919), in Abraham, Selected Papers of Karl Abraham, trans. Douglas Bryan and Alix Strachey (London: Marsfield Library, 1988
[1927]), 303311; in this short paper, Abraham mentions these patients narcissism more than a dozen times. Good tolerance: Henry M. Bachrach and
Louis A. Leaff, Analyzability: A Systematic Review of the Clinical and Quantitative Literature, JAPA 26 (1978): 881920, at 886.
6. Although some credit Kohut and some Kernberg with having coined the
concept of the narcissistic personality disorder, in fact priority belongs to
neither. Maxwell Gitelson delineated the concept in 1958 (or earlier), but his
name is almost never associated with it. See Edward Glover, Ego-Distortion,
IJP 39 (1958): 260264, at 261, among other papers and panel reports; Book
Notices, JAPA 22 (1974): 697706, at 701, notes the lack of proper attribution. Throughout, I have stressed Kernbergs role in formulating the narcissistic
personality more than Kohuts; his portrait of the narcissist is, to my mind,
much more compelling and innovative than Kohuts, in part because, coming
from the object relations tradition, he homes right in on the contradictions between external functioning (which may be quite good) and the pathologies in
internal object relating that make the condition so confusing, paradoxical, and
hard to pin downif familiar. Stanley A. Leavy, Against Narcissism, Psychoanalysis and Contemporary Thought 19 (1996): 403424, writes, at 411,
crediting Kernberg with delineating the term, that it has the advantage of being as good a label as any for a recognizable syndrome. On Kernberg, see esp.
his Contrasting Viewpoints Regarding the Nature and Psychoanalytic Treatment of Narcissistic Personalities: A Preliminary Communication, JAPA 22
(1974): 255267. Improve dramatically: Kernberg, Borderline Conditions
and Pathological Narcissism (Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson, 1985 [1975]),
243. Pathological self-structure: Kernberg, Contrasting Viewpoints, 258.
On Kernberg and Kohut, consider Irwin Hirsch, Toward a More Subjective
View of Analyzability, JAPA 44 (1984): 169182, at 180: The analytic community in the United States responded [to the work of Kernberg and Kohut] as
if restraints were lifted. On Kohut, see Kris, Freuds Treatment of a Narcissistic
334
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Patient, IJP 75 (1994): 649664, at 661, asking why Freuds attitude of support toward narcissistic patients required rediscovery by Kohut; and Charles
K. Hofling and Robert W. Meyers, Recent Discoveries in Psychoanalysis, Archives of General Psychiatry 26 (1972): 518523. Among surveys that registered the predominance of narcissism and the character disorders are Norman
D. Lazar, Nature and Significance of Changes in Patients in a Psychoanalytic
Clinic, Psychoanalytic Quarterly 42 (1973): 579600; and Daniel S. Jaffee and
Sydney E. Pulver, Survey of Psychoanalytic Practice 1976: Some Trends and
Implications, JAPA 26 (1978): 615631. Like Aaron Green: Janet Malcolm,
Psychoanalysis: The Impossible Profession (New York: Knopf, 1981), 110 and
117. On the Kohutian analytic setting, consider what Kohut said in a seminar,
circa 1974 (Seminars, 59), of his stance toward people with acute disturbances
in body-temperature regulation, among them schizoid and narcissistic patients:
Sometimes a very simple remedy is to offer them a hot drink. I do not serve
meals in sessions with my patients, but I have had some very ill people to whom
I have said, Youre feeling terrible today. Let us go down and have a cup of
coffee.
7. Biography of Jones: Vincent Brome, Ernest Jones: Freuds Alter Ego
(New York: Norton, 1983), esp. chap. 12. On Riviere as patient, see also Kris,
Freuds Treatment; Lisa Appignanesi and John Forrrester, Freuds Women
(New York: Basic Books, 1992), 365; and Mary Jacobus, The Poetics of Psychoanalysis: In the Wake of Klein (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005),
chap. 2. Rivieres classic paper: Riviere, A Contribution to the Analysis of the
Negative Therapeutic Reaction, IJP 17 (1936): 304320. Taking Freud to
task: Kris, Freuds Treatment, 660.
8. Riviere, Review of David Forsythe, The Technique of Psycho-Analysis
(192122), in Riviere, The Inner World and Joan Riviere: Collected Papers:
19201958, ed. Athol Hughes (London: Karnac Books, 1991), 69.
9. That proud woman: Freud to Abraham, 30 March 1922. Long tragedy: Riviere to Jones, 25 October 1918, Joan Riviere collection, Archives of
the British Psychoanalytical Society, P04-C-E-06 (all letters cited below from
Riviere to Jones are in the Riviere Collection, with the same reference number).
Worst failure: Jones to Freud, 22 January 1922. Not yet worked out:
Freud to Abraham, 30 March 1922.
10. Narcissism and selfishness: Riviere to Jones, 28 December 1918.
Egocentric, asocial: Riviere, Negative Therapeutic Reaction, 318.
11. Underestimated: Jones to Freud, 22 January 1922. Intimate attitude: Freud, Recommendations to Physicians Practising Psycho-Analysis
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336
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9. Identity
1. Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique (New York: Norton, 2013 [1953]),
68. See Philip Gleason, Identifying Identity: A Semantic History, Journal of
338
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American History 69 (1983): 910931, for a masterful survey of identitys debut and subsequent fate beyond psychoanalysis.
2. Inward life: William James, The Principles of Psychology, vol. 1 (New
York: Dover, 1950 [1890]), 299, cited in Ian Miller, William James and the
Psychology of Consciousness: Beginnings of the American School, Contemporary Psychoanalysis 23 (1981): 299313, at 308309. Sociological orientation: Edith Jacobson, The Self and the Object World (New York: International
Universities Press, 1964), 25.
3. Household word: Robert A. Nisbet, A Sense of Personal Sameness,
New York Times, 31 March 1968. Clich: Robert Coles in Gleason, Identifying Identity, 913. Rallying cry: Robert S. Wallerstein, Eriksons Concept
of Ego Identity Reconsidered, JAPA 46 (1998): 229247, at 230. Moral
terms: Kenneth Kenniston in Gleason, 913. Identity crisis: Dorothy Barclay,
After the First Year of College, New York Times, 28 May 1961. Growing
pains: June Bingham, The Intelligent Squares Guide to Hippieland, New
York Times, 24 September 1967. Bellyachers: Crane Brinton in Alden Whitman, Identity a Puzzle to Intellectuals, New York Times, 1 April 1968. See
Orrin E. Klapp, Collective Search for Identity (New York: Holt, Reinhart and
Winston, 1969), for a report from the front lines of the identity revolution.
4. On social factors, see, for example, Norman Tabachnick, Three PsychoAnalytic Views of Identity, IJP 46 (1965): 467473, at 471. True clinician:
Daniel Yankelovich and William Barrett, Ego and Instinct: The Psychoanalytic
View of Human NatureRevised (New York: Random House, 1970), 143 (reporting a conversation with Paul Myerson), lived experience at 152154.
5. Erikson, Childhood and Society (New York: Norton, 1978 [1950]), 279.
6. Introspective honesty: ibid., 282. Life itself : D. W. Winnicott, The
Location of Cultural Experience (1967), in Playing and Reality (London:
Routledge, 1989 [1971]), 98 (emphasis in original). Differ from Freud: Winnicott in Harry Guntrip, My Experience of Analysis with Fairbairn and Winnicott, International Review of Psycho-Analysis 2 (1975): 145156, at 153.
For an instance of the subtlety of Eriksons use of Freud to authorize his own
anti-Freudian position, see his Ego Development and Historical Change
Clinical Notes, Psychoanalytic Study of the Child 2 (1946): 359396, where,
at 380, he argues that psychoanalysis came to emphasize the individual and
regressive rather than the collective-supportive aspects of Freuds statements
on self-esteem in On Narcissism. Absolving Freud, he lays blame instead on
Freuds followers, who were concerned with only half the story, going on to
spell out a compelling argument for the potential of the environment to sustain
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340
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23. Long journey: Ibid. Constituted out of: Leston Havens, A Theoretical Basis for the Concepts of Self and Authentic Self, JAPA 34 (1986): 363
378, at 370. Collect together: Winnicott, The Maturational Processes and the
Facilitating Environment: Studies in the Theory of Emotional Development
(London: Karnac, 1990 [1965]), 148. Feeling real: Winnicott, Playing and
Reality, 117.
24. Valid indications: Ralph H. Turner, The Real Self: From Institution
to Impulse, American Journal of Sociology 81 (1976): 9891016, at 997.
25. Love-ins: Ibid., 993. Mastery of reality: James F. Masterson, The
Search for the Real Self: Unmasking the Personality Disorders of Our Age
(New York: Free Press, 1988), 23. On Winnicotts true self, see Adam Phillips,
Winnicott (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988), 127137.
26. When a philosopher: Moore in Clifford Geertz, Common Sense as a
Cultural System, in Local Knowledge (New York: Basic Books, 1983), 84.
Talk a good game: Riesman, Faces in the Crowd: Individual Studies in Character and Politics (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1952), 700705,
talk of autonomy at 680.
27. Riesman, Faces in the Crowd, 679680.
28. Jersild, In Search of Self: An Exploration of the Role of the School in
Promoting Self-Understanding (New York: Bureau of Publication, Teachers
College, Columbia University, 1952), 2236, appendix B.
29. Psychologizing: ibid., 30.
30. Ralph H. Turner, Is There a Quest for Identity? Sociological Quarterly
16 (1975): 148161. No Freud please: John Forrester, Dispatches from the
Freud Wars: Psychoanalysis and Its Passions (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997), 252. On the view from Britain, consider the acid comment
of Charles Rycroft, On Shame and the Search for Identity, IJP 41 (1960): 85
86: Of the use or misuse that American society may make of psycho-analytical
concepts in its search for a philosophy of life, the present reviewer can have
nothing to say. Anguished, frustrated: Charles J. Rolo, Are Americans Well
Adjusted? Atlantic Monthly, 1961, a review of Geral Gurin, Joseph Veroff,
and Sheila Field, Americans View Their Mental Health: A Nationwide Interview Survey (New York, 1960).
31. Judicial department: Wheelis, Quest for Identity, 98. Parents strictness: Freud, New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis (1933), Standard
Edition 22:62.
32. Unquestioning acceptance: Wheelis, Quest for Identity, 102. Writing
from Britain, Charles Rycroft, The Quest for Identity, IJP 41 (1960): 8687,
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343
dissented from the notion that father deprivation was at the root of identity
problems, noting that Winnicotts work was demonstrating that the relationship with the preoedipal mother was of more significance.
33. Flock of sheep: Jung to Freud, 8 November 1909. Father ideal:
Freud (12 October 1910), Minutes 3:14. Mother-complex: Jung to Freud,
8 November 1909. Petticoat government: Freud, The Future of an Illusion
(1927), Standard Edition 21:49. On Freuds distaste for the United States, see
Patrick J. Mahony, Freud Overwhelmed, Psychoanalysis and History 1
(1999): 5668.
34. Mothers were dominant: Rollo May, Mans Search for Himself (New
York: Norton, 1953), esp. 119125. Men waited on their wives: Freida
Fromm-Reichmann, Notes on the Mother Rle in the Family Group, Bulletin
of the Menninger Clinic 4 (1940): 132148, at 133134; she adds that such a
mother was more disastrous for the child than the authoritarian father.
35. Revengeful triumph: Erikson, Childhood and Society, 289, overwhelmingly bigger at 313314.
36. Reasonably good terms: ibid., 312. Rigidly vindictive: Erikson, The
Problem of Ego Identity, JAPA 4 (1956): 56121, at 103, triumph of depreciation at 84. Tastes and standards: Freud (An Outline of Psycho-Analysis,
IJP 21 [1940], 82) in Erikson, Childhood and Tradition, 346. Mans enslavement: Ego Development and Historical Change, 395, particular life style
at 360. See Bingham, Hippieland, for an instance of the sort of parental leniency that caught Eriksons attention: A clear difference between the parents of
today and their parents is the reluctance to smite the young down. The refugee
analyst Christine Olden, in Notes on Child Rearing in America, Psychoanalytic Study of the Child 7 (1952): 387392, attempting, at 389, to understand
why the permissive aspects of psychoanalysis overshadowed all other aspects in the United States, noted that in the 1870s a visiting Scotsman, observing how independent the American young were, wrote that Parent, obey your
children in all things, is the new commandment.
37. Tibor Agoston, Some Psychological Aspects of Prostitution: The
Pseudo-Personality, IJP 26 (1945): 6267. Emergence: Lichtenstein, Identity and Sexuality, 216, consummated body at 225, feminine surrender at
228.
38. Lasch, The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations (New York: Norton, 1978), 6465.
39. Well liked: Ibid., 64. Master occupational change: C. Wright Mills,
The Competitive Personality, Partisan Review 13 (1946): 433447, at 437.
344
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345
346
N o t e s t o Pa g e s 2 5 5 2 5 8
13 August 2011. Makes you attractive: Tracy Quan, In Defence of Narcissism, guardian.co.uk, 4 August 2008. Inflated sense of self: Kaufmann,
Adaptive in youth. Life has meaning: Yoffe, Enough about You. Forms
of public life: Quan, Defence of Narcissism.
4. Kohutian: Manfred F.R. Kets de Vries, Narcissism and Leadership: An
Object Relations Perspective, Human Relations 38 (1985): 583601, at 587.
Overcome: Michael Maccoby, Narcissistic Leaders: The Incredible Pros,
The Inevitable Cons; the article was originally published in Harvard Business
Review, vol. 78, no. 1 (January 2000): 6877, and is widely available on the
Internet (www.maccoby.com/Articles/NarLeaders.shtml: accessed 22 June 2013).
See also Maccoby, The Productive Narcissist: The Promise and Peril of Visionary Leadership (New York: Broadway Books, 2003).
5. Maccoby, Corporate Character Types: The Gamesman vs. Narcissus,
Psychology Today, October 1978.
6. Ernest Jones, The God Complex: The Belief That One Is God, and the
Resulting Character Traits (1913), in Essays in Applied Psychoanalysis, vol. 2
(London: Hogarth Press and Institute of Psycho-Analysis, 1951), 244265 (emphasis in original). Difference: Maccoby, Narcissistic Leaders, 94; the quip
is all over the Internet, and provides the title for Mike Wilson, The Difference
between God and Larry Ellison: Inside Oracle Corporation (New York: HarperCollins, 2002).
7. These are the doers: Maccoby, Gamesman vs. Narcissus, 61. People
belonging: Freud, Libidinal Types (1931), Standard Edition 21:218 (cited by
Maccoby, Narcissistic Leaders, 93). Absolutely narcissistic: Freud, Group
Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego (1921), Standard Edition 18:123124.
8. Security and protection: Christine Olden, About the Fascinating Effect of the Narcissistic Personality, American Imago 2 (1941): 347355, at
353354. Extreme submissiveness: Annie Reich, A Contribution to the Psychoanalysis of Extreme Submissiveness in Women, Psychoanalytic Quarterly 9
(1940): 470480.
9. Otto Fenichel, Psychoanalytic Remarks on Fromms Book Escape from
Freedom, Psychoanalytic Review 31 (1944): 133152, reviews the literature
on the longing to belong; see also his Trophy and Triumph: A Clinical Study
(1939), Collected Papers, 2nd series (New York: W. W. Norton, 1954), 141
162. Limitless narcissism: Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents (1930),
Standard Edition 21:72. Another persons narcissism: Freud, On Narcissism: An Introduction (1914), Standard Edition 14:89.
N o t e s t o Pa g e s 2 5 8 2 6 0
347
10. Personal Magnetism, London Spectator, 34, no. 3, March 1903. Max
Weber, The Theory of Social and Economic Organization, ed. Talcott Parsons,
trans. A. M. Henderson and Talcott Parsons (New York: Free Press, 1947). On
Weber, see Robert C. Tucker, The Theory of Charismatic Leadership, Daedalus
97 (1968): 731756. Attributions of specialness: Charles Camic, Charisma:
Its Varieties, Preconditions, and Consequences, Sociological Inquiry 50 (1980):
523, at 7.
11. Into popular discourse: Bell in Richard R. Lingeman, The Greeks
Had a Word for ItBut What Does It Mean? New York Times Magazine, 4
August 1968. Malcolm X: Albert B. Southwick, Malcolm X: Charismatic
Demagogue, Christian Century 80 (1963): 740741. Wilson: Britain: The
Charisma Sweepstakes, Newsweek, 15 June 1970. Scoop Jackson: Nation: A
Moment of Charisma, Time, 15 March 1976. Connolly: Mr. Charisma, The
Nation, 10 February 1979. Jackson: Nathaniel Sheppard, Jesse Jackson: The
Last Charismatic Leader? Black Enterprise, March 1981. Mysterious air:
Fredelle Maynard, Charisma: Who Has It? Seventeen, October 1968. Francine du Plessix Gray, Charisma: What It Is and How to Get It, Mademoiselle,
December 1981; Doe Lang, Charisma: Who Has It? How They Got It! And
How You Can Get It Too! Good Housekeeping, February 1982.
12. Key trait: Seth A. Rosenthal and Todd L. Pittinsky, Narcissistic Leadership, Leadership Quarterly 17 (2006): 617633, at 628. Model of leadership: Maccoby, Productive Narcissist, 11. Bland, opaque: Abraham Zaleznik, Charismatic and Consensus Leaders: A Psychological Comparison,
Bulletin of the Menninger Clinic 38 (1974): 222238, at 233. Zaleznik was a
psychoanalyst and professor of management at the Harvard Business School.
For a popular notice of his work, see The Ugly Side of Charisma, Science
Digest 80 (October 1976): 89.
13. Awe, devotion: Jerome A. Winer, Thomas Jobe, and Carlton Ferrono,
Toward a Psychoanalytic Theory of the Charismatic Relationship, Annual of
Psychoanalysis 12 (1984): 155175, at 163165; here I am indebted to Camic,
Charisma. Uncanny ability: Kohut in Daniel Sankowsky, The Charismatic
Leader as Narcissist: Understanding the Abuse of Power, Organizational Dynamics 23, no. 4 (1995): 5771, at 65.
14. Seemingly unlimited: Roderick M. Kramer, The Harder They Fall,
Harvard Business Review 81, no. 10 (October 2003): 5866, at 58. Risky decision making: Amy B. Brunell et al., Leader Emergence: The Case of the Narcissistic Leader, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 34 (2008): 16631676,
348
N o t e s t o Pa g e s 2 6 0 2 6 2
at 1674. Crash and burn: Kramer, Harder they Fall, 5859. Resource and
hazard: Zaleznik, Management of Disappointment, Harvard Business Review 45, no. 6 (NovemberDecember 1967): 5970, at 6566.
15. Distributing authority: Zaleznik, Power and Politics in Organizational Life, Harvard Business Review 48, no. 3 (MayJune 1970): 4760, at 48.
16. Maccoby, The Narcissist-Visionary: How to Stop Worrying and Learn
to Love Your Difficult Boss, Forbes, 3 March 2003, www.maccoby.com
/Articles/onmymind.shtml (accessed 23 September 2010).
17. For the numbers, widely quoted, see Jean M. Twenge and W. Keith
Campbell, The Narcissism Epidemic: Living in an Age of Entitlement (New
York: Free Press, 2009), 2; for example, is not good: Holly Brubach, But
Enough about You, New York Times T Magazine, 19 February 2009; Raina
Kelley, Generation Me, Newsweek, 27 April 2009; and Madeline Bunting,
The Narcissism of Consumer Society Has Left Women Unhappier than Ever,
Guardian, 26 July 2009. On prevalence, see Leonard C. Groopman and Arnold
Cooper, Narcissistic Personality Disorder, at www.health.am/psy/narcissistic
-personality-disorder/ (accessed 28 June 2013), reporting lifetime prevalence of
1 percent in the general population, 216 percent in clinical populations, with
5075 percent male; and F. S. Stinson et al., Prevalence, Correlates, Disability,
and Comorbidity of DSM IV Narcissistic Personality Disorder: Results from
the Wave 2 National Epidemiological Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions, Journal of Clinical Psychiatry 69 (2008): 10331045, reporting lifetime
prevalence at 6.2 percent, in a sample of 34,653 adults: 7.7 percent for men, 4.8
percent for women.
18. The Narcissistic Personality Inventory can be found on the Internet
athttp://psychcentral.com/quizzes/narcissistic.htm and in Pinsky Mirror Effect,
261267. Scores of 21 or higher are indicative of narcissism; according to
Twenge and Campbell, Narcissism Epidemic, at 31, average scores have gone
from c. 15.5 in 19801984 to c. 17.5 in 20052006. There is a substantial literature and a good deal of controversy about what the test measures. Among
critics articles are Seth A. Rosenthal and Jill M. Hooley, Narcissism Assessment in Social-Personality Research: Does the Association between Narcissism
and Psychological Health Result from a Confound with Self-Esteem? Journal of
Research in Personality 44 (2010): 453465; Rosenthal et al., Further Evidence
of the Narcissistic Personality Inventorys Validity Problems: A Meta-Analytic
InvestigationResponse to Miller, Maples, and Campbell, Journal of Research
in Personality 45 (2100): 408416; and Kali H. Trzesniewski et al., Do Todays
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23. New study: Eric Hoover, New Study Finds Most Narcissistic Generation on Campuses, Watching You Tube, Chronicle of Higher Education 28
February 2007. Students Not So Self-Obsessed. Dire warnings: Douglas
Quenqua, Seeing Narcissists Everywhere, New York Times, 5 August 1913.
Books: Linda Martinez-Lewis, Freeing Yourself from the Narcissist in Your Life
(New York: Penguin, 2008); Cynthia Zayn and M.S. Kevin Dribble, Narcissistic
Lovers: How to Cope, Recover and Move On (Far Hills, NJ: New Horizon
Press, 2007); Nina W. Brown, Children of the Self-Absorbed: A Grown-Ups
Guide to Getting over Narcissistic Parents (Oakland, CA: New Harbinger
Press, 2008). Infuriating: Nina W. Brown, Coping with Infuriating, Mean,
Critical People: The Destructive Narcissistic Pattern (Westport, CT: Praeger,
2006). Cynthia Lechan Goodman and Barbara Leff, The Everything Guide to
Narcissistic Personality Disorder (Avon, MA: Adams Media, 2012).
24. Rosenthal and Hooley, Narcissism Assessment, 461, discussing the
psychologists take on healthy narcissism. I refer to research psychologists here
to distinguish them from clinical psychologists.
25. For condemnation of advertisers exploitation of women, see Susan J.
Douglas, Where The Girls Are: Growing Up Female with the Mass Media (New
York: Three Rivers Press, 1994), chap. 11 (a critique of the notion of Narcissism as Liberation). Inflated sense: Lucy Taylor, The Ego Epidemic: How
More and More of Us Women Have an Inflated Sense of Our Own Fabulousness, Mail Online,14 September 2009. Anne Hollander, Sex and Suits (New
York: Knopf, 1994), writes, at 23, that feelings of dismay about the whole of
fashion have been expressed since its very beginning and is especially pointed
on the dour moralism of the antifashion position.
26. Jealousy, petty triumph: Flgel, The Psychology of Clothes (London:
Hogarth Press, 1930), 114, women dress, at 214. Highly ambivalent: Adrienne Harris in Irene Cairo-Chiarandini, To Have and Have Not: Clinical Uses
of Envy, JAPA 49 (2001): 13911404, at 1399. Way of displaying: Arlene
Kramer Richards, Ladies of Fashion: Pleasure, Perversion or Paraphilia, IJP
77 (1996): 337351, at 337.
27. Generation Mes lifetime: Twenge, Generation Me: Why Todays
Young Americans Are More Confident, Assertive, Entitledand More Miserable Than Ever Before (New York: Free Press, 2006), 17, free to be at 2425,
satisfy their personal wants at 221. Fads and bodies are items on the
NPI, in Pinsky and Young, Mirror Effect, 264. Vain and self-centered: Twenge
and Campbell, Narcissism Epidemic, 39. Stanley A. Leavy, Against Narcissism, Psychoanalysis and Contemporary Thought 19 (1996): 403424, notes,
N o t e s t o Pa g e s 2 6 8 2 7 0
351
at 406, that narcissism as the erotic pleasure of gazing at the reflection of ones
own body plays little role in analytic thinking and practice (though, as noted
in the text, it figures importantly in the NPI).
28. Louis W. Flaccus, Remarks on the Psychology of Clothes, Pedagogical
Seminary 1314 (19061907): 6183, esp. 7075.
29. Psychic distress: Colin Campbell, Shopaholics, Spendaholics, and the
Question of Gender, in I Shop, Therefore I Am: Compulsive Buying and the
Search for Self, ed. April Lane Benson (Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson, 2000),
58, extended clothes-shopping at 69. Escape from psychic pain: Ann-Marie
N. Paley, Growing Up in Chaos: The Dissociative Response, American Journal of Psychoanalysis 48 (1988): 7283, at 75. Flight from feminine identification: Diana Diamond, Gender-Specific Transference Reactions of Male and
Female Patients to the Therapists Pregnancy, Psychoanalytic Psychology 9
(1992): 319345, at 331. Form of self-harm: Lynda Chassler, Traumatic Attachments and Self-Harm Behaviors, Psychoanalytic Social Work 15 (2008):
6974, at 70. Deferred reaction: Lauren Lawrence, The Psychodynamics of
the Compulsive Female Shopper, American Journal of Psychoanalysis 50
(1990): 6770, at 70. Cast shopping: Campbell, Shopaholics.
30. Ungraceful descent: Michelle Cottle, How Mens Magazines Are
Making Guys as Neurotic, Insecure and Obsessive about Their Appearance as
Women, Washington Monthly, May 1998. Tight, low-rise jeans: Mark
Lotto, Were Nude York, Nude York, New York Observer, 26 June 2005.
31. Shalt nots: Philip Rieff, The Triumph of the Therapeutic: Uses of
Faith after Freud (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966), 1418. Ernest
Dichter, The Strategy of Desire (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 2011 [1960]),
85.
32. Rieff, Triumph of the Therapeutic, 17.
AC K N OW L E D G M E N T S
Acknowledgments
353
has been critical through the years this book has been in the making.
Michael Bernstein has given generously of his self and keen intelligence, for which I am exceedingly grateful. And, over the last several
decades, Allan Brandt has proven the most steadfast of friends, a font
of warmth and deeply appreciated wisdom on just about everything.
I wish to acknowledge the psychiatrists and psychoanalysts
friends and colleagueswho have contributed in important ways to
this book. Bennett Simon, friend and intellectual collaborator, has
served as an invaluable sounding board on matters both personal
and professional; I benefitted enormously from his generous reading
of the entire manuscript. In conversation with Humphrey Morris I
have deepened my understanding of narcissism, of psychoanalysis,
and of much else besides. In Boston, Steven Ablon, Nancy Chodorow,
Lois Choi-Kain, Shelly Greenfield, and Anton Kris have been especially welcoming and supportive of my interests in the borderlands
between the academy and psychoanalysis. I am also grateful to the
many practitioners to whom I have presented my work for the informed and challenging feedback they have given me. In particular, I
thank Stanley Coen, Lawrence Friedman, George Makari, and Kerry
Sulkowicz in New York and James Anderson in Chicago.
Portions of chapter 4 originally appeared in The Narcissistic
Homosexual: Genealogy of a Myth, History and Psyche: Culture,
Psychoanalysis, and the Past, ed. Sally Alexander and Barbara Taylor (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), reproduced with permission of Palgrave Macmillan. The full published version of this
publication is available from: http://www.palgraveconnect.com/pc
/doifinder/10.1057/9781137092427.0004.
Brief portions of the Introduction and Chapter 1 originally appeared in Narcissism: Social Critique in Me-Decade America,
Engineering Society: The Role of the Human and Social Sciencesin Modern Societies, 1880-1980, ed. Kerstin Brckweh, Dirk
Schumann, Richard F. Wetzell, and Benjamin Zieman (New York:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), reproduced with permission of Palgrave
Macmillan. The full published version of this publication is available from: http://www.palgraveconnect.com/pc/doifinder/10.1057
/9781137284501.
354
Acknowledgments
I wish to thank John Burnham for providing a platform to explore the ideas discussed here in chapter 2, in After Freud Left: A
Century of Psychoanalysis in America, ed. Burnham (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012). At an earlier stage in my research, I
examined some of the issues in the same chapter in Histories of Scientific Observation, ed. Lorraine Daston and Elizabeth Lunbeck
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011), and am grateful for
the feedback I received. I would also like to thank Joanne Halford,
Honorary Archivist of the British Psychoanalytical Society, London,
and Casey Gibbs, Librarian of the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis, for permission to publish material from, respectively, the
Joan Riviere Papers and the Heinz Kohut Papers.
My greatest debts are to my family. The support of my parents
has been unwavering, and so too has been the companionship of my
sisters and brothers. Linda Gerstle and Isaac Franco were always
ready to offer me a refuge from narcissism. My sons reached adulthood listening to me talk of finishing this project. Dan has proven
an invaluable interlocutor to the end, and his readings of the book
improved it immeasurably. Sam has been endlessly and satisfyingly
curious and, like his brother, always open to talking with me about
it. Finally, I thank my husband Gary Gerstle for giving me sustained
encouragement, support, and lovethe narcissistic supplies that
have made it all possible.
INDEX
356
Index
Index
dependency, 127, 129130; and
independence, 113; and vanity,
268
A Contribution to the Analysis of
the Negative Therapeutic Reaction (Riviere), 205206
Cosmopolitan on identity, 228
Counterculture, 3, 1920, 39, 78,
165, 195
Countertransference, 66
Covey, Stephen, 259
Creativity: of fashion, 148; and
independence, 133; and malignant
narcissism, 71, 80
The Cultural Contradictions of
Capitalism (Bell), 2, 18
Cultural personality, 226
Culture against Man (Henry), 21
Culture of narcissism, 1318
The Culture of Narcissism (Lasch), 2,
12, 13, 16, 17, 68, 110, 132, 255
Cushman, Philip, 284n35
Democracy in America (Tocqueville),
13
Dependence: as feminine trait, 86,
119126; and homosexuality, 86,
96; and jealousy, 220; and Oedipus
complex, 308n17; as pathological
problem, 136137; and subordination, 113; and vanity, 160. See also
Independence
Developmental stages, 2728
Dichter, Ernest, 21, 22, 32, 195, 270,
281n19
Dreams and Telepathy
(Freud), 234
Drive theory, 59, 65
357
358
Index
Index
by, 4243; on leadership qualities
of narcissists, 256257; on
Leonardo da Vinci, 8590; on
narcissism as normal and pathological, 4, 3334, 8384; on needs
and wants, 23; on primary
narcissism, 114, 115119; Riviere
as analysis subject of, 213219,
336n24; on self-esteem, 105,
302n36; on treatment of narcissism, 203204. See also specific
books and papers
Freud, Sophie, 121
Freud: The Mind of the Moralist
(Rieff), 24
Friedan, Betty, 224, 246, 247
Fromm, Erich, 136, 233, 313n5
Fromm-Reichmann, Frieda, 242, 243
Galatzer-Levy, Robert M., 329n48
Galbraith, John Kenneth, 1819, 24,
25, 26
Gallantry, 75
Gates, Bill, 261
Gay, Peter, 87, 95, 184, 323n18
Gellner, Ernest, 6263
Gender: and jealousy, 219220, 221;
and vanity, 266271. See also
Femininity; Feminism; Women
Gender Trouble (Butler), 152
Generation Me, 261, 264, 267
Generation Me (Twenge), 267
Generation of Narcissus
(Malcolm), 197
God-complex, 154, 256
Goleman, Daniel, 259
Good Housekeeping: on charisma,
259; on self-love, 110
359
360
Index
Hofstadter, Richard, 17
Hollander, Anne, 316n19
Home economics, 131
Homosexuality: and dependence,
86, 96; Freuds work on, 8590;
and identity, 225; of Leonardo da
Vinci, 8788; narcissism connected
to, 84, 107; and object love, 98;
and paranoia, 9192; and psychoanalysis, 98; and self-love, 84,
97103; and vanity, 139, 142
Horney, Karen, 184, 236, 237, 238
Household labor, 131
Hubbard, L. Ron, 14
Id, 16
Idealism, 197, 209
Identity, 224251; and American
superego, 241244; and culture
of narcissism, 13; and healthy
narcissism, 56; and minor
differences, 248251; pseudopersonalities, 245; and realness,
237241; searching for, 228237;
womens, 244247
Identity crisis, 229
Imperial self, 47
Impulse gratification, 15, 66
Independence, 113136; and
affluence, 19; and Freuds heroic
dependencies, 119126; hallucinatory, 115119; and leadership,
260; and malignant narcissism,
62; phony, 132135; and selfesteem, 106; and self-sufficiency,
126132; and vanity, 143, 153,
160. See also Dependence
Individualism: and affluence, 20, 22
Indulgence, 166
Infancy: dependence in, 133;
grandiosity in, 44; independence
in, 114, 115119; narcissism in,
4344, 70, 249
Infantile sexuality, 86
Instant gratification, 194200
Interdependence, 20, 117, 119
Internalized object relations, 61, 160
International Journal of PsychoAnalysis, 126, 181, 215
The Interpretation of Dreams
(Freud), 95
Introductory Lectures on PsychoAnalysis (Freud), 212
Introjection and Transference
(Ferenczi), 104
Introspection, Empathy, and
Psychoanalysis (Kohut), 186
Jackson, Jesse, 258
Jackson, Scoop, 258
Jacobson, Edith, 52
Jacoby, Russell, 281n19
James, William, 30, 225, 233235,
302n36, 341n19
Jealousy, 219222. See also Envy
Jersild, Arthur T., 240
Jobs, Steve, 255, 261
Johns Hopkins University, 64
Johnson, Virginia E., 74
Jokes and Their Relationship to the
Unconscious (Freud), 171
Jones, Ernest: analytic boundary
violations by, 183; Ferenczis work
censored and suppressed by,
5455, 181; framing of narcissism
by, 67; and Freuds departure from
Index
361
362
Index
Leadership, 254261
Leonardo da Vinci and a Memory
of His Childhood (Freud), 84,
8590, 98
Libido: and culture of narcissism,
16; and healthy narcissism, 104;
Kernberg on, 65
Life magazine on household
consumption, 131
Lipps, Theodore, 171
Loneliness, 38
The Lonely Crowd (Riesman), 2,
16, 19
Love: and aggression, 73, 78; and
gratification, 167176; Kernbergs
theories on, 7374; ritualization
of, 74. See also Self-love
Lundberg, Ferdinand, 131
Lynd, Helen Merrell, 236, 237
Maccoby, Michael, 255, 261
Mademoiselle: on charisma, 259; on
identity, 236
The Making of a Counter Culture
(Roszak), 1920
Malcolm, Henry, 197
Malcolm, Janet, 190191, 192
Malcolm X, 258
Malignant narcissism, 5980; and
faade of normality, 6467; media
focus on, 57, 252; normal narcissism vs., 6771; and personal
relationships, 6064; and sex and
violence, 7179
Marcuse, Herbert, 48
Marin, Peter, 1314
Marital fidelity, 77
Marriage, 74, 261
Marxism, 233
Masculine ascendancy, 75
Maslow, Abraham, 35
Maslows hierarchy of needs, 23
Masochism, 207
Masters, William H., 74
Materialism, 3233, 127, 157162,
270
Matriarchy, 242. See also Mother
attachment
May, Rollo, 242
Me Decade, 5, 11, 79, 194
Media coverage: on malignant
narcissism, 57, 252, 264; narcissism equated with selfishness in,
50. See also specific publications
Megalomania, 117, 207
Memoirs of My Nervous Illness
(Schreber), 91
Menninger Foundation, 64
Merezhkovsky, Dmitry, 85
Miller, Perry, 3435
Mills, C. Wright, 246
Modern Woman: The Lost Sex
(Lundberg & Farnham), 131
Moon, Sun Myung, 14
Moore, G. E., 238239
Morbid dependency, 126
Morrow, Lance, 79
Mother attachment: and homosexuality, 99; and identity, 242; and
independence, 116, 119; and
self-love, 89. See also Oedipus
complex
Narcissism: and affluent society,
1823; Americanized, 3849;
colossal, 213219, 256; culture of,
Index
1318; elements of, 83251; and
gratification, 165201; healthy, 85,
103109; and identity, 224251;
and independence, 113136; and
jealousy, 219222; and leadership,
254261; and me and mine,
3033; and needs and wants,
2326; normalization of, 4; and
objects and things, 2730; and
self-love, 83112; treatment of,
202223; and vanity, 138164
The Narcissism Epidemic: Living in
the Age of Entitlement (Twenge &
Campbell), 261
Narcissistic dystopia, 5980; and
faade of normality, 6467; normal
vs. malignant narcissism, 6771;
and personal relationships, 6064;
and sex and violence, 7179
Narcissistic personality disorder, 4,
204205, 333n6
Narcissistic Personality Inventory
(NPI), 261262, 348n18
Narcissistic supplies, 28
Needs: and affluence, 19; and
narcissism, 2326; as target of Me
Decade critics, 5; and vanity, 153
New Introductory Essays (Freud),
151
Newsweek: on culture of narcissism,
1213, 1617; on dependence,
135; on self-love, 110, 111
New York Times: on affluent society,
21; on Age of Narcissism, 2; on
culture of narcissism, 15; on
grandiosity, 253; on identity,
225226; Kohuts obituary in, 43;
on narcissism, 264, 276n2
363
364
Index
Parental introjects, 15
Parenting: and disorders of self,
4546; permissive, 196. See also
Mother attachment
Patriarchy, 7475, 242
Penis envy, 163, 222, 314n7
People: on Kohut, 39; on Lasch, 17,
165
People of Plenty (Potter), 18
Permissive parenting, 196
Phony independence, 132135
Pinsky, Drew, 348n18
Plagiarism, 54, 290n26
Plentitude, 1, 62
Political power, 6, 197
Potter, David, 18, 310n26
Primary narcissism, 114, 115119,
134135, 305n6
The Principles of Psychology
(James), 30, 235
Privation in analytic setting, 1, 174,
182186
The Productive Narcissist (Maccoby),
255
Propaganda of commodities, 15
Prostitution, 245, 246
Pseudo-personalities, 245
Psychic equilibrium, 78
Psychoanalysis: boundary violations
in, 183; economic hypothesis in,
23; and gratification, 320n2; and
homosexuality, 98; on independence, 114; popularity of, 50; and
primary narcissism, 117118;
privation in, 182186; technique
of, 169171; treatment of narcissism with, 45, 72, 202223. See
also Classical psychoanalysis
Index
on gratification, 195196; on
identity, 228, 239; social criticism
by, 2, 16, 35; on treatment of
narcissism, 202; on work ethic,
19, 20
Riviere, Joan, 207212; as analysis
subject, 205206, 207219,
336n24; on female narcissism,
150157; framing of narcissism
by, 67; on jealousy, 220; on
materialism, 158, 159; translation
of Freuds works by, 212
Rockefeller University, 64
Roszak, Theodore, 1920
Rycroft, Charles, 342n32
Sadger, Isidor, 84, 111112
Sadism, 207, 217
Sartre, Jean-Paul, 62
Scarcity of resources, 19, 2324, 60
Schizophrenia, 16, 117
Schreber, Daniel Paul, 91, 92, 97
Schur, Max, 200
Scientific American on normalization
of narcissism, 254
Scott, Joan, 156
Segal, Hanna, 335n12
Self-absorption, 47
Self-admiration, 142. See also Vanity
Self-assurance, 104
Self-censorship, 177
Self-confidence, 62, 147
Self-control, 1, 22, 9097, 200
Self-criticism, 217
Self-esteem: and child grandiosity,
46; and culture of narcissism, 11;
defining, 302n36; and Generation
Me, 261; and healthy narcissism,
365
366
Index
Waelder, Robert, 52
Wallerstein, Robert S., 289n21
Index
Wall Street Journal on normalization
of narcissism, 254
Wants: and affluence, 19; and
narcissism, 2326
Watson, Amey E., 130131
The Wealth of Nations
(Smith), 129
Weatherly, U. G., 130
Weber, Max, 176, 258, 323n18
Welch, Jack, 261
Wheelis, Allen, 228, 241242
Whyte, William H., Jr., 2, 1922,
195196
Wilson, Harold, 258
Winnicott, D. W.: framing of
narcissism by, 67; on identity,
225, 227, 237238; on materialism, 31, 157, 158
Wittels, Fritz, 119
367