Life Narcissism

Death Narcissism
Andre Green

Translated by Andrew Weller

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Translation © 2001 Andrew Weller

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Contents

Translator's Acknowledgements vi

Preface Narcissism: Past and Present ix

Part One : The Theory of Narcissism

1 One, Other, Neuter: Narcissistic Values of Sameness 3

2 Primary Narcissism: Structure or State? 48

3 Anxiety and Narcissism 91

Part Two: Narcissistic Forms

4 Moral Narcissism 131

5 The Neuter Gender 158

6 The Dead Mother 170

Postscript The Ego, Mortal-Immortal 201

Notes 225

References o f the Original Publication in French 243

Bibliography 244

Index 249
Translator's Acknowledgements

There are several people who I should like to thank very warmly for
their assistance to me with this translation. First and foremost,
Monique Zerbib, who has very generously given me a great deal of
time and help over the past six months with this work. I am also
indebted to Andre Green himself for the time he has given me to go
over problems met with in the translation. My thanks also go to Ian
Snowball for reading through parts of the translation in English and
giving me the benefit of his very pertinent comments. Steven Pewsey
has kindly given me assistance with searching for references.
Andrew Weller
Paris
30 October 2000
Give me that glass, and therein shall I read. (IV, 1, 276)

Thus I play in one person many people

And none contented ... (V, 5, 31)

... But whate'er shall I be

Nor I, nor any man that but man is,
W ith nothing shall be pleased, till he be eased
W ith being nothing ...
(V, 5, 38)

Mount, m ount my soul! Thy seat is up on high

W hilst m y gross flesh sinks downward, here to die
(V, 5, III)
Shakespeare, Richard II.

Now, since one's ego lives by thinking incessantly of all sorts of

things, since it is no more than the thought of those things, if
by chance, instead of being preoccupied with those things, it
suddenly thinks of itself, it finds only an empty apparatus,
something which it does not recognise and to which, in order
to give it some reality, it adds the memory of a face seen in a
mirror. That peculiar smile, that untidy moustache - they are
what would disappear from the face of the earth ... And my ego
seemed to me even more null when I saw it as something that
no longer exists.
Proust, In Search o f Lost Time (Vol. 5 (The Fugitive),
p. 803. Trans. Scott Moncrieff and Kilmartin. London:
Vintage Classics, 1996).
Preface
Narcissism and Psychoanalysis:
Past and Present
Aux heures du verger.1

Doing analysis involves subjecting a dense and often confused body

of facts - particularly as the analyst will have given up any attempt to
understand them in terms of the outward unity of the discourse - to
the test of differentiation; and, according to principles that should
reveal a different composition of the object, which this time is not
apparent, thereby allowing its real nature to emerge. This ideal goal is
all the more difficult to attain since one is moving away from the
object in the physical world in order to come closer to the psychical
object. Whereas objects of the world of nature only respond passively
to examination, hum an objects put up active resistance as well to
their disclosure; if it is fair to use this term to describe the result of the
investigation.
One of the major reasons for such tenacious resistance, when it is
the ego that is being analysed, is narcissism. The cement which
preserves the ego's constituted unity has bound together its compo­
nent parts, giving it a formal identity which is vital both to its sense
of existence and to the way in which it apprehends its own being. In
this respect, narcissism is one of the fiercest forms of resistance to
analysis. Is it not true that defending the One involves, ipso facto,
rejecting the unconscious; since the latter implies that a part of the
psyche exists which is acting in its own interests, thwarting the
empire of the ego? But before it can be apprehended, its existence and
function have to be particularised by means of the analytic process.
Herein lies another obstacle to the analysis of hum an objects - the
axes and components they are comprised of cannot be observed or
deduced directly by the mind. It has even been denied that psycho­
analytic theory is derived from experience, since a grid of
interpretation seemed to be a sine qua non of any form of under­
standing, however partial it might be, of psychical events; and, even
more so, of the subject's structure.
In a way, narcissism was a parenthesis in Freud's thinking. Although
sexuality remains the unassailable constant of the entire theory of the
inventor of psychoanalysis, its power has always been contested by an
opposing force which, for its part, has been subject to variation over
the years. Before narcissism, there were the drives of self-preservation;
after, there were the death drives. In the interregnum between the first
and last theory of the drives, narcissism was the result of the libidinal-
isation of the ego drives, hitherto devoted to self-preservation. Freud
undoubtedly made a decisive leap by integrating sexuality within the
core of the ego which, at first sight, seemed to escape its control. W ith
narcissism, Freud thought he had discovered the reason why certain
patients were inaccessible to psychoanalysis. Once the libido had
turned away from objects, flowing back towards the ego, it prevented
any kind of transference, in all senses of the term, and thus any elab­
oration of the psycho-sexuality which had found refuge in an
inviolable sanctuary. At the time, Freud thought that the fundamental
disorder of psychosis arose from this withdrawal of libido which found
more satisfaction in its chosen place of asylum than in object-libido
experience - a source of other satisfactions, but also of many disap­
pointments, dangers and uncertainties.
Narcissism, then, had to be discovered as a subset of the psyche
before its role in the topography, dynamics and economy of the libido
could be accounted for. This dimension of psychical life did not make
its mark in psychoanalysis from the outset. It took almost twenty
years of reflection and experience for Freud to decide to formulate a
hypothesis about it in his key paper 'O n Narcissism: An Introduction'
(1914). Analysts found this theoretical acquisition pertinent and
enlightening; how astonished they were, then, when, seven years
later, Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920) asserted that this pertinence
was illusory, since it led to a monistic conception of the libido. In
short, narcissism was particularly enticing because it subjected
psychoanalytic theory to the same seduction which it was itself the
expression of, that is, the illusion of unity; this time with regard to
the libido. Freud decided, therefore, to put an end to these ruminar
tions by proposing the final theory of the drives in which the life
drives and the death drives were opposed. The hypothesis of the
death drives became a source of controversy. Sexuality, in its turn,
underwent a change of status. It was not the sexual drives but the life
drives which would be set in opposition to the death drives. W hat
appeared to be a mere nuance was to have momentous consequences.
Faced with the spectre of death, the only adversary equal to it was
Eros, the metaphorical figure of the life drives. W hat was subsumed
under this new denomination? The sum of the drives I have already
described, which henceforth were gathered under one heading: the
drives of self-preservation, the sexual drives, object-libido and narcis­
sism. In other words, all the constituents of earlier drive theories were
now merely subsets united by the same function, that is, the defence
and accomplishment of life by Eros faced with the devastating effects
of the death drives.
It can be seen how love, which seems to be straightforward and
perfectly 'natural', is in fact thwarted on all sides. Not only does it
have to confront a formidable adversary which always gets the upper
hand, but it also suffers from internal dissensions; each of the subsets
being in conflict with the others at the very centre of the life drives.
Thus in life, certain forces - the pleasure principle itself! - collaborate
unwittingly with the death drives. It required considerable boldness
to ask psychoanalysts, still intoxicated with a thirst for conquest, to
accept the need to recognise this implacable army of shadows - the
forces of death - which were undermining their therapeutic efforts.
What, at the outset, was a mere speculation which psychoanalysts
were not obliged to accept, would, over the years, and as a result of
clinical experience as well as social phenomena, become a firm
conviction, at least where Freud was concerned; for it cannot be said
that he received unanimous support on this point.2 Be that as it may,
it seems that the psychoanalytic com m unity attached more impor­
tance to discussing Freud's theoretical innovations than to defending
the theory they had ousted, in which narcissism occupied the central
position.
Another reason why Freud, as well as his disciples, forgot narcis­
sism, may have been the creation of the second topography which
entailed a re-evaluation of the ego - an innovation which received a
more positive reception than the death drive. It seems Freud wanted
to sap the morale of his troops, since the enemy which was ruining
their therapeutic hopes proved to be practically invincible. One
might have expected, therefore, that thanks to the new conception of
the ego, the problems set by narcissism would have been reconsidered
in the light of the second topography and the last drive theory, in a
bid to integrate past acquisitions and present discoveries. But this did
not happen. Was Freud, who undoubtedly reproached himself for
having made too many concessions to Jung's ideas, trying deliberately
to shed his earlier views? It is quite possible. W hat is certain is that
narcissism increasingly lost ground in his writings to the destructive
drives. Evidence of this may be found in the revision of his noso-
graphical views which restricted the field of the narcissistic neuroses
to melancholia alone; or, if you prefer, to manic-depressive psychosis,
schizophrenia and paranoia, which thenceforth belonged to a
separate etiopathogeny. Although melancholia remained within the
jurisdiction of narcissism, it was nonetheless described as an expres­
sion of a pure culture of the death drive. There is therefore a necessary
link to be found between narcissism and the death drive, a task Freud
scarcely concerned himself with, leaving it for us to discover. The
 large majority of the papers collected in this volume are concerned,
implicitly or explicitly, with reflecting on the relations between
narcissism and the death drive - which I have proposed to call
negative narcissism.
After Freud, narcissism evolved in two different directions. In
Europe, the work of Melanie Klein, based entirely on Freud's final
drive theory - she was perhaps the only author who really took the
hypothesis of the destructive drives seriously, even if the content she
assigned to them was quite different - overlooked narcissism. Among
the Kleinians, only H. Rosenfeld attempted to integrate it with
Kleinian conceptions; neither H. Segal, Meltzer nor Bion found a
place for it in their theoretical contributions. Winnicott's work, which
differs so profoundly from Kleinian theories, but is no less dependent
on them for it, scarcely gives it more attention.
On the other hand, narcissism was to rise from its ashes on the other
side of the Atlantic; initially, in Hartmann's work, albeit in a relatively
incidental way. But it was with Kohut that it returned to psychoanalysis
in force. His work, The Analysis o f the Self, enjoyed wide popularity. In
a short time Kohut gathered a following, though not without arousing
resistance. This initially came from those who claimed to be 'classical
Freudians' - in fact, they were Hartmannians - although the reasons for
their opposition are not really clear, since reading Kohut shows that he
has a filiation with Freud and Hartmann; or, to be more exact, with
Freud interpreted by Hartmann. Certainly, his way of understanding
material communicated by analysands and of responding to it, if needs
be, may be open to discussion. But opposition was also to come from
other quarters; in particular, from Kernberg who defended a concep­
tion of object relations which owed something to Melanie Klein - in
spite of the criticisms contesting her theories - and much to Edith
Jacobson whose work has not been sufficiently appreciated. Both
Kohut and Kernberg came in for a lot of criticism from the English
school, whose basic postulates are very different.
All \his did not prevent Kohut from passing for the theoretician
who had succeeded in resurrecting narcissism. Mistakenly, however;
for had the psychoanalytic com m unity not professed ignorance,
sometimes tainted with scorn, of French psychoanalytic works, it
would have seen that, in France, Kohut had been preceded in this
field by Grunberger. Moreover, if Lacan had not been subjected to
ostracism for many years - though this has recently been lifted - it
might have been noticed that narcissism was a principal piece in his
theoretical apparatus. The post-war French psychoanalytic movement
has always given narcissism the closest attention; even if, in this area,
as in others, diverging conceptions, of varying degree, have been put
forward. Thus, if I may be permitted to m ention my own contribu­
tions, the informed reader will have no difficulty in recognising that
my own opinions differ from both those of Lacan and Grunberger.
Rather than deploring the absence of consensus on such a central
issue, we should, on the contrary, be glad that the theoretical devel­
opments inspired by different interpretations have rekindled the
controversy; since it is only through a confrontation of ideas that we
shall gain in understanding.
Today, the debates on narcissism remain centred, as far as central
issues are concerned, on a problem that I believe to be poorly stated.
The whole question is to know whether narcissism can be attributed
with autonomy; or, whether the problems it raises should be consid­
ered as belonging to the singular vicissitudes of one group of drives
which need to be regarded as being closely connected with the others.
Personally, I do not see any need to choose between one or the other
of these theoretical strategies. Indeed, clinical experience gives us
reason to suppose that there are narcissistic structures and narcissistic
transferences; that is, where narcissism is at the heart of the conflict.
But neither of them can be thought about and interpreted in isolation
while neglecting object relations and the general problem of the ego's
relations with the erotic and destructive libido. Everything comes
down to a question of judgement - a judgement which the analyst is
obliged to make alone, without being able to rely in the analytic situ­
ation on anyone else's opinion, however enlightened it may be. In
most cases this judgement will be intuitive, not to say imaginative.
The prevalence of narcissism in certain aspects of clinical work
lends credence to the idea that, at the heart of the psychical apparatus,
there must be an agency which is sufficiently strong to attract cathexes
of the same nature, all of which possess characteristics that are suffi­
ciently differentiated to deserve particular mention. This does not
necessarily imply that the formation of narcissistic structures follows a
quite separate course of development, propelled by intrinsic forces,
independently of the object-oriented drives. A concern for clarity
should prompt us to decide which comes first, and which is a deriva­
tive in the relations between ego-libido and object-libido, particularly
in the light of the last drive theory. It may be that this causal preoc­
cupation is at the basis of a certain confusion in the discussion; for
unless one is obsessed with a developmental point of view, which is
supposed to reconstitute the elements in the evolutionary scheme of
the psychical apparatus, and to identify the stumbling points, it is
much more fruitful to determine how the different clinical configura­
tions are organised, and to recognise the nature of their internal
coherence, so as to be able to infer the organising axes of the psyche.
As for the need to decide - in the name of a scientific attitude which
refuses to accept the highly conjectural character of any construction
 or reconstruction of the infantile psyche - whether the manifestations
observed are of primitive or secondary origin, more often than not this
turns out to be a struggle leading nowhere, particularly where narcis­
sism is concerned. There is nothing to be learnt here from claiming
validity on the grounds of observation, since the phenomena in
question concern the subject's innermost world. As things stand, the
heuristic value of the contradictory theories is assessed in terms of the
body of clinical facts they cover and claim to give account of.
Although the clinical forms which one would like to link up with
archaic functions are often confused, so that it is not always possible
to have a clear sense of the distinctions that are postulated in metapsy­
chology, it is unlikely that the combination of phenomena’associated
with narcissism are the products of drive transformations which are
regarded as extraneous to it. There is reason to suppose - although
even here the picture is not very clear - that the lineaments already
exist of what may, at a later stage, blossom with all the features gener­
ally considered as narcissistic.
W hile recognising that narcissism should rightly be considered as
a concept in its own right, one cannot avoid posing the problem of
its relationship with homosexuality (conscious or unconscious), and
with hate (of another person or of oneself). It is clear, however, that
in mentioning its most immediate neighbours, one has to take into
account all the other theoretical concepts of psychoanalysis, whether
they relate to the objectal drives, the ego, the super-ego, the ego ideal,
reality, or the object.
Similarly, while there is a very close link between narcissism and
depression, as Freud himself noticed, it seems to me equally true that
the problems of narcissism occupy the foreground in character
neuroses - which is only to be expected, and not only in those cases
where there is a marked schizoid tendency - in psychosomatic
pathology, and, last but not least,3 in borderline cases. Too clear a
distinction between narcissistic structures and borderline cases simply
results in an artificial compartmentalisation which is soon contra­
dicted by the complexity of clinical problems; not to mention the
inevitable narcissistic element, ever present in transference neuroses.
In fact, as soon as the conflictual organisation touches upon regres­
sive layers situated beyond the classical fixations observed in the
transference neuroses, the role played by narcissism proves to be more
important, even in conflicts where it is not the dom inant feature.
A question often discussed in the literature is the relationship
between narcissistic structure and borderline cases, both of which
seem to vie for the interest of contemporary psychoanalytic authors.
It is worth noting that Kohut, who advocates the autonomy of narcis­
sism, distinguishes carefully between borderline cases and narcissistic
structures, and has devoted the last years of his life to the exclusive
study of the latter. O n the other hand, Kernberg, while accepting the
need for a clinical distinction, is against viewing narcissism as
autonomous and writes about both. Those who defend the entity
'Narcissism' seem inclined to render it the homage due to a neglected
divinity in the psychoanalytic pantheon.
As far as I am concerned, I adopt the same position in regard to
clinical work as I have taken theoretically. I think there is little doubt
that certain structures should be particularised in the name of narcis­
sism; but, in my opinion, it would be a mistake to exaggerate the
differences between narcissistic structures and borderline cases. If, as
I believe, the border should be considered as a concept and not
simply empirically by situating the borderlines4 on the frontiers of
psychosis, how can narcissism be left out of the picture?5
I realise that these nosographical remarks will not go down well
with everyone. If I continue to refer to them, it is not only for reasons
of clinical stenography, so to speak, but because I believe that there is
a closer relationship between metapsychology and nosography than
is generally recognised. The sole aim of nosography is to demonstrate
the coherence of certain psychical constellations whose structures
have crystallised in a particular way, without paying attention to the
degree of frequency observed, but with a concern to grasp the struc­
tural intelligibility of the organising models. Similarly, the aim of
metapsychology, in the broad sense of the term, is to define principles
of functioning, determining factors and functionally separate subsets
which act either in synergy with, or in opposition to, each other.
Nosography has been criticised for having the drawback of rigidi-
fying structures and so not allowing sufficient space for the psychical
dynamism which is the basis of the analyst's hope that he will be able
to modify the analysand's mental functioning. Where psychiatric
nosography is concerned, the reproach may be justified, but it
certainly does not apply to psychoanalytic nosography. For although
the latter does indeed identify the coherence of psychopathological
organisation, and distinguishes between various modalities, it is just
as concerned with understanding how these various modalities are
interlinked; and how the analysand, with the help of transference
analysis, can pass from one to the other regressively or progressively.
Mistrustful of nosography, analysts prefer to think about what makes
their analysands unique, a necessary attitude for anyone undertaking
someone's analysis. To think of the analysand's unconscious conflicts
purely in terms of categories and classes would be depersonalising.
Such protest is thus well-founded and legitimate. But even though we
endeavour to analyse the specificity of the Oedipus complex in this
or that analysand, is there any denying that it is necessary to speak of
the Oedipus complex in terms of a supra-individual structure? The
objection may be easier to explain in the case of narcissism. It has
been pointed out that narcissism has a bad press. Narcissistic is rarely
a laudatory description. Narcissistic patients irritate us perhaps even
more than perverts. This is perhaps because we can dream of being
the object of a pervert's desire, whereas the narcissistic subject's only
object of desire is himself. Narcissus ignores Echo, just as analysands
'who do not develop a transference' ignore us supremely.
It would be useful to remind ourselves here of some obvious facts:
narcissistic patients are wounded subjects - in fact, they are narcissism
tically deprived. Often their disappointment, which has left them with
open wounds, concerns not just one parent but both. W hat other
object can they love but themselves? Of course, the narcissistic wound
inflicted on infantile omnipotence directly, or projected on to the
parents, is our common lot; but clearly some people never get over it,
even after analysis. They remain vulnerable, but analysis allows them
to make better use of their defence mechanisms to avoid getting hurt,
since they have not acquired the leather that others seem to have for
skin. No one suffers more than the narcissistic subject from being cata­
logued under a general rubric; his concern, therefore, is not merely to
be one, but unique; that is, without ancestors or successors.
It would be easy to apply the same criticism which has been made
of nosography to psychoanalytic concepts and to deny that both
narcissistic structures and narcissism as an autonomous entity can
exist. But in that case the same would apply to masochism and many
other concepts. There is never any difficulty in demonstrating that
the strongest expression of erotism comprises disguised aggressive
designs just as much as the contrary. W hat will remain, then, of the
analytic requirement to separate, distinguish and undo muddled
complexity in order to reconstruct it from its invisible elements?
Metapsychology does not have direct clinical and technical appli­
cations. Everyone knows excellent analysts who ignore it; more or less
deliberately. This does not prevent their clinical work from being
based on unconscious metapsychology which guides their m ind in its
associative activity when it seems to be 'floating' more or less atten­
tively. Metapsychology is merely a useful tool for thinking, and
always retrospectively; that is, not when the analyst is in his armchair
but later when he is sitting in front of the blank page stimulating or
inhibiting his intellect.
I have pointed out above that we cannot think usefully about the
issues raised by narcissism if we isolate the concept completely and
study it on its own. W hile it is useful, at certain times in our thinking,
if we wish to understand the nature of narcissism as closely as
possible, to shut ourselves away with it, to be alone with it, deeply
within ourselves - for it is the very core of our ego - the centripetal
movement, in which the sole object of knowledge is oneself, only
reveals its meaning by opposing the object and ego. The relationship
between them is complex since, for some authors, the concept of
object relations includes the ego's narcissistic relations to itself. The
most classical theory recognised the existence of narcissistic object-
cathexes well before Kohut had put forward the hypothesis of Self­
objects, which are simply products of narcissism.
Be that as it may, there is a consensus between those who defend
opposing theoretical positions. The completion of the development of
the ego and of the libido is manifested, in particular, by the ego's
capacity to recognise the object as it is and no longer simply as a
projection of the ego. Does psychoanalytic ideology once again have
to be associated with a normative aim, as was true of the genital rela­
tionship? Is this a goal which the psychical apparatus is capable of
attaining and which falls within the scope of psychoanalytic treat­
ment? In these matters, excessive dogmatism - one way or the other -
soon verges on incoherence. Asserting that desire is totally, definitively
and incurably alienated by one's narcissism - which is no less ideolog­
ical - is no more coherent than maintaining that the object will one
day appear in its true light. In any case, a comparative study of the ego
(narcissistic) and the object is unavoidable; it reveals all the variations
of the spectrum from subjective blindness to genuine encounter.
It has occurred to me that a new metapsychology, a sort of third
topography, may have slipped surreptitiously into psychoanalytic
thinking without our noticing it, the theoretical poles of which
would be the Self and the object. The explanation for this would be
that, under the pressure of experience, psychoanalysts have felt the
need for a theoretical construct that is more deeply rooted in clinical
practice. In other words, what we have is not praxis, on the one hand,
and theory on the other, but a theory that is purely - which is not the
case with Freud - a theory o f clinical experience.
Transference is therefore no longer just one psychoanalytic
concept among others which needs to be thought about; it is the
necessary condition for thinking about the others. Similarly, counter­
transference is no longer confined to exploring unresolved - or
unanalysed - conflicts in the analyst that are apt to interfere with his
listening; it is the correlate of transference, following a parallel course,
sometimes inducing it, and, in certain cases, preceding it.
If anything new has occurred in psychoanalysis in recent decades,
it is to be found in its thinking on the couple, which has enabled us
to free Freudian theory of a whiff of solipsism. For it has to be said
that re-reading Freud too often gives the impression that everything
he describes unfolds independently of his own stance or, in the
 clinical cases he presents, of his own actions. When, for instance, he
traces the trajectory of an imaginary child's psychical development -
whether in regard of sexuality or the ego - it seems to take a course
laid down in advance: arrests, blockages and diversions owing little,
in the final analysis, to the child's relations with his parental objects.
In short, Freud minimised the role played by his own narcissism as
well as the object's.
Formulating things in this way does not necessarily make them any
clearer; revering clinical work is all very well, but we need to know
which kind of clinical work we are talking about. If the silent meta­
psychology of Self-object relations has established itself progressively,
it is undoubtedly because it gives a better account of clinical aspects of
contemporary analysis which were inadequately elucidated by the
classical models of Freudian theory. In other words, Freud's psychology
is too restricted by its referent, neurosis, and especially transference
neurosis. It is as if the problematics of Self-object relations were in a
better position to shed light not only on borderline cases but also on
narcissistic structures; in particular the latter, since what has to be
contrasted with narcissism is precisely the object's irreducibility.
But it would be regrettable, to say the least, if a rift were to be
created in psychoanalysis between the old and the new, without there
being any attempt to grasp the conceptual continuity underlying the
outward change. W hile it is easy to point out that there is nothing
new under the sun, it would be truer to say that all change is only half
as new as those who proclaim it would have us believe.
Theory which is grounded in the experience of analysing transfer­
ence neurosis situates the object at the centre of its thinking as a
fantasmatic object, or an object of desire. Theory based on the
analysis of borderline cases continues, for its part, to be based on the
fantasmatic object but cannot disregard its relations with the real
object. One often notices that real objects have played a part in the
subject's psychopathology; or, if one wished to be more cautious from
an etibpathogenic point of view, one would simply say that the
subject's psychical structure reveals singular links between the real
object and the fantasmatic object. It is as if the fantasmatic object -
in spite of the fact that its quality as an object of psychical reality is
recognised - coexisted with the real object, without the latter
possessing the power to assert its supremacy over the former; as if a
double inscription of psychical events ascribed the same reality to
fantasmatic objects and real objects.6
As far as narcissism is concerned, the object, whether fantasmatic
or real, enters into conflictual relations with the ego. The ego's sexu-
alisation has the effect of transforming desire for the object into
desire for the ego. I have called this the desire for the One, in which
all trace of desire for the Other is erased. Desire has thus changed its
object; for it is the ego itself that has become its own object of desire.
It is this movement that needs clarifying.
W hat is desire? Going beyond the well-known definitions which
do not need restating, I would say that desire is the movement by
which the subject is de-centred.7 That is to say, the quest for the satis­
fying object, the lacking object, makes the subject feel that his centre
is no longer within himself. Instead he feels that it is outside himself,
in an object from which he is separated, but with whom he desires to
be reunited in order to reconstitute his centre through the unity - re­
found identity - of well-being subsequent to the experience of
satisfaction.
Desire, therefore, is that which induces awareness of spatial sepa­
ration from, and temporal dyschrony with the object, created by the
necessary delay in obtaining satisfaction. After this primary symbolic
matrix, which is a source of psychical development, multiple factors
later stand in the way of desire being fully satisfied. Among others,
the following may be mentioned: the defusion of the drives, bisexu­
ality, the reality principle and, lastly, narcissism. This group of factors
is governed by fundamental taboos: fantasies of parricide, incest and
cannibalism. Apart from this observation, what interests us is to
identify the means which have been employed to fend against the
fact that desire can never be fulfilled completely.
W hen the 'first' experience of lack occurs, a solution is found
through hallucinatory wish-fulfilment, functioning as an illusion
compensating for the lacking object. This model is enlarged when
later frustrations occur, which are no longer linked to the search for
the breast alone. It has rightly been pointed out that this solution is
far from perfect and that it calls for others that are more likely to
bring actual satisfaction. But, as such, it is nonetheless a psychical
achievement which is all the more valuable in that the child attrib­
utes it with the power of having made the object-breast reappear. He
is not in a position to know that it was his cries and tears that alerted
his mother to come to his rescue; but he establishes a relationship of
cause and effect between hallucinatory wish-fulfilment and the expe­
rience of satisfaction.
As long as vital needs continue to be met in other situations in
which the object is found to be lacking, other solutions will be found:
identification being the most fundamental of them. It does away with
object representation; the ego becomes this object itself, merging with
it. The modalities of identification differ according to age. At the
outset, primary identification is called narcissistic, the ego merging
with an object which is much more an emanation of itself than a
separate entity recognised in its otherness. If this mode of narcissistic
 identification persists beyond the stage of fusion with the object,
when the ego differentiates from non-ego and accepts the object's
separate existence, it will be exposed to countless experiences of disil­
lusionment. When otherness is not recognised, the ego's sense of what
the object is supposed to be like is constantly belied, with the result
that its expectations of it are repeatedly disappointed. So much so that
the ego can never rely on the object in its quest to re-find the unity-
identity permitting it to re-centre during an experience of satisfaction
which is never complete. The triangular nature of relationships
complicates the situation further; for it is often the case that both the
narcissistically cathected parental objects - each for different reasons -
disappoint the ego. All this is damaging for the ego because, as the
fundamental experience of displacement in search of a substitute
object, capable of repairing the wounds caused by the original object,
has failed, all subsequent displacements on to substitute objects - from
the most personal to the most impersonal - repeat the initial failure.8
Any contact with the object exacerbates the feeling of being de­
centred, whether in relation to spatial separation or to temporal
dyschrony. Ego-syntony can only be achieved if the ego is cathected
by its own drives: this is positive narcissism resulting from the object's
neutralisation. The independence the ego thus acquires from the
object is valuable, but precarious, because the ego can never totally
replace the object. Even if it should wish to entertain illusions in this
respect by finding pleasure in living in solitude, the limits of the oper­
ation will soon make themselves felt. The ego's cathexes (or
investments) therefore need enriching by making another cathexis in
a wholly idealised object with which it can merge, as was the case with
the primary object. This is how serenity may ultimately be found in
the bosom of God, devaluing all ordinary hum an joys in the process.
One could leave things there. Clinical experience shows, however,
that these accomplishments of life narcissism are never completely
successful. In certain cases, the combined effect of unbridgeable
spatial distance and interminable temporal dyschrony turn the expe­
rience of being de-centred into an ordeal of resentment, hate and
despair. Consequently, withdrawal towards unity, or the merging of
the ego with an idealised object, are no longer possible. W hat is then
actively sought after is not unity but nothingness; that is, a lowering
of tensions to the level zero, which is tantam ount to psychical death.
Narcissism thus creates the opportunity for a mimesis of desire
through a solution which makes it possible to avoid a situation in
which de-centring compels the ego to cathect the object which
controls access to the centre. The ego has acquired a certain degree of
independence by transferring desire for the Other on to desire for the
One. This mimesis can even be inverted, cancelling out the constraints
of the model of desire when the unitary accomplishment of narcissism
is lacking. It thus becomes mimesis of non-desire, desire for n on ­
desire. Here the quest for the centre is abandoned by suppressing it.
The centre, as a goal of plenitude, has become an empty centre, an
absence of centre. The quest for satisfaction continues beyond any
form of satisfaction - as if it had already been obtained - as if it had
got what it wanted by abandoning the search for satisfaction.
It is here that death takes on the aspect of absolute Being. Life
becomes equivalent to death because it is a release from all desire.
Could it be that this psychical death conceals a death wish towards
the object? It would be a mistake to think so, for the object has
already been killed at the outset of this process which should be
attributed to death narcissism.
Negative hallucinatory wish-fulfilment has become the model
governing psychical activity. It is not unpleasure which has substi­
tuted itself for pleasure, but the Neuter. It is not depression one
should think of here but aphanisis, asceticism and anorexia of living.
This is the true meaning of Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920). The
metaphor of returning to inanimate matter is more powerful than it
seems, since the goal of this petrifaction of the ego is anaesthesia and
inertia in psychical death. It is only an aporia, but one that enables us
to understand the purpose and meaning of death narcissism.
Narcissus Janus is thus mimetic of life, as well as of death, adopting
the illusory solution of making life or death an absolutely closed
couple. It is now easier to understand why Freud turned away from
narcissism which he saw as a source of misunderstandings. But
replacing one concept with another only changes the word, not the
thing itself.
The Neuter thus towers up before us, defying thought. The
moment everything gets more complicated is when we are obliged to
realise that the Neuter is also a reality that is indifferent to the stirring
of hum an passions. The Neuter is the area of intellectual impartiality
which Freud referred to when he postulated the existence of the death
drive. Narcissism is a concept, not a reality; for even when the latter
assumes the name of clinical reality, it is always of a complexity
which is barely graspable. Hyper-complex, in today's language.
One inescapable aporia of psychoanalytic theory is the permanent
overlapping that can be observed, when reading psychoanalytic
works, between the descriptive and conceptual levels. There is not a
single piece of analytic writing in which one does not sense a
constant shifting from one level to the other. Pure description is
impossible, since it remains more or less organised by concepts that
are mute, if not unconscious. It is scarcely any easier to conceive of
pure conceptualisation; for the reader is only interested in it if it
 evokes reminiscences of analyses he has conducted, or of his own
analysis. The pious wish which theoreticians may entertain of being
aware, at any given moment, of the level at which their thinking is
taking place, and of being sensitive to the shift from description to
concept or vice versa, often escapes their control.
While a concern for rigour - which is nonetheless beset by many
preconceptions - requires the analyst to take the exact sciences as a
model, I do not believe he can go any further than physics, and will
always fall short of pure mathematics owing to the very nature of the
conditions of his practice. But although the pseudo-scientific preten­
sions of some analysts need denouncing - North Americans readily
refer to the science o f psychoanalysis,9 which is curiously reminiscent of
the guidelines Lacan imposed on his disciples - one should not jump
too quickly to the conclusion that psychoanalysis is pure poetry/ It is
true that there is something in the analyst's psychical functioning
that is not unlike the mythopoetic approach; and it is no coincidence
that Freud and psychoanalysts have always found the poetry of myth
and literature to be one of the sources of psychoanalysis, the other
being the field of biology. After all, the myth of Narcissus played no
small part in the invention of narcissism; its evocative power serving
to reinforce the clinical descriptions of Nacke. It may be that biology
is more poetic than it gives itself credit for and that poetry is more
closely linked to the 'nature' of man than it supposes.
However, as soon as one tries to think about psychoanalysis meta-
scientificaily, beyond the realms of biology, psychology or sociology
- and without giving way to the combined temptations of pseudo­
science and pseudo-poetry - theoretical work, which admittedly is
always provisional, takes place and encounters the limits imposed by
the reciprocal infringement of the descriptive and conceptual levels.
More than any other aspect of theory, there is a risk with narcissism
of description and concept becoming confused. This is, if I may say so,
because narcissism is a mirror concept dealing with the unity of the
ego, its fine form and the desire for the One which, by definition,
contradicts - perhaps even to the extent of denying them - the exis­
tence of the unconscious and the splitting of the ego, that is, the
subject's divided status. As such, narcissism is simply waiting for this
individuality, singularity and totality to be recognised. This is why the
concept of the One, which leaves its stamp on narcissism, has to be
given tension. This unity which is present from the outset in the feeling
that one exists as a separate entity is, as we know, the outcome of a long
process extending from absolute primary narcissism to the sexualisa-
tion of the ego drives. It is one of the accomplishments of Eros to have
achieved this unification of a psyche which was fragmented, dispersed
and anarchic, dominated by the organ pleasure of the component
drives, before being in a position, at least to some extent, to conceive
of itself as a whole, limited and separate entity. But the price which has
to be paid for this achievement of being no more than ego is very high.
More than psychoanalysts, it was Borges who understood better than
anyone else the nature of the wound which is inflicted by the impossi­
bility of being the Other. W hat needs to be understood, however, is that
during the period extending from the primitive mother-child dyad to
the existence of the unified ego a series of operations have occurred: the
separation of the two elements of this dyad exposing the child to sepa­
ration anxiety; the threat of disintegration; and the overcoming of
Hilflosigkeit through the constitution of the object and the 'narcissised'
ego. The latter finds compensation, in the love it has for itself, for the
loss of fusional love, the expression of its relationship with a consub-
stantial object. Narcissism is thus not so much an effect of binding as
of re-binding. Harbouring illusions of self-sufficiency, the ego now
forms a couple with itself, through its own image.
The One is therefore not a simple concept. If it has to be given
tension; it will not be enough to introduce its antagonist, the Other,
or even the Neuter. W ith the One it is necessary to think not only
about the Double, but particularly about the Infinity of chaos and the
Zero of nothingness. The One arises, perhaps, out of the Infinite and
the Zero, in as far as they may ... only be One. But it is in the oscilla­
tions from One to Zero that we shall have to understand the intrinsic
problematics of narcissism, without being put off by the fact that,
while the One can be grasped immediately by phenomenological
apperception, the Zero, for its part, can never be conceived of when
it is oneself that is involved, in the same way that death is unrepre­
sentable for the unconscious.
The concept does not always elude metaphor and we shall have to
treat it metaphorically when we are obliged to speak of Zero. The
curve, however, will be asymptotic, since we will only ever be able to
speak of a 'tendency' towards the lowering of excitation, that is, of
life, towards the level zero. That will be the moment to introduce the
difference between descriptive and conceptual approaches. It is on a
conceptual level, and only conceptual, detached from description,
that I shall speak of the aspiration for psychical death in order to shed
light on clinical manifestations which others will interpret differ­
ently. The fact that this zero point borders on immortality merely
gives an inkling of the complexity of the problem.
I feel somewhat uncomfortable referring to the Far Eastern philoso­
phies which are currently in fashion because I am very unfamiliar with
them, but the little information I possess has drawn my attention to
one obvious fact. Without wishing to make any claims for universality,
which would be difficult to defend, the fact is that many people on this
 earth live by the basic principles of a philosophy which they only have
scanty knowledge of, but which informs their way of living and under­
standing existence. While remaining within a Western-centrist outlook,
but obliging us, nonetheless, to re-examine some of its most well-estab­
lished concepts, Freud may have got a glimpse of this limitation when
he decided to take into account the principle of Nirvana which he came
across in Barbara Low's work. It would not be difficult to demonstrate
that the theoretical deductions he drew from it are far removed from
the teachings of Oriental metaphysics, which is so different from
Western philosophy that it has been contested whether it is philosophy
at all. In any case, I am speaking in the name of psychoanalysis and not
philosophy, which is not my domain. If I mention it in passing, it is
merely to point out that certain developments which are to be found
in this volume under the name of negative narcissism have already
been the object of philosophical reflection in cultural traditions very
different from our own. These philosophical reflections obey the
requirements of their frame of reference, which are not those of
psychoanalysis. But they certainly arose from something; for instance,
from paying attention to certain aspects of psychical life which have
been largely eclipsed in Western thought, or which, when they have
been observed, have only given rise to timid reflection. It is as though
a certain lack of freedom of thought was operative here, restrained by
an obscure fear, causing those who might have got carried away to
retreat, and dissuading those who would have been tempted to take
these aspects up again, and to dwell on them at length, from doing so.
As for me, it seems hardly debatable that psychoanalytic reflection and
practice confront the analyst with the tensions between the One and
the Zero, and not always in the clearest fashion. I should perhaps have
waited until I was in a better position to formulate my observations
more adequately before having them published for the first time.
It is not entirely satisfying for an author to offer the public a collec­
tion of articles of which the earliest date back more than fifteen years,
even if'he still nourishes the hope that they have not lost all their
interest. I shall not repeat here the usual warnings to the reader which
one finds in volumes of this kind, as they tend to be so stereotyped. It
strikes me, however, that not enough attention is given to one of the
observations that can be made when reading previously published
works that have been brought together in the form of a book. A
strange phenomenon, characteristic of analysts who write, is often
noticeable. I am referring to the theoretical process which is so visible in
Freud, and to a lesser extent in other psychoanalytic authors. Namely,
the evolution over a number of years of a conceptual development
which occurs in rather a similar way to that which is called the psycho­
analytic process in clinical work. It has quite rightly been pointed out
that it is better not to make too sharp a distinction between the
analytic process and transference. Consequently, the theoretical
process should be considered as an effect of transference which the
psychoanalytic process has on the analyst's psychic functioning when
he is writing. Is this theoretical process very different, then, from the
analyst's ongoing self-analysis resulting from his experience of psycho­
analysis? W hile we may think so, and while it is scarcely possible to
think otherwise, we should be wary of adopting a fundamentally
subjectivist theoretical approach leading to the radical scepticism
which it is fashionable to give way to today.
It is doubtful whether psychoanalytic theory can ever attain objec­
tivity without passing through a subjective stage, but we should not
go so far as to taint it with the suspicion that it is no more than a
defence against madness, since the same could be said of any system
of thought. It is rather the originality of the movement towards
greater objectivity in psychoanalysis that needs stressing; this is what
we must hold on to rather than concluding too hastily that any
attempt to achieve it is vain, remaining unaware, in so doing, that we
are merely following the Zeitgeist
W hile all psychoanalytic theory results from analysing transference,
it is clear that the formulation of it will necessarily have been
conveyed, if not unconsciously coded, by counter-transference. But
alongside the analysis of transferences (of analysands) and of counter­
transferences, there is also a place for the analyst to transfer his
'analysability' on to psychoanalysis, considered, at the time of writing,
as something impersonal. This is all the more true in that his writing
is addressed to an impersonal analyst, known or unknown, in the past
or in the future. If one looks for comparisons within the heart of
analytic theory itself, one will recall that the id and the super-ego are
characterised by this same impersonality: at the beginning, for the first,
and at the end for the second. Objectivising subjectivity should not be
connected with the analyst's most personal characteristics; or, if such
is the case, with the way in which this 'personality' may speak to
others. There is nothing astonishing about this, since the swaying of
this subjectivity towards objectivisation is always the work of another
person's words. If, moreover, it is the subject who is seeking to be heard
by another subject, the subjectivity of listening never loses sight of the
fact - even if it never succeeds in doing him complete justice - that it
is another person's voice that is expressing itself. However much he
may be a captive of his own voice, the analyst still endeavours not to
hear this other voice as an echo. And while it is true that he often finds
himself caught in this trap, it would be wrong to suggest that he always
does so. There is more to it than mere narcissism.
August 1982
Part One
The Theory of Narcissism
1
One, Other, Neuter: Narcissistic
Values of Sameness (1976)

The way in which he modelled men was this. He took a lum p of

earth and said to himself, T will make man, but he must be able
to walk and run and go out into the fields, so I will give him two
long legs, like the flamingo'. Having done so, he thought again,
The man must be able to cultivate his millet, so I will give him
two arms, one to hold the hoe, and the other to tear up the
weeds'. So he gave him two arms. Then he thought again, The
man must be able to see his millet, so I will give him two eyes'.
So two eyes he gave him. Next he thought to himself, The man
must be able to eat his millet, so I will give h im a mouth'. So a
m outh he gave him. After that he thought within himself, The
m an must be able to dance and speak and sing and shout, and
for these purposes he must have a tongue'. And a tongue he
gave him accordingly. Lastly the deity said to himself, The man
must be able to hear the noise of the dance and the speech of
great men, and for that he needs two ears'. So two ears he gave
him , and sent him out into the world a perfect man.
J.G. Frazer, The Worship of Nature.1

Then God said, 'Let us make man in our image, after our
likeness;2 and let them have dom inion over the fish of the sea,
and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the
earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the
earth.'

So God created man in his own image,

in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.
Semantic Shifts
The two sources of psychoanalytic concepts are psychoanalytic
practice, on the one hand, and the epistemological point of view, on
the other. Once they have been adopted, psychoanalytic concepts
modify the psychoanalyst's listening, which leads him to call into
question the theoretical instruments of psychoanalysis. Perhaps more
than of any other concept, this has been true in the case of narcis­
sism, a concept Freud invented under the influence of various
pressures. Throughout his work, his approach was supported by an
unshakeable certitude with regard to the role played by sexuality. But
he was equally certain that an anti-sexual factor lay at the root of
conflictuality w ithin the psychical apparatus. This was the role origi­
nally assigned to the so-called drives (SE, 'instincts') of
self-preservation. Allocating this role to them did not require a great
effort of originality on Freud's part, for he needed urgently to devote
all his attention to that which had been so obstinately excluded from
the picture, that is, the sexual dimension. As a first step, it was there­
fore sufficient to establish, albeit on a provisional basis, the opposite
pole of self-preservation, even if it might have to be revised at a later
stage. This Freud was forced to do as much due to difficulties arising
from experience as to the criticisms of opponents from within and
without. Among these, but the first of them, was Jung, whose main
interest was dementia praecox. The ego, which had been awaiting
theoretical explication, now occupied centre stage. Nevertheless, as
far back as the Project (1895b), Freud's definitions of it suggested that
its cathexes were of a specific nature and of endogenous origin.

This organisation is called the 'Ego'; it can easily be depicted if we

consider that the regularly repeated reception of endogenous
quantities in certain neurones (of the nucleus) and the facilitating
effect proceeding thence will produce a group of neurones which
is constantly cathected and thus corresponds to the vehicle o f the
slore required by the secondary function.3

Admittedly, Freud primarily had the secondary function in view, but

the idea of a particular cathexis, a kind of energy store specific to the
ego, was already confirmed. The very last sentences of the Project bear
this out. Freud was pondering, without going any further than this -
the manuscript ends at this point - on the relations between auto­
erotism and the primal ego. It was, as you will recall, through his
study of the psychogenic disturbances of vision (1910) that Freud
came to formulate the hypothesis of narcissism. But the second
edition of the Three Essays (1905) already shows how much attention
he was devoting to the problem. 'Leonardo da Vinci and a Memory of
his Childhood', which dates from the same period, refers explicitly to
the myth of Narcissus (SE, XI, p. 100). And we should note that the
opposition of two types of object-choice as well as the material under­
lying the theory of narcissism, are both connected with the activity of
looking, that is, Leonardo's conflict between his activity as a painter,
linked to scopophilia, and his extraordinary intellectual curiosity
deriving from epistemophilia, itself an offshoot of the former. Mona
Lisa's strange gaze may therefore be of much more importance than
the misleading vulture (which, moreover, was not discovered by
Freud). Argos' eyes follow one everywhere from above the mysterious
smile. It was thus no coincidence that once he had returned to the
more serious - even the most serious, since it concerned ocular
medicine - terrain of clinical experience, Freud again made use of
vision to introduce the idea of a libidinal investment of the so-called
drives of self-preservation. But, up to that point, we were still in the
familiar waters of the castration complex.
The Psycho-Analytic View of Psychogenic Disturbance of Vision'
(1910b)4 afforded Freud with a late consolation for having missed out
on the discovery of cocaine. However, if the act of looking directs its
rays towards the external world and can become libidinised to the
point that it can no longer see anything in its state of hysterical blind­
ness, it is because it has become the victim of excessive erotisation. It
turns towards the internal world where other adventures await it. The
validity of the relation Freud established between scopophilia and
epistemophilia, the latter involving the erotisation of thought
processes, is still recognised today. This is why I maintain that the
most neglected precursory text on narcissism is The Rat Man' (1909).
W hen discussing the relations between narcissism and omnipotent
thinking it is customary to cite Totem and Taboo (1912-13). But then
one is forgetting that everything that Freud says on this subject was
discovered through analysing the Rat Man. There are good grounds
for thinking this, since in the last lines of his essay, Freud makes an
allusion to a triple psychical organisation, an unconscious personality
and two preconscious ones; the third psychical organisation showing
the patient to be 'superstitious and ascetic' (my italics). He even adds
that this third organisation would have swallowed up the normal
personality had the illness lasted much longer.
Thus by taking the activity of looking as his starting point, Freud
tied narcissism to the domain of the visible. But there were theoretical
difficulties from the outset. W hat had been involved up till then? The
closed-circuit cathexis of the ego; the primal ego and its relations with
auto-erotism, foreshadowing the emergence of primary narcissism in
the theory; and, finally, the auto-erotic object-choice secondary to
repression. In 'Leonardo7(1910a) he wrote:

The boy represses his love for his mother: he puts himself in her
place, identifies himself with her and takes his own person as a
model in whose likeness he chooses the new objects of his love.
(SE, XI, p. 100)

He thus draws on the love his mother has given him in order to love
boys as she loved him , thereby reviving her image, while at the same
time taking his mother's place.

He finds the objects of his love along the path of narcissism, as we

say; for Narcissus, according to the Greek legend, was a youth who
preferred his own reflection to everything else and who was
changed into the lovely flower of that name. (SE, XI, p. 100)

Incidentally, Freud forged a neologism, Narzissmus, for reasons of ...

narcissistic euphony!5 He passed from the self-image as an object of
love to the flower of the resurrection, leaving out the narcissistic
m oment par excellence; that is, the fusion of the object and its image
in the fascinating and mortifying liquid element, going back to a
period before birth. Before birth, after birth: here, primal narcissism is
literally scotomised in favour of the attraction of outward appearance,
of the beauty of form in search of its double, which will never be
complementary but a duplicate. But all this was still too simple. He
pursued his study of Leonardo, a curious Narcissus who was much
more fascinated by the form of the Other and by the riddles of the
World than by his own image (there were few self-portraits, if one
compares h im with Rembrandt, although the latter did come later, it
is true), and pointed out that the deceptive appearance of Leonardo
pursuing beautiful young men with his assiduous attentions served to
ma^k his indelible, unwavering and incomparable love for his
mother. Freud thus enables us to see that narcissism is itself merely
appearance, and that, behind it, the shadow of the invisible object is
always to be found.
Initially it was the model of perversion that justified the theoret­
ical recasting of 'O n Narcissism: An Introduction' (1914). This was a
call to order for those who had been attracted by the Jungian siren
call of 'beyond sex'. No, sexuality has not gone away and, although
there are non-sexual elements in self-esteem, we need to get it into
our heads that adult self-esteem is rooted in the love - diverted from
objects - which the child appropriates for its own benefit. Freudian
reasoning is prototypical here. It runs as follows:
1. There are perverts who love their bodies just as one loves the
body of the Other. I was not the first to say this; P. Nacke said it
in 1899 - he was not even an analyst and so can hardly be
suspected of giving a partisan clinical description!
2. If there is perversion in the adult, it means there is a fixation on
one of the features of the constellation of the child's poly­
morphous perversion.
3. If one characteristic is capable of being sufficiently attractive to
monopolise the libido as a whole, it is an indication that it should
be isolated and introduced into the theory as a concept, thus
throwing light in a much more general way on the vicissitudes of
the drives. Moreover, can it not be said that sublimation calls for
such a neutralisation and therefore an apparent desexualisation?

It is worth pointing out that the type of conflict Freud was speaking
about in 'The Psychogenic Disturbance of Vision', far from involving
a non-libidinal factor in the ego, in the exercise of its somatic func­
tions, reveals on the contrary an impingement, an invasion of the ego
by the libido. Hysterical fits revealed a similar invasion in the motor
sphere through conversion. The obsessional subject's omnipotent
way of thinking showed that thought had been sexualised. The more
Freud thought about it, the more he was inclined to find Jung's argu­
ments unacceptable, but he did not yield in the slightest. He laid
more stress on sexuality and annexed the ego. From then on, the
libido was to be found everywhere, even in the deepest recesses of the
organic body: in the cavity of an unhealthy tooth; in the hidden
organ of the hypochondriac; and elsewhere. The protagonists in the
conflict had changed; henceforth it was the object and the ego that
were opposed, and the conflict was essentially one of distribution and
therefore economic. This was true as much for the ego as for the
object. It was a question of cathexis or investment, a need to balance
the budgets of the Home Office and the Foreign Office.
We know what followed. The question which now arose was the
origin of cathexes. I shall come on to this later6 but, for the time
being, there are three problems which need distinguishing:

(I) Primary 'Narcissism: what is meant by this?

(a) The organisation of the ego's component drives into a unitary
ego-cathexis.
(b) Absolute primary narcissism as an expression of the tendency to
reduce cathexes to the level zero.

In the first case, we mean the narcissistic ego as One, stemming from
n component drives - through the activity of Eros.
 In the second case, I mean the expression of the principle of inertia,
already a major referent in the Project and later to be called the
Nirvana principle, which strives towards absolute primary narcissism.
Freud never resolved the question. A dialectical solution might be
suggested here. Whether the ego achieves a unitary cathexis emerging
from fragmentation or whether it appears to attain absolute zero, the
effect obtained is similar (which does not mean identical). In both
cases, the ego finds satisfaction in itself; it has the illusion of self-suffi­
ciency and frees itself of vicissitudes and dependence on an object
which is eminently variable in what it grants or withholds at will.
This progress leads towards the ego One - which sometimes allows it
to rediscover this quietude through regression, when it is compelled
to by frustration, the other defences proving inefficient. Regression
sometimes leads even further: that is, towards the zero of the illusion
of no cathexis; but the zero is then cathected, turning regressive with­
drawal into a positive aspiration, an achievement. This is the aim of
asceticism: to return to the divine breast.

(II) The Origin ofCathexes: the Ego and the Id

Economic issues are related to topographical issues. The question:
'how much?' (quantity), can only be understood if one knows what
the starting-point is. Where do the resources originate? Freud's
answer to this question varied constantly. Looking for the 'reservoir'
is like looking for the sources of the Nile or the Amazon. It was a
question, among others, which was to lead to the answer which
Hartmann gave. To the Byzantine question of whether the ego
emerged from the id or whether there existed an id and an ego from
the outset (a question on which the possibility of locating the reser­
voir depends) Freud did not in fact have an answer. Remarkably
enough, no one is interested in it today. The real question is more to
know whether the origin is in the id-ego (is this our self?) or in the
object. If Freud posed the question in this way, it was, I think,
because he was still dependent on the problem of 'looking'. Because
it was necessary first of all to look, he needed to stand back, to
exclude himself from the relation 'looking - being looked at', and to
stop being a voyeur. Had he been a voyeur, it would have led h im to
becoming personally involved in the process of looking, but also,
perhaps, to taking up a position in its blind spot. It is better to be
able to see even if through a filter or prism. Or better still, to position
oneself outside the field of vision, avoiding looking and replacing it
with listening. Jean Gillibert has proposed the felicitous term of
'listenerism' (ecouteurism). Hearing what is unheard-of and extraordi­
nary means moving towards the invisible, beyond the visible.
Listening does not simply mean listening to the unheard-of/extraor­
dinary but to the inaudible; that is, to the dull groans of the body,
even as far as the voices of silence.

(Ill) The Destiny o f Narcissism following the Last Drive Theory

We know that narcissism, which was supposedly abandoned by Freud
for theoretical reasons, was left high and dry after Beyond the Pleasure
Principle (1920). An Outline of Psycho-Analysis (1940a [1938]) scarcely
mentions it. Such is the fate of concepts. Like fleeting love affairs,
they are dropped when more attractive ones beckon. Yet narcissism
has not disappeared from psychoanalytic literature. It has even
returned in strength; but as a concept dressed in keeping with the
style of the day, that is, in the form of the 'self'.
Psychoanalysts are divided into two camps according to the
position that they take on the autonomy of narcissism. One group
feels that defending its autonomy is justified. This implies accepting
the hypothesis of primary narcissism; either as an autonomous agency
(Grunberger),7 an antenatal psychical mode of functioning; or, in the
sense of the ego's unitary goal (Kohut). Grunberger opposes narcis­
sism to the drives, whereas Kohut, who does not believe that
opposition towards the ego or the object is relevant, sees the main
characteristic of narcissism in its peculiar mode of cathexis or invest­
ment (grandiose Self, idealisation, 'mirror' transference). Finally, some
would see it as the origin of the Self (Hartmann), or the support of
identity (Lichtenstein).8 For the other group, primary narcissism is a
myth, an illusion of Freud's. Balint's position of primary object love
easily won favour with the English school. Jean Laplanche,9 an
author who can hardly be suspected of being modernist, accepts it,
while giving it a different theoretical interpretation (with regard to
masochism). Melanie Klein, who defended simultaneously the
hypothesis of the death drive (although she had a different view of it
to Freud) and that of object relations (inherited from Abraham, but
reshaped; there is no objectless stage), found it easy to do without
narcissism. H. Rosenfeld10 was the only one to reintroduce it; he
nonetheless subordinated it to the death drive and did not challenge
the thesis that object relations are present from the beginning,n Bion
remained silent on the question of narcissism. The economic was
related to the topographical; the dynamic to the genetic or the
generic. Kernberg,12 crossing swords with Kohut, supports those who
trace narcissism back to the vicissitudes of pregenital drives. As for
Pasche,13 he postulates the existence alongside narcissism, 'agonisti-
cally' and antagonistically, of an anti-narcissism which he couples
with the former.
And Winnicott? He did not know; perhaps ... There remains
Lacan.14 He started with the mirror stage (looking, once again),
progressing towards language and the locus of the Other - 'the treasure
of the signifier', and guardian of structure. These few words fall far
short of doing justice to the importance and influence of this theory.
In this outline I am simply placing markers, but what we need to bear
in m ind is that narcissism is the cornerstone of the Lacanian system.
I have attempted to defend the idea that one cannot legitimately
accept the second topography while leaving the final drive theory to
one side. Unfortunately, however, I cannot expand on this important
point here.15 Moreover, it seems to me that, on the grounds of theo­
retical coherence, as well as clinical experience, we are justified in
postulating the existence of a negative narcissism, the dark double of
the unitary Eros of positive narcissism; all object or ego-cathexis
containing w ithin it its inverted double which aims at slipping back
regressively towards the point zero. P. Castoriadis-Aulagnier (1975)
has confirmed this opinion.16 Negative narcissism strikes me as being
different from masochism, notwithstanding the observations of
numerous authors. The difference is that masochism - albeit primal -
is a painful state which treats pain and its continuation as the only
possible form of existence, life and sensibility. Conversely, negative
narcissism tends towards non-existence, anaesthesia, emptiness, the
blanc (from the English 'blank' which refers to the category neuter);
whether this blank cathects affect (indifference), representation,
(negative hallucination) or thought (blank psychosis).
To sum up this 'conceptual drifting', then, Freud started from
'looking' and discovered the One. After him, analysts gave the key
role to the Other (whether by this we mean the sense that was given
to it by English object relations theory or the quite different sense
given to it by Lacan). I propose to complete this series by the category
Neuter (neither the One nor the Other).

The Corpus and its Limits: Overlapping and Coherence

The semantic shifts and fluctuations in psychoanalytic literature give
us an inkling of the multifaceted nature of the concept of narcissism,
which, to be honest, remains undefinable. It is curious that the idea
of a unifying whole, with which the denomination of narcissism is
linked, itself has difficulty in bringing together a clearly defined
corpus. A more systematic reading of Freud's work, to confine
ourselves to that, reveals a host of themes which I will just mention
in passing, without going into them all in depth, endeavouring
instead to examine the cohesion of the elements brought together in
the attempt.
1. Under the heading libidinal ego-cathexis, we can differentiate the
positive, unifying action of narcissism starting with auto-erotism;
that is, the transition from auto-erotism (mentioned for the first time
in the letter to Fliess dated 9 December 1899),17 - an instinctual state
which 'dispenses with any psycho-sexual aim' and seeks only locally
gratifying sensations - to the stage at which the ego is itself experi­
enced and apprehended as a total form. Later we shall see how Freud
understood the dialectic - for that is what it is - of this transforma­
tion. However, among the component drives, a special place must be
reserved for scopophilia, even though sadism also plays its part in the
drive for mastery which has a part to play in the process of appropri­
ating the body. The ego, Freud reminds us, is first and foremost a
bodily ego, but he adds: 'it is not merely a surface entity; it is itself the
projection of a surface' (SE, XIX, p. 26). This clarification helps us to
understand the role of looking and of the mirror. A two-sided mirror,
no doubt; forming its surface out of bodily sensations and, at the
same time, creating its image; but only under the auspices of looking,
which enables it to see the form of the similar other. This necessarily
introduces the concept of identification, the first form of which is
narcissistic ('Mourning and Melancholia', 1917 [1915]). The narcis­
sistic organisation was described by Freud in 'Instincts and their
Vicissitudes' (1915a). It was assumed to intervene before repression,
and was defined by two instinctual vicissitudes: the turning round of
the instinct on the subject's own ego and its reversal into its opposite,
the combination of which produces a model of double reversal.
Identification (secondary identification) favours desexualisation,
bringing about the transformation of object-libido into narcissistic-
libido in order to save narcissistic integrity threatened by castration
anxiety. The links Freud had established with the antenatal narcis­
sistic state, prior to Rank's work in this area, show how the
problematics of narcissism can be traced back to birth. Whether this
lost paradise is displaced from intrauterine life to the period of the
relationship prior to oral weaning, or to the loss of the breast, is of
considerable importance in certain modern formulations of narcis­
sism but changes nothing concerning the essential problem.
Narcissistic integrity is a constant preoccupation, even if it varies
according to circumstances; it is problematic because it is difficult to
see how one can speak about the integrity of that which has no limits.
Later, character formation reveals the tenacity of narcissistic defences
which are bent on m aintaining an inalienable individuality. In this
respect, it seems to me that at least a part of what used to be discussed
in psychoanalytic literature from the point of view of character is
today treated under the auspices of identity. This is no doubt because,
under closer examination, the solidity of character defences proves to
be vulnerable. The often repeated tautological statement, 'I am as I
am' reveals that there is a further question underlying it; that of 'W ho
am I?', which cannot be formulated without running the risk of
undermining the most fundamental of our 'raisons d'etre'. Identity is
not a state; it is an ego quest which can only have its response
reflected by the object and reality.
2. Secondly, we find ourselves faced with the narcissistic mode of
relating to reality. In principle, reality and narcissism are opposed, if not
mutually exclusive. The major contradiction of the ego is that it is the
agency which has to entertain relations with reality as well as to invest
itself narcissistically, while ignoring reality in order to know only
itself. The link Freud established between the repression of reality and
the narcissistic neuroses, first, and the psychoses thereafter, bore
witness to this. He undoubtedly understood that more than a fixation
or narcissistic regression was needed to make a psychosis; which
brings us back to the links between narcissism and the destructive
drives, a subject I will turn to later. The domain covered by the narcis­
sistic mode of relating to reality extends between two poles: thought
and action. Om nipotent thinking, which was one of the first aspects
of narcissism Freud observed, is the expression of a twofold cathexis;
namely, overestimating the powers of an impotent ego (in fact, the
reversal of its impotence into omnipotence) and the sexualisation of
thinking. Far from disappearing into highly evolved forms, the latter
still persists in certain unconscious formations, of which fantasy and
jokes are the most eloquent forms. It even infiltrates the most sophis­
ticated elaborations of the ego. In my judgement, rationalisation,
which plays such a large part in the passionate logic of delusion,
should be considered from this angle. At this point, I wish to add a
comment whose importance will become apparent in due course. If
the ego, as Laplanche maintains, is a metaphor for the organism,
language is arguably a double-entry metaphor for the ego and
thought. Freud had already pointed out the extent to which the ego's
activity is based on omnipotent thinking. By the same token, the
omnipotence of language may be mentioned here both with regard to
creation - the verb existed in the beginning, did it not? - and to
mastering the world, that is, intellectualisation. The fact remains that
it is language that makes the subject aware of how narcissistic he is:
the wish to be eloquent is hampered by the lack of words.
At the other pole, that is, of action, the narcissistic mode of
relating reveals the same contradiction: on the one hand, the schizoid
attitude is to take flight from the world, withdrawing into the internal
world, cut off from reality - solitary isolation being preferred to any
form of activity with another person or several people. But, on the
other hand, in another type of narcissistic cathexis, social action is
seen as valuable. This was something Freud had understood ever since
his analysis of the Schreber case. In his description of narcissistic
personalities ('Libidinal Types', 1931) the portrait he sketches of these
personalities represents them as having a large amount of aggressive­
ness at their disposal and of being

... especially suited to act as a support for others, to take on the role
of leaders and to a give a fresh stimulus to cultural development or
to damage the established state of affairs. (SE, XXI, p. 218)

According to Freud, all this indicates that there is no tension between

the ego and the super-ego since, he adds, there is scarcely any
evidence of a developed ego and equally little preponderance of erotic
needs. Once again, emphasis is placed on self-preservation, inde­
pendence, and the unwillingness to be intimidated.
3. The aforementioned characteristics raise the question of the
defusion o f narcissism from the object drives. Although it offends the
requirement for conceptual coherence, the eternal discussion about
the irrelevant distinction between narcissism and the drives is
nonetheless reminiscent of a clinical reality perceived in analytic
practice. Sexuality, then, is far from playing a negligible role in narcis­
sistic structures, and it would be a mistake to think that sexual
enjoyment (jouissance) is in any way impeded by auto-erotic tenden­
cies where they are concerned. Similarly, the narcissistic object-choice
is not mutually exclusive with obtaining great satisfactions from the
object, which are not solely of a narcissistic order. W hat needs to be
said is that sexuality is sometimes experienced as being in rivalry with
narcissism, as if narcissistic libido were in danger of being impover­
ished due to the leaking of object-cathexes, and sometimes - and this
is undoubtedly the most frequent case rr-it only has meaning to the
extent that it nourishes the subject's narcissism: the capacity to enjoy
sexual activity is proof that narcissistic integrity has been preserved.
Just like guilt, which is never absent but is of less consequence, the
feeling of shame at not being able to enjoy sexuality supplants castra­
tion anxiety. By the same token, sexual failure exposes the subject to
the danger of being abandoned or rejected by the object. This is not
so much a sign of a loss of love as a loss of worth, and of the unsatis­
fied need to be recognised by the object. Worse still, narcissistic
suffering has increased beyond the failure of unsatisfied desire to the
extent that the latter is a mark of the subject's dependence on the
object for the satisfaction of his drives - or to be more precise, for
silencing the desires which only the object can satisfy. Envy of the
object is at its most intense when the latter is imagined to be having
pleasure w ithout conflict. The projected narcissistic penis (of
whichever sex) is one which can enjoy uninhibited pleasure, devoid
of guilt and shame. Its worth does not reside in its capacity for sexual
enjoyment, but in its aptitude for getting rid of its tensions by
satisfying its drives, while all pleasure is converted into narcissistic
ego-cathexis.
Aggressivity is subject to the same defusion. Much has been said
about the need for narcissistic domination; the example of leaders,
which Freud gave, is a good illustration of this. W ithout wishing to
deny the satisfactions the object derives from its position of mastery,
what matters in a situation such as this is to ensure that power
remains in one's own hands. This is just as important as taking the
place of whoever is exercising it in order to prevent them from exer­
cising it over oneself. In other words the important thing is freeing
oneself from the other person's tutelage. It is not just the need to
make the other person suffer that motivates the quest for power; nor
is it simply the wish to be loved and admired that gives narcissism its
wings. Above all, it is the need to avoid the scorn which is projected
on to the master for an essential reason that Freud mentions in Group
Psychology and the Analysis o f the Ego (1921). The father of the primi­
tive horde, the leader, who, as a result of transference, has become the
object who takes the place of the ego ideal of the individuals in the
group, lives apart in solitude; they need him , but he himself is
assumed not to have any needs. In principle these have already been
satisfied. Like Moses, he is God's intercessor and, as such, is closer to
God than men. He is not subject to any desires, except perhaps to that
of the sovereign good. By the same logic, he can only feel scorn for
ordinary mortals who remain trapped by their desires; that is, their
childhood or infantile wishes. Thus exercising mastery over the drives
serves complex aims. W hen he renounces instinctual satisfaction,
narcissistic pride provides him with compensation at a high price.
W hen, on the contrary, this mastery occurs when there is an oppor­
tunity for instinctual satisfaction, the pleasure derived is only
justifiable on the condition that he subordinates himself to the ego
ideal* This is equally true of the aggressive and erotic impulses.
The impossibility of satisfying the need for mastery results in
narcissistic rage. Reality, or the other's desire, are certainly hindrances
here; but the real reason for rage is that lack of satisfaction does not
deprive the subject of satisfaction itself, in as far as this involves the
quest for a particular pleasure, but of the possibility of freeing himself
from desire. The narcissistic penis is an object, the possession of
which is a guarantee that satisfaction will always be found and expe­
rienced without impediment. Appeasement is obtained without
restriction, without delay, and without asking. It is therefore more a
desire for satisfaction than a satisfaction of desire. The notion of the
ideal ego (Nunberg, Lagache) could be applied to this configuration as
it is not unrelated to Freud's 'purified pleasure ego'. That the ideal ego
is one of the ego's aspirations, one of its values, is obvious. But one
still needs to show why this aspiration is unrealisable. It is certainly
not endorsed by reality, but even less so by the defusion of the drives.
In a structure like this where unification is achieved to the detriment
of id satisfactions, the ego can only seek in the object its own narcis­
sistic projection, or a truth that is perfectly adapted to the subject's
requirements. This is the first stumbling block. Secondly, the object's
'unreality' necessarily induces regression to pregenital sexuality. This
may serve as an illustration for the assumption that sexuality is by
nature traumatic (Laplanche). Sexuality intrudes upon the ego and is
experienced all the more disturbingly because it is in its crudest
forms: a wild sexuality in which the need to possess the object - to
have a guarantee of exclusivity - is infiltrated by perverse positions
(insofar as it is the satisfaction of the component drives which is at
stake), particularly sado-masochistic ones. In this sense, it may be said
that sexuality slips back into auto-erotism, the object's function now being
to satisfy this objectal auto-erotism.
4. The function o f the ideal is described by Freud as one of the ego's
major institutions. This amounts to saying that, although narcissism
was scarcely mentioned after the final theory of the drives, and the
second topography, it at least survived under the auspices of the
ideal. The fact that Freud's work closes with Moses and Monotheism
(1939), in which the role played by instinctual renunciation is
idealised as favouring the victories of intellect, is revealing. It is not
difficult to imagine the fears that the founder of psychoanalysis may
have had for the future of his cause. And although he was prepared
to be 'assassinated', as he imagined Moses to have been, it was of no
importance provided we valued his written work and turned away
from the idle satisfactions of oedipal rivalry and the incestuous
wishes lurking w ithin it! The Future o f an Illusion (1927), Civilisation
and its Discontents (1930) and the Weltanschauung (1932) accom­
plished the contradictory twofold task of analysing the function of
ideals and of placing hope in the future of a veracious science freed
of all ideology, which is itself a new ideology. I have suggested that
ideological productions as a whole be called 'idealogy\18 Freud distin­
guished between sublimating the drives and idealising the object. He
was in favour of the former and struggled against the disastrous
consequences of the latter, even though he was obliged to recognise
that love was not possible w ithout such idealisation. Love?
Fortunately, a passing folly. The overestimation of parental figures,
reflecting the parents' idealisation of the child himself, creates an
indestructible narcissistic circuit. But we should not forget that the
destiny of ideals is to bring about complete instinctual renunciation,
including the renunciation o f narcissistic satisfactions. W hile pride is the
reward for renunciation as we 'grow up', the wish to be grown up
also requires a good deal of humility. In 'O n Narcissism: An
Introduction' (1914) he wrote:

To be their own ideal once more, in regard to sexual no less than

other trends, as they were in childhood - this is what people strive
to attain as their happiness.19

Asceticism is the serf of the ideal. Servants of the ideal are capable of
subjecting themselves to extreme forms of purification, some of
which are performed for the masochistic satisfactions obtained. In my
opinion, these satisfactions do not go beyond the secondary benefits
or the inevitable resulting ills; for it has to be recognised that pleasure
can be taken on board as a clandestine passenger. In this respect, the
ascetic is not always a martyr. Moral narcissism,20 nourished by ideal­
isation, is thus exalted. Self-effacement is the goal of all messianism,
and, as a reward for its troubles, narcissism receives the spin-off
benefits of the sacrifice made on behalf of the chosen one whose
image provides further food for negative narcissism. If I am placing
more emphasis than is customary on collective forms of idealisation,
it is because I feel that this is where projected narcissism operates
most fully: narcissistic deprivation on an individual level, thanks to
its backlash effects, is transferred to the missionary group and justifies
the abnegation that it requires. W hen the group lacks mystique
(Bion), there will always be the narcissism of small differences. The
psychoanalytic movement has not escaped this fate.
5. This contradictory situation - exaltation and sacrifice - is indica­
tive of the twofold movement of expansion and narcissistic withdrawal.
Freud undoubtedly placed much more emphasis on narcissistic libid-
inal withdrawal than on expansion. Although at the end of his work,
in Civilisation and its Discontents, his analysis of the oceanic feeling
draws attention to the coexistence of the sense of identity, which
suggests the idea of the ego's territorial boundaries, and the tendency
to fusion, which he explains by the longing for a protective om nipo­
tent paternal image. This expansionist tendency, which makes
narcissism a territory without frontiers,21 can be observed without
there being any fusional regression. There are grounds for speaking of
the existence in some patients of a fam ilial narcissistic ego where,
through a process of idealising intrafamilial relationships, in which
fraternal complicity often plays a dom inant part, the family is thought
of as an extension of the ego. It comes as no surprise, therefore, that
even larger groups may experience the same need for a sense of
identity; and even more so when the latter claims to be altruistic.
There is no need to add that such an attitude, which is capable of
engendering both the best and the worst, cannot be described as
morbid. Narcissistic withdrawal does not call for any particular
commentary, except that one must always remember that it is the
response to suffering, to a sense of ill-being. But one must also bear in
mind that it is one of the most natural tendencies of the ego, which,
each night, withdraws its investments from the world to find refresh­
ment in sleep; and not just to dream.
Increasing interest has been paid in recent years to the clinical
approach to states of emptiness, to forms of aspiration for objectal
nothingness, to the category neuter. This tendency towards with­
drawing cathexes (or disinvesting), the quest for indifference, is not
limited to Eastern philosophies.22 It would seem logical to assume
that any investment contains w ithin it the disinvestment which is its
shadow projected backwards, conjuring up the mythical state prior to
desire; and forwards, anticipating the neutralising appeasement
following the satisfaction of a desire that is felt to have been
completely satisfied. A plausible explanation may be found in negative
narcissism, the ramifications of which, in my opinion, include all the
ways in which narcissistic satisfaction is enhanced by the non-satis­
faction of desire for the object. This is considered more desirable than
satisfaction which involves dependence on the object, on its unpre­
dictable changeableness, and on its responses which always fall short
of the expectations it is supposed to fulfil: vox ch'entrate ...
6. All these ambiguities can be found in the concepts of narcissistic
object and narcissistic investment. The enemy of narcissism is the reality
of the object; and, conversely, the object of reality, namely, its
function in the ego's economy. The object is a particularly useful tool
for examining this issue because it is both outside and inside the ego;
and, because it is necessary for founding the ego as well as elaborating
narcissism. The assumption of primary object love is based on a
misunderstanding which needs clearing up. It is true that from the
beginning the baby's existence is marked by primary object love. This
fact notwithstanding, from the point of view o f the infans, the object is
included from its narcissistic organisation, which Winnicott justifi­
ably called the subjective object, and Kohut the self-object. The
confusion arises from the fact that, in place of the monistic perspec­
tive - it has even been called 'monadological' - of imaginary
identification with the baby, a dualistic outlook has been substituted,
stemming from the perception of a third party observing the
innocent paradisiacal scene of infantile love. There is no reason,
therefore, to deny the existence of primary narcissism in favour of
primary object love; they are two complementary perspectives seen
from two different points of view. W hat certainly can be contested is
the adult's imaginary identification with the infans, which is always
more or less adultomorphic. But it is an unsurmountable obstacle. At
least it is better to know it and not to let oneself be trapped by the
charms of the visible, in which adultomorphic imagination is advan­
tageously replaced by the 'objective perception' of direct observation,
a rationalisation that is more scientist than scientific. As for the
observing third party, it should be included in the picture; but one
must not forget that, although it is not part of the mother-baby rela­
tionship, it is nonetheless present in one form or another. That is to
say, in the baby which is half made by the father - not only in its
chromosomes, but in its features, and, at a very early stage, in its way
of being and acting - and, in the mother who united with the father
to create it.
The object is, therefore, both there and not there at the same time.
W hat is inevitable is that the auto-erotic mode of functioning
according to the pleasure principle (which includes maternal care) is
followed by the paradox of losing the object - the inaugural condi­
tion for finding the object (or of re-finding it, if you prefer). Let us
remember that according to the Freudian model:

... at a time at which the first beginnings of sexual satisfaction are

still linked with the taking of nourishment, the sexual instinct has
a sexual object outside23 the infant's own body in the shape of his
mother's breast. It is only later that the instinct loses that object,
just at the time, perhaps, when the child is able to form a total idea
of the person to whom the organ that is giving him satisfaction
belongs. As a rule the sexual instinct then becomes auto-erotic. (SE,
VII, p. 222)

This development links auto-erotism to perceiving the Other in his or

her totality, but there is no question of narcissism as yet. In short, if
we take the reformulation of the Outline into account, things may be
represented as follows:
Stage 1: infant-breast body, oral instinctual impulse.
Stage 2: losing the breast; localising the breast; narcissistic object;
outside; perception of the whole of the mother's body; linking the
breast with the mother's body; auto-erotism (pleasure of sucking).
Furthermore, (see 'Negation', 1925), it is said that object-loss is the
■motor for establishing the reality-principle.
The origins of narcissism are described in the case history of
Schreber (1911):

There comes a time in the development of the individual at which

he unifies his sexual instincts (which have hitherto been engaged
in auto-erotic activities) in order to obtain a love-object; and he
 begins by taking himself, his own body, as his love-object, and
only subsequently proceeds from this to the choice of some person
other than himself as his object. (SE, XII, p. 60)

Stage 3: Narcissism arises from the unification of the sexual drives

in order to constitute an object based on the model (see Stage 2) of the
object perceived in its totality.
And that is not all. In its choice of object, ego development makes
a division isolating a part-object. This is evident from the continua­
tion of the passage quoted earlier, which is clearly inspired by
Leonardo's case history: 'W hat is of chief importance in the subject's
self thus chosen as a love-object may already be the genitals/
And thus to Stage 4: Homo-erotic object-choice in which the
homo-erotic signifier is represented by the genitals which stand for
the whole object.
Just one remark: Freud seems to deny (insofar as he is clearly
thinking about men) the sexual difference which he has introduced.
In fact, here the penis belongs to both sexes. The mother is credited
with a penis.
Stage 5: Allo-erotic object-choice based on sexual difference
(phallic-castrated, double identification); the Oedipus complex
evolving towards the creation of the super-ego in order to save narcis­
sistic integrity. The super-ego is the heir of the Oedipus complex and
the ego ideal an offshoot of narcissism.
Stage 6: Discovery or rediscovery of the vagina. The reality of
sexual difference in the antithesis penis-vagina. Continuity of the
narcissistic thread, beyond this discovery-rediscovery.
Later, in Civilisation and its Discontents (1930), Freud admitted that
the ego's feeling of unity is very fragile, if not illusory. His analysis of
the oceanic feeling bears this out. But Freud's explanation leaves us
wondering. He sees in it the reappearance of the need for the protec­
tion of an all-powerful father. Although God is written in the
masculine form, we do say mother nature. At the same time, the
phantasy of devouring, which it is tempting to link up with the
mother's breast, through the cannibalistic oral relationship, receives
the same interpretation in the Cronian myth - the father who is
jealous of his sons - right up to the end of Freud's work.24 It is worth
noting, too, that the version Freud gave of the birth of the object
should probably be related to its loss. In 'Instincts and their
Vicissitudes' (1915a) he states that the object is known through hate.
W hat better way is there of pointing out that the ego's perception of
the object's independent existence makes it hate the object because it
undermines its narcissistic omnipotence? But a few papers later, he
compared the dreamer's narcissism (the dreamer's heroic narcissism
connected with his oneiric exploits of which the dream itself is not
the least) with the narcissism of dreams.25 Further on still, in
'Mourning and Melancholia' (1917a [1915]),26 it is object-loss which,
so to speak, makes the subject aware of it. This revelation, which
really deserves a capital letter, discloses the narcissistic structure: oral
relating, ambivalence and narcissistic cathexis characteristic of
primary identification.
At the same period, but elsewhere, in Thoughts for the Times on
War and Death' (1915c) Freud analysed our reactions to the death of
other people. The death of someone we love is a testing experience
because it faces us with the limitations of our investment in others:

These loved ones are on the one hand an inner possession, compo­
nents of our own ego; but on the other hand they are partly
strangers, even enemies. (SE, XIV, p. 298)

The effect of castration anxiety may represent a victory of narcissism

which gives up organ pleasure in the interests of preserving bodily
identity. The following statement could be added to Stage 5: 'narcis­
sism robs objects of their cathexes'.
This leads us to speak of narcissistic object-cathexis. The term arouses
objections in that the meaning of the word narcissistic is rarely free
of pejorative undertones. The altruistic super-ego can express its
demands out loud. Privately, it is reduced to silence - to a certain
extent, at least, since it is not easy to do without others. We are
condemned to love. Love, says Freud, involves narcissistic impover­
ishment. But C. David has rightly pointed out that the state of being
in love exalts narcissism.27 In his description of 'libidinal types' Freud
writes: 'In erotic life loving is preferred above being loved', though
one would have expected the contrary. An explanation for this,
however, may lie in the refusal to be dependent on the object's love
and in the desire to preserve a freedom of manoeuvre regarding the
mobility of cathexes. Making an opposition between object-choice
through attachment (anaclitic) and narcissistic object-choice is over­
simplifying things as well as being phallocentric. W hile the symmetry
Freud established is questionable, the existence of the narcissistic
object-choice is not. We are familiar with the characteristics of these
cathexes: the projection onto the object of one's self-image - as one
was in the past, or as one would like to be, or an image based on the
idealised parental figures. The descriptions waver between fusional
cathexis, the cathexis of an 'impoverished' self-image, mirror-cathexis
and cathexis that might be called solipsistic. Narcissistic structure
reacts with remarkable hypersensitivity to any intrusion in the space
of the Self, while at the same time retaining a nostalgia for fusion and
a fear of separation which is anxiety provoking. This is true even if it
longs for independence; and, above all, if it wishes to avoid being
devalued by the object's scorn, as well as its own scorn for itself for
being incomplete, unfulfilled and dependent. Narcissism cannot
achieve this selflessness with the other. Such self-abandonment is
equivalent to the threat of being abandoned by the object. Narcissism
thus serves as a substitute internal object for the subject which
watches over the ego just as the mother watches over her baby. It
shields the subject and protects it. How are the object's vicissitudes to
be coped with if one does not protect oneself narcissistically? It would
seem to me that artistic creativity (even on a m inor or m inim al scale)
has a role to play here. The narcissistically invested object of creation
serves as an object of projection - even though the creator, while
vigorously asserting that he is the author of it, rejects equally force­
fully that it reflects his own life in any way. He wants to ensure that
it has its own life, an independence equal to that which he himself
aspires to. He values highly what he has created but finds any evalu­
ation of it hurtful, even though he welcomes such evaluation at the
same time. Analysts' writings are their creation; which is why nothing
grieves them more than the judgement of others who do not recog­
nise their hidden virtues or contest their value. The function of the
created object is to serve as a mediation - a transaction - with the
other person who finds pleasure (when ambivalence does not get in
the way) by identifying with the creator. Father Freud is thus a refer­
ence for every psychoanalyst. W hat I am saying then is that the
object and the investment of it are trans-narcissistic objects. Outside
the creative realm, other objects have been credited with the same
function: drugs, alcohol, or more significantly, the fetish. But in the
final analysis it is the phallus that is the Cause. At the same time it is
the Mother of all our motivations for living, the Father of all our
hopes, and the Child-King saviour of the world.
Here is a portrait of Narcissus: he is a unique figure who is om nipo­
tent because his body and m ind are incarnated in his speech; he is
independent and autonomous whenever he chooses to be, but others
depend on him although he feels no desire for them. Yet, dwelling
amongst his own people, that is, his family, clan or race, he is chosen
because of his obvious signs of Divinity, fashioned in his own image.
He is their leader, master of the Universe, Time and Death, full of his
own dialogue, without witnesses, with the one God who bestows His
favours upon him - until the fall when he is the chosen object of
sacrifice - as the intercessor between God and m an who lives in the
isolation of the shadow cast by His light. This shadow of God is a
figure of the Same, the immutable, the intangible, the immortal and
the timeless.
 W ho, in the secret world of his fantasies, would not recognise this
figure, whether he serves it or entertains the mad idea of incarnating
it? But we are now a long way from the innocent flower resuscitating
the ephebe who is in love with his own reflection to the point of
merging into the still, bottomless waters.
Narcissism belongs less to the world of aesthetic myths than to the
world of religious myths, which is why it never ceases to flower again.
7. Narcissism and the dualistic drive organisation. There are successive
drive theories in Freud's work. The contrast between narcissistic-libido
and object-libido occupies a halfway position between the first of the
antitheses postulated, distinguishing the drives of self-preservation
and the sexual drives, and the last, opposing the life drives and the
death drives. It has often been said that Freud changed direction in
this final elaboration. But this is not so. W hile the link between the
drives of self-preservation and narcissistic-libido can, so to speak, be
taken for granted, the redistribution of the connotations of the drives
in the final drive theory seems to me to be consistent with Freud's
theoretical logic. W hat is happening here? As I have already pointed
out, sexuality is a constant factor throughout Freud's work. Given its
eminently conflictual position, Freud was trying to feel his way
towards something that could resist it; in other words, the anti-sexual
drive. Initially, biology seemed to offer a way forward, since the
'instinct' of self-preservation is unanimously recognised: hunger and
love govern the appetites of living entities. The second stage, in which
Freud libidinised the ego, set up a rivalry between the libidinal
cathexes of the object and those of the ego. Weismann had his say in
this choice. And yet Freud, remaining faithful to his own referent, the
species, saw the ego as being in the service of the perpetuation of life.
For him the individual never attains the status of a concept. In 'On
Narcissism: An Introduction' (1914), with reference once again to
biology, he wrote:

The individual does actually carry on a twofold existence: one to

serve his own purposes and the other as a link in a chain, which
he serves against his will, or at least involuntarily. The individual
himself regards sexuality as one of his own ends; whereas from
another point of view he is an appendage to his germ-plasm, at
whose disposal he puts his energies in return for a bonus of
pleasure. He is the mortal vehicle of a (possibly) immortal
substance - like the inheritor of an entailed property, who is only
the temporary holder of an estate which survives him. The separa­
tion of the sexual instincts from the ego-instincts would simply
reflect this twofold function of the individual.28
Let us note here how the ego in turn can be cathected with the feeling
of immortality, as Rank shows in connection with the double. The
ego not only has a double existence but also a double structure:
mortal and immortal. That is, it identifies with the part of itself that
it passes on to its descendants, but also includes it in the present by
constituting the phantasmatic twin for whom death does not exist.
The introduction of the death drives in Beyond the Pleasure Principle
and the reappearance of the inertia principle from the 'Project' in the
form of the principle of Nirvana, postulated by Barbara Low, indicate
a dialectical reversal. The aims of the immortal ego are inverted here:
the exaltation of living leads to the appeasement of dying. There is
thus a thanatophilic ego or, to stay within Keats' poetic universe, an
ego h alf in love with death.29 But the object is an 'excitement monger',
as is the external world. The reflexive relations established between
the ego's narcissistic organisation and the object make it very clear
that the object's destruction can take the reflexive form of self­
destruction. W hich comes first? It is a vain question, because the idea
of successiveness in an organisation of this kind is beside the point;
the idea of simultaneity is prevalent here and should lead us to think
about the coexistence of the object's destruction (the founder of
narcissism and narcissistically cathected) and the destruction of the
ego which longs to rediscover a state of indifference. Is it to rediscover
a sense of well-being or to take flight from a sense of ill-being? Here
again the two movements 'flight from' and 'aspiration for' occur
simultaneously. This passionately longed for indifference is, of course,
intolerance towards the indifference of others - which Freud rightly
sees as the root of paranoia. The point of equilibrium in these
tensions, which aims at cancelling them out reciprocally, is im m obil­
isation at the point 'zero', insensible to the oscillations of the other
and of the ego in its immobile state. Difference is lacking between
good and bad, inside and outside, ego and object, masculine and
feminine (or castrated). The narcissist's sense of plenitude comes both
from the ego's fusion with the object as well as from the disappear­
ance of the object and the ego into the neuter, ne-uter.
Freudian logic now proceeds to make a new separation between
Eros and the destructive drives. If these mythical entities seem to
hamper our epistemology, it is sufficient to compare them with
binding and unbinding, conjunction and disjunction, which are re­
assuringly logical categories. But the logic still needs to be dialectical.
I mean that the relations should be conceived of as being interde­
pendent. There can be no effective binding without unbinding which
works in favour of individuation; no binding without recombining.
Conjunction and disjunction constitute a major axe; this is related to
its complement: Same and Other. Their relations as a whole define
what are known as the object relationship and the narcissistic rela­
tionship (W innicott's ego-relatedness30). The entire history of
development is involved here: the primitive scene (the uniting of
parents); the separation of partners (breaking up of the couple); preg­
nancy (the baby's inclusion within the mother's body); giving birth
(disjunction from the mother's body); relationship to the breast
(rebinding due to prematurity); the constitution of the ego (individual
separation); pregenital fixations in connection with the object (frag­
m enting plural auto-erotism); oedipal triangulation (bringing
together the relations between separating prohibition and union
through identification with the rival); access to the world of culture
(as distinct from the family space); sublimation (union with the world
of culture, even if in protest); adolescence (mourning the separation
from parents); object-choice (derivative union) and once again the
primitive scene. This depiction may seem normative but it is in fact
simply the path of repetition. Seen from a distance, the variations
(cultural or individual) are negligible. In any case, death is at the end
of the road, which has been said to be inconceivable for the uncon­
scious. This needs rethinking. Negative narcissism is the logical
complement of positive narcissism, rendering intelligible the shift
from the theory of the drives in which narcissistic-libido and object-
libido were opposed, to the final drive theory of the life drives and the
death drives. Death: is it V'drive'? Is it possible? My only response to
this question, here and now, is one of silence.
If narcissism Was abandoned by Freud en route, on the pretext that
his theory of it was too close to Jung's - whom he had regarded as his
heir, before discovering that he was a dissident who preferred to be
his own ideal rather than the chosen one of Freud's ideal - it was
perhaps because Freud discovered too late that his theoretical
solution was open to the same criticisms that he himself was making,
thus putting its originality in danger. Further, if he preferred to intro­
duce the destructive drives as a counterpoint to Eros, it was because
he realised that even those illusions which seem the most indestruc­
tible are capable of disappearing. Defending the death drive implied
admitting that psychoanalysis, like civilisations, is mortal. This was
the real point at which he surpassed his own narcissism, even if he
could not help believing in an unidealogical science.31
At the beginning, there was a scientific ideal which consisted in
discovering the laws of the unconscious. A hero: Oedipus, and his
Jewish double, Joseph, who was less conquering but more thoughtful;
he did not attain royalty but obtained much greater power since he
interpreted Pharaoh's dreams. In the course of Freud's work three
pairs emerge.32 Leonardo, who preferred knowledge to representa­
tion; Shakespeare, who recreated the world's stage; and lastly, Moses,
who handed down the Tables of the Law while controlling his anger,
but who was assassinated by the people who were incapable of renun­
ciation. Perhaps this was already a forewarning of the end of what has
been called the Jewish science.
The last posthumous note, dated 22 August 1938, reads:
'Mysticism is the obscure self^perception of the realm outside the ego,
of the id.'
Where id was ... But the ego is too narcissistic to give it up. The
ego's immortality ... However, death is keeping watch.

Numbers and Figures in Narcissism

While narcissism inevitably forces us to think about the most
unthinkable concept in psychoanalysis, namely, the One, this
concept cannot be said to be univocal. Narcissism is Desire for the One.
A unitary utopia, an ideal totalisation which is challenged from all
sides and, first and foremost, by the unconscious. In fact the scope of
the corpus is such that three different values need to be distinguished.
In the name of primary narcissism let us consider the unitary
entity. This, however, can already be divided into the One and the
Unique. The One is in principle the indivisible entity, but it is capable
of duplicating, multiplying itself. W hen it is part of a chain, it is
subject to operations of adding and subtracting. One more or one less;
multiplied or divided; this is how the operation of the successor, and
thus of the predecessor, is defined.
W hat is the One bound to and what does it seek to unbind itself
from? To another and from another One, or from the Other. Addition
and subtraction can be transformed into multiplication and division.
1-1 = 0. Zero is both a number and a concept (Frege33). 1 + 1 = 2. But,
psychoanalytically speaking, 1 does not exist from the outset. 1 only
becomes 1 through the separation of what Nicolas Abraham used to
call the dual unity. The One arises, then, from the sexion (sexuality)
which requires the genetic linking up (of two halves) to form a biolog­
ical unity. Psychical development starts from this Two in One' which,
after separation from, and loss of, the object, gives birth to the One:
the One of the Other precedes the One Same. Let us stay with the
Unity 1 x 1 = 1. By multiplying itself 1 only produces the unity. Idem
for division. 1 must at least be combined with 2 (1 + 1) in the m ulti­
plication in order to create a series of equal numbers. From the second
multiplication on, 2 is multiplied by itself. This is the series of
numbers divisible by two: doubles. The One thus relates to the double.
Conversely the double implies division by two. Applied to the One, it
gives us the fraction known as half. Half has a unique status. If the One
is made up of two halves, each of the two halves consists of a divided
and incomplete status; and yet, each half is a component of the unity
formed by uniting the two halves. See the myths of twins.34 This is
precisely the classical definition of the symbol of the tessera. In fact
each half has a twofold identity: it is in itself a half, and also a compo­
nent of the unity. A fundamental split which is inclined to cancel itself
out in fusion. It is understandable then that the narcissistic mode of
relating can only conceive of the Other in terms of the One. For the
real unity is that of the couple. This is what we find in psychoanalysis;
that is, when practising psychoanalysis.
Nevertheless, primary narcissism itself follows two paths:
towards the choice of an object, choice of the Other. Alter ego, then
without ego: alter. In the double, the difference was reduced to zero,
although, in fact, the difference never really disappears. Myths of twins
re-establish it in a minimal, discreet form, or maximally (when one is
mortal, the other is immortal35). W ith the double, symmetry becomes
dissymmetry,36 similitude (similar is not the same as identical)
becomes difference. However, secondary narcissism makes it possible to
rediscover one's reserve by recuperating, 'robbing', Freud says, from
objects the cathexes that are tied up with it. The One returns to itself;
towards absolute primary narcissism in which excitation tends
towards zero, that is, negative narcissism. I have already pointed out
that the negative has two senses (at least): the reverse of the positive
(for example, hate in contrast with love, where love is found in an
inverted form, as love cannot cancel out hate). Lacan speaks of
hainamoration (Seminar XX). But negative relates to the pure concept
of nothingness. For a long time confusion in psychoanalysis resulted
in the second meaning being mistaken for the first, doing away with
the concept 0. Hence zero's ambiguity as both a concept and a
number (Frege). Principles - thus Nirvana as well - tend towards ...
without ever reaching their aim ... Otherwise, they would not be
principles. The asymptotic curve strives for 0 without ever reaching it.
Absolute pleasure or absolute reality do not exist either. Zero - an
unstable point of equilibrium - underpins the category Neuter. I have
conceptualised this category under the auspices of the blanc,37 from
the English blank. Blank rhyme = rime neutre. Giving you carte
blanche = abdicating my own wishes. Signing a blank cheque = taking
the risk of being dispossessed of everything. There is no need to
remind you of the difference between a white wedding (un manage en
blanc) and an unconsummated wedding {un mariage blanc). Blank
psychosis is for us the realm of radical decathexis (or disinvestment),
a canvas on which the picture of delusional neo-reality is inscribed.38
Bion proposed the concept of 0 as the state of the unknowable. W hen
questioned as to whether 0 was the equivalent of zero, he rejected this
interpretation, saying that he was speaking of the object in terms of
divinity, of absolute, infinite truth.39 Might it be compared with
Lacan's concept of the Other, allowing for the difference that the
latter is the treasure of the signifier? It is unlikely that he would have
endorsed this. I propose the solution of the zero object Neuter.
All these operations involve the concepts of binding and
unbinding, for which Freud produces the figures, the superb and
indefinite myths, of Eros and the destructive drives. The Neuter is
untenable, it falls either on One side or the Other. This being so, it
binds itself and/or unbinds itself in the Same or in the Other.
These three types of narcissistic values form different geometrical
figures. It is impossible to think about narcissism without spatial refer­
ence points. In the central position I would place the sphere, which
Freud called the vesicle. This sphere is enclosed by its external
envelope with variable limits or boundaries (pseudopodes). It is a
spatial enclosure which gives the individual the feeling that he exists
in himself. In fact the sphere shelters the Self and may constitute
Winnicott's false self at its periphery, fashioned in the image of the
mother's desire. One is related to the other. In the interaction,
W innicott has demonstrated the mirroring role of the mother's face;
in fact, her gaze. The baby has to be able to see himself in it before he
can see her, in order to form his subjective, that is, narcissistic objects.
Subsequently the mirror is a plane, a surface of reflection, an area of
projection on which the double and the Other are inscribed. Lacan has
given a good description of the role played by the image of the Other
in giving the ego recognition through the lure of a totally unifying
narcissism. This presupposes, of course, being recognised by the Other.
Projection can just as easily form an idealising image (of the One or of
the Other) or a persecuting image (of what is the same). Their combi­
nation is at the root of delusion; their antagonism is psychic death.
Once again various directions are possible here, amongst which is the
double reversal40 of the narcissistic organisation, creator of the Mobius
strip which we have come to recognise with Lacan's help. Lacanian
topology will not be taken into consideration here. But we also know
that the sphere and the projected image are expansible and retractable.
By providing us with the concept of the intermediate zone, Winnicott
has enabled us to understand the role of the intersection in the sharing
of mother-baby relations. The separating out of the united spheres
gives birth to the potential space where cultural experience occurs.
This is a primary form of sublimated creativity; sublimation and
creation constituting trans-narcissistic objects.
The aim of the optimal intersection is to create the affect of exis­
tence; that is, the sense of coherence and consistency underlying the
pleasure of existing which cannot be taken for granted - it has to be
instilled by the object (a purely female element for Winnicott) - and
which shows that it is able to tolerate acceptance of the Other and
separation from it. The destiny of the One is to live in conjunction
with and/or separation from the other: the capacity to be alone in the
presence of someone is a mark of this favourable development. The T
loses itself and finds itself again in playing.
Conversely, other outcomes are also possible. For instance, being
invaded by the Other, something that is both desired and feared, is
illustrated by states of fusion. The danger here is explosion and implo­
sion (Laing41), which are both equally catastrophic. This is what Bouvet
called the rapprocher de rapprochement and the rapprocher de rejection,42
observable in states of depersonalisation.43 Fusion leads to absolute
dependence on the object. Passivation44 presupposes having confidence
in the object; having confidence that the object will not take advantage
of the power which has been given to it. Beyond that, the fear of inertia,
of psychical death, is a terrible spectre which is fought against with
active and reactive defences. This wards off the dangers of the two
spheres being merged into one, in which one is swallowed up by the
other: there is a projection of the narcissism of cannibalistic oral rela­
tionship in which the first figure of duality soon appears: eating-being
eaten. In place of the third element in Bertram Lewin's triad, 'the wish
to devour, to be devoured and the wish to go to sleep', it is disappear­
ance which is feared: the disappearance of the One, of the Other, or of
their unity, merged and reconstituted as a result of devouring the Other
or of being devoured by the Other. However, being able to tolerate
fusion is just as necessary as the need to exist separately. Here, we have
the distinction between the unintegrated state, which is beneficial, and
the disintegrated state, which is harmful (Winnicott).
Finally, self-withdrawal is the ultimate defence. Hounded into a
corner, selective shrinking is the only alternative the self has, bringing
in its wake psychical death and perhaps even death itself. It has been
shown45 that total withdrawal represents the collapse of the ego
following the failure of ordinary or exceptional defence mechanisms
which attempt to fend against psychotic anxieties, that is, traumatic
anxiety resulting from unbound energies; binding allowing for the
solution of signal anxiety. The point becomes the final solution. Point zero.
Numbers relate to figures and figures to numbers; all of them
narcissistic. W hat is being bound? A body (volume), an image
(surface), a point (m inim um level)? Perhaps a language.

Elementary Grammatical Functions in Narcissistic Discourse

One of the functions of language is to constitute a representation of the
unitary subject as well as his thought. I shall not go over again here
the rules of Lacanian language (lalangue46 included). Analysis shows
that words tend to be lacking. Expressing oneself through the effect
of what is not said, or by what is said badly, or by saying 'that's not
what I mean' results in denial: 'How does one take back what one's
just said?' Analytic discourse presupposes two forms of articulation.
Free association, the injunction to 'say everything', involves a syntag-
matic drifting, illogical in terms of meaning, while each syntagma
must continue to obey grammatical logic. However, what I am
thinking of here is the narcissistic investment of the basic elements of
a sentence: subject, auxiliaries, verb and complement.
1. The subject In psychoanalytic literature of recent years there is a
sense that the terminology of narcissism is incomplete. Various terms
have been proposed to make up for this deficiency. The Freudian
concept of the ego has been completed by lexical variants of the subject
The Self, which differs depending on the author (Hartmann,
Jacobson, Kohut or Winnicott), is the most widely accepted term, but
not without resistance from some quarters (Pontalis47). Many regard
it as a global ego containing the narcissistic investments which are at
the root of the feeling of identity (Lichtenstein). Others prefer to
stress the difference between the ego and the 'I' (le Je), whether it be
from an existential perspective (Pasche), from a linguistic perspective
(Lacan), or in terms of knowledge about the 'I' (P. Castoriadis-
Aulagnier). Finally, the subject has been interpreted in various ways:
Lacan's structuralist understanding of it stands apart from other uses
which are generally descriptive. The ambiguity of the concept of the
total ego or of the ego as an agency has been clarified by J. Laplanche,
who thinks of the ego as a metaphor for the organism: an ego-system
functioning according to a particular, if not autonomous, endoge­
nous regime. Apart from these designations, there is also a concern
for identity, for individuation (Mahler) and for personalisation. While
all these forms of ipseity have found their place, they nonetheless
carry with them a risk of conceptual displacement which can prove to
be serious insofar as they involve making phenomenological, and
even existential concessions. Consequently, however justified refer­
ences to clinical work may be, it is preferable that experience is not
translated into a metapsychological paraphrase of a system of
thought which will remain more descriptive than theoretical.
Translation is responsible for this induction. In endeavouring to
tackle narcissism it is likely, if not certain, that one will be drawn into
a theoretical tautology. The unconscious ego should make us wary,
but the 'fine form' or 'noble nature' of the narcissistic ego tends to
seduce us in the theory which makes the reflections of its outward
appearance shimmer before us. Terminological habits will no doubt
^vin through in the end. The terms themselves are less important than
the use that is made of them. The unconscious structure of narcissism
perhaps still needs to be unveiled; it is a structure which is easier to
identify in the dom ain of the object-related drives. -
W hat has produced this overabundance of adjacent or vicarious
conceptions of the Freudian ego is probably the question of the differ­
ence between ego and T, which Freud, perhaps deliberately,
overlooked. In French we often say, 4Moi, je ...' as if to illustrate the split
and the difference. According to language and communication special­
ists, one of the particularities, and not the least of them, of hum an
language is that it is a self-referential system (T wish t h a t ... ', 'I think
that') in which the problematics of narcissism are involved. 'I, myself,
don't think that narcissism is what people say it is ... .' Here we come
across the distinction made by R. Jakobson between the subject within
the utterance and the subject who makes the utterance (sujet de
Venonce/sujet de Venonciation). W hat I want to draw attention to is that,
in contrast with other modes of communication, language as a whole
has this twofold function in analytic treatment. Thus slips of the
tongue and jokes are and are not 'pure utterances'. Language is
singular-plural: not only in the sense of the royal 'we' but because the
plurality of first person pronouns necessarily makes it plural, whereas
the first person plural refers to the singular. 'In Paris, we don't think
that narcissism is what it is said to be elsewhere.' A statement which in
fact conceals two persons, the author of the statement and the partic­
ular person he is addressing. Finally, this leads us to locate the personal
pronoun in the field of affirmation and negation which ensures the
converging functions of narcissistic cohesion and discriminative rele­
vance. However, it is clear that what is repudiated by negation makes
its return through affirmation and what is affirmed continues to deny
that it is related to what is denied. In any case, this difference emerges
in relation to 'the third person'. 'He (Freud) would certainly have
agreed with me.' In the final analysis, one always has to put oneself in
the position of a representative of a function of representation.
2< The question of auxiliaries is essential. The reference to being
comes naturally to m ind and Winnicott, suspected of complicity with
Jung, did not hesitate to tackle the issue, even if he aroused reserva­
tions. Freud, in his posthumous notes, clearly pointed out the
confusion between 'having the breast' and 'being the breast'.48 We
should perhaps invent a formula to replace the ordinary 'I am'. 'I
have-am the breast' would be more appropriate if we bear in mind
that, in this case, 'have' has the sense of incorporating and intro-
jecting, which makes being possible. The subject's assets, his
possessions, as W innicott says, are subject to quantitative variations,
the effects of which are familiar to us. But it is the qualitative varia­
tion that matters if we are to explain what is at stake. We speak of
anxiety in the face of the vicissitudes of object relations and the
wounding, suffering and pain when narcissism is undermined; that is,
when the subject feels his very being is affected. But while being is the
feeling that one exists, and underpins the logic of self-belonging, it is
also the process of becoming, that is, being subject, whether one likes
it or not, to time. Even the most narcissistic affection does not
prevent time from passing, the body from ageing, the world from
changing, and being from undergoing changes (yet remaining the
same being). There is good reason therefore to create, through the
verb becoming which is the equivalent of the German auxiliary werden
(Wo es war soli ich werden). Having been (in the past) - having to
become (in the future).
3. The vehicle for expressing action is the verb which, for the
psychoanalyst, is only an instinctual verb (verbe pulsionnel). Narcissism
is present here in the reflexivity expressed by the split 'I-me'. Turning
round upon the subject's own self and reversal into its opposite, from
activity to passivity. It is not always clear what the connection of the
passive form with narcissism is. Whether I love myself (or hate
myself) passivation is involved, but it is not the same when I say, T am
loved' or T am hated'. The second of these involves the object; the
first merges with it in imaginary fusion. In fact, what is occurring is
an objectless 'love attraction'. It is when there is trusting passivation
that the double reversal, constitutive of I, can occur. W hat we have
here is a pathway, a circuit, which, under certain circumstances, can
become a short-circuit, a shunt49 of the object-system. Thus one can
write: 'In the beginning was the verb', dissociating the verb of
language and the verb of the drive. But how are they related? The
ego's expanding and retracting movements bear witness to this reflex­
ivity: 'I'm master of myself (= I am in control of myself) as of the
world (= as I am in control of the world).'50 In any case, dissociation
is still operating. Speaking about his feelings of depersonalisation,
one of Bouvet's patients said: 'I am the world and the world is me.'
Clearly, fusion can put an end here to dissociation, leading to a
complete reversal, to the narcissistic equation. One could contrast this
with the statement: 'Because it was him, because it was me', which
bases union on the recognition of difference. Yet the verb is still
active, and it is through reversal that it acquires the passive form. This
is the origin of Freud's idea that the libido is always masculine. The
corollary of this is that passivity takes second place. There are no
passive instincts but instincts with a passive aim ('Instincts and their
Vicissitudes', 1915a). However, we know that the child, on the
contrary, is passivated, is dependent on the object for maternal care.
Hence the controversy: Freud sees things from the point of view of
the baby who actively experiences its drives, whereas Balint looks at
the scene and notes the passivity of the baby in need of maternal
love. The complementarity of their two positions conjures up the idea
of the mother adapted to her baby's needs, that is to say, dyadic unity.
Nonetheless, Diatkine has rightly drawn attention to the mother's
inadequacy for the original displacement. We might wonder here
about the relevance of pronouns. Can one say T? Sooner or later this
would imply 'You'. In fact, as J.-L. Donnet, drawing on Benveniste,
has pointed out, what is important is Tt', the concept of the excluded
third party.51 The indefinite French pronoun 'On' includes everybody,
except I. The proliferation of works based on the model o f 'On bat un
enfant ('A Child is Being Beaten'), ‘On tue un enfant ('A Child is Being
Killed') by S. Leclaire, ‘On parle d'un enfant ('A Child is Being Talked
About') by J.-L. Donnet, makes a reduction necessary: 'On fait un
enfant ('A Child is Being Conceived'). The shepherd answers the
shepherdess by saying, ‘On ne me la fait pas’ (T can't be taken in so
easily'), for narcissism is acutely sensitive to deception. Here entice­
ment can never be anything but deceptive. Illusion has no positive
function. 'It doesn't exist.' In other words, 'you are only an analyst'.
4. Finally, we come to the object as complement W hich object? That
is the whole question. Here, once again, we have to go back to the
different types of object-cathexis or narcissistic-cathexis, primary or
secondary, since absolute primary narcissism is objectless. The type of
narcissistic-cathexis which is described by Freud in primary identifi­
cation comes to m ind here, and with it, dependence on the object.
Object-loss in mourning or merely disappointment in the object
results in narcissistic wounding which in its severe forms leads to
depression. Self-deprecation, or a lack of a sense of worth, are the
specific signs of it. Apparently the object is contingent; the narcissist
either regards its existence as dubious or, on the contrary, makes it his
raison d'etre. But, in both cases, object-loss reawakens dependency,
bringing out the hate underlying sadness and reveals scarcely veiled
desires to devour and expel. The object is a complement o f being. We
are familiar with the discussions which revolve around the object in
psychoanalysis and the object of psychoanalysis.52 The question of
the relations between part-object and whole-object is raised here.
Contrary to Lacan, who states that the object can only be a part-
object, I think that the situation is more complicated. Either the drive
expresses itself without inhibition of aim and can only be partial or,
there is an inhibition of aim in which case the object is perceived as
whole, b u t with a drive that ceases to be fully deployed. W hat is
impossible is the relation: drive with uninhibited aim - whole object.
There is perhaps one exception: the passionate sexual relationship.
Hence the function of the narcissistic object and the programmed
dialectic I have just outlined. Once narcissistic object-cathexis has
been overcome, the next stage is not, as is often thought, the objectal
or objective object but the potential object of the transitional area. In
this way any identification with the normative model of the analyst
is avoided. Identification with the analytic function is made clearer if
one adds that, in the etymological sense of the word, the analyst is a
hypocrite, someone who remains above the crisis 50 that he can play his
role - this was how actors used to be called. The analytic role conforms
to the requirements of intrigue: tragic, dramatic or comic, or all three
at once. The analyst's repertoire and his capacity to make use of it - a
different role for each patient - to be the patient's object in a floating
identity, is only valid in the context of the 'Other stage', that is, the
analyst's consulting room. The analyst is able to act thanks to
secondary, primary or narcissistic identification. The latter is different
from primary identification in that fusion gives birth to figures of
duality. It is when narcissistic identification enables positive narcis­
sism to establish itself that playing can emerge in the capacity to be
alone in somebody's presence. It is a complement that one may be
unaware of, but which has to be there in order to be misrecognised.
It is a very particular form of sharing.
In the case of Schreber and, in particular, in connection with
narcissism, Freud demonstrated the transformations which the
subject, the verb and the complement undergo in delusion. He did
not refer to the auxiliaries. However, it may be that they are the
implicit referents of the system. At any rate, the fact that language
underpins narcissistic structure to the extent that the transformations
of the internal relations between its elements afford us a picture of the
drive economy, suggests that it may be the most inexpungible narcis­
sistic refuge, in the hope of creating closed forms which can salvage
even the most patent failings of the discourse. In any case, what is
essential is the production of a syntagma; that is, a self-sufficient
linguistic unit. In French the imperative requires just one word:
'Parlons' or 'Partons'. The syntagma is not a unit but a metaphor for
unity, in which we can find G. Rosolato's notion of metaphoro-
metonymic oscillation. But in order to speak about narcissism, that is,
a mark of individuation, a style is needed. There are a thousand and
one ways of saying: T love myself.' But is that all there is to it?

The Style of Transference Narcissism

The analysis of narcissistic transferences has led Kohut and Kernberg
to adopt opposing points of view in their interpretation of the
autonomy of narcissism or of its indissociability from the pregenital
drives - first and foremost, aggressivity. I do not intend to take sides in
this controversy, preferring to approach the theme of narcissism in the
transference from the angle of the discursive style that is characteristic
of narcissism and specific to each patient. There is no notable diver­
gence between the authors as far as content is concerned. On the other
hand, few authors have had the idea that narcissism could be consid­
ered from the point of view of mental functioning, and, specifically,
from the angle of the style of the transference discourse. Here we are faced
with two situations, one of which is perhaps merely a caricature of the
other, although quantitative modification always translates itself into
qualitative modifications. In the transference of structures which are
not particularly narcissistic, not only is it possible to speak of a narcis­
sistic vertex as a constant feature, but it can also be argued that all
material may be understood in terms of the narcissistic vertex and the
objectal vertex, which explains the reluctance of some analysts to
adopt the concept of narcissism. In this respect transference experi­
ence is troubling. Even the fact that interpretation links the analyst's
person with the message, which in principle is not directed at him,
means that the analyst himself can be accused of narcissism!
Furthermore, he is the one who assumes that the analysand is only
able to talk about the analyst or about himself. These axioms are neces­
sary to the analytic frame of reference. If we insist on the necessity of
the pair, free association-floating attention, it is so that a circuit of
exchanges between the Self and the object can be observed; which in
turn will be redefined in a second duplication. Thus the object is
divided into objectal object-cathexis and narcissistic object-cathexis,
just as the Self comprises narcissistic and object cathexes when the Self
becomes its own object.
A permanent oscillation of narcissistic and object cathexes, as
much of oneself as of thg object, can be witnessed. This relational
instability depends, of course, on the exchanges taking place between
the analysand and the analyst. It is probably affected by technical
variations, whether these induce, not to say exalt, narcissistic expres­
sion, or whether, on the contrary, narcissism becomes the persecuted
object of the analyst who cannot free himself from its pejorative
connotations, thus forcing 'objectalisation' in return. The debate
between 'narcissism' and 'anti-narcissism' is based on different inter­
pretations of clinical facts and genetic assumptions, none of which
prevails over the others. The debate remains confined to their
heuristic value, but nonetheless leads to different technical attitudes.
To my m ind, these discussions are only of relative interest; for what
is important is to study the relationship between narcissistic transfer­
ence and object transference and their intersections. To be more
exact, let us say that we need to distinguish between the narcissistic
vertex and the object vertex in any analytical relationship; to take
into account the particular features of narcissistic transferences
marked by narcissistic structures - neurotic, unstable, perverse,
depressive or psychotic - and finally, to circumscribe a basic narcis­
sistic organisation in the light of the worth placed on this or that
feature of the narcissistic corpus as we have defined it.
Approaching mental functioning from this perspective is more
interesting. I have defended the concept of the signifier's hetero­
geneity:53 bodily states, affects, thing- and word-presentations, and
acts, are the constitutive elements. The interest of these distinctions
lies in their economic, topographical and dynamic interplay. But
while these differences can be found in any discourse, whatever form
it may take, they counterbalance each other in a striking way in
narcissistic discourse. Articulating them may serve different, but ulti­
mately converging aims. The utterances as a whole constitute a
narcissistic cover, a 'protective shield' if you like, sheltering the body.
This shield is both aesthetic and moral: the discourse complies with
the requirement of forming an attractive totality. Such is the function
of the narrative-recitative discourse which binds the elements of
mental functioning, thereby forming a screen between the analysand
and the analyst. Silence operates symmetrically. It might be said,
then, that in their own way discourse and silence have the same task.
Dense, heavy silence, creating a feeling of opacity and impenetra­
bility, without a crack in it. The breach of transference or the
associative thread is masked by the discursive development of the
stream of words. The analyst feels as if he is watching a film of which
he can only be the spectator.
In other forms the narrative-recitative discourse does not simply
act as a screen. To passive resistance, an active function is added: the
discourse pushes back - might one say represses? - the analyst's
presence, an object which is perceived as being intrusive. The narcis­
sistic movement does more than just resist listening; it secures the
analysand's boundaries; but, as these cannot take the risk of estab­
lishing themselves at the outposts on the frontiers, they have to avert
narcissistic danger by penetrating the object's territory in order to
neutralise it. The analysand is willing to experience whatever analysis
makes h im experience, but it is his business. 'Something' is
happening to him and, however unpleasant invasions in the sphere
of the Self may be, they can be tolerated as long as they are not
perceived to be effects of the object who, as a result, would take on
too much importance for narcissism. Different forms of resistance,
linked to external reality and the role played by the social milieu, are
used to counter the extreme narcissistic tonality of the perception of
reality, particularly social reality. It should not be forgotten that Freud
observed how social relations in paranoia are sexualised. In fact, a
thorough analysis leads one to conclude that the recognition of
external reality in childhood is the source of an acute conflict whose
consequences still make themselves noticeable in spells of deperson­
alisation. In addition to this effect we need to add the role that is
played by the accentuation of sexual difference in the objectal aspect
of transference. Should it be called a projection? It would be a misin­
terpretation to believe that the analysand wishes to project
something on to or into the analyst. In fact, what he asks of the object
is simply to occupy the status that he agrees to give him, that is, as
witness, image, reflection or vanishing point; but in any case without
having any existence in the flesh - a status that is less fantasmatic
than ghostly, a shadow of the object.
Finally, the third possibility: narcissistic object-cathexis and, reflex­
ively, the narcissistic cathexis of language, that is, the way one speaks
about the object. The language of analysts, their style of interpreting,
their writing, makes them identifiable. Whether it is dry (pseudo­
scientific), abrupt (deceptively simple), lyrical (the chant of desire),
precious (Ah! In what gallant terms ...), confused (nothing is simple),
or Gongoric (trying to imitate the genius of the unconscious), the list,
far from being exhaustive, gives the picture of a failure in conceptual­
ising narcissism, a danger which Freud was one of the few to escape.
Exerting fascination over the reader in the absence of the analysand (if
only one could tell him ...) is how the analyst takes his revenge; he is
a hypnotist who has had to give up fascinating for analysing.
But to be able to analyse there has to be a discourse that is
analysable. The narrative-recitative discourse excludes the object as
soon as the latter ceases to be a witness. Only the associative discourse
is analysable if one hopes to go beyond an interpretation in the form
of a paraphrase; which can nonetheless be useful by echoing the
words of the analysand who needs to be heard, not analysed, strictly
speaking, but heard by someone. Yet this kind of analysis is not what
is meant by psychoanalysis. Once the censor is lifted, the associative
discourse is the product of a process of unbinding which is capable of
rebinding itself differently. The narcissistic subject cannot take the
risk of unbinding his discourse, as if the unbinding of language alone
had the power to destroy his self-image haunted by fragmentation.
This is why he tries to m aintain a cohesive and adhesive discourse. It
could be argued that what underlies the associative discourse is the
component drives; not those of the auto-erotic type, but those which
are related to the object. In the trusting relationship with the object,
the analyst gathers together the shattered bits with the aim of giving
them new coherence. On the other hand, the narrative-recitative
discourse only aspires to be recognised as such, en soi, averting any
eventual unbinding and aim ing to preserve its form. A discourse that
is eminently 'gestaltist', in which background and figure tend towards
unity.
 The danger of analysing narcissistic organisations is that alongside
the desire for change expressed in the request for analysis before it has
begun, there is also a certain self-fidelity, the guardian of narcissism,
which would prefer the analysis to fail rather than risking the change
that is involved in being open to the object. And this is true quite
apart from any so-called adaptive reference.
The discourse of the narcissistic vertex of transference or of the
narcissistic transference both oblige us to consider the role of speech
in psychoanalysis. If one considers that speech mediates between
body and language, in a psychical hand-to-hand, speech is psyche. It
is a mirror, or rather an interplay of prismatic mirrors, breaking up the
light of bodies or recomposing the spectrum of luminous rays. But it
is also the link between one body and another, one language and
another, One and Other. In truth, it is not only a relation but the
representation of relations. As such, it strives for autonomy while
remaining dependent; interdependent because intersubjective. In this
sense, it is not narcissistic speech, although it can represent narcis­
sism or the object. It may nonetheless be objectal or even objective
speech. Even in this case, it retains its function of relating and medi­
ating. Being interpsychical and intrapsychical, it creates a milieu of
language between objective worlds, between objective and subjective
worlds, and between subjective worlds. Its function is to unite but
also to divide; by virtue of its properties, it symbolises Sameness and
Alterity. In any case it is plural speech, tending beyond the One and
the Other towards the Neuter in which everyone can recognise them­
selves. Speech is therefore neither narcissistic nor objectal, and less
still objective, but it is all this at once in its aspiration for neutrality.
The Law claims to be the law of the unbegotten God, who is what he
is. But, in the last resort, everyone knows that it is only human,
fallible speech, originating in mother and father. It is still the speech
of an infans. Crying. But the cry is ambiguity itself, that is of jouissance
or pain; or, in terms of the median values of man, of pleasure and
unpleasure. Even silence, which itself does not escape ambiguity: the
silence of quietude, of despair or of impotence. Only the silence of
God is different. W hich is why, for the analyst, discourse, that is,
speech and silence, is always deferred.
Language serves all these ends which aim, all of them, at trans­
forming the Other into Neuter in favour of the One. That is where the
paradox emerges. The One needs the Other to feel it exists; yet it has
to make it Neuter. Consequently, the One, in turn, is only Neuter.
The narcissistic subject uses language to make the subject within
the utterance and the subject making the utterance coincide as far as
possible, to reduce them to a single point which, in fact, is a high
point or a climax. Silence and speech are ultimately the same. One
 might say that the double T loses its function in a metaphorical
'third person' in which the famous word play on Nobody54 lends
weight to the function of the excluded third: 'the third person' is
neuter. This is the paradox of Narcissus: the extreme affirmation of
subjectivity goes hand in hand with his extreme negation and finds
its scansion, or its punctuation, in the neuter. An essential instability,
as a result of which the structure, forever in search of a new point of
stability, will be weakened by oscillations between the One and the
Other. Stance understood as rest, sojourn, dwelling place, and stasis as
arrest, imm obility and stagnation, alternate in narcissistic figures.
The Greeks had already noticed the unique character of language
which speaks simultaneously of the world and of itself. Incidentally
this is precisely the characteristic of analytic language. The moderns
have again taken up the distinction between 'language-object' and
'metalanguage'. Whatever the relevance of Lacan's opposition to the
concept of metalanguage, it has to be recognised that the language-
object cannot in itself explain what is subsumed under the term
metalanguage, even by splitting itself. Although poetic language is
the linguistic aspect that is closest in spirit to analytic discourse, one
cannot help recalling, along with W innicott, that no one would
accept to be someone else's poem. If, then, the word 'meta' disturbs
us - but why should it be any more disturbing than 'metapsy­
chology'? - it is undoubtedly because we are wary of any reference to
the beyond. And it will be recalled just to what extent 'Beyond' the
pleasure principle provoked disarray amongst analysts and continues
to do so even today. W hat is certain is that we are dealing with a
system of interlocking antitheses in which the pair, language (about
the) object - reflexive language (language speaking about itself),
overlaps the distinction between objectal discourse and narcissistic
discourse without becoming confused with it. Narcissistic discourse
and reflexive discourse duplicate each other unconsciously. That is to
say, narrative discourse 'forgets' that it only speaks about language
itself, that it is an object-less language; that is, reflexive language
which is itself its own object. In analysis, the recitative-narrative
discourse is object-less, or holds its object at a distance while being
hypnotically fascinated by it. The ultimate aim of this rapport is to
subject the latter to its own pleasure: subjugating so as not to be
subjugated, even by language. Such is the oracular word of Masters. It
only suffers consent and responds to what the other says by casting it
into outer darkness. There is no possibility here of circumventing the
difficulty of the relations between message and code: is it not true
that the oracle aims to bring about their coincidence? In this case, it
is more reminiscent of the vocation of an apostle than that of a
psychoanalyst.
 The essence of the fantasy of self-mastery or of mastering the
object is that it can only be guaranteed expression by negating itself
as such. The Master says he himself is subjugated. But he is the only
one who can say so. Totalisation is denied in reference to a truth
which declares itself to be indefinable: a mutilated statue whose
complete form is reconstituted by those to whom it is revealed. This
brings us to another feature of narcissistic transference; namely, its
relations with metonymy and metaphor. It is supposed at the outset
that all language is metonymic since it cannot adm it any concept of
closed unity. But this metonymy becomes metaphor. Here again we
come across the metaphoro-metonymic oscillation which G. Rosolato
regards as an organising concept. In relation to the theme I am
discussing, I would prefer to speak of a metaphorical substitution of
metonymy. Thus language is metonymic, not only in the eyes of the
world but in analytic discourse; for it is accepted, at least, that
language is not lalangue. On the other hand, language becomes the
metaphor of lalangue. The effects of language cease to be syntagmatic,
becoming paradigmatic instead. And, if it is true that inconsistent
multiplicity (J.-A. Miller55) could be called the central notion of
lalangue, the consistent unity of Lacanian theory is certainly found in
the concept of the signifier. J.-A. Miller says: The Ucs. is One in Two.
It is made up of parts which are incompatible and inseparable at the
same time. It is an entity which can neither be shared nor reassembled,
a vortex or a commutation' (my italics). How then is analysis possible
except by placing the analyst in the eye of the vortex, a narcissistic
position par excellence? Lack cannot be unified under one concept
alone since, as J. Derrida has said, 'Something is not where it should
be [castration-truth] but lack is never missing/56 It is easier now to
appreciate why The Purloined Letter' functions as a session. It is a
narrative discourse. Analysis, as we have to practise it, leaves narrative
as such to one side, which is certainly the feature of this text because
narrative is the basis of narcissism. Unity, as I have said elsewhere,57
appears again in the concept of the signifier. If lalangue is not
language (la langue), then its constitutive element cannot be the signi­
fier. Assuming that the signifier is what constitutes lalangue,
necessarily results, not in creating an effect of meaning, even if it is a
vortex, but in causing a 'confusion of tongues' (Ferenczi) to emerge
from listening. The response of narcissistic language to trauma-catas-
trophe is the closure of the isolated system.
Language (langue) 'before the signifier'? Rather than falling into the
traps of a genetism that is open to all imaginable confusions, I would
prefer, along with P. Castoriadis-Aulagnier, to use the term representa­
tive, taking up the idea that the psyche cannot represent without
representing itself and that its representation can never be one or
unifiable; or again, is never inseparable from knowledge about the T
that is being violent. The difference between the signifier and the
representative is that the representative is a representative of transfer­
ence (of desire for meaning), whereas the signifier is the transference
of a representative. And if it is true that 'the signifier is that which
represents a subject for another signifier' (Lacan), it could be said that
the representative is what a subject signifies for another representa­
tive. It is not the signified that is unrepresentable (it is fairly
polysemic), but that which is represented; that is, in psychoanalytic
theory, the unconscious which always has to be inferred from trans­
ference. If the symbolic does indeed govern the psyche, it can only do
so by linking the unconscious and reality by recognising their irre­
ducible difference. We therefore need to resort to a more general
model such as Heinz von Foerster's, which quite rightly points out
that the logical properties of 'invariance' and 'change' are the proper­
ties of first, second or third degree representation.58 He further adds that
a 'necessary and adequate formalism for a theory of communication
should not contain primary symbols representing communicabiliae
(symbols, words, messages, etc.).' From this point of view, it may be
said that, if language and lalangue are metaphorical, it is because they
necessarily refer to something other than themselves. But narcissism
represents a lim it here, in as far as all description involves the one who
is doing the describing. This lim it is neither surpassable nor unsur­
passable; if one means that it can or cannot be crossed. But, by its very
nature as a limit, it assumes that something else is: the object which
has allowed it to constitute itself as such. The characteristic of this
lim it is that it is an obstacle or wall against which cathexis or invest­
ment turns round upon the subject's own self and reverses into its
opposite in the narcissistic space where the work of language awaits it.
Investment acts as transference. Language is the reflective effect of the
impossible act. Although language represents it, it is not the image of
it, but rather the fascination of having said it. From then on, it no
longer speaks about it; it speaks it as much as it is spoken by it.
However much this is where the lack of saying or speaking can be
identified, the result is fine enough that one tries to make up for this
lack rather than the lack of being, living and doing. And for all this to
take place there have to be at least two: one with the other. Assigning
these terms with capitals when one is referring to the third party only
makes sense for Scripture. Transference, which is the representative of
the third party, that is, the relationship, has no need of it.
Representation is bound and unbound. In the same movement it
binds the world, discourse and the subject who does not differ in
essence from the structure of the world; but, at best, it will only be an
unbound representation.
 Analysis oscillates between two illusions: on the one hand, of a
discourse which is wholly transmittable, which can be integrated
with the discourse itself, which is transcendental speech - this is in line
with the ambition of linguists for unequivocal language - and, on the
other, of a non-communicable, non-transmittable discourse in which
the inexpressible eludes the nature of language: the transcendental
unsaid. Between two: representation and affect, that is, the uncon­
scious between words and things. Narcissism aspires to ego unity, to
the alter ego, to the Neuter, as a means of reconciling the opposition
between One and the Other.

Listening to Narcissism and Counter-Transference

The basis of any code is that it has first been broken down by the
transmitter into more or less polysemic messages (only the genetic
code is rigorously monosemic). This implies that there are messengers
to transfer the message, and that its representation is recognised by a
mediator who transmits it to a receiver whose code should preserve
an effective rapport of difference with the transmitter. Psychoanalytic
transference fits such a model and is caught between the vertex of an
absolutely singular narcissistic framework - which may ultimately be
non-transferable - and the objectal vertex making transference neces­
sary to m aintain the existence of a relationship between the
transmitter and receiver as well as within each of them. Quantitative
and qualitative aspects are linked here, as are the economic, topo­
graphical and dynamic points of view. Their axial referents are
binding and unbinding, the Same and the Other, united in a network
of interdependent relations.
This necessarily leads us to counter-transference as listening and as
an effect of transference. The latter itself is conceived of as an effect
induced by counter-transference - in the broad sense of the term59 -
insofar as the analyst determines the forms of communication; that
is, speaking from the lying position, the receiver's invisibility, the
appeal to unconscious messages, the analyst's making use of his own
psychical activity to decode them and surrendering himself to his
own psychical apparatus which is in tune with the patient's. From
this point on, the analysis is marked by a twofold movement: the
narcissistic transformation of the analyst who relates the entire
discourse to himself in as far as he is, in the final analysis, the
receiver; and, the objectalisation of this discourse by the interpreta­
tion that he gives to it. Thus a prerequisite for this circuit is that the
analyst has an analogous position to the analysand; he is both the
same (by identification) and the other (by difference).
 Narcissistic discourse induces a counter-transference which
depends on the exclusive, inclusive or replicate form that it takes in
transference. The analyst's response to a discourse excluding the
object, is to feel isolated: feeling cut off from the patient, from his
affects, his body, he may react with aggressivity, even rage (narcis­
sistic), with boredom or sleepiness. The analysand seems to be
experiencing a dream in which he is at once the dreamer and the
dream narrator. This is represented in the painting of the prisoner by
Schwind60 in which the analysand is lying in his prison, isolated from
the world like Plato's prisoner in his cave. However, instead of
noticing the gaoler's shadow, the dream characters represent helping
agents; that is, gnomes, one of whom is sawing through the prison
bars and has the same features as the dreamer (Freud, dixit), clam­
bering on their king's back, while a winged feminine character is
pouring these kind liberators something to drink. Absent from the
painting, the analyst is undoubtedly the spectator witnessing the
scene. But as a result of feeling cut off from the dream world, it may
very well be that he has no other solution than to become the equiv­
alent of sleep for his dreamer.
To the invasive, inclusive form of narcissistic discourse, the analyst
responds either by passively accepting being devoured, or, if he
defends against it, by repression: Noli me tangere. By so doing, and
probably without realising it, he repeats the rejecting maternal care or
the ice-cold distance of an inaccessible father.
Lastly, in reaction to the transferences described by Kohut, the
analyst is tempted to take the analysand's megalomaniac transference
literally. A situation of complicity evolves in which the analyst
becomes the sole guarantor of the analysand's desire; the most
favourable conditions for this are created in a training analysis. Or he
feels his otherness is being attacked because he finds he is only
perceived as the patient's double. He would prefer an image of himself
that was more modest, yet more respectful of his individuality.
Counter-transference requires the analyst - 1 am speaking here of situ­
ations in which narcissistic discourse does not dominate analytic
speech - to narcissistically transform the fragmented bits of the
patient's discourse; that is, he gathers them so that they may acquire
a different form. A closed narcissistic discourse obliges him to
renounce this task since there is nothing to gather; this kind of
discourse always being more or less shut in on itself. It thus leads to
the analytic situation becoming disinvested and, after the vigorous
reaction to analytic frustration, to a more or less extensive narcissistic
withdrawal. Counter-transference which does not resist the unfolding
of the analytic process, formed out of the narrative-recitative
discourse and the associative discourse which alternate in any treat­
ment, depending on the requirements of the moment, in search of a
point of equilibrium between narcissistic-cathexes and object-
cathexes, can successively and simultaneously play the role of the
whole-object and the part-object. This is an unsurmountable contra­
diction in the constitution of the subject in the relationship. It is not
possible to think about the analytic situation if one does not bear in
mind that the analyst, far from only recognising himself by his desire,
is himself subject to the analytic process: he is there to serve it and
not to make use of it for his own benefit.
Counter-transference cannot be dissociated from the analyst's ego
ideal; that is, from his professional goal. In other words, from the goal
the analyst has for his patient, whether he admits it or denies it.
Today the psychoanalytic diaspora presents us with different cultural
choices. For Freud, the result or aim of analysis was sublimation
(which concerns the drives), unlike idealisation (which is linked to
the object). But in Freud there is an idealisation of sublimation which
smacks of his elitism. Hartmann moved this referent towards adapta­
tion. It has to be one thing or the other: either adaptation is de facto
and it loses all theoretical interest, or it is de jure and it poses the
familiar problems of analytic normativeness which, in fact, are never
transcended; for, whatever the referent is, be it the most revolu­
tionary, it is nonetheless normative. The English school prefers
growth. But although it is clear in practice what is meant by that, it is
more difficult to develop a theory of it. At the heart of the English
school, Melanie Klein's approach culminates in reparation, making a
permanent mourner of each individual who beats his breast following
the ravages of destruction for which he accepts responsibility.
Winnicott, more humbly, chooses play. Perhaps this is where he
comes closest to the other implicit referent in Freud: humour. Finally,
Lacan positions himself in the contradictory couple jouissance-castra-
tion (truth). Contradiction, yes, but for what end? Two imperatives
alternate: 'Enjoy yourself', says the super-ego, defying castration, but
the latter proves to be the stronger of the two, resulting in a new
quest for jouissance. A vicious circle is set up which, paradoxically, fits
in with adaptation to modern cultural trends and submission to the
castrating power of paternal Law. Reich said: 'Let's change the world';
for it is true that changing oneself does not make the world's cruelty
any more tolerable. O n the other hand, the displacement means
turning away from psychical reality.
G oing beyond the narcissistic-object dilemma (changing
oneself-changing others), I believe the psychoanalytic referent is the
representation of internal psychical reality and external physical
reality, with social reality effecting the transition between them. But
here there is a danger of being dependent on our cultural prejudices:
the narcissism of small or great differences. All culture is in essence
paranoia. It only ensures its narcissistic identity by negating others.
Replacing national culture with belonging to a class does not change
the problem in any essential way. Representation, in my view, is the
only solution which comes near to a truth of which we are the
subjects. That it has to be constructed does not alter its referential
status.
W hat is meant by representation? W hat is the model for it? Four
elements need to be associated here, all of which are linked by bi­
univocal relations: binding, unbinding, the Same and the Other.
Finally, tied in with this, we find Freud's successive drive theories, and
especially the last two: narcissism (positive and negative) and the
destructive drives. The Neuter occupies the centre, which in life is
always out of true, since the Neuter is foreign to it.

Myth and Tragedy: Dictionary and Folio

At last, the myth of Narcissus! Myths, I should say, since the
dictionary of mythology records three versions, and a fourth in which
the legend's vitality is exhausted.61 Ovid recounts the legend that is
most well known. Narcissus is the son of a river-god, Cephissus, and
of a nymph, Liriope: origins that were to weigh heavily on his destiny.
Tiresias, who the psychoanalyst is constantly coming across, utters an
oracle at his birth: Narcissus would live to a well-ripened age provided
he did not know himself. The association with Oedipus is almost
inevitable. This blind m an is undoubtedly the priest of psychical and
physical blindness. As Narcissus is very good-looking, numerous
maidens fall in love with him. Their love is met with indifference, for
he spurns love. The nymph, Echo, does not give up hope. She pines
for him, withdraws from the world and stops eating until the time
comes when she is a mere voice. W hen an incomplete form can no
longer nourish itself on the form it desires, the only trace of life that
remains is the voice; the visible is erased. This scornful hubris leads
the nymphs to call for Nemesis, that is, the return of the foreclosed.
One very hot day, Narcissus is thirsty after hunting, a masculine
activity patronised by the virile Artemis. First, there is Echo's anorexia
and now Narcissus' thirst. But for what? He is thirsty for the river -
paternal - and not for the woman who is an echo of the mother. The
spring (the origin) reflects an image he does not recognise and he falls
in love with it: Tf you don't love me, you will love yourself to death
without knowing yourself, Echo must have said to herself. Thus, just
like Echo, Narcissus grows insensitive to the world - identifying
vengefully with the mother's double. Leaning forward over his image
- would it be fair to say that it is supporting him? - he lets himself
die. It is not suicide but a renunciation of life. The Cephissus is now
the Styx into which Narcissus gazes frantically trying to recognise his
features. Resurrection: the flower whose only connection with the
hero of the legend is its name.
To the psychoanalyst's ear, the Beotian version says something
different and yet the same thing. Narcissus' origins are only specified
in relation to geography. He comes from Helicon, the favourite
dwelling place of the Muses who liked to gather around a fountain
near Thespiae. This time it is a young boy who loves him: Ameinias
(homo-erotic object choice). Weary of this irksome courting,
Narcissus (who does not love him) offers him a sword in order to get
rid of him . Although polysemic, the symbol is so transparent that it
does not call for any commentary. Understanding the message,
Ameinias turns the object on himself and dies in front of Narcissus'
door while cursing his contemptuous object. Malediction replaces the
oracle - a psychological turning point. The rest is the same: the spring
and the self-image taken for an object of love. But here it is said that
Narcissus commits suicide: identification with the object driven to its
death. Consequently, the inhabitants, that is, the Thespians, worship
love. At the end of the myth, the oracle is replaced by the cult - retro­
spectively. A red flower - the colour of life, or of castration - emerges
from Narcissus' blood.
Lastly, Pausanias, too, says the Same and the Other. He gives
Narcissus a twin sister - now at last we have bisexuality. The young girl
dies - death is no longer the fruit of passion. Narcissus mourns for her
inconsolably. Seeing his own reflection in a spring, he imagines he sees
the likeness of the dead girl. 'Although he knew very well that it was
not his sister, he became accustomed to looking at himself in springs
to console himself for his loss.' But who did he see then? Pausanias
rationalises the legend, prompted by euhemeristic inspiration.
The fourth version is absolutely incomprehensible. The variations
have affected the core of semantic intelligibility preserved in the
others. Narcissus is killed by a certain Epops (or Eupo) and from his
blood a flower emerges.
Narcissus thus has three objects: two are repulsive, Echo and
Ameinias, and the third is attractive, his twin sister. In the first two
versions, he spurns love (heterosexual as much as homosexual); in
the third, he loves his other half as himself. He loves himself or he
loves her-him. His demise is different: in the first version, he lets
himself die; in the second, he commits suicide like the boy who loves
him but whom he does not love. In the first version, he drowns; in
the second, he wounds himself; in the third, nothing is said about his
ultimate fate. In the initial version and the one following it, there is
resurrection. Let me point out in passing the resemblance between
the myth of Narcissus and that of Hermaphrodite.62 It cannot be said
that Ovid's version is the genuine one but it is the richest on account
of its allusion to the oracle (it is destiny), the opposition of the visible
body and the voice, the reference to parental images and the absence
of mourning, that is, the work of narcissism. This is why it spoke to
Freud. Narcissus was young and beautiful: all the versions say so
(except the last which says nothing at all). Narcissism is an illness of
youth.
This mythical vision needs completing with a symmetrical and
inverse tragic vision. The figure of the narcissistic father, Lear, comes
to m ind here. Shakespeare, the greatest author on narcissism (Richard
III, Hamlet, Othello), illustrates this mercilessly. Lear wants to be loved
for himself. The quest for love comes up against Cordelia's 'Nothing'.
Echoing her, he retorts: 'Nothing?' Then imitating her, 'Nothing
will come of nothing: speak again' (I, 1, 91).63
But his daughter keeps her love secret and, above all, reserves the
share of love destined for the husband whom she has been promised.
W hat happens thereafter is well known. W hen his wicked daughters
combine their efforts to silence his rowdy retinue, the downward
bidding makes him desperate. In vain he cries:
'I gave you all.'
The hundred knights become fifty, twenty-five, ten, five. Finally,
one of his daughters says:
'W hat need you one?'
This is too m uch for Lear, who cries out:
'Allow not nature more than nature needs, Man's life is cheap as
beast's' (II, 4, 269).
His despair culminates on the deserted heath amidst hostile
nature, the black sky rent asunder by the storm during which the God
of mountains - the action is supposed to take place in Biblical times
- thunders. Malediction on his daughters and the whole of
hum ankind. But let's get to the essential point,64 for everything is
worth quoting here on the destructive narcissism of a man of whom
one of his evil daughters would say:
'He never knew himself.'
In front of poor Tom, who, like a real schizo, is simulating madness
in order to escape the persecuting curse of the other father, Lear,
gripped with fright and pity, cries out:

W hy thou wert better in thy grave than to answer with thy uncov­
ered body this extremity of the skies. Is m an no more than this?
Consider him well. Thou owest the worm no silk, the beast no
hide, the sheep no wool, the cat no perfume. Ha! Here's three on's
are sophisticated;65 thou art the thing itself; unaccommodated
 man is no more but such a poor, bare, forked animal as thou art.
Off, off, you lendings! Come; unbutton here. (Ill, 4, 103-12)

There are no more objects, the uncovered body is the thing itself. But
once the loved daughter has been found again, his reason is governed
by illusion until the end. His hope of re-conquering the throne is
defeated by the lost battle; his daughter is murdered, none of which
makes any difference. 'Look on her, look, her lips, Look there, look
there!' (V, 3, 312). W hile looking for signs of life coming from this
silent m outh, he takes leave of the world's stage.
Shakespeare makes us think of Freud, the man obsessed by death,
who secretly called his fiancee Cordelia,66 and was the author of the
The Theme of the Three Caskets' (1913). The major absence in this
tragedy is the mother, the purely feminine element (Winnicott), the
founder of primal narcissism. She is represented by three figures: the
parent, the companion and death. In the image of the old man
carrying his dead daughter, Freud sees the inverse of reality, that is,
the old m an being carried off by death in its indifference. This image
reveals the limits to narcissism, in which narcissism survives death
through filiation and affiliation.
2
Primary Narcissism: Structure or
State? (1966-1967)
In memory o f J.M.

No concept in the theoretical apparatus of psychoanalysis has under­

gone so many modern reappraisals as the ego. Its complexity, not to
mention the contradictions which seem unavoidable when one
attempts to formulate a theory of it, has been such that a good many
post-Freudian authors, emphasising one particular aspect of the func­
tions it is supposed to fulfil, have given very different versions of it.
Furthermore, many other authors have claimed that it was necessary
to complete the Freudian theory of the ego and to add to it the
concept of the Self (the Anglo-Saxon concept) as the agency repre­
senting narcissistic cathexes. Of the post-Freudian authors, Hartmann
was probably the one who most vigorously defended the need for a
complement to ego metapsychology. Hartmann was followed by
Kohut, who became the most eminent herald of a line of thought to
which he himself made an important contribution. However, in
France, Grunberger had already preceded him in this field, arousing a
certain am ount of surprise, and a good deal of controversy, when he
suggested that narcissism should be considered as an agency, in the
same way as the ego, the id and the super-ego. Many analysts,
following in Hartmann's steps, or sometimes adopting a quite
different perspective, included the Self in their conceptual framework.
Thus, authors as different from one another in their outlook as Spitz,
W innicott, Lebovici, and even the Kleinians, prefer to refer to the Self
rather than the ego. Edith Jacobson introduced the notion of a psycho-
physiological primary Self. Related concepts, such as identity, which one
finds in the writings of Erikson, Lichtenstein and Spiegel, /or person­
ation (Racamier), are also closer to the Self than the ego.
It is true that, after giving up his earlier hypotheses on the
antithesis between ego-libido and object-libido in favour of the
fundamental conflict between Eros and the destructive drives, or
between the life drives and the death drives, Freud did not devote
much attention to the study of narcissism, and particularly to its
future in the theory. 'O n Narcissism: An Introduction' (1914)
nonetheless remains one of Freud's most important texts. Whatever
the reasons for Freud's eventual loss of interest in narcissism - for
instance, the polemic with Jung - it is nevertheless astonishing that
the inventor of the concept did not even consider it useful to explain
why what he had so convincingly described at an earlier juncture
should now be re-evaluated and incorporated within another theor­
etical ensemble. He had not failed to do this, for instance, with the
unconscious, when he replaced the first topography with the second.
This is all the more surprising in that the role of the ego was to be
given more importance with the elaboration of the second topog­
raphy. Freud's readers, psychoanalysts, first and foremost, had more
than one reason therefore to expect a re-evaluation of narcissism,
which in fact never occurred.
It is not surprising that this half-forgotten concept returned in
force to haunt the works of psychoanalysts; for the clinical reality of
narcissism is a fact, even if the way it is interpreted may vary from one
author to another.
Of all the questions relating to narcissism, primary narcissism is
the most muddled and controversial. Furthermore, there is no other
issue which calls the ego's status into question more. How can one
adhere to a line of development which goes from non-differentiation
or primitive fragmentation to a unified image of the ego, whereas the
epistemological revolution, based on the concept unconscious, postu­
lates an unsurmountable split, as the title of one of Freud's last
articles, The Splitting of the Ego in the Process of Defence' (1940b
[1938]) indicates? This is all the more true since, after 1923, the ego
was said to be largely unconscious, especially of its defence mecha­
nisms. Linking narcissism to the accomplishment of Eros alone, an
essential characteristic of which is to carry out increasingly extensive
syntheses - which implies in particular a synthesis of the ego drives -
leads us to wonder what the effect of the destructive drives on narcis­
sistic cathexes and primary narcissism might be. This will be the main
focus of the discussion that is to follow and it will often lead us far
away from this central issue. The point of view that I shall adopt chal­
lenges a certain idea of primary narcissism which regards it as a mere
stage or state of psychical development. I shall endeavour to go
beyond the level of mythical description - as is the case in any recon­
struction based on genetic assumptions - in order to understand a
structure of the psychical apparatus based on a theoretical model. In
Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920) Freud wrote:
 I do not think a large part is played by what is called 'intuition' in
work of this kind. From what I have seen of intuition, it seems to
me to be the product of a kind of intellectual impartiality.1

Trying to make one synthetic interpretation of all the figures or states

described by Freud under the denom ination of narcissism is not
necessarily a feasible task. The contradictions one comes across in so
doing leave narcissism in a state of open inquiry.

Absolute Primary Narcissism: Narcissism of Dreams or

Narcissism of Sleep?
The condition dominating all the other aspects of narcissism, and
which seems to govern the configuration that has been given to these
forms as a whole, is primary narcissism. W hen Freud used this term
for the last time, he added a qualifier which gives the impression that
he was trying to radicalise the notion. He spoke of absolute, primary
narcissism.2 But let there be no mistake; narcissism is cited here not
in the sense of an experience but in the sense of a concept, or perhaps
as part of a concept. In any case there is nothing which resembles a
positive quality of an experiential order. Sleep might stand such a
comparison, but not dreams. Sleep requires the subject to lay aside his
wrappings, which Freud light-heartedly compares with leaving
behind in the dream's antechamber the accessories (for instance,
spectacles and other prostheses) used to compensate for organ defi­
ciencies. Although Freud compared this with returning to the
beginnings of life, the period spent in the maternal womb does not
take place in an atmosphere of victory or blossoming of any sort. The
conditions fulfilled there, just as in intrauterine existence, are 'repose,
warmth and exclusion of stimulus'.3 Entering the condition of sleep
can only occur if the ego leaves behind its attachments, acquisitions
and possessions, drawing in its cathexes or investments.
Consequently, if primary narcissism is indeed an absolute state, it
is because it represents the lim it of what we can imagine about a
state totally free of excitation. But this notion of lim it is itself open
to confusion. By resorting to it, one immediately introduces a
quality, an affective tonality, the presence of which is explained by
arguing that the experience that is specific to it is encountered on
the way towards primary narcissism, before there is any possibility of
it being accomplished. Unless one is prepared to give up the idea that
the lifting of tensions is the m ain purpose of narcissism, these states,
which are described by using terms denoting a state of bliss, cannot
be amalgamated without destroying the principle of quietude postu­
lated by absolute primary narcissism. Freud does not consider dreams
as a manifestation on the path towards sleep as such but, on the
contrary, as the expression of that which refuses to be silenced, and
which sleep has to integrate if it is not to be interrupted (a breach of
narcissism: this is what Freud has to say about the unconscious
thoughts which are the origin of dreams, showing the sleeping ego
that its capacity to impose its will is limited). In the same way, for
Freud, narcissistic elation or expansion, connoting narcissistic regres­
sion are, so to speak, extraneous, and a sign of the subject's
reluctance to let himself slip away into silence. For when the
analysand has the feeling that the analyst is no longer present in the
session, one has to explain why he does not remain silent and why
he does not stop talking. Is it not precisely when there is a danger
that his own discourse results in his no longer being seen or heard
by the analyst that he swallows him like an egg, incorporating him,
so that the discourse is not interrupted but continues after the threat
of an absence - which could very well be his own - has been warded
off? Even when this feeling is experienced during a pause, the aware­
ness and expression of it are the signs that such a moment has been
ruptured.
Freud seemed to want to distinguish clearly between the narcissism
of dreams and the narcissism of sleep. If we read the text4 carefully,
we realise that two very similar formulations should be understood
more as reflecting two different modalities than as the orientations of
a single process for which Freud does not supply a theory. In fact the
narcissism of dreams is the same as the narcissism of the dreamer. The
latter is unmistakably the principal dream character who, as it were,
always glorifies the dreamer - a point of view which is by no means
undermined by dreams of self-punishment or nightmares. Whereas
the narcissism of sleep surpasses, so to speak, the dreamer's wishes; it
supports the movement of the dream and withdraws from it into a
region that is out of reach, in which the dreamer himself vanishes.
When, in a dream, there is an unrecognisable character or an
unknown face or, one whose features are not even recognisable, it
represents the dreamer or his mother. I shall come back to this later.
This blank face which is only present in outline, or which is only
marked by its location in space, is perhaps the leitmotif that will
guide us in constructing the theory left in abeyance by Freud.

The Principle of Constancy or the Principle of Inertia?

The separation I have just referred to between the narcissism aimed at
removing tension, of which sleep is not an illustration (how can one
speak of sleep without dreams?) but an abstract model, and the
narcissism of dreams, or of the dreamer who experiences states of bliss
or states in which his bodily limits are overwhelmed during waking
life, was never completely explained by Freud. It is customary to link
Freud's loss of interest in narcissism to the theoretical reformulation
which led to the final drive theory and, above all, to the introduction
of the death drive; a point of view that is no doubt justified. But redis­
tributing the connotations of the drive according to a different
configuration, and in terms of the drive orientation, was not the only
innovation as far as narcissism was concerned.
The aspiration for a state of zero excitation - the insusceptibility to
excitation of uncathected systems already alluded to in the 'Project' -
is a constant element in Freud's thinking. This is how he described the
organism's tendency, which thereby ensures its mastery over stimuli,
in his first formulations, inspired by psychobiology. Focusing there­
after on the vicissitudes of desire, he likened pleasure to the cessation
of sexual tension, to the removal of the pressure of desire by its satis­
faction causing a pleasant state of relaxation. But experience probably
taught him that the longing for a lowering of tension was, so to
speak, independent of it. It was no longer to be seen merely as a m ani­
festation of the mastery of the psychical apparatus but perhaps, or
even probably, as a state, even if there was no way of telling whether
it was a consequence of its functioning, one of its aims, or if it itself
had to obey it as though it were an exigency. In An Outline of Psycho­
Analysis (1940a [1938]) he says:

The consideration that the pleasure principle demands a reduc­

tion, at bottom the extinction perhaps,5 of the tensions of instinctual
needs (that is, Nirvana) leads to the still unassessed relations
between the pleasure principle and the two primal forces, Eros and
the death instinct.6

The modern versions of primary narcissism which have been put

forward provide us with many partial images of these relations,
particularly where the links between the state of Nirvana and Eros are
concerned; but they tell us nothing about the relationship between
Nirvana and the death drive. Either it is completely ignored, or the
states described - which can only be interpreted as resulting from the
fusion of Nirvana and Eros - are only thought of as being stages on
the way to complete Nirvana when the death drive would take over
from Eros but would not be its antagonist.
As was often the case, Freud forgot that he had already begun to
examine and even to resolve these questions which had escaped eval­
uation. The idea of a state free of excitation had haunted Freud from
the time of his neurological formulations on neuronic inertia to his
search for backing in Fechner's psychology (.Beyond the Pleasure
Principle, 1920). He paid for his allegiance to the banner of his illus­
trious elder by renouncing an original point of view which he was
only to rediscover many years later; for in the 'Project' there was
already tendency to make an absolute of that which, later, would be
known as absolute primary narcissism. The principle of inertia - and
not the principle of constancy - was the first to be stated by Freud.
The 'original trend' of the nervous system to inertia is to 'bring the
level of tension to zero'. For Freud, this original trend was the primary
function, whose aim was to keep the system in a state free of excita­
tion. Constancy obeys secondary processes which are governed by the
necessity of maintaining a m in im um level of cathexis.7 It is impor­
tant to realise that Freud only used the word principle in the case of
the principle of inertia; maintaining excitation at a constant level was
not raised to the same rank. The principle of constancy was, however,
frequently mentioned by Freud in the Letters to Fliess (Manuscript D,
May 1894, letters dated 29 November 1895 and 8 December 1895;
Manuscript K, the letter of 1 January 1895) at the time when he was
elaborating the 'Project'. Moreover, the first mention of it comes even
earlier, in the Studies on Hysteria (1895c [1893-5]).8 But although the
principle of constancy was attributed to Fechner, the principle of
inertia was purely Freudian. W hich means that, in the cursive allu­
sions or correspondence, the only reference is to maintaining
excitation at a constant level, as low as possible; whereas, in the
'Project', where Freud was trying to systematise his ideas, his wish to
make a theory of it led him to pursue his assumptions to their logical
limit and to give preference to the principle whose purpose is to
attain the level zero, and not merely the 'lowest level possible'. Here
we can see the origin of a duality of principles whose order of prece­
dence was to fluctuate in Freud's writings thereafter. But if we are to
understand their permutations or their later fusion properly, it is first
necessary to notice in what ways they are different. For Freud, the
principle of inertia was fundamental,9 belonging to the order of
primary aims (characteristic of the primary neuronal system). It owes
its existence to the neuronal system's attribute of totally suppressing
excitation by means of flight which, on the other hand, is totally
impossible in the case of internal stimuli. In the light of this impossi­
bility the only solution is to keep tension at its lowest possible level.
Freud describes this function as secondary.10
This is a good opportunity for noting the liberties that Freud took
with the genetic point of view, while he endeavoured to make a
division between primary and secondary functions. It is perfectly clear
that the possibilities of suppressing excitation by means of flight in a
young organism are strictly limited; and, that the most intense and
frequent stimuli unquestionably come from the major needs which,
logically, should be in a position of primarity. But Freud did not stop
there. W hat was important for him was to focus on the efficiency or
success of the operation of taking flight from disturbing stimuli and
to establish the configuration unexcitability - tension - flight - abol­
ishing tension - unexcitability as a model; that is, as a fundamental
aspiration, within a psychological perspective, even if it was unrealis-
able in practice. This is why keeping tension as low as possible and
guarding against any increase of it was, at this stage in his thinking, a
second choice, as the English say; that is, a secondary function. It is
this difference that Freud apparently gave up in Beyond the Pleasure
Principle when he merged the two principles into one. Taking refuge
behind the authority of Fechner, just when he was at his most auda­
cious, was rather characteristic of him. By making Fechner's principle
of constancy the organising principle of which lowering tension to
the level zero was only one special case, he increased his under­
standing of primary-secondary relations. Primarity was granted to the
principle of constancy from which he inferred the pleasure prin­
ciple,11 and secondarity to the reality principle.
It is understandable, therefore, that this change has been a source
of confusion. There is a temptation to regard the lifting of tension,
accompanied by a return to calm produced by the satisfaction of a
drive which had hitherto generated unpleasure, as equivalent to the
state of absolute elimination of tension in the initial model, where
non-excitation, a state in which the system is out of action, was the
absolute criterion. At first sight, the difference between inertia and
calm is clear; just as it is between night and obscurity. This transposi­
tion is all the more significant in that Freud recast the relations
between the principle of constancy and the pleasure principle in
terms of the relations between an abstract theoretical model and its
concrete illustration.12 Apparently, however, he was overlooking the
fact that he had already applied the notion of the relativity of
pleasure to that of m aintaining excitation at a constant level when
faced with the total extinction of stimuli towards which the inertia
principle tends. Let us recall, however, that this apparent retreat coin­
cided with the introduction of the death drive.13 And yet there is an
indication of uncertainty surrounding this relegation of the inertia
principle to a position of secondary importance. In the penultimate
chapter of Beyond the Pleasure Principle - and one might have thought
that since Freud no longer felt the need for backing, and had now
expressed his opinion on the death drive, he would now be able to
return to it - he wrote: '

The dom inating tendency of mental life, and perhaps of nervous

life in general, is the effort to reduce, to keep constant or to remove
 internal tension due to stimuli (the Nirvana principle, to borrow a
term from Barbara Low [1920, 73]) - a tendency which finds
expression in the pleasure principle; and our recognition of that
fact is one of our strongest reasons for believing in the existence of
death instincts.14

A Theory of States and a Theory of Structures

So the order of things had now been restored: the ultimate tendency
of the Nirvana principle was to eliminate excitation and the pleasure
principle was simply derived from it. The first theory of the 'Project'
was thus legitimised and was to be reinforced even more indisputably
a few years later in the first paragraphs of 'The Economic Problem of
Masochism' (1924), where Freud went a considerable way towards
clarifying his ideas. He proclaimed the divorce between the Nirvana
principle and the pleasure principle and warned against any further
confusion between them .15 Their respective characteristics were
described as follows:

The Nirvana principle expresses the trend of the death instinct; the
pleasure principle represents the demands of the libido; and the
modification of the latter principle, the reality principle, represents
the influence of the external world. (SE, XIX, p. 160)

The task of reducing tension no longer fell to the pleasure principle -

the notion of constancy disappeared from this theoretical reorganisa­
tion - and remained the exclusive task of the Nirvana principle,
whereas the function of the pleasure principle was very closely
connected with the 'qualitative characteristics of stimuli'. We are
therefore justified in postulating that all states comprising an affec­
tive characteristic, or pleasure and its derivative forms (elation,
expansion, or any other manifestation of the same order), are foreign
to absolute primary narcissism.
Let me point out right away that proposing this trinity does not
infringe upon Freud's epistemological rule, which keeps all the
antitheses within a context of duality. The reality principle is merely
a modified pleasure principle. In fact, there is no other solution than
to consider that the problem has two aspects to it: first, there is a
primary antithesis between Nirvana and the pleasure principle; and
second, between the pleasure principle and the reality principle, the
latter of the two being more common. For although Freud uses the
same terms to describe the transformation of the Nirvana principle
into the pleasure principle and the relation between the pleasure
principle and the reality principle,16 he does not connect the two
operations. We have no other choice but to assume that Freud could
not connect these two modifications because they belong to funda­
mentally different registers or spheres and do not tolerate being
mixed or amalgamated.
In his first text on narcissism in 1914 Freud gave an indication of
how the two aspects of this problem might be explained:

The individual does actually carry on a twofold existence: one to

serve his own purposes and the other as a link in a chain, which
he serves against his will, or at least involuntarily. The individual
himself regards sexuality as one of his own ends, whereas from
another point of view he is an appendage to his germ-plasm, at
whose disposal he puts his energies in return for a bonus of
pleasure. He is the mortal vehicle of a (possibly) immortal
substance - like the inheritor of an entailed property, who is only
the temporary holder of an estate which survives h im .17

Is it fair to suppose that the role Freud attributes to the legacy of the
species can be sacrificed with impunity, on the basis that this elabo­
ration stems from a metabiological romanticism which a healthy
scientific reflex requires us to shun? It may be felt that Freud's state­
ment is outdated and that his assumptions with regard to this part of
the theory are clumsy and debatable. But there is m uch less justifica­
tion for refusing to examine the fundamental problem, which is
neither the role of the species, nor the heritage of acquired character­
istics. It is a two-sided problem: the current general trend in
psychoanalysis is resolutely ontogenetic; if anything, its error is that
it is not enough so. Freud was more ontogenetic in that he did not
allow himself to be paralysed by a linear conception of time. But he
was constantly having to navigate between a theory of states, which
continued to retain the descriptive aspect of clinical forms, and a
theory o f structures which created models, if not as pure conventions,
at least as the development of these states to the point at which their
function and their meaning was revealed in the most abstract terms.
The antithesis between the pleasure principle and the Nirvana
principle is, I think, a good example. If Freud took a wrong turning
with the principle of constancy, surely it was because this notion was
halfway between a theory of states - in this case the state of pleasure
- and a theory of structures, the constant level of excitation holding
the middle ground between the extinction of excitation and the
heightening of internal tension. If one gives the matter careful
thought, it will be noticed that the theory of states which- gave rise
to the hybrid monster of psychoanalytic phenomenology is, in the
last resort, a theory of the subject's manifestations, but not a theory
of the subject. And while the conflict has not gone away, it has, as
one says today, been 'personalised'. In the end the subject is always
a volitional being who wants something or cannot do something,
who allows himself, or does not allow himself something, who longs
for, or is frightened by something. This being the case, it is difficult
to understand why an analysis conducted along these lines would
not remove the obstacles when the invisible hindrances have been
brought to light and identified. It is easy to see that, even when the
analyst's good will is accompanied by lucidity and vigilance, it has
little mutative effect. Although there is some consistency in the
concept of the subject's Entzweiung, it is not to be understood as the
antithesis and reconciliation of two wills, but as a conflict between
two systems, inspired by two antithetical and obstinate ways of
thinking, which can be noticed even in the effects produced by the
way the discourse is constituted, or in the utterance itself (in the
suture and cutting of the elements of a section of the enunciation
and in what follows them), in which the signs of the work of this
division are reflected. The theory of structures seeks to establish the
conditions under which discourse is possible; the organisation of the
latter being such that the subject can only be apprehended in terms
of his life trajectory whose functioning is the mark of its reality. The
subject is therefore not in a position of m odality18 in which the
index at the origin of the utterance designates the operation of
thinking as being distinct from the representation it is aiming at;
neither is he at the end of the sentence at which point, once the
utterance is over, one may be able to throw light on everything that
has preceded it by looking backwards. He is the vehicle by means of
which there is an utterance.
It should not be thought that we repudiate wholesale everything
in psychoanalysis pertaining to the theory of states. It represents a
first level of psychoanalytic epistemology; and, in their silent
com m unication with their analysands, or with other analysts,
psychoanalysts cannot avoid expressing themselves as follows: in fact
he wants this or that; at bottom he is saying this or that; he is again
reliving, and so on. But this inevitable stage cannot be considered as
the degree of organisation which accounts for the analytic process.
W hat guarantees the functioning of this process is the analyst's
silence which, in the last resort, has no other justification. The great
merit of the impetus Lacan gave to this kind of research was to show
how the results of our psychoanalytic investigations, notw ith­
standing the fact that their structural intent is respected, refer to
organisations that are already structured.
The Psychical Apparatus and the Drives
Let us turn our attention for a m om ent to the psychical apparatus.
There can be no doubt that this construction is linked in Freud's
thinking with a theoretical model situated off the path between the
brain and conscious thought, creating an essential discontinuity
between them. But Freud gives this model a space19 and a time (since
he speaks of the relations of seniority between the agencies). He does
not take the trouble to say which space and which time are involved
but, since it is space and time that are at stake, the psychical appa­
ratus has been reintegrated w ithin a pre-Freudian universe of
representation by treating it as one of the multiple organisms defined
by our conscious space and time. This indicates the beginnings of an
attempt to look for a structure within an ontogenetic framework. The
psychical apparatus becomes a kind of self-codification in which the
subject constructs himself.
As one might well suspect, this shift tends to shrink and, ulti­
mately, to superimpose the dimensions of the psychical apparatus on
the ego, and flouts Freud's remark that individual experience, as it is
registered by the ego, only determines 'accidental and contemporary
events'.20 It is logical to assume that the effect of structuring has to
come from elsewhere if the ego is thus involved in the instantaneity
of the present.21
In order to preserve the metaphorical value of this apparatus, the
question needs to be turned round the other way; rather than trying
to find out what kind of apparatus psychic life may relate to, the
question we should ask ourselves is: what is an apparatus from the
point of view of the psyche which is assumed to be its function? Can
the principles which we have examined at length be considered as
original first causes or as regulators of functioning? In the latter case,
all 'governing' power would be taken away from them and there
would be no further reason to use the word principle. Regarding them
as first^causes or, at least, as that which conceptualises such causes, is
to see in them the ultimate foundation of any kind of psychical
organisation. However, a careful examination of the last systematic -
dogmatic, even, Freud says - theoretical work, that is, the Outline,
shows that it accords equal status to the theory of the drives and the
principles of mental functioning, that is, the same conceptual worth.
Even the values of the first topography (conscious, preconscious,
unconscious) are confined to psychical qualities whose status can only
be explained by the structure of the psychical apparatus, in the same
way that the development of the sexual function - albeit the origin of
everything we know about Eros - is subordinated to the theory of the
drives.22 Freud shows in the seventh chapter of Beyond the Pleasure
Principle that he was aware of the difficulties involved in these rela­
tions, when he turned to the question - m uch too briefly,
unfortunately - of the differences between function and tendency.
Notably he says there that the pleasure principle is a tendency oper­
ating in the service of a function

... whose business it is to free the mental apparatus entirely from

excitation or to keep the amount of excitation in it constant or to
keep it as low as possible. We cannot yet decide with certainty in
favour of any of these ways of putting it; but it is clear that the
function thus described would be concerned with the most
universal endeavour of all living substance - namely to return to
the quiescence of the inorganic world.23

In addition to this assertion, he announced an entirely fresh series of

investigations which, for lack of time, he was never able to carry out
fully, in which the relations between principle and drive can be
inferred; and, he maintained that there was a contradiction, if not
between the particular and the universal, at least between the
personal and impersonal. At this point, we can say that the principles
are at the crossroads of the relations between the psychical apparatus
and the theory of the drives.24
At the core of a drive there is a principle which enables us to gain
an understanding of the equipment that governs its functioning in a
way that on no account should be understood as the impact of a force
that is external to it, but rather as a process within the constituents of
the drive. As a result, the latter is deployed, distributed, and ampli­
fied, the structure of the apparatus allowing its elements to be linked
up and primitively condensed, quasi-tautologically, within a system
of relations. This could not, for example, be an act of repression, an
operation that is itself subject to the pleasure-unpleasure principle.
The 'universal' function of the drive is particularised in an individual,
but on the condition that the individual acquiesces to it, which can
only happen if there is a 'tendency'. Nonetheless, this word should
not lead us astray; it is not a synonym for an 'attempt' (tentative) but
of a 'tension towards' (tension vers). And if the aim here is the inac­
cessible absolute, the absolute is displaced on to the effort of tension.
Now, the relations between the psychical apparatus and the drives
have rarely been examined in detail. It is quite usual to talk about the
situation of the drives in the id25 (the id as the seat or reservoir of the
instinctual drives). W hat is less frequently discussed is the articula­
tion between the theory of the drives and the psychical apparatus.
It is generally acknowledged that the theory of the psychical appa­
ratus represents the last stage of psychoanalytic theorisation and, in a
certain sense, this is true. It is true at this first level of the theory, that
which Freud calls the part of the individual whose type of organisa­
tion is reflected in this construction. But for Freud, drive theory
brings into play what is already-structured, a notion I referred to earlier,
the structure of which organises the possible conditions of func­
tioning in which a subject reveals himself. While, like Freud, one is
reluctant to see in this a manifestation of the species, one needs at
least to recognise this dimension of depuis-toujours-deja-la; this
montage which is never immediately accessible but to which all
organisation refers. It is not possible to say whether the drives are
always for the psychical apparatus or if the psychical apparatus is for
the drives. 'Already structured' does not mean that the structural
mode is identical in all cases. Indeed, the interest of the system resides
in its heterogeneity.
The psychical apparatus represents the construction that drive
activity would be capable of if its mode of functioning were other than
agonistic and antagonistic. But conversely, one would have no idea
what the fundamental nature of such agonism and antagonism might
be if there was no psychical apparatus to represent it for us. A better
idea of these relations can perhaps be obtained by recalling Freud's
view that the drives act essentially within dynamic and economic
dimensions. They do not have any localisation, even within the frame­
work of a conventional abstract model.26 Whereas, the psychical
apparatus has the characteristic of being extended in space, that is, of
converting modes of transformation originating from the dynamic
economic system - and we will see in due course which ones - into an
interdependent system of surfaces and spaces (or locations) capable of
receiving qualitative and quantitative modes of varied inscriptions,
filtering and retaining them in forms that are appropriate for them.
Between the undifferentiated drive, which some authors present
variously as a current of force, a tide or as a tachist painting, and
Freud's elegant and precise montage, which nonetheless seems to
many td'be too restrictive today, the final theory of the drives may
provide a point of mediation. Here the functions of Eros and the
destructive drives converge with the major categories of the tendency
towards union and the tendency towards division, of fusion and
defusion. Using more modern vocabulary one might speak of conjunc­
tion and disjunction, of suture and cutting.27 But Freud was not
content with bringing together, in the manner of classical antitheses,
two terms of equal value in order, through the repetition and setting
up of new relations, to end up with an organising, ordering power.
Eros and the destructive drive do not form a pair of equal terms.
An indication of this is that Freud always refrained from nam ing the
death drive in any other way than this (except by the related formula
of the destructive drives). For if the compulsion to repeat is the mode
of activity characteristic of any drive - which, as F. Pasche puts it
aptly, would be like the instinct of the instinct - it can be said that
something of the essence of the death drive has passed over to Eros;
or, that Eros has tapped into it for its own benefit, which disqualifies
the death drive and means that one can no longer speak of it merely
as the invisible and silent term of a couple whose difference can only
be determined by a shadow cast over the sparkling light of Eros.
Recasting the antithesis would enable Freud to say - a first duplication
- that the two drives could operate against each other or combine
with each other. W hile drive defusion - in the case of discordant
work, examples of which can be found in pathological states such as
melancholia or paranoia - may give an idea of it in love-hate rela­
tions, the collaboration of the two drives is of course puzzling if one
does not accept the idea of hate being neutralised by love, and, if one
is not satisfied with employing arguments of a quantitative nature to
suppress the issue.
The internalisation of this contradiction led to the rediscovery of a
duality in Eros which was to be a second duplication; namely the
division of Eros between ego-love and object-love and the division
between self-preservation and the preservation of the species.
Although, at first sight, it is tempting to put ego-love and self-preser­
vation together on one side, and object-love and the preservation of
the species on the other, one soon realises that, by so doing, one is
doing away with the antithesis between personal erotism, of which
object-love is a part, and impersonal erotism whose heuristic value is
of such importance. This perhaps offers a way of exploring further the
richness of the Lacanian theory of the subject as a structure. W hen
Lacan writes: 'Only the signifier can tolerate coexistence; only the
disorder consisting (in synchrony) of elements deployed (in
diachrony) in the most indestructible order. This associative rigour of
which it is capable, in the second dimension, even merges with the
commutability which it shows is interchangeable in the first',28 one
may wonder whether such commutability does not have a bearing on
the two double registers that I have just mentioned. We should there­
fore not overlook the troubling expression used by Freud in the
'Project' - so skilfully interpreted by Jacques Derrida29 - according to
which, the processes uncovered in the study of neuroses, which only
differ from the normal in their intensity, are quantities in motion. The
question of primary narcissism appears to have been overshadowed
by the problems involved in the theory of the drives. We shall see that
this is not in fact the case when we come back to the question from
another angle, by examining the following problem: is narcissism
merely a consequence of the orientation of cathexes?
The Origin and Vicissitudes of Primary Cathexes
Our thinking on the first forms of exchange is dominated by the
paradigm of the amoeba. However, although Freud only made use of
this analogy to compare the movements of cathexes being sent out
and withdrawn, the peripheral phenomena, which were the main
reason for resorting to this image, have themselves become peripheral
in our thinking, thus making room for the idea that the general form
of amoebas should be taken as a model for the first forms of psychical
organisation, and particularly of the ego.
Nevertheless, while this analogy may, at a pinch, be congruent
with the ego Freud described before the last topography, contradic­
tions inevitably arise from continuing to make use of the comparison
after the final conception of the ego.
The vesicle, a small self-enclosed sphere, suggests the existence of
a mode of functioning which does not fit in easily with Freud's ambi­
guities or imprecise observations on the earliest relations between the
ego and the id ... Another paradigm, that of the reservoir, may be
regarded as consubstantial with it, and Freud even condenses the two
of them in some texts. It required all of Strachey's penetrating vigi­
lance to analyse this image.30 Yet is it not enough to distinguish
between the storage function and the source of supply; or to note that
the contradictory versions Freud gives of the origin of the first
cathexes - alternately in the ego (before its differentiation in the last
topography), then in the id and finally, paradoxically, in the ego
again - are resolved in the conception of the undifferentiated ego and
id? This provides a useful clarification but needs examining more
closely. The primitive, undifferentiated ego-id 'originally' serves two
functions at once: as a source of supply and a storage tank. As a source
of supply, it sends its cathexes out in two directions: towards objects
(centrifugal orientation) and towards the future ego (centripetal
orientation), thus contributing to the second function. As it develops,
the undifferentiated ego, is basically a storage tank. And while the ego
unquestionably plays a role as a source of energy supply for object-
cathexes, it also watches over the reserves of narcissistic libido. In
other words, ego-id differentiation introduces a functional separa­
tion. But the ego recuperates part of the function it gave up in the id's
favour in order to secure in priority a store of narcissistic cathexis. It
therefore acts upon the object-cathexes originating in the id in such
a way that they do not compromise too much the narcissistic cathexis
under its control. However, it is the detail of this differentiation that
needs clarifying. W hat cannot be doubted is that Freud, as I have
already shown, linked the state of absolute primary narcissism with
the lifting of tension and an ego-relationship. Although he fully
insisted on the possibility of a conversion in the exchanges between
narcissistic-libido and object-libido, he equally stressed the durability
of a narcissistic organisation which never disappears. The libido
cathects the ego and in this way provides itself with a love-object, a
process that can be observed throughout life. But Freud never associ­
ates the state of absolute primary narcissism with the id. Freud quite
frequently employs the term ego to designate either the ego stricto
sensu or the primitive undifferentiated ego-id. But the opposite is not
true. Freud never associates the id with functions or processes
belonging exclusively to the ego.
Now, to define narcissism in terms of the qualities of elation or
expansion or any other affect of the same order, even when one is
referring to the undifferentiated ego-id, is to refer to properties which
are only meaningful within the system of the id.31 This means that,
in order to define their relation to narcissism, they are being intro­
duced in a context which is not appropriate to ego-cathexes. It is not
enough to liken them to omnipotence; for elation and expansion are
consequences of omnipotence and not the process by which om nipo­
tence sets in. This consists in suppressing the object's power of
resistance or the power of reality by denying dependence on them
and not by merging with them. Such fusion, if it occurred, would
only be possible once the ego had assured itself that it had the upper
hand over the object's powers which it appropriates to this end.
The Nirvana principle - which, as I have pointed out, has its place
in a theory of structures, but is in fact absent from a theory of states
in which only signs of a lessening of tensions are perceptible - has
undergone a modification in living organisms. It is true that it is often
necessary to turn to the pleasure principle (which is fundamentally
different, however, as it is tied up with qualities of pleasure) in order
to find a trace of it. In the Freudian system, where modifications
never completely erase the state they modify, we perhaps need to see
whether a displacement of values makes it possible to rediscover what
appears to have disappeared. And since we feel condemned by the
death drive to seeing nothing but the invisible, and to questioning
only that which is silent, we have to explore that aspect of Eros which
resembles it.
It is clear, I think, that the love the ego has for itself (ensuring its
independence from the external world and saving it from expending
cathexes on the object), the flowing back of object-libido towards the
ego, and the absence of conflict - provided that the quality of this
ego-love compensates for the libidinal quality intended for the object
and that it protects against the disappointments that the latter can
inflict - succeeds in creating an enclosed system, and comes very close
to the condition which the ego strives for in dreamless sleep. A border
situation is created here in which the 'clamour of life7of Eros, and the
struggle against Eros, manage against all odds to introduce that which
is at the origin of death into the very heart of love, settling their debts
at the object's expense. But how does this come about? We shall have
to take a roundabout route before being in a position to answer this
question.

The Aim-Inhibited Drive

Even though the current state of psychoanalytic research only sees
the drives of self-preservation at work in the ego (libidinalised since
the introduction of narcissism), the repeated observation32 that other
drives may be operating in it has gone unheeded. As Freud tied the
relations of the ego to reality to safeguard the pleasure principle,
without saying more about the forms of this non-libidinal drive
activity, the conclusion has been drawn that this silence must have
covered one of Freud's mysterious assertions, the secret of which he
took with him to the grave.
Between those drives that were not libidinal, 'which seem to be
operating in the ego', and the elusive work of the death drive, Freud
was to introduce an intermediary series which he regarded as
belonging to the constituents of Eros. Alongside the uninhibited
sexual drive proper and the drive of self-preservation, Freud set the
instinctual impulses of an aim-inhibited or sublimated nature derived from
the sexual instinct.33 He would undoubtedly have resisted any inter­
pretation which gave this contingent autonomy under the umbrella
of the 'social instincts', which were very much in vogue in the
psychology of the period. But after further examination he distin­
guished the aim-inhibited drives. The best description Freud gives of
them can be found in the thirty-second lecture in which he likens
them to sublimation.
s
Besides this, we have grounds for distinguishing instincts which are
'inhibited in their aim' - instinctual impulses from sources well
known to us with an unambiguous aim, but which come to a stop
on their way to satisfaction, so that a durable object-cathexis comes
about and a permanent trend [of feeling]. Such, for instance, is the
relation of tenderness, which undoubtedly originates from the
sources of sexual need and invariably renounces its satisfaction.34

In the end it was the idea of restriction, of holding back, of the non­
development of the cathexis which won through, justifying a special
denomination. By proposing to give a special place to this type of
drive, Freud was pursuing a postulate which he had already had a
glimpse of in 1912.35 W hen he credited the affectionate current of
infantile sexuality with the power of carrying the primitive sexual
cathexes of the component drives along with it, he was raising the
question of where the affectionate current gets so much power from.
And although in his Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (1905),
instinctual inhibitions result from the latency period, sexual impulses
being held back by dams impeding the full development of sexual
activity, Freud was then led to distinguish the effect of the action of
the dams - unquestionably repression - and an inhibition internal to
the instinct, as becomes increasingly clear in each of the passages in
which he approaches the question.
It is not repression that is the cause of the aim-inhibited drive,
since it is precisely the manner in which the drive avoids repression
that is the particular feature of this drive vicissitude. And it is thanks
to this status of the drive, which is not dismantled but simply arrested
in its development, that it can assume the power to carry others along
with it which are more attached to component functions.
It should not be thought either that the aim-inhibited drives can
always be placed alongside the pregenital drives with which they are
at variance. The characteristic of the pregenital drives is to aim for
organ pleasure. Later, as a result of the new sexual aim of union with
the object, the genital erotic components carry out transformations
denouncing the orientation of the pregenital drives towards organ
pleasure and subordinating them to ends which confine them to
preliminary pleasure. Some of them will even be excluded. In other
words, the drives which have undergone an inhibition of aim will be
those whose activity has been best preserved. They will be combined
in equal parts with the erotic cathexes proper of the genital phase,
whereas those whose tendency to satisfaction has not been able, like
the ones just mentioned, to make do with an 'approximation', will be
left behind. They will contribute, by exchanging their aims and their
objects, to the complexity of the wish-organisation. Nevertheless,
their time will be limited. As they have not undergone an inhibition
of aim, they will simply facilitate union with the object. One can see
the difference: on the one hand, there is an inhibition of drive
activity which maintains the object by sacrificing the complete satis­
faction of the wish for erotic union with it, yet conserves a form of
attachment which fixes the investment of it; and, on the other, an
unrestrained development of drive activity on the sole condition that
aims and objects enter into the operations of permutation and substi­
tution, the only limitation being the influence of repression and
other drives. The first type of activity, which ultimately dominates,
makes use of the drives of the second type which are compatible with
its purpose and rejects the others. It is evident that the fate of this
contingent of drives with uninhibited aim is necessarily the most
vulnerable and the most suited to supporting the insubordination of
the ego-drives. Paradoxically, the aim-inhibited drives are those
which should, first and foremost, be characterised by their link with
the object. W ithout saying so in so many words, Freud seemed to
consider that what might be called the genital vocation towards the
object, in its quality as the definitive libidinal object, that is, of sexual
union, was present from the outset. It is in order to safeguard this
purpose, thereby avoiding that the scene is not completely aban­
doned to the pregenital drives which give primacy to organ pleasure
before all else, that the inhibition of the aim of the drive occurs.36
The Oedipus complex involves relations of affection and hostility.
Yet there exists a relative independence between the relations of affec­
tion or hostility and the phallic organisation under whose aegis the
Oedipus complex comes. The affectionate relationship towards
parents is tied up with everything involved in the sensual relationship,
censored by the threat of castration. But there is no confusion between
the two. Evidence for this may be found in the fact that maintaining
an affectionate cathexis can be the best way of getting round the fear
of castration, as in the situation described in the article 'On the
Universal Tendency to Debasement in the Sphere of Love' (1912). If
Freud linked the maternal object-cathexes in the Oedipus complex
with those which originally were related to the mother's breast,37 then
it is perhaps at this level that the inhibition of aim needs to be under­
stood; that is, at the moment when the loss of the object-breast goes
hand in hand with perceiving the mother as a whole object.38

The Function of the Ideal: Desexualisation and the Death Drive

W hen one considers the fact that the drive is in contention with
itself, and that this is not due to an evolving process, as well as the
fact that this restriction exists without the intervention of an extra­
neous force, it is difficult not to see at work here the group of drives
that are antagonistic to Eros, that is, the destructive drives. Instead of
the two groups of drives expressing their antagonism in their rela­
tions to the object through defusion, the forces of separation act, on
the contrary, by modifying the erotic drives in an intrinsic manner.
Already in 1912, Freud suspected that a solution of this kind would
ultimately be necessary when, at the end of the second article on the
psychology of love, he maintained that the sexual drive was divided
into components which work against its own satisfaction.39 It is not
the pregenital drives that impede such satisfaction but a factor that
Freud attributes to civilisation and that has become an integral part
of hereditary history.
 Our task would probably be easier if we could assume that an influ­
ence of this order - which, to Freud's way of thinking, is not to be
attributed to any form of transcendence - was a product acquired in
the progressive acculturation of each of us. But such a simplification is
scarcely acceptable here. From The Ego and the Id (1923) onwards, Freud
seems to have attributed psychical life with three centres of develop­
ment. Perception seemed to him to be so closely tied up with the ego's
activity that, on two occasions, he compared it with the relation of the
drive to the id.40 Of course, it is not a crude opposition but a
confrontation between different types of hyper-cathexes, the dialec­
tical outcome of which will be the unconscious representation of the
drive, that is, the ideational representative. A corresponding function
necessarily exists for the super-ego, a role that is fulfilled by the
function of the ideal. Moreover, Freud said that he could not localise
the ego ideal, as he had tried to do for the relations between the ego
and the id. In trying to follow the course of Freud's metapsychological
approach, one might think that the dispersed distribution of the ego
ideal, its quasi-ubiquitous presence in the field of psychical processes,
is a consequence of the topographical relations of the ego and the id.
It is as though the spatial limitation imposed on the id, at least by the
frontier which brings it into relation with the ego, were paid for in turn
by the clear field left to the function of the ideal. For although the ego
has been successful through the binding of psychical processes in
gagging - even if only partially - the id, the latter can only go along
with this by masking its defeat. Consequently, the id now imposes a
new exigency, just as pressing as instinctual satisfaction obeying the
pleasure principle, which is the copy of it or the negative double. This
new exigency will not rest until it has achieved illusory emancipation
from the former. The ego ideal, in terms of which the ego evaluates
itself and tries to achieve perfection, is calibrated according to the
demand made by the body on the mind. The pretensions of the
function of the ideal do not represent any consolation or compensa­
tion. In the very place where instinctual satisfaction occurred, it sets up
its contrary. It accords an even greater value to renunciation. Pride has
become a higher aim than satisfaction; the ideal ego has been replaced
by the ego ideal. There is nothing here that deserves autonomy de jure
or de facto, since this graft can only take root in the drive and reflect
the latter negatively. It is not so much a question of making a virtue of
necessity as of making a necessity of virtue.
Even though this function of the ideal actually originated 'from
the experiences that led to totemism' (from the experiences ... and
not totemism itself), and contains 'the germ from which all religions
have evolved',41 Freud only connects it with the primordial identifi­
cation with the father insofar as the latter is a dead father. This makes
death a necessary condition so that the aggrandisement of the
defunct occurs through signs which do not so much restore his
presence as they ensure his perpetuation in this absence for ever, thus
conferring him with eternal power. It is now necessary to return once
again to the death drive for which death represents the final outcome
of its tendency. The death drive repudiates actual death and restores
cathexis of the father, while endeavouring to eliminate all possible
tension by celebrating renunciation through the function of the
ideal. W hat is the meaning of this reference to the dead father in the
period of ontogenesis? It means that paternity cannot be transmitted
wholly from parent to child, because the father is only one link in the
chain, the succession of ancestors having become the property of
culture of which he is only a representative, the traces of which the
child will have to discover for ‘himself. These traces are written in a
different ink from the one in which experience is recorded. This
process is at the root of the primordial identification with the father.
Let us stop quibbling over the text42 with regard to the mother's
chronological anteriority and recognise once and for all what this
means from a Freudian perspective. Pointing out, as Freud does in an
adjoining note, that it may, perhaps, be safer to speak of the parents
rather than the father, does not mean that this experience is under­
gone twice, first with the mother and then with the father, but that
the motor of this inaugural identification is a principle of kinship, the
condition of being a parent to which the child will be called. Two
requirements will have to be met: the intangible preservation of the
attachment and the no less inevitable emancipation from the object.

It may be that this identification is the sole condition under which

the id can give up its objects ... From another point of view it may
be said that this transformation of an erotic object-choice into an
alteration of the ego is also a method by which the ego can obtain
control over the id and deepen its relations with it - at the cost, it
is thie, of acquiescing to a large extent in the id's experiences.43

One cannot help comparing the two types of phenomenon. They are
not equivalent, but reveal two possible destinies in which the condi­
tions are met allowing relations with the object to be maintained at
the cost of a sacrifice. Renunciation becomes the condition for the
survival of the most essential attachment; at the same time, it shows
that this relation takes precedence over all other considerations and
that there can be no question of replacing it solely by permuting the
object or aim. Renunciation or inhibition of aim furnish the best
evidence that nothing can replace the object and that no sequence of
actions is conceivable outside the ongoing relations linking it with
the ego. It is therefore no coincidence that, after these considerations,
Freud introduced the notions of desexualisation and sublimation,
although he had just spoken in the preceding paragraphs of the
earliest cathexes, those of the oral phase, and wondered whether all
forms of sublimation - a question that he was to ask himself three
times in The Ego and the Id44 - originated through the mediation of
the ego, or if it was possible that they resulted from the defusion of
the drives. In fact, we should recognise in this capacity to create
durable and permanent cathexes, the existence of a structural justifica­
tion that is always perceived as such, though never completely
clarified conceptually, which has its roots in the defusion of the
drives, that is, in the operation of the death drive upon the erotic life
drives, which include the drives of self-preservation.45
Linking these processes to operations governed by the pleasure
principle and the Nirvana principle would most likely provide
evidence of the pre-eminence of the latter. In the chapter of The Ego
and the Id devoted to the two classes of drives, Freud pursues his
hypotheses to their logical conclusion: sublimation and identification
are merely forms of transformation of erotic libido into ego-libido
which involve a desexualisation, an abandoning of object-cathexes,
which can even result in an undifferentiated neutral energy, a hybrid
form between the libido of Eros and the libido of the destructive
drives, that is, a 'mortified' libido. A libido, in any case, which is more
vulnerable to the effect of the death drive.
Freud seems to have assigned desexualisation with a very general
function capable of affecting the first object-cathexes:

By thus getting hold of the libido from the object-cathexes, setting

itself up as sole love-object, and desexualizing or sublimating the
libido of the id, the ego is working in opposition to the purposes
of Eros and placing itself at the service of the opposing instinctual
impulses.

The work thus accomplished was attributed by Freud to defusion.46

And if we take into account Freud's next statement describing the
ego's narcissism as secondary narcissism, the course of the investiga­
tion that led Freud to circumscribe, with increasing precision, the
death drive within narcissism, will enable us to trace it back to its
earliest origins.

The Protective Shield and Repression

How does such a stable, durable and permanent cathexis find its way
into the register of dynamic and economic processes? Freud only gave
examples of this by referring to states which analysts will have no diffi­
culty in recognising. The operations which govern the formation of
their structure continue to intrigue us. Now on each occasion that
Freud was pressed to give an explanation of the means by which dura­
bility and even permanence, as against mobility and change, are
acquired, he resorted to the metaphor of the transition from unbound
energy to bound energy. As we do not have an alternative solution to
propose, it is difficult to see how this metaphor can be avoided. It
should be possible to describe everything that has just been said about
the relations between the aim-inhibited drive and the object in the
language Freud used when he endeavoured to describe these processes.
Let it be said without further ado that there is no reason to think
that the inhibition of the drive aim only works in favour of the erotic
drives involving an object-choice - although it is only in those cases
that Freud speaks of it - and it is not clear why it should be excluded
in the case of the erotic drives of self-preservation. As soon as we
assume that the drives of self-preservation also have an antagonist in
the drives which are connected with preserving the species, and
which are accomplished by fusing with the object in the genital rela­
tionship, it can be seen that here, too, the inhibition of aim protects
the object against being completely assimilated into the ego, which
would result in the dissolution of the ego's organisation.
The mechanisms for converting unbound energy into bound
energy, described by Freud, show how the organism protects itself
against excessive amounts of external stimulation by offering a
surface of resistance which has been subject to a neutralisation of
cathexes but is capable of receiving, absorbing and conveying
external stimuli. One can see, then, that this barrier or 'protective
shield' has the twofold function of prohibiting, at its level, all trans­
formation of the reception of stimuli involving alterations in the
register of expression, mutation, combination, and so on. It is simply
a question of absorbing: that is, of transmitting, without deforming,
the Weakened result of what has been recorded. Its functions are
therefore those of blocking - reception and binding - and of trans­
mission by means of circulation. Protection takes precedence over the
capacity for reception. A similar surface receives the impression of
internal stimuli and also seeks to avoid too great an afflux or an exces­
sive am ount of excitation. But it is obvious that, however
homologous they appear to be, the two operations are not equivalent.
For the force resisting the external stimuli eliminates them, whereas
the repudiation of internal stimuli merely results in their returning
towards unconscious processes, that is, in a new charge, leading to a
new thrust towards consciousness, in the face of which the possibili­
ties for repudiation will be limited. A device comparable to the
protective shield can therefore not function here. The link between
the two modes of activity, that which has the function of dealing with
external stimuli and that which protects against internal stimuli, is
thus not conclusive. Once again, Freud made use here of the
metaphor comparing the organism with a living vesicle. The initial
reality ego allows a distinction to be made, it is true, between the
origins of the two sources of excitation, but its action is not without
shortcomings since projection remains a possibility. Furthermore, the
intervention of this projective mechanism occurs on a scale which is
much too great for us to be able to imagine - think, for a moment, of
the case of pain - that a breach of the system could lead to an osmosis
such that what comes from the inside is in fact treated as if it came
from the outside. This operation does not merely involve a rejection;
it has the advantage of creating the possibility of mustering the
means necessary to defend itself - once the externalisation has
occurred - against the source of the projection.
Freud himself expresses some reservations about this way of
picturing things in the Outline.47 The relations between the two layers,
inner and outer, might perhaps offer a better solution. The special
feature of the outer layer of the metaphorical organism is that it has
been 'worked on' to such an extent that it has succeeded in lowering
all the organic processes to a m inim um . It contents itself with
knowing the source and nature of the excitations, which is possible
due to its orientation. In fact, such an achievement is not unrelated to
the types of processes which, under the effect of the Nirvana principle,
make it their aim to abolish all tension. Freud even says that the death
of this outer layer seems to have saved from a similar fate all the
deeper ones which shelter the sense organs, the latter dealing only
with very small and selected quantities of external stimulation.
My conclusion, then, is that such a system cannot be applied to
the internal barrier. But although Freud compares them, he does not
see a similitude between them - which is impossible - but an analogy.
It is as though the model provided by the protective shield provided
a tempting solution for the internal stimuli. The stimuli are thus
treated as quantities of excitation to be reduced, bound, rendered
'inanimate' or mortified. And although some tensions continue to
break through the dams and to produce effects comparable to an
external trauma, this does not occur frequently. The force of binding
will depend on the quantitative level of the cathexes of the system.
As this quiescent force no longer has the function of neutralising or
disqualifying excitations, as the protective shield does, it offers an
equivalent of it: a mirror in which the lure of the removal of tensions
is reflected. The id becomes, to use Freud's felicitous expression, the
ego's 'second external world'.48 In certain circumstances the terminal
organs receiving external excitations also transmit sensations and
feelings such as pain. The work of the internal force of binding is to
render internal stimuli perceptible and to master them (by reducing
tensions). But it has less capacity to discern the source of the excita­
tions so that what it experiences as coming from everywhere - and
Freud, whose statements are never vague, speaks here of 'something'
which corresponds to sensations and enters consciousness - is subject
to all manner of confusion with regard to its localisation. However,
the result of this is that the comparison with the terminal organs
which receive the external excitations makes an analogy possible and
Freud says that 'as regards the terminal organs of sensation and
feeling, the body itself would take the place of the external world'.49
This does not mean that we are justified in speaking of a confusion
between them but simply of a duplication of the latter, which can
also be understood as a division. Yet by interposing a 'second external
world' in the relations between the id and the ego, Freud was re-eval­
uating the relations between the three agencies. The process of
mortifying inertia, established within the envelope which serves as an
intermediary with the outside, corresponds to the system (repression)
which protects against exigencies and pressures. Liberation from the
latter poses more problems than dealing with external stimuli. As we
have seen this initial evaluation is complicated by the action of the
function of the ideal.

Auto-Erotism
A comparable process can be observed here to that which occurs
when the erotic drive is subject to an inhibition of aim, though not
all of its characteristics are the same. Of course, auto-erotism does not
have the durability and imm utability of the affectionate relations to
which Freud refers, but it is quite clear that auto-erotism and narcis­
sism are not only stages. The ego - or, initially, the ego drives - can
present itself as a source of satisfaction by means of mechanisms
which will last throughout life. It is legitimate to want to assign a
beginning, a point of departure for auto-erotism, as Laplanche and
Pontalis do,50 when they insist on the fact that the drive becomes
auto-erotic when it has lost the object. Freud's own statement on this
point is too important for me not to cite it in full:

At a time at which the first beginnings of sexual satisfaction are

still linked with the taking of nourishment, the sexual instinct has
a sexual object outside the infant's own body in the shape of his
mother's breast. It is only later that the instinct loses that object,
just at the time, perhaps, when the child is able to form a total idea
 of the person to whom the organ that is giving him satisfaction
belongs. As a rule the sexual instinct then becomes auto-erotic ...
(SE, VII, p. 222)

W hen Laplanche and Pontalis point out in another passage that the
object does not have to be absent for the auto-erotic condition to
come about, their argument is indisputable. But in that case we should
probably attempt to define auto-erotism more closely.51 One cannot
take Freud's remark out of context, and the interesting point here is
that this process is tied up with introjection. W hat needs accounting
for is the transition from the object of satisfaction 'outside' to the
search for satisfaction, if not 'inside', then at least in the infant's own
body, at its surface of contact, thus concretising in a remarkable way
the proposition that the body takes the place of the external world. I
agree with Laplanche and Pontalis who maintain, following Freud,
that the ideal of auto-erotism is 'lips kissing themselves'. The signifi­
cance of this image needs to be understood in a much wider sense;
that is, as a movement of a more general and fundamental value. It is
not so m uch that the distribution between infant and object has been
abolished but that, before acceding to the status of a subject, that is,
at the moment when the object, which had hitherto been 'outside',
was lost, the 'subject' was still only a centrifugal movement of inves­
tigation. Separation reconstitutes this couple in the subject's own
body, since the image of lips kissing themselves suggests the idea of a
replication followed by a re-gluing which, in this new unity, traces the
line of partition which has enabled the 'subject' to fall back on his
own resources. Auto-erotism occurs during this retreat; it represents a
kind of stopping place on the frontier, and in this respect may be
compared to the inhibition of aim described in relation to the libid-
inal erotic drives.52 We have seen that the inhibition of aim is closely
tied up with retaining the object. Now what is striking in this auto­
erotic situation is the particular status of the drive, with regard to its
aim and object. It is not possible - and, on this point, I agree with
Laplanche and Pontalis - to link auto-erotism with the object's
absence. But on no account can what is happening here be likened to
a substitution of the object, or even to a change of aim, since the latter
remains unchanged; that is, the pleasure connected with sucking, for
which thumb-sucking is not the equivalent but the quintessence. This
is why auto-erotism is, to a certain extent, organ-pleasure; but only to
a certain extent. Saying that the auto-erotic character of the drive is
'an anarchic product of the component drives'53 is perhaps abusing
the theory slightly, since it means situating the said drive on the same
side as the so-called drives with an inhibited aim, characterised by
constant displacement, transformations of energy and repeated
permutations of aims and objects. Primordially, the auto-erotic drive
is a drive capable of satisfying itself, either in the object's absence or
presence, but independently of it We can only understand the issue
clearly if we assume, as Freud did, that there are two categories of
drives: those capable of finding satisfaction in the subject's own body,
and those which cannot do without the object. Consequently, there is
no longer any reason to link auto-erotism to the emergence of
desire,54 as Laplanche and Pontalis do, since the latter is in fact desire
for contact with the object. Moreover, their conception neglects the
role of the drives which require the object's participation. By the same
token, it is not necessary, as Pasche maintains, to postulate an anti­
narcissism,55 since this is implicit in this latter category of drives. This
differentiation in Freud's* work occurs in the context of a remarkable
continuity of thought. For if one does not wish to regard auto-erotism
merely as a stage, then one must exploit fully all the theoretical poten­
tial that the notion contains - not always explicitly - in order to
justify rejecting a genetic position which is over-simplified, incom­
plete and rather unsatisfactory.
Let us pause a m om ent over the following passage taken from
'Instincts and their Vicissitudes':

Originally, at the very beginning of mental life, the ego is

cathected with instincts and is to some extent capable of satisfying
them on itself. We call this condition 'narcissism' and this way of
obtaining satisfaction 'auto-erotic'.56

It was when he wrote these lines, which at first sight seem to reinforce
the genetic point of view, that Freud added a note which has caught
the attention of many authors, including W innicott. Freud recognises
here that the group of sexual drives and the drives of self-preservation
are not homogeneous, and that it is still necessary to differentiate
between drives that are capable of finding satisfaction, without neces­
sarily involving the object, and drives which cannot economise on
the link with the object. W hat makes the functioning of auto-erotic
drives possible is the vicariousness of the mother's care. But this does
not am ount to saying, however, that the latter is subordinated to the
drives which require a relationship with the object. It is not because
the mother ensures that the infant's needs are satisfied and makes up
for his immaturity that she has the absolute function of a primordial
object. The latter would deprive the infant's own organisation of all
reality; an organisation which acquires its value not on a biological
level, of course, since without the mother's care the infant would die,
but in the dom ain of desire and of the signifier. The mother shields the
infant's auto-erotism.
 These remarks throw light on the question I was discussing earlier
of the origin of primary cathexes which, depending on the version of
Freud one follows, arise either from the ego or the id. Strachey was
right to define the parameters of the debate by reminding us of the
primitive undifferentiated state of the id and the ego. Would we not
come even closer to the truth if, in an attempt to understand these
relations, we pictured an id which partly included the mother,
cathected primitively and directly, and an ego forming itself around
its own possibilities for satisfaction. The latter are essential for their
founding role but are called into question by the drives which can
only find satisfaction in the object.

Repression and the Ego

Perhaps you can see more clearly now the parallel that I am drawing
between drives with an inhibited aim and auto-erotic drives. Is it a
coincidence that the most common signs of affection, caresses and
kisses, belong to both categories? Auto-erotism is thus one of the
succession of phenomena through which the body takes the place of the
external world.
W hat we need to consider now is how we should conceive of the
protective barrier w ithin the perspective of a structural theory, while
distancing ourselves as much as possible from an approach based on
archaeological reconstitution. Modelled on the protective shield, the
protective barrier makes it possible to register the stimuli coming
from the body, this second external world, on a screen, so to speak.
In some recent metapsychological conceptions this role has been
attributed to repression (Laplanche and Pontalis, Stein), which is
regarded as having the property of founding the conscious and
unconscious registers as well as separating primary and secondary
processes.57 W hile this point of view has the advantage of centring
the distinctions on a founding act, thereby allowing the various kinds
of facts and phenomena to be articulated more easily, it seems to run
the risk of postulating the existence, beyond repression, of an un in ­
telligible chaos that is opposed to the primordial order from which
intelligible structure emerges. The protective shield, which has the
capacity of localising the external source of the stimuli, sees its action
strengthened by the reality principle,58 which makes the distinction
between the ego and the external world quite clear. Repression could
be thought of as its stand-in. From this point of view, some investi­
gators would place primary narcissism in this area beyond repression
- in a world which is without order or limits, in which the ego would
be merged with the cosmos; hence the description ego-cosmic. In my
judgement, this situation pertains more to the id than to narcissism.
Now as L have already pointed out, the characteristic of absolute
primary narcissism is that it strives towards a zero level of excitation.
Doing away with all motion, protecting oneself from all tension, does
not necessarily generate the feeling of expansion, although it may do
so sometimes.
It is important to remember that on numerous occasions Freud
refused to give repression the status of an inaugural function, even
after an interval of nearly twenty years:

Originally, to be sure, everything was id; the ego was developed out
of the id by the continual influence of the external world. In the
course of this slow development certain of the contents of the id
were transformed into the preconscious state and so taken into the
ego; others of its contents remained in the id unchanged, as its
scarcely accessible nucleus. During this development, however, the
young and feeble ego put back into the unconscious state some of
the material it had already taken in, dropped it, and behaved in the
same way to some fresh impressions which it might have taken in,
so that these, having been rejected, could leave a trace only in the
id. In consideration of its origin we speak of this latter portion of
the id as the repressed,59

From this passage it emerges that:

1. the ego is not constituted by repression, but is pre-existent to it;

2. if these traces are only left in an id separated from the ego, the
form in which the primitive contents of the id have been
accepted and admitted nonetheless remains a problem;
3. repression does not carry out a primal separation, but rejects that
which has already been admitted once;
4. the division into unconscious-preconscious is necessary for acti­
vating repression;
5. finally, repression is linked to a mechanism involving the re­
passage, the re-turn, of the re-pressed.

An unavoidable question arises here: why is it that what has been

admitted once is later rejected? Even when one attaches great impor­
tance to counter-cathexis - involving a considerable expenditure of
energy - one should not lose sight of the fact that repression is also 'a
preliminary stage of condemnation'. Linking these two aspects is
undoubtedly interesting from a heuristic perspective. The advantage
is that it makes the processes of judgement consubstantial with those
of energetic energy. But this is perhaps being a bit hasty. Not that
there is any reason to question the connection between the order of
the signifier and the energetic order. But in my opinion, this link
requires further mediation. Freud seemed to have a reason of this sort
in m ind when he wrote:

It has consequently become a condition for repression that the

motive force of unpleasure shall have acquired more strength than
the pleasure obtained from satisfaction.60

Now the only type of pleasure we know of that has claimed to safe­
guard - under the cover of maternal care - such a possibility of
satisfaction, without incurring unpleasure, is auto-erotism.61 The
period of separation from the mother and the period of repression
may come together again afterwards, but they are not merged from
the start, since this conjunction of periods is inferred retrospectively
through the search for the lost object which unites the actual loss of
the object at the time of separation and the loss suffered through
repression. I believe it would be more coherent to account for this
search in a different way. The loss of the breast, occurring when the
mother is perceived as a whole object, which implies that the process
of separation between them has been completed, results in the
creation of a mediation that is necessary to compensate for the effects
of her absence and integration into the psychical apparatus. The latter
occurs independently of the action of repression, whose aim is
different. This mediation represents the constitution in the ego of the
maternal setting as a framing structure.
The continuation of Freud's text helps us to see more clearly:

Psychoanalytic observation of the transference neuroses,

moreover, leads us to conclude that repression is not a defensive
mechanism which is present from the very beginning, and that it
cannot arise until a sharp cleavage has occurred between conscious
and unconscious mental activity - that the essence of repression lies
simply in turning something away, and keeping it at a distance, from the
conscious.62

To say that the essence of repression resides simply in repudiating a

psychical content is not to diminish its importance; it is merely to
specify its function without in any way ignoring its privileged
position.
Certain passages in Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety (1926
[1925])63 go to great lengths to draw a comparison between the
defence offered by the protective shield against external stimuli and
that which resists internal stimuli. We need to be very attentive to the
idea that it is flight, more than repudiation, that is the fundamental
mechanism in the second case. Here linguistic connections are
lacking, for there is the notion of a turning away, of a dismissal in the
Freudian term which, when all is said and done, implies an active
attitude of counter-cathexis, whereas flight is an attitude which, so to
speak, is actively passive.64 The two modes of defence might be
compared - although this can only be expressed partially through
images - to tactics whose very principles are opposed. The first, the
protective shield, m ight be compared to tactics of withdrawal
whereby, depending on the size of one's forces, one periodically turns
and faces the enemy, taking advantage of each engagement to consol­
idate one's defences, so that they are in a position to hold their
ground when the moment comes to thwart the enemy's thrust. The
second, which could be compared to internal stimuli, exercises a
withdrawal using all resources available to carry out a scorched earth
policy until a fortified place is reached where better times are awaited.

The Double Reversal and Primary Decussation

There is no denying that repression partakes of these two forms. In the
same passage, Freud adds that 'repression is an equivalent for this
attempt at flight', but he does not recognise the primary flight itself.65
The correction of the interpretative error which tends to confuse the
two can be found in one of the addenda of Inhibitions, Symptoms and
Anxiety. The concept of defence covers the general category of the ego's
measures of protection against instinctual demands and provides good
grounds 'for subsuming repression under it as a special case'. Freud thus
reneges on the earlier solution he had adopted in which repression
seemed to illustrate the process of defence in general. But he also adds:

In addition we may look forward to the possible discovery of yet

another important correlation.66 It may well be that before its sharp
cleavage into an ego and an id, and before the formation of a
super-ego, the mental apparatus makes use of different methods of
defence from those which it employs after it has reached these
stages of organisation.67

Once again, one could simply put a question mark here against the
text, regretting that the author did not explain himself more fully.
And yet it is practically the same sentence as we find written, eleven
years before, in the text 'Repression' (1915b):

This view of repression would be made more complete by

assuming that, before the mental organisation reaches this stage,
the task of fending off instinctual impulses is dealt with by the
 other vicissitudes which instincts may undergo - e.g. reversal into
the opposite or turning round upon the subject's own self.68

This echoes a similar passage in Tnstincts and their Vicissitudes'.69 In

fact, here Freud described a single process involving two operations.
This concerns, firstly, the orientation - the change of which indicates
that the centrifugal orientation has become centripetal - and,
secondly, the mode of reversal which is not just a reversal of direc­
tion, nor a mere change of sign, but should be thought of as a
decussation. The direct confusion of the two mechanisms would result
in withdrawal which would in no way resolve the problem posed by
the instinctual demand; the only solution for which is a modification
inscribed in the body which leaves a trace of satisfaction. In this
reversal through decussation, it is rather as if the response expected
from the object were carried along by this movement in which the
extreme positions of internal and external in the instinctual current
change places. An overlapping thus occurs between that which, on a
surface, can be localised on the left and right of a hypothetical
frontier. This movement of return permits the drive to reach the
bodily zone which is awaiting satisfaction as if it were the object itself
that had provided the satisfaction there; for, as with the inhibition of
aim, the object has been retained and not exchanged. But this preser­
vation has been paid for by limited satisfaction - something I regard
as the negative of a metonymical operation, since it resists the
suturing of the subject and the object. At the same time such a lim i­
tation preserves it, because this union would exclude any follow-up
to this first and last sequence. W hat is created, then, is a circuit which
does not concern the properties of the object but its response. While
preserving the object in its absence, the circuit delegates the object's
function to the subject in such a way that the subject experiences the
realisation (implied by the response) as if it had been provided by the
object. It is clear that a metaphorical process is at work here.
This may throw light on the mutation that occurs between the
relation to the breast - which can equally well be described as 'the
mother suckling the baby or as her being sucked by it'70 - and the
reversion of lips kissing themselves.
Between the undifferentiated state of ego-id and mother-infant
and the emergence of repression, a mediating process occurs
involving a regulation of the drives, on the basis of which repression
is possible. In other words, between the 'biological' process at work in
the protective shield and the psychological process of repression
which Freud refers to, there is no correspondence as between outside
and inside; but there is an intersection between them, so that what is
inside may be treated in the same way as that which comes from the
outside, provided that the inside is perceived as if it were the outside,
and without there being any fusion between the two. This is exactly what
Freud affirms in Beyond the Pleasure Principle, which links the forma­
tion of an internal barrier to projection. The double reversal allows us
to think about this mediation structurally. If we read the passage on
the double reversal it shows that Freud was describing the work which
prevents a drive from attaining direct satisfaction, not by means of a
force that is alien to it - repression as a psychological process - but by
an internal modification of its own nature.
W hen Freud considered that it was necessary to distinguish two
processes in the reversal of the drive into its opposite: namely, the
change from activity to passivity, and the reversal of its content (love-
hate), nobody seemed to be concerned that, in so doing, he had
introduced a new characteristic of the drive, that is, its content, which
was never mentioned in later descriptions, or, only with respect to the
id. A problem arises here that is closely related to that of auto-erotism
and the relation to the object. Freud denies that the antithesis between
loving and hating can fit into the scheme of the reversal of a drive into
its opposite in the same way as the change from activity to passivity
can, these affects only being applicable to a whole object. Narcissism,
a state in which one loves oneself, appears to represent the form, at this
last level, of the equivalent of it in the transformation from activity to
passivity. There is therefore justification for saying that it is when drive
activity is understood as the ego's relation to sources of pleasure related
to the object, considered as independent of the ego, that the reversal
from activity into passivity assumes the form of the love that the ego
can have for itself. And if we ask ourselves what the preparation of this
structural stage corresponds to, we need to bear in m ind a distinction
Freud considered to be imperative, which led him to separate the oper­
ation of reversing the aims of the drives from the turning-around upon
the subject's own self. He was right to separate them but the situations
which he encountered (sadism-masochism, scopophilia-exhibi-
tionism) soon led him to make the following observation:

We cannot fail to notice, however, that in these examples the

turning round upon the subject's self and the transformation from
activity to passivity converge or coincide.71

Retaining the object, and maintaining certain cathexes in a lasting

and unchanged mode, are closely tied up with the aim-inhibited
drive. Auto-erotism spares the object and does not lose it entirely;
since it is just when the subject is able to apprehend the mother as a
whole that the drive becomes auto-erotic. And if the subject seems to
change object, it is only to turn towards the object o f the object (the
subject's body) in order to create there a second erotogenic zone,
though 'of an inferior kind',72 thereby vouching for its fidelity. On
the other hand, the fact that the loss of the object coincides with the
moment when the organ which was the source of the infant's satis­
faction, that is, the breast, and the mother, to whom it belongs, are
united, as well as the fact that this loss paves the way for the onset of
auto-erotism, suggests that the infant's apprehension of the link
between organ and person may also have been internalised. This
internalisation does not lead to awareness of a bodily form; but,
because the circular mode of cathexis has been closed down, it gives
rise to feelings of autonomy, perfection and of being delivered from
desire through the symmetrical creation, almost simultaneously, of
the global and unifying apprehension that is characteristic of the
infant's ego, as it was described by Lacan in the mirror stage.

The Ego and its Ideal

In this context, inferiority and independence are associated terms.
The sense of inferiority exists because the persistence of a lack with
regard to the object is not abolished by auto-erotism; independence
shows how the tutelage of desire is a most formidable yoke, and,
though it is undoubtedly necessary to psychical organisation, it needs
to be overcome if structure is to be acquired. Once again what we are
faced with here, as was the case with the inhibition of aim, is the
work of the death drive. The mark of the death drive is to be seen not
in its impossibility of attaining a goal but rather in the choice of this
zone 'of an inferior kind', with a special vocation. The lowering of
tension to the level zero and the immediate suppression of all differ­
ence abolishing the object's absence are both hallowed in the temples
of self-sufficiency. The impression this leaves is indelible and it will
persist, if not at each moment of life, at least throughout the whole
of life. 'To be their own ideal once more, in regard to sexual no less
than other trends, as they were in childhood - this is what people
strive to attain as their happiness.'73
But can we be certain that this mediatory stage between the lack of
ego-id differentiation and repression is to be connected with narcis­
sism through auto-erotism? Is there any other way of seeing things
that offers a convincing alternative? Either narcissism is cast out into
the chaos prior to repression or it is specified as a field of illusion; but,
in any case, it lacks its own structure. Freud appears to have had a
solution:

We shall be approaching a more general realisation - namely, that

the instinctual vicissitudes which consist in the instinct being
 turned round upon the subject's own ego and undergoing reversal
from activity to passivity are dependent on the narcissistic organi­
sation of the ego and bear the stamp of that phase. They perhaps
correspond to the attempts at defence which at higher stages of the
development of the ego are effected by other means.74

Narcissism is founded on the ego drives. But it would be wrong to

think that, because I have based my interpretation of auto-erotism on
the drive contingent that is capable of obtaining satisfaction without
the object's assistance, I therefore consider that this mechanism alone
can provide a solution for all the unanswered questions. But I still
want to tackle the problem of the ego's unity which Freud associated
with narcissism. There is a big difference between 'the energy of the
ego drives' and narcissism. For this expression, which Freud took as
his point of departure, needs to be related to the highly indeterminate
character of the primitive drives. The drive finds its vocation during
the course of its actual functioning, which is set in m otion by its aim,
but only discovered in the course of effective action directed at a
specific goal. Inferring the drive's activity does not am ount to intro­
ducing a teleological point of view into Freudian theory, since the
innate spontaneity of the way it is activated is enriched by the
discovery of the aim that motivates the very process of its activation.
By taking the energy of the ego drives as my starting-point, I do not
mean to attribute any sort of biological character to this pre-form; but
I am trying to picture in the most convenient way a current of
cathexes between two limits separated by a difference of potential,
without which it would be impossible to identify specifically any
current whatsoever. In short, I regard it as the prerequisite state for
the formation of a chain. A suitable means of expressing this needs to
be found if we are to understand how Freud could maintain that the
infant is unable to distinguish between its body and the breast, yet is
able to localise the latter when it is absent - although a lack of differ­
entiation persists - 'outside' itself. I share the view of Laplanche and
Pontalis that this whole process is dominated by anaclitic object rela­
tions; but I am tempted to liken this mechanism, in which the
activity of need coincides with the emergence of pleasure at the
points where need is appeased, with the difference between the
'locus' of the satisfaction of pleasure and that which makes its satis­
faction possible. If their association constitutes a demand, I would be
inclined to think that the demand and its circuit are separable. The
circuit is cathected before demand. W hich does not amount to saying -
as Lebovici argues - that the object is cathected before it is perceived,
but rather that cathexis is cathected before the object is. Just as the
repressed does not simply remain banished from consciousness, but is
attracted by the pre-existing repressed and moves towards that which
is ready to take possession of it, similarly, the pathway of cathexis
only exists because it is cathected by the mother. But it is important
to understand that the function of the two currents is placed under
opposite signs. For the mother only unites with her child insofar as
she has consented to separate from him in the future; and to the
extent that the child, in his encounter with her, is forced to recognise
the limitations of self-preservation. By trying to preserve himself, he
endeavours to m aintain the link that has been established, though, in
another sense of this term, he has to appropriate the condition of his
satisfaction along with the source of pleasure.

The First Difference

We cannot go any further without examining the antagonism between
Eros and the death drives. In the initial state of affairs, the id and the
ego, each indistinct, thwart the action of the destructive drives which
were working in the child towards a return to the earlier situation;
whereas, in the mother, the movement of Eros finds an ally in the
desire to reintegrate the product of creation.75 A genuine reversal of drive
values needs to occur in order that decisive change can come about. As far as
the mother is concerned, the forces that are pushing for separation
must succeed in making themselves heard,76 whereas the child needs
to hold together the portion of the mother's id which serves these aims
and everything that has sided with the individual's clamour of life. And
so what, in the initial 'stage', had no other purpose than the suspen­
sion of all disturbance, now has another meaning in this new context
which is to lead the individual to himself, towards submission and the
binding of the ego. Its purpose is not only to muzzle or reduce the
chaotic id to a state of impotence, but also to seal the mark of self­
belonging and belonging to the other. One can see that this reversal of
values necessitates a de-centring of drive polarities from the mother to
the child, and of their common id, so that an ego may be born. The id
has created object-cathexes which the ego takes possession of. This is
the first transgression. But these are not the ego's only origins for it can
also make use of the portion of cathexes that do not necessarily involve
the object. It can be seen that this alliance between the ego and the id
can only come about through a relative synergy; for, although the ego's
action is that of 'binding', this can only be carried out to the extent
that the ego has agreed to support, within itself, the pursuit of the
removal of tension which prevailed in the work of the death drive. 'The
pleasure principle seems to be in the service of the death instinct.'77
It is clearly difficult to maintain a strict opposition between the
two types of antagonistic drives, but each time one of them seems to
have gained the upper hand over the other, the force which got the
better of it in the conflict between them has to be internalised into
this new state of things. Freud's thought does not lend itself to simpli­
fication. In certain places, therefore, the id is conceived of as an
antagonist of the libido. Pleasure, which has become the character­
istic of the libido, is used by the id against the libido. It should not be
thought that the id supplants it, but rather that their aims converge,
provided that pleasure is the beneficiary. Moreover, when I speak of
the forces of union, nothing is further from my m ind than to present
them as the equivalent of physical forces; they should be considered
more as orientations and aims, impersonal and personal. Ulysses' ruse
was to make use of the polysemy of language; the same word desig­
nating both nobody and a particular person. The overlapping of
operations does not always allow us to see what is involved in them.
W hen I allude to the contradiction between preservation and appro­
priation, it will be clear that I do not in any way picture this reversal
in favour of the ego as a monopolisation or a seizure of assets in
favour of the purchaser, so to speak. And although separation from
the mother is what is implied, it would be wrong to imagine that she
has been abandoned or that the cathexes of which she was the object
have been transfused.

Negative Hallucination of the Mother

Let us return now to Freud's assertion that the perception of the
object is linked with its absence. It is against the backcloth of this
absence that signs have to be created which will be inscribed where
there is a lack, as an exchange value and not as a substitute object.
But, as this perception of absence goes hand in hand with an aware­
ness of loss, the two tend to become merged; or, auto-erotism is
considered as the new form that is capable of resolving the problems
raised by these two observations. Although Freud saw the loss of the
breast and the moment when the infant apprehends the mother as a
whole person as contemporaneous, what precedes this apprehension
must potentially include the content of the later appropriation. Not
in the form of a perception because, if this were the case, the object
would be outside, and the representation of this perception would
only be a copy, whose function of replication would not be congruent
with the reversal of polarities which focuses the effort of unification
on the ego itself. O n the contrary, it would take the form of a negative
hallucination of this global apprehension. Auto-erotism at the body's
door is a hallmark of independence from the object; negative halluci­
nation signals, with the total perception of the object, that the latter
has been put 'outside-of-I', which is succeeded by the I-not-I on which
identification is based. While such negative hallucination cannot, by
definition, be represented by an image of any kind, it can be observed
in the constitution of the circuit of double reversal of which auto­
erotism represents only the mark of the function or suture, and is
carried out - and here the operation of reversing activity into
passivity is more fundamental than the reversal against the self -
through the inversion of the polarities between mother and infant.
He treats himself as she treats him once she is no longer merely an
excentric part of himself. The mother is caught in the empty frame of
negative hallucination and becomes a framing structure for the subject
himself. The subject constructs himself in the place where the object's
investiture has been consecrated to the locus o f its investment. Everything
is then in place so that the infant's body can take the place of the
external world.
By resorting to the example of the wooden reel Freud not only
represented the creation of the status of absence. To say that what
mattered to him above all was to stress the aspect of mastery involved
in this activity would be doing violence to his thought. The phonetic
opposition accompanying the game is indeed linked to the signifier.
However, it cannot be separated from the circuit supporting it.78 It
goes without saying that the child is not the creator of this circuit;
otherwise the concepts of the division of the subject and of the
subject of the unconscious would be reduced to nothing. The entire
Freudian system of interpretation is based on the following device:
the wooden reel, the piece of string for pulling it in again, the
curtained cot, the active movement of throwing away and reeling in
again. At this stage, the child makes use of his hands but it is the
mother who plays the active role by returning. The reversal of the
subject's polarity is indicated by the link Freud established between
this game and the appearance-disappearance of the baby's image in
the mirror, as if he had been seen by someone else, even though he
was the one to make the movements allowing an image of himself to
be formed, just where the mother was expected to appear. The child
says: 'Baby o-o-o-o!', providing a further reason for linking the
negative hallucination of the mother with identification. But let there
be no misunderstanding. Not all the cathexes have suffered this fate
but precisely those that are susceptible to binding through auto-satis­
faction. Nothing is detracted from the cathexes of the component
drives which continue, in their mobile, changing, fragmentary form
to enter into contact with the object of those cathexes which the loss
of the object cannot compensate for by means of identification. It is
this contingent of drives that is subject to repression. This throws
light on Freud's idea that what is repressed has already been admitted
into the ego. Such is the lot of the homologous portion of cathexes
capable of auto-satisfaction, which are in no way different from the
others, in as much as they are object-cathexes, before this outcome is
offered to them.
Freud always thought that repression affected the forms of repre­
sentation (the affects which are subjected to this fate are only those
w hich have been linked at one time or another to
Vorstellungsreprasentanz). Are we not justified in inferring that the
negative hallucination of the mother, without in any way repre­
senting anything, has made the conditions for representation possible?
That is, the creation of a memory without content, the transition
from repetition to the suture preceding the presence of the elements
of the suturing which the chain they form will presuppose.

Desire for the One

Narcissism erases the trace of the Other in its Desire for the One. The
difference inaugurated by the separation between mother and child is
compensated for by narcissistic investiture. This is the term which, in
all respects, founded difference on the place that the child occupied
in the mother's desire. W hen difference has not been established,
another difference is created owing to the fact that the mother is
caught in the framing structure. The partial cathexes which were
destined for her, nonetheless enter into the series of exchanges and
transformations which occur between them, of which the forms of
representation will be both the product and the witness. It is at this
point that the barrier of repression, which is the stand-in for this
circuit, forms the wall on which the component drives will be
reflected, facilitating the dissociation that allows representation to
occur. Repression is now able to carry out its task of repudiating the
drive which is considered undesirable. This is a stage which opens the
way towards other forms of exchange in which these intersecting
conversions between object-cathexes and secondary narcissistic-
cathexes 'stolen from objects' occur, the economy of which is
regulated by the structure I have just described. Once this process has
been completed, the ego, making use of the closure for which the
contours of negative hallucination provided the model, will be able
to offer itself as a love-object to the portion of the id which it has
taken possession of by assuming the object's features: 'Look, you can
love me too - I am so like the object.'79
This way of seeing things might account for Freud's remarks on the
indestructible character of early identifications and the ego's narcis­
sism as secondary narcissism. During the first stage, the primitive
stamp left by the object inspires the ego in its endeavours to offer, not
its resemblance with it, but the self-sufficient quality of its own
imprint. The features borrowed from the object can be diversified,
selected and isolated one by one, but they should be able to give the
subject the feeling that they make him independent of desire. It is
possible to imagine here a new form of anaclitic object relations,
between two forms of narcissism.
Once the process is completed, negative hallucination will have
established the boundaries of an empty space, as in a Mobius strip.
This is what Freud repeatedly pointed out when he introduced the
final theory of the drives. The division between ego drives and sexual
drives amounts to replacing a qualitative distinction by a topograph­
ical one,80 which involves a great deal more than simply assigning a
direction to cathexes and lays down the same foundations of a
psychical apparatus as I have postulated in my description. The struc­
ture of the Mobius strip provides the equivalent of this double
reversal and circumscribes the two parts of the empty space I have just
referred to.81 They will be occupied respectively by the object-
cathexes and the ego-cathexes which are denied auto-satisfaction as
the latter depends on the libidinal erotic drives. Circumscribed spaces,
then, with different orientations and contrasting directions; but it is
possible to pass alternately from one to the other by making a detour
along the external and internal surface, the dividing surfaces of each
space allowing the exchange of these two types of cathexes.

Introjection and Projection

It is of course impossible to make links between all these mechanisms
without referring to the fundamental role played by introjection.
When Freud was commenting on the process of introjection during the
phase that bears the stamp of narcissistic organisation, and declared
that the object is consumed, incorporated into the subject but also
destroyed, his remarks are unintelligible if the entire cathexis takes the
path of destructivity; for, how can something be preserved if there has
been total destruction? A satisfactory answer might be that introjection
becomes merged with the inscription of the framing circuit, thereby consti­
tuting the matrix of identifications and coinciding with the object's
disappearance. Introjection is dependent on the closure of the circuit
which, as I have said, results in the abolition of tensions. The emer­
gence of auto-erotism, which proceeds along similar lines to the
satisfaction of drives independently of the object, completes the
process. Later introjections will be dismantled in the same way as the
identifications I have just mentioned, constituting the group of object-
cathexes. It will come as no surprise, then, that projection has a part to
play here, since the whole effect of the reversal of activity into passivity
is to make the subject responsible for what apparently takes place
outside him. The mother's excentric position is invalidated by the
forming of a circuit which re-includes in the individual the polarity he
tends towards, in such a way that it becomes an integral part of
himself. The formation of the Mobius strip no longer allows us to speak
of a wrong side and a right side, of an interior and an exterior, though
they should not become merged in a universe without limits.82
It is a mistake always to situate projection beyond the subject's
limits, as hypochondria provides us with a contrary example.
Hypochondria is often regarded today as the result of an introjection.
Following Tausk, who understood the essence, if not the structure, of
narcissism so clearly, it should be seen as an example of projection
from a distance into the body, the discovery of the lost object. The
hypochondriacal object is 'cut out' of the body by the bodily libido of
the psychical cathexis allotted to the ego. The body has taken the
place of the external world, thus allowing psychical cathexes to be
formed. The hypochondriacal organ represents the negative of auto­
erotism, the point at which the negative hallucination of the mother
is ruptured; a moment when the body (which had taken the place she
occupied primitively), undoing the internalisation of this exteriority,
restores her presence, or rather the presence of the object, whose
absence was a sign that it had been localised outside the infant. But
the hypochondriacal organ is more than this; it is also a source of
scanning, investigation and listening. It is the eye in the body which
feels, senses, guesses and warns.

The Eye of Narcissus

Freud thought certain structures of narcissistic origin had the role of
evaluating the ego, measuring themselves against it, competing with
it and striving for ever greater perfection in relation to it. I link these
structures with secondary narcissism. The struggle in question, which
sustains the ego, occurs between satisfaction and the renunciation of
libidinal satisfactions. The sacrifices it makes seem negligible in
comparison with the sense of pride it derives from doing so. We know
from many examples that the ego ideal can prove to be intransigent
to such a degree that the ego is driven to the very brink of what it can
tolerate.
Myths, artistic creations and personal fantasies have made the
theme of the double familiar to us.83 Romantic and expressionist liter­
ature has drawn deeply on this source of 'uncanniness'. Freud pointed
out that one of the most frequent characteristics of the double is that
of being immortal.84 Here we are bound to recognise a trace of
primary narcissism which leads us to suspect that it plays a part in
these occurrences.
 Strachey noted that Freud wavered between different formulations
of the ego ideal. Sometimes the ego ideal is presented as that which
restores the perfection of the lost narcissism of childhood and, in this
case, another structure guarantees the ego functions of self-observa­
tion, vigilance and evaluation. Sometimes all this merges into a
single unity, the super-ego. Most writers accept there is a link
between narcissism and the ego ideal in order to distinguish it from
the super-ego. But it may be necessary to make a clearer distinction
between the function of censoring which is primarily the task of the
super-ego and that of keeping watch, called self-observation. That
which has the role of looking does not arise from a function analo­
gous to the visual function85 but from the detachment of a part of
the ego from the rest. If one bears in m ind that the double is
immortal, it will be seen that the ego aspires to nothing less than
complete invulnerability. As for primary narcissism it admits of no
division and the veil cast over dreamless sleep remains a mystery.
This division enables us to get a clearer idea of the most extreme
purposes of primary narcissism. There is no contradiction in thinking
of it simultaneously as the state of absolute quiescence from which
all tension is removed; the prior condition for the independence of
satisfaction; the closure of the circuit by means of which the negative
hallucination of the mother is fixed, paving the way for identifica­
tion; and the process of appropriating the ideal so as to be able to
attain the highest degree of perfection in which invulnerability is the
final aim. The stage which would necessarily follow this invulnera­
bility would undoubtedly be that of self-begetting abolishing sexual
difference.

The Phoenix, Narcissus and Death

It will come as no surprise, therefore, that in her analysis of the myths
and rites of bisexuality in ancient times Marie Delcourt86 finds a
synthesis of the raw materials Mind-Body, Sky-Earth and, in the last
analysis, immortality. The legend of the Phoenix is the most striking
example, combining effective androgynous bisexuality and eternal
rejuvenescence which is oblivious to death. In many ways the legend
of Narcissus extends and completes the legend of the Phoenix.
Our reflections on Freud's work help us to understand why, after
his brilliant introduction of narcissism in 1914, he felt obliged to
abandon it for fear of leading us along false paths - just as he felt
impelled to introduce the death drive (1921), which resulted in a
more coherent redistribution of the values of psychoanalytic theory
which he upheld until his death (1939) with ever increasing vigi­
lance. And although he was not explicit about the future of narcissism
after the final drive theory, he said enough for us to be able to develop
his reflections on the matter.
Primary narcissism cannot be understood as a state, but should be
understood as a structure. Most writers on the subject not only treat
it as a state, but also only speak of it as life narcissism, observing a
silence - the very silence that dwells within it - with regard to the
death narcissism that is present in the reduction of tensions to the
level zero. Some themes of Freudian metapsychology demonstrate the
work of the death drive in certain aspects of psychical life: aim-inhib­
ited drives, sublimation, identification and the function of the ideal.
The problem of primary narcissism cannot bypass the question of the
origin and vicissitudes of primary cathexes, of the separation of the
ego and the id, which calls for an examination of the concepts of
repression and defence. On the basis of Freudian theory, I have
defended the existence of defences prior to repression: the reversal
against the self and the reversal into its opposite, which I call the
double reversal. In developing the structure which emerges from this
study we have seen that there is an inversion of drive polarities, an
exchange of aims which culminates in the primary difference
between the mother and child, in which several registers of drives can
be distinguished: the component drives whose object is the breast,
and the aim-inhibited drives whose object is the mother, whose
destiny will be separate until the definitive object-choice has been
made. During the period of primary difference, the loss of the breast
is the equivalent in one register of what the negative hallucination of
the mother is in the other. Ego narcissism is, then, as Freud said,
secondary narcissism stolen from objects - it implies the division of
the subject following upon auto-erotism as a situation of self-suffi­
ciency. From this point of view primary narcissism is Desire for the
One, a longing for a self-sufficient and immortal totality, for which
self-begetting is the condition, death and negation of death at the
same time.
3
Anxiety and Narcissism (1979)

There is always an element of risk involved in emerging from silence

to engage in discourse.
In the Book o f the Yellow Emperor it is said:

W hen a shape stirs, it begets not a shape but a shadow. When a

sound stirs, it begets not a sound but an echo. W hen Nothing stirs,
it begets not nothing but something.

These lines are taken from The Book ofLieh Tzu} an author who is said
by some never to have existed.
How does one communicate with others? We know that the main
obstacle to such communication is narcissism. Anxiety is often said to
be incommunicable. How are they related?
In this chapter I shall be discussing:

(a) Anxiety linked to the One: that is, to the unity which is threatened,
reconstituted and bound up with the Other, against a background of
emptiness, in which the form unites part-object and whole-object.
(b) Anxiety linked to the couple, where the figures of symmetry,
complementarity and opposition, in the difference between the
One and the Other, in which bisexuality has a part to play, are
related to the fantasy of the total unity of the couple - always
sought after, and always impossible.
(c) Anxiety linked to the ensemble: having evoked the figures of the One
and of the Two, I want to use this concept to tackle the question,
not of the third, but of the diasparagmos, of dispersion, fragmen­
tation; a finite or infinite ensemble providing a meeting point for
the infans’ anxiety and anxiety linked to the super-ego, insofar as
the latter, arising from the id, becomes a Tower of Destiny’ (once
the category of the Impersonal has been instituted).
These three forms of anxiety raise the problem of limits, of form, of
substance, or consistency, where what is at stake is the coexistence of
different egos.

Internal and External: The Birth of the Ego

To say, once again, that re-reading Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety
(1926 [1925]) gives one a real sense of the extent of Freud's genius, does
not take away the fact that this admirable piece of writing nonetheless
ends abruptly. One senses this as one progresses through the work, and
particularly when Freud approaches the question of the relations
between anxiety, on the one hand, and mourning and pain, on the
other. It therefore comes as no surprise to see that Freud was obliged -
a rather rare occurrence in his work - to add addenda to the body of
the work, the last of which takes up the theme of these relations.
Freud puts forward a certain number of hypotheses which I think
are worth retaining, but they fall a long way short of solving the
problems he is quite rightly posing. The work was undertaken, as we
know, in response to Rank's hypotheses - which, in my judgement,
Freud gave too much credit to - on the birth trauma. Freud refutes
Rank's idea that birth institutes the separation between mother and
child:

... birth is not experienced subjectively as a separation from the

mother, since the foetus, being a completely narcissistic creature, is
totally unaware of her existence as an object.2

Moreover, Freud points out that the affective reactions to separation

are pain and mourning, and not anxiety. Anxiety is linked to the
notion of danger; it is different from pain and mourning which
belong more to the category of narcissistic injury. In his exposition,
Freud links anxiety to excessive instinctual excitation. There is too
much libido: either it is automatic anxiety, in which case no help can
be expected from the object; or, it is signal anxiety in anticipation of
the danger of losing the object, whose protective function against the
upsurge of libido beyond a certain level is lacking; or again, it is
anxiety linked to the danger of allowing excitation to accumulate, the
satisfaction of which would be reprehensible; or, finally, it is anxiety
arising from the danger of increasing tension owing to the reproaches
of the super-ego, where there is a risk of being abandoned by the
'protective Powers of Destiny'.
The question that arises, then, is that of the transition from the
'completely narcissistic' foetus, which is totally unaware of the mother
as an object, to the conflicting desires between erotic libido and
aggressive libido in the oedipal phase. It is this whole development
that the text evades, that is, the destiny of absolute primary narcissism.
The genesis of the super-ego does not account for it and the ego ideal
is its outcome or term. Such is the destiny of narcissistic figures which
develop in parallel to the drive vicissitudes linked to the object. As for
the destiny of the drives, we know that it is necessary to distinguish
between idealisations of the object as an expression of narcissistic
cathexis and sublimations as transformations of the drives.
All these operations require a subject, in the structural sense, which
is not an existential I, but a working of displaced condensations or
circulations. This subject experiences himself existentially in his
affects, and especially in the anxiety felt by the ego. Anxiety is the
epiphany o f the subject; an epiphany that is obtained by means of the
ego, but for which the symbolic subject is a necessity.
Freud's reasoning is both sound and false at the same time. It is
sound insofar as he rejects an explanation based on origins, that is,
birth as the zero point, and the trauma of birth as an economy of the
treatment; first and foremost, because it would shorten analyses to
nine months! It is also right to say that to stop a fire it is not enough
to put out the match that started it. But it is false in that birth is
indeed a catastrophe in the modern theoretical sense of the word. A
catastrophe which is overcome by reconstituting as closely as possible
the conditions of intrauterine life in the outside world. This is the
really profound and often unrecognised meaning of Winnicott's
important concept of holding, which is nothing other than an
external nidification of the child. Although birth, more than original
sin, is the origin of all our troubles, harking back to it does not help
us much in resolving our problems.3 W hat we need to bear in m ind
concerning this situation is the following series of dialectical rever­
sals: birth as catastrophe (separation from the uterus; severing the
umbilical cord; the transition to normal respiration and digestive
feeding; the beginnings of a relationship to the mother) and its
negation by the mother's adaptation to the infant's needs during the
first weeks when the initial drive functioning is establishing itself in
a narcissistic mode. The effect of anaclitic object relations, as
Laplanche has rightly pointed out, is to give birth to hum an sexuality.
The second birth, which is in fact the first for Freud, is the loss of
the breast allowing the ego to come into existence; that is, to accede
to the status of a reality-ego ensuring its distinction from the object.
The problem of limits has its rightful place here.4 It is therefore not
surprising to see that Freud comes to the conclusion that the factors
causing neuroses are merely anachronisms, that is, reactions to
danger stemming from an adapted infantile attitude persisting
without due reason into the age of adulthood as a result of fixation
and repression. Three kinds of causes may be identified: biological, the
child's incomplete development (hence his dependence on the
object); phylogenetic, that is, diphasic sexuality (thus the compulsion
to repeat infantile sexuality in adult sexuality); and finally, psycholog­
ical, id-ego differentiation (the fact that the ego, which is struggling
against the id, is obliged to struggle against itself as well, since it is
simply an emanation of it). All this implies the reproduction, the
replication of external-internal relations. It is true that the^internal
danger was formerly external; the struggle against the internal danger
is a vain imitation of the method used against the external danger.
These struggles the ego wages against the id, as if it were external to
it, backfire on the ego itself, in that the ego is merely a portion of the
id that has been modified by contact with the external world.
There is thus a correspondence between the drive-object
dichotomy and the distinction between narcissistic-libido and object-
libido. Here again object-libido arises from narcissistic-libido, at least
in part; secondarily, narcissistic-libido will be stolen from objects.
To the above points I would like to add a personal hypothesis:
narcissism is grounded in object-libido and its relative autonomy.
Further, one consequence among others of the agonistic and antago­
nistic relations between narcissistic-libido and object-libido is the
creation of the narcissistic object which eludes the limitations
imposed by the boundaries between subject and object, ego and id.
The theoretical argument I have just advanced, drawing on Freud's
work, is intended to underscore the importance of the problem of
limits in external-internal relations, and w ithin the psychical appa­
ratus, from a metapsychological rather than phenomenological
perspective. Federn's theories, on the other hand, are more inspired
by psychoanalytic phenomenology.

The Ego and its Representation

As'I was re-reading Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety (1926 [1925]), it
seemed to me that there was one point which had been neglected.
The work begins with a study of inhibitions which Freud attempts to
distinguish from symptoms (later, Freud says inhibition may be a
symptom as well). Inhibition is defined as a restriction o f an ego-
function for the purpose of avoiding coming into conflict either with
the id or with the super-ego. But in this single chapter devoted to
inhibition, it is noteworthy that Freud never speaks of representations
or affects. From this I draw the following conclusions:

• that the functional restriction short-circuits the intervention of

representations or affects at the level of the ego. I am not saying
 Freud was right on this point, but am simply drawing out the
implications of his analysis;
• that this way of understanding the functional limitations of the
ego in relation to the sexual, nutritive, locomotive and work
function (inhibition in work) raises the corollary question of the
relation of the ego to representation and affect. Although, as far
as affect is concerned, it seems certain that the ego, the seat of
anxiety, is the seat of affects - so much so that there has been a
long debate in contemporary psychoanalytic literature on the
existence of unconscious affects - where representations are
concerned, on the other hand, Freud only ever speaks of object-
representations (SE, 'presentations').
• My conclusion thus runs as follows: either Freud purposely passes
over the problem of ego-representations (representations which
the ego is presumed to have of itself) or, and this is the supposi­
tion I incline towards, the ego has no representation of itself Under
these circumstances, speaking of ego-representations makes no
sense from a theoretical point of view, even if this notion has a
phenomenological echo to it. Moreover, in The Ego and the Id
(1923), Freud defines the ego as a surface, or that which corre­
sponds to the projection of a surface; and, I would add, a surface
intended to receive object representations and affects.5

I will now give an example taken from Proust's In Search of Lost Time
which I have already made use of in a work of applied psycho­
analysis.6
Albertine has left Marcel after a night during which he sensed their
relationship was coming to an end. He is imagining every possible
way of getting her back:

I was going to buy, in addition to the motor cars, the finest yacht
which then existed. It was for sale, but at so high a price that no
buyer could be found. Moreover, once bought, even if we confined
ourselves to four-month cruises, it would cost two hundred
thousand francs a year in upkeep. We should be living at the rate
of half a m illion francs a year. Would I be able to sustain it for more
than seven or eight years? But never mind; when I had only an
income of fifty thousand francs left, I could leave it to Albertine
and kill myself. This was the decision I made. It made me think of
myself Now, since one's ego lives by thinking incessantly of all
sorts of things, since it is no more the thought of those things, if
by chance, instead of being preoccupied with those things, it
suddenly thinks of itself, it finds only an empty apparatus, some­
thing which it does not recognise and to which, in order to give it
 some reality, it adds the memory of a face seen in a mirror. That
peculiar smile, that untidy moustache - they are what would disap­
pear from the face of the earth. W hen I killed myself five years
hence, I would no longer be able to think all those things which
passed through my m ind unceasingly, I would no longer exist on
the face of the earth and would never come back to it; my thought
would stop for ever. And my ego seemed to me even more null
when I saw it as something that no longer exists. How could it be
difficult to sacrifice, for the sake of the person to whom one's
thought is constantly straining (the person we love), that other
person of whom we never think: ourselves? Accordingly, this
thought of my death, like the notion of my ego, seemed to me
most strange, but I did not find it at all disagreeable. Then
suddenly it struck me as being terribly sad; this was because,
reflecting that if I did not have more money at my disposal it was
because my parents were still alive, I suddenly thought of my
mother. And I could not bear the idea of what she would suffer
after my death.7

In the light of this passage, I would like to add that a confusion has
often been made between body image and ego-representation. If the
ego is a surface, or that which corresponds to the projection of a
surface, body image and ego-representation belong to different theo­
retical levels. Body image is connected with a phenomenology of
appearance. W hen one speaks of an unconscious ego-representation,
one is usually referring to what can be deduced from the projection
of an unconscious fantasy concerning the object patched (in the sense
of an item of patched clothing) on to the ego. As for the ego itself, it
is a theoretical concept and not a phenomenological description; it is
an agency. Just as it would be absurd to speak of a representation of
the id or of the super-ego, it is absurd to speak of an ego-representa­
tion. It is fair enough to speak of representatives of the id, super-ego or
eg6, that is, of mandated emanations, offshoots, or derivatives of an
agency. But the representation of an agency is theoretically untenable.
The ego works on representations and is worked on by representa­
tions, but it cannot be represented. It can, and indeed this is all it can
do, have object-representations. It is through affects that the ego gives
an unrepresentable representation of itself.

Affects and the Object: The Trauma-Object

It will be seen, then, that the problem of representations only
concerns the object, whereas the structure of affect has a double
aspect to it. It is both affect for the object and an ego-related affect,
the two sometimes becoming confused without the ego being able to
tell the difference. A few years ago, on reading M. Bouvet's paper on
'Depersonnalisation et relations d'objet',8 I was led to think about the
question of narcissistic relations and I proposed that they be given a
place apart. Since then I have changed my mind. Although there is
justification for defining a notion of the ego's relation to itself, which
W innicott was to call ego-relatedness, it is evident that this auto-egotic
relation with narcissistic connotations comes within the general
framework of object relations. To be more specific the object rela­
tionship comprises:

• object-representations and the affects that correspond to them;

• ego-related affects without ego-representation (which does not
exclude body representations).

This means that when one speaks of ego-representations, one has to

realise that this licence stops precisely where the theory begins. Ego-
representations are in fact object-representations dressed up as
ego-representations by virtue of narcissistic cathexis. This is in
keeping with Freud's phrase in which the ego, addressing the id, says:
'Look, you can love me too - I am so like the object.' The question of
narcissistic anxiety, which is so important, now takes on a different
light: phenomenologically, there is justification for describing its
manifestations; theoretically, narcissistic anxiety is anxiety linked to
objects dressed up as narcissistic objects; for strictly speaking, narcis­
sism is only aware of the affects - in the order of unpleasure - of pain,
mourning and hypochondria.
Although it would be interesting to do so, it is not possible here for
me to review the list of ego-functions in order to demonstrate that
there can be no question of there being ego-representations, but, on
the other hand, I would like to see if there is nothing but object-repre­
sentations in the ego. In Thoughts for the Times on War and Death'
(1915c) Freud considers the consequences of the loss of loved ones.
These loved ones are on the one hand an inner possession, compo­
nents of our own ego; but on the other hand they are partly strangers,
even enemies.'9 It seems to me to be much more interesting to draw
out the implications of these remarks, not in terms of ambivalence as
Freud does, but rather in terms of the relations between narcissism
and the object. From this perspective, the object, which is originally
the aim of the id's satisfactions, is in certain respects always a cause of
disequilibrium for the ego - in fact, it is a trauma. While it is true that
the ego longs for unification and that this internal unification
extends to unification with the object, total union with the object
results in a loss of ego-organisation. Moreover, when such reunifica­
tion is impossible, it disorganises the ego when the latter cannot
tolerate this separation. The trauma-object (for narcissism) thus leads
us to consider the ego not only as the seat of the effects of trauma but
also as the seat of reactions against this dependence on the object,
reactions which constitute an important part of the ego's defences,
not against anxiety, but against the object whose independent varia­
tions release anxiety. So in the series: early traumatism - defence
(both together constituting fixation) - latency - the explosion of
neurosis - partial return of the repressed, I would like to underscore
the confusion between the drive (represented by affect) and the object; for
danger comes just as much from the eruption of sexuality in the ego
as from the impingement of the object.
It is now clear, then, that the problem of the relations between ego
and object is one that concerns their limits, their coexistence. These
limits or boundaries are as much internal as external. I mean that the
limits between the ego and the object resonate or reverberate with the
limits between the ego and the id. The problem does not arise for the
super-ego, which, it will be remembered, extends from the id (its
source) to the ego (its object) in the schema Freud gives of the agencies.
That is to say that the super-ego's impingement of the ego is in fact a
disguised impingement by the id modified by the ego's development.
I must now point out what I am going to exclude from my expo­
sition: that is, the relations of the ego to psychosomatic syndromes,
which concern the relations between ego and soma through the inter­
mediary of the id (anchored in soma but distinct from it), and to
delusion, which is a product of the relations between ego, super-ego
and reality. O n the other hand, I will give particular attention to the
case of mourning. For it is in m ourning that the ego's relation to itself
materialises, since a part of the ego identifies with the lost object and
enters into conflict with the rest of the ego; regression occurs in
melancholia both at the twin levels of the id (oral cannibalistic
fixation) and of the super-ego (self-reproaches and feelings of a lack
of faorth). Nevertheless, even though these extremes are not included
in my argument, I shall not overlook the intermediate positions as I
defined them in the model I presented for borderline cases in my
London Congress paper of 1975.10

The Conflict between the Ego and the Trauma-Object

The psychoanalytic theory of the ego is particularly muddled since, as
we all know, it wavers constantly between viewing the ego as a partial
agency of the psychical apparatus and as a unitary entity, considered
as the whole of the psychical personality. I shall concern myself with
the first of these two acceptations because, even if this ambiguity is
integral to ego theory in psychoanalysis, it is nonetheless true that
the idea of a totalising unitary structure remains inconceivable for
psychoanalytic thought. W hich is why I believe it is necessary to
remain cautious in regard of psychoanalytic conceptions of the Self or
identity which are phenomenologically inspired.
If the ego is a part-agency - I am modelling this expression on that
of the part-object - we need to picture it as Freud did at the beginning
in the 'Project'; that is, as a system of constantly - or relatively constant
- cathected neurones. In my judgement, this is the meaning that
should be attributed to Freud's idea that the ego is the product of the
differentiation of a part of the id under the influence of the external
world. The apprehension of reality, even if selectively and oriented by
projective mechanisms, necessitates a relatively stable level of cathexis.
This explains why Freud regards the ego as resulting from the inhibi­
tion of unconscious representation. It would seem to me that it is even
arguable that, in addition to the idea that the ego has no representa­
tion of itself, the ego is the means by which representation can occur.
Indeed, regarding the ego as the functioning of a network of operations
- without any representation of itself - allows us to understand the
logical coherence of the set of operations: perception, representation
and identification. The latter, insofar as it is unconscious, has an inte­
grating effect, owing to the disappearance of the sensory dimension in
the first, or the imaginary dimension in the second.11
In identification, the imaginary quality is eclipsed in favour of
being-like-the-object; that is, identification does away with the
distance separating the object (perceived or represented) and the ego.
Identification is not only alienating but structuring as well, in that
the object of the identification is supposed to have attained its
stability of functioning thanks to a relatively constant level of
cathexis. This is what characterises the mother-child relationship in
the metaphor of maternal care. It is also what transference reveals
when our analysands see our lives as being ordered and peaceful,
without instinctual torments, just as the child imagines that the adult
has no difficulty whatsoever in living in peace with his drives, or that
he has the power to satisfy them completely, so that he is not subject
to frustration and is oblivious to the pangs of desire.
Now this ideal vision of the ego - that of an ideal ego - is demolished
by desire for the object. It is the lack of an object that will upset this
fragile success of the ego-organisation functioning as a network of
cathexes at a relatively constant level. The object's presence: never
more present than in the absence when it is found to be lacking, the
object is a 'mischief maker' as Freud says. Here we need to bear in m ind
its intermediate - in fact, dual - position. The object represents a cross­
roads. It is .the quest of the desires of the id which lacks an object to
satisfy it, and thus generates necessarily contradictory libidinal tensions
of love and hate. It is part of the external world, since it is there, outside
the subject, that the object is located. We have learnt from Winnicott
how the function of the transitional object partially overcomes this
twofold source of tensions. But there is yet another solution we know
of for resolving this problem: narcissism. Through the libidinal cathexis
of the ego, the latter gives itself the possibility of finding an object of
love in itself, constituted on the model of the object, and capable,
owing to the resources of auto-erotism, of obtaining the instinctual
satisfaction it is seeking. It is narcissism that makes the unitary
outcome possible, or rather the lure of a unitary outcome, via the path
of imaginary identification. This 'narcissising' process will be all the
more intense in that the invested object will prove disappointing.
Disappointment more than frustration; for it is disappointment that is
at the root of depression. Disappointment brings the depressive
movement in its wake all the more easily in that the two objects
(internal and external, maternal and paternal) have been disillusioning
too early on; they have been unreliable and deceiving. The subject has
lost his faith in them. They have become 'too real' prematurely.
Nothing remains but to rely on the resources of confidence - illusory -
that he places by way of compensation in his omnipotence.
These rather lengthy preliminary remarks were indispensable to
back up my hypothesis of the trauma-object. On the one hand, it has
been maintained, not without justification, that the trauma was not
necessarily of an external origin, that the irruption of sexuality into
the ego was a traumatism; and, on the other hand, that the introjec-
tion of instinctual impulses into the ego was a way of resolving
conflicts connected with incorporating the object. The point of view
I am putting forward here reflects a different but complementary
perspective. In speaking of the trauma-object, I mainly have in mind
the danger that the object represents for the ego insofar as its very
existence obliges the ego to modify its regime. As the object is
internal to the drive assembly, it is charged with all the instinctual
energy and fantasy there, and so tries to penetrate the ego from the
inside. O n the other hand, insofar as it is external to the drive
assembly, the object is not at the ego's disposition and so, while
conciliating the other agencies (the id, super-ego and reality), the
latter is driven to violate itself in order to emerge from its quietude
and go towards the object, just as one speaks of going to work. What's
more, and this is the most important point, the object is neither fixed
nor permanent. It is aleatory, both in time and space. Its moods, states
and desires are changing and therefore it forces the ego to make
considerable efforts to adjust. Lastly, the object has its own desires
which only partly coincide with those of the ego. It has its aim and
its object which do not necessarily tally with the sense of reciprocity
the ego wishes for. All these are sources of traumatisms, as can be seen
from the ego's incapacity to control the object. To these difficulties
may be added quantitative (and thus qualitative) problems; a sense of
'too m uch' and 'too little' surrounds the object: too present, not
present enough; too absent or not absent enough. Now while fusion
with the object is desirable, it can never be entirely achieved as the
ego disappears completely in the fusion. And although separation
allows the ego to 'breathe', the object should not be too far away nor
out of reach for too long. O n top of this there are the object's parallel
exigencies towards the ego, and the latter senses this, except in
moments of grace that are always too short, always insufficient, in the
face of these expectations.
It now becomes understandable that the object is both desirable
and undesirable at the same time - lovable and hateful - and that the
narcissistic pole prefers 'being' to 'having', although having reinforces
the sense of being. Less need for having should prepare for the uncer­
tainties involved in having; less being may provide security against
the dangers of the vicissitudes of being; narcissistic illusion being able
to make up for this suppression of provisions by 'drawing on' ego-
cathexes taken from its reserves - its 'narcissistic supplies' as they are
called.12
But narcissistic withdrawal is yet another lure; Freud showed he was
aware of this in his description of 'Libidinal Types' (1931). The narcis­
sistic character type is more independent, but also more vulnerable.
When the ego is disappointed with itself in face of the ego ideal which
becomes its object, the ideal ego loses its fragile equilibrium. Two
outcomes are possible. The first possibility is depression, owing to
disappointment in the object and, more regressively, to the ego's sense
of bankruptcy in the face of the exigencies of the ego ideal which has
taken the place of the object. The second possibility is fragmentation,
where disappointment in the object gives way to a feeling of being
persecuted by it - resulting from projective identification - in which
the ego identifies with the parts of itself that are projected, the bad ego
being identified with the object. One can see, then, that conflict
between the ego and the trauma-object is inevitable and that the
disinvestment of the object and narcissistic withdrawal expose the
subject's ego to a very threatening type of anxiety: narcissistic anxiety.

Narcissistic Anxieties and Psychotic Anxieties

As I have said, I shall not be dealing with the question of delusion
but, within the context of the relations between narcissism and
psychosis, I want to clarify the relations between narcissistic anxieties
and psychotic anxieties. This theme arises particularly in relation to
the trauma-object.
Insofar as the object is the object of the drive it is necessarily a
trauma-object. However, that is not all it is. As an external object (that
is to say, external to the drive assembly) the object has the role of
remedying the suffering it causes. A troublemaker, an alien agent,
disturbing the ego's tranquillity, the internal object can also, of
course, insofar as it is a good object, be used as a consoling, soothing
object, a 'holding-object', in the sense of Winnicott's holding. This
internal object, which may give birth to the transitional object, is
grounded in the object of the maternal care of the so-called 'good-
enough' mother, in Winnicott's terminology.
The role of the external object linked with object-love means that
the object acquires an oscillating function. W hat I mean by this is
that object-love is a transitive function in which the object is alter­
nately either the mother or the child. The child becomes the object of
the object in the illusory relation of the mother-child unity.
This continues until the day comes when this illusion makes way
for the disillusion created by awareness of the presence of the third
party, the father. He has always been there; but he has only been
present in absentia, in the mother's psyche. The new awareness of his
separate existence, which needs relating to the emerging awareness of
the mother and the child as separate beings, whose wishes no longer
completely coincide in the relation of mutual omnipotence, opens
the area of early triangulation (much earlier than the oedipal phase
proper).
However, this evolution is only possible for the child if the good-
enough mother has made full use of object-love. It is not easy to say
what object-love consists of, but anyone observing an ordinary
mother-child relationship knows what it is about. To express it in
psychoanalytic language, I would say that object-love consists in the
child investing the mother as a guarantor of well-being at a time when
the drives are activated in search of the gratification they expect from
an object situated outside the sphere of the drives. We know that the
immediate satisfaction of the drives is impossible, that frustration is
inevitable, that perfect adaptation between mother and child is a
moment of grace that does not last, if it ever existed, and that it should
rather be understood as a retroactive fantasy of an idealisation of the
past: the golden age between a speaking mother and her infans.
Everything that follows, everything that can be remembered, or
that is memorable, involves the series drive-desire-demand-frustra­
tion-postponed satisfaction, which is necessarily incomplete and
more or less adapted to desire activated by the drive. Consequently,
as far as the external object is concerned, object-love can only have
one aim and one result, except for the case which Freud called the
specific action (instinctual satisfaction); that is, rendering the drives
tolerable for the ego. It is the specific action that gives the child the
feeling that it is loved and, at the same time, constitutes positive
narcissism and a belief in object-love. Any premature satisfaction
(before the child has even become conscious of his desire), any satis­
faction given without love or delayed beyond the baby's capacities to
wait, and any diffusion of the mother's anxieties, transform this
specifically good action into a specifically bad action. W hat are the
consequences of this for the psychical apparatus?
W hen the specific action remains specifically good, the ego can
constitute the system which is specific to it, which aims to set up the
network of cathexes at a constant level and to acquire a relatively
stable organisation. The external object has played the role of a mirror,
a container, an auxiliary ego. In this case, all that remains for the ego
to do is to try and defend itself against the somewhat excessive char­
acter of certain instinctual demands. It can count on the help and
assistance of the object (external and internal) in this conflict with
the drives. If, afterwards, disappointment in the object, or in the two
objects in the oedipal configuration, forces it into narcissistic with­
drawal, it will find refuge there which is precarious, but also
protective through self-idealisation. And when this shelter, this self-
nidification, is threatened, it will experience narcissistic anxieties.
Regressive anxieties, no doubt, but regression which is not funda­
mentally destructive for psychical reality and external, material
reality.
O n the contrary, when the specific action becomes specifically bad
and the object does not fulfil its role as a mirror, container or auxil­
iary ego, a second source of conflict will be set up instead. That is to
say, instead of merely having to defend itself against the drives and
their derivatives (fantasmatic objects), the ego will have to engage in
a struggle on two fronts. On the one hand, it will continue to struggle
against the drives and, on the other, it will have to struggle against
the object. Caught in a pincer movement, it knows neither which
way to turn nor which front presents the most pressing danger, so it
employs the resources it has at its disposal; that is, it brings the
destructive drives into play. The destructive drives will act in turn on
the external object, the internal object, and even on the ego itself.
Projective identification will now be excessive. Both external reality
and internal reality will be hated (Bion). It is at this point that not
only the narcissistic anxieties of private madness but the psychotic
anxieties of public madness, that is, psychosis, will appear.
The trauma-object thus becomes a mad-object; both driven mad
and maddening, which the destructive drives will endeavour to
neutralise. In this case, narcissistic withdrawal will no longer be able
to sustain so efficiently the illusion of the ego's megalomania. That is,
narcissism, which was positive, now becomes negative. Negative in all
senses of the term. Negative in the sense of being the opposite of
positive: the good becomes bad and negative in the sense of a process
of nihilation, in which the ego and object tend towards mutual nulli­
fication. Here we are dealing with the extreme possibilities of the
psychical apparatus in the psychical sphere. Other remaining possi­
bilities are either psychosomatic regression, that is, somatic dementia,
or psychical disintegration through mental deterioration. In both
cases, the psychical dimension is overwhelmed by the somatic-
physical dim ension. Reversibility is conjectural: possible or
impossible. Destructive regression can be temporary or definitive.
W hat is probable is that reversibility will depend on the physical and
psychical care of an object which has never existed. The object in
question will not be a perfect object - perhaps only a trauma-object
which will lim it the inevitable traumatism to its imperfect adaptation
to the ego,13 without permitting anxiety, arising from its own drives,
to get mixed up in its interventions.
Having pursued my theoretical argument to its logical conclusion,
it is now time to return to less hypothetical ground by examining
Freud's text of 1926.

Affective Mnemic Signs and Symbols

The fact that Freud begins his work Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety
by making a study of the functional restrictions of the ego, in order
to distinguish them from symptoms and anxiety, shows that he was
aware of their differences. A symptom cannot be described as taking place
within the ego is the conclusion he comes to at the end of the first
chapter. Later, the ego reappears in the text as the agency which
releases anxiety when object-cathexes represent a danger for it. But
what about the case where the ego releases anxiety at the level not o f object-
cathexes but of its own cathexes? This is a case Freud did not envisage
in Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety, at least in the text itself. It is only
in the last pages of the work, in the addenda, that the differences
between anxiety, pain and m ourning appear. These are essential
distinctions in that they take narcissism into account. In fact, Freud
concludes that physical pain is narcissistic in nature, whereas
psychical pain results from the change of narcissistic cathexis to
object-cathexis (S£, XX, p. 171). Freud was at least being consistent,
for he had maintained since 1914 that hypochondria was the 'actual'
neurosis preliminary to the narcissistic neurosis of psychosis. This
idea was corrected by the distinction he made in 1924, in which
melancholia alone deserved the name of narcissistic neurosis,
whereas paranoia and schizophrenia were called psychoses.
Nonetheless, Freud's conclusion in 1926 that psychical pain is linked
to object-cathexis calls for further comment. Although Freud's
position is not at variance with that of 'Mourning and Melancholia'
(1917a [1915]) - and there is nothing to suggest that he wished to
modify his theory on this point - the object-cathexis of psychical
pain can only logically be the cathexis o f a narcissistic object.
So we have the pair 'physical pain - psychical pain' in which the
transition from narcissistic cathexis to object-cathexis (narcissistic)
locates narcissism first at the level of the body - that is, of the bodily
ego - and then at the level of the psychical ego, in a relation in which
object and ego mirror each other. But the important thing is that, in
contradistinction to anxiety, which is a signal, pain is a wound. We
have passed from the semantics of signs to a metaphorical semiology
of the narcissistic haemorrhage oozing out through the open sore of
wounded, gashed narcissism. W hich means that narcissistic unity is
compromised. From the point of view of form, the wound creates a
gaping hole; from the point of view of consistency, the ego suffers a
loss or even a depletion of its consistency. The ego's substance, if I
may say so, takes a knock. Lastly, mourning - and here we should
follow Melanie Klein - is mourning of an object, if not a whole object,
or apprehended as whole, at least one which is becoming whole. Here
again the mirror reactions between the structure of the destroyed
object and its symmetrical reparation by the ego, which identifies
with it, are remarkable.
One cannot insist enough on the differences that exist between
affect and identification. Identification, especially when it is primary
identification, is above all affective: empathetic or sympathetic, in
any case, 'pathetic'. We can understand, then, the difference between
primary identification and secondary identification. Whereas the
former belongs to the world of affect, the latter is above all the
product of representations related to desire. The desire is no longer
experienced as in the former case; it is reduced to specific features
which become features of identification in a semantic mode. An
explanation for this transition may be that the diffuse mode of iden­
tification, in the case of so-called primary identification, is substituted
for a structured mode of identification, in the case of so-called
secondary identification. In this second case, it is understandable that
language may have an appropriate part to play, since there is a certain
structure, whereas, in the first case, the massive, affective identifica­
tions have only a limited choice, the oppositions being governed by
the dual relation of pleasure-unpleasure or jouissance-pain, in
symmetrical, opposing, or complementary modes.
 This reference to semantics, to semiology, and even linguistics may
be surprising. Yet Freud's writing itself provides the justification for it.
He defines a symptom as 'a sign of, and a substitute for, an instinctual
satisfaction which has remained in abeyance' (SE, XX, p. 91). A bit
further on, he repeats his view that affective states have become
incorporated in the m ind 'as precipitates of primaeval traumatic expe­
riences, and when a similar situation occurs they are revived like
mnemic symbols' (p. 93). There is no need here to raise the question
of phylogenesis, as the ontogenetic precipitate suffices as an explana­
tion. W hat is more important is the idea of incorporation into
psychical life; precipitates of traumas from the beginnings of life are
incorporated into psychical life and serve the signal function as
mnemic symbols. Sign and symbol: Freud's writing neglects none of
the resources of a semiology which preserves semantic unity which is
sometimes based on representations and sometimes on affects.
Freud's expression 'affective symbol' (p. 94) seems to me to be highly
significant.
A few years after, in the New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis
(1933 [1932]), he pursued, in the same vein of inspiration, the
comparison which I have just suggested, when he made a correlation
between signal anxiety, with the emission of small quantities of
energy, and' thought, used to explore the external world. Thus, from
affect to thought the mnemic-semantic function is at work. What
distinguishes the different manifestations is the material which the
function mobilises, its nature and its quantity; for it is clear that the
most m inim al affect mobilises a quantity of energy which is not of
the same order as that which is used for cathecting or decathecting
representations, and, even more so, it goes without saying, the
thought that is actualised through language.
At all events, it should be noted how the ego participates in all
these operations, whether by releasing anxiety, or as the agent of
thought processes (which are the apanage of the preconscious); the
ego is at the centre of things. I should add that it is not the same func­
tions which are activated in the different cases, even though they are
united by analogical relations.
But the question which we cannot avoid asking ourselves, to the
extent that the ego and narcissism are so tightly related, not to say
consubstantial, is whether, apart from the cases described by Freud
(physical pain or hypochondria, mental pain, narcissistic injury,
depression, and let us add splitting and fragmentation), it is not
possible to complete these descriptions, or to refine them; and, above
all, to give them a theoretical formulation that is more in line with
clinical experience and post-Freudian theoretical elaborations.
 We shall have to take into consideration the vicissitudes of narcis­
sistic drive motions (that is to say, oriented towards the ego), and
narcissistic drive representatives, in order to understand the clinical
and theoretical aspects of narcissistic anxieties, as well as the way in
which they manifest themselves in analysis. This will involve exam­
ining, from the same point of view, the narcissistic side of anxiety -
even if it is linked to object-cathexes - and the anxiety found in
narcissistic structures (organisations or narcissistic personalities). I
shall try to deal with those aspects which have been studied least, but
whose importance has been recognised with a remarkable degree of
unanim ity in modern clinical psychoanalysis.
I shall propose, then, a definition of anxiety from a modern
perspective:

Anxiety is the noise which interrupts the silent continuum of the sense of
existing through the exchange o f information with oneself or with others.
This noise is a form of information belonging to a code which should be
translated into the code governed by the relations o f language and thought
in their relationship to desire; so as to increase the information of this latter
system which, like any system, has functions, and therefore, limits. First
and foremost, then, anxiety poses the problem of the lim it between the codes
of one and the same subject or between two subjects.

Two strategies are then possible:

(a) either one can include all the unpleasant or distressing affective
phenomena under the term 'anxiety7; or,
(b) one can reserve a specific meaning for anxiety, distinguishing it,
as Freud does, from other distressing affects.

In the second case, there is a constant interaction between the two

registers.
For the time being, let us put this definition to one side and turn
our attention to one of the most extreme forms of the relations
between anxiety and narcissism, that is, psychical pain.

Psychical Pain
At a Congress a few years ago, the British Psychoanalytic Society
proposed as a subject of discussion: 'Psychical Pain7.14
As J.-B. Pontalis pointed out at the time, the experience of pain is
one of a 'body-ego7,15 the psyche changing into body and the body
into psyche. The circumstances in which I have been able to observe
psychical pain enable me to describe the following constellation:
(a) Pain is caused by a disappointment experienced in a state o f unpre­
paredness, which makes it closer to traumatic neurosis than to
frustration or privation. Saying that it is linked to object-loss is less
important than emphasising the subject's unpreparedness, due to
scomatisation and the denial of signs of change in the object up
to the point when denial can no longer be maintained. It always
comes like a clap of thunder in a clear sky, even if the sun has been
obscured by clouds for weeks. W hat is intolerable is the change in
the object which obliges the ego to change correspondingly.
(b) Pain results from the object's sequestration, in a manner akin to
hypochondria, except that it is a psychical object and not an
organ that is involved. Or rather, the ego encysts itself with the
object, m aintaining an algesic unity in which it seeks to imprison
it. Pain is the result of the internal object's struggle to free itself,
whereas the ego hounds it and is bruised by the contact with it.
For in the last analysis, the ego merely injures itself since the
sequestered object no longer exists; it is the shadow of an object.
The ego is like a desperate child banging his head against a wall.
Unlike in melancholy, there is no sense of unworthiness and self-
berating, but a feeling of being wronged, and of injustice.
(c) The object's sequestration and the internal pain which acts like a
constant spur provides a picture of contrasts in which discreet
external signs (owing to an affect of shame) are set against a perma­
nent internal storm.
(d) There is a contradiction in the ego's structure between the remark­
able possibilities for sublimation accompanying an object relationship
marked by idealisation as well as denial, and the cleavage o f drives in
the primitive state. Narcissistic sensibility is refined; object sensi­
bility is brute.
(e) A common defence against psychical pain is the moving o f spatial
limits: wandering or travelling. The displacement is put into
action, in a quest for an unknown space, whereas internal
v displacement is impossible; psychical space being taken up by the
sequestration of the phantom object.
(f) Regressing to the past assumes a paradoxical form. Whereas a
change in the object is unforeseeable, owing to the fact that time
is denied, anticipation now dominates. For when all is said and
done it is an intolerance of change both in the ego and in the
object which is the main characteristic of psychical pain. The
reason for this is that change goes against the permanence and
continuity of the unitary narcissistic organisation in space as well
as in time.
(g) This state of psychical pain is the product of what Masud Khan
called cumulative trauma. Owing to the ego's narcissistic structure,
 this cumulative trauma is overcome through denial. W hen the
most important narcissistic wound is reopened, the internal state
is, as Freud described, one of a continuous internal traumatic
experience. W innicott spoke of reactive behaviour. Following
him, I shall speak of reactive internal psychic functioning. In fact this
reactivity functions symmetrically, blow by blow. Defence takes
the form, then, of a reactive primary identification or, in the most
serious cases, of a more or less reactive confusional depersonalisation.
An exploration of the past reveals that character formations stem
less from precise drive orientations than from reactive formations
to the object's drives. The reaction does not so much concern the
drives of the subject, which there is an attempt to reduce to
silence, as the drives of the object, which are hated for their new
orientation or the change in their mode of expression. Likewise,
the internal world is relatively uncathected, whereas external
reality - a source of permanent dangers - is hyper-cathected.
(h) Faced with the dangers provoked by the change in the object,
attempts are made to control it. The contradiction is perhaps that
it is a question of both controlling the object and of being
controlled by it. In other words, the subject imprisons the object
by making himself the object's prisoner too. The roles are
inverted, as we have seen, once the narcissistic wound has
become an open sore, making the object's sequestration indis­
pensable and creating 'psychical hypochondria'. The aim of this
sequestration, which can be accompanied by projective identifi­
cation, is to reconstitute the lost unity with the object by creating
an internal complementarity. The result of this feat is that one is
dealing with subjects who appear on the face of it to be 'normal',
insofar as this adjective has any meaning for a psychoanalyst, but
who are living with an internal infirmity, a receptacle for trauma-
objects which 'vamparise' the hypnotised ego. Hence the
difficulty of determining the psychopathological structure.

What is the metapsychological explanation for this structure? I will

provide a hypothetical model. The narcissistic subject can never take
the risk, for fear of exhaustion or 'impingement' by the object
(Winnicott), of cathecting the object fully in self-abandonment.
Abandoning oneself implies having confidence in the situation in
which one is abandoning oneself to the object's love. The object can
be loved; opening oneself to the object is perilous. If, under these
conditions which are frustrating for the object, the latter turns away
or leaves in search of another object (the object of the object), the ego
experiences narcissistic rage (Kohut) and homosexual feelings
towards the rival. All contact with the object, insofar as such contact
suggests a homosexual relationship with the rival (the object of the
object) or a destructive contact through the disappointment inflicted,
is suspended. As if this were not enough, a change in the orientation
of cathexes takes the form of a reversal with a vacuum effect,
'returning' the cathexes towards the ego. Narcissistic withdrawal is
the corollary of withdrawing cathexes from the object. Unknown to
the subject, the next thing to happen in this deflection of cathexes,
or this internal reorientation, is that, without realising it, the ego
brings the object back into its net, but it is an empty object, a
phantom object. Henceforth, the object's sequestration, which I have
been discussing, becomes the focus of a merciless struggle in which
the ego, believing it is bruising the object, merely succeeds in bruising
itself. The object's narcissistic status, woven into the ego's web, simply
results in making the tear in the web greater. This explains the
negative cathexis, a cathexis of the hole left by the object, as if this
hole were the only reality. W innicott expressed this by saying that the
negative of one person is more real than the positive of another; that
is to say, of any substitute object. The blindness of the paralysed and
painful ego is all the more understandable insofar as it cannot see the
object, since the object is not on the web, the surface on which it is
inscribed, but is the very weft of this woven surface. Instead of an
insight, we have a 'painsightJ. In French, instead of an introvision, we
have an algovision. This investing of the 'negative side of relation­
ships' (Winnicott) shows a remarkable intolerance to mourning, since
losing the object is equivalent to losing oneself, the object being the
source of any esteem the ego has for itself. In these cases, the aim of
analysis is to bring about a psychical rebirth - or perhaps even a birth
- by means of 'growing pains' (Bion). This can only be accomplished
by tolerance of the unintegrated state; that is, by abandoning narcis­
sistic mastery and control of the object. The unintegrated state is
different from the disintegrated state (Winnicott). The ego struggles
against this anti-unitary threat, since the object and the ego are but
one. Pain is a kind of safeguard, a state of alert, a means of existence
for survival, without real life, when the ego is faced with its contin­
gency, experienced as futility.
These remarks give me serious reason to doubt Freud's assertion in
Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety, according to which negative
cathexis has no place in the unconscious. I am equally doubtful about
his claim - and here he was personally concerned, because he himself
was prone to it - that fainting leaves no trace in the unconscious. On
the contrary, I believe that the decathexis involved in fainting is not
confined to reliving an experience of fusion, but also creates an ex­
perience of a breach, of emptiness, which pierces a hole in the
unconscious, whose counter-cathexes become active around the
edges of the gaping wound to prevent the return or the extension of
such an affective experience. Negative hallucination is the equivalent
of it at the level of representation.
I must add that it is not only the experience of loss which is at the
forefront here but also that of the unknown life of the changing
object.16 If the object has changed without the ego noticing the
change, it means that the object was, in fact, not known. It was
unknowable, and thus unpredictable. W hich amounts to saying that
it was an autonomous object and not a narcissistic object. And this is
what is intolerable for the ego which considers it alternately as a part
of itself and as an absolute stranger; that is, both Same and Other.
This unknowability of the object forces the ego to confront its own
unknown aspects, which its narcissism seals off. Various means are
available: it can construct a neo-reality by means of projective identi­
fication: deluding itself; or, it can experience the pain of the unknown
in itself which reflects what is unknown in the object and seek the
soothing and re-fusioning end, that is, dying. The analyst therefore
has to navigate between Scylla and Charybdis: he has to be the
support for a delusional transference or of a deadly transference. It is
not necessary for the analysand to go as far as committing suicide to
achieve that. Psychical death, embalming the ego and the object in
the inert, is quite enough to carry out this programme.
The object of the analysis in the setting should neither be in the
analysand or in the analyst, but in the potential space between them,
in a new form of reunion which makes it possible to accede to the
metaphor o f the object, which is simply the object of the link between
them; neither mine nor yours but linking.

The Blank

In 1973, with Jean-Luc Donnet, I described 'blank psychosis' (la

psychose blanche).17 At the time, I wondered if in analysing a case
which would certainly come under the category of the 'exception'
according to Freud (and the exception is always linked to a narcis­
sistic wound), I had not described a teratological singularity without
general validity. But experience has delivered me of my scepticism. I
would like to make a few points about the ambiguity of the French
word blancheur. Blanche, in the sense in which I am using it, comes
from the English 'blank',18 which means an unoccupied, empty space
(not printed, for example, for the signature on a form or the sum on
a blank cheque, carte blanche). The Anglo-Saxon term comes from
the French blanc, which designates a colour.19 The French, for its
part, comes from Occidental German: blank, which means clear,
polished. Blank has supplanted the Latin word albus. Among the
derivatives are listed blanchir (to whiten), deblanchir (to remove the
white) and reblanchir (to make something white again). The word
aubin has become albumin, egg white; which brings us back to
narcissism. Moreover the Dictionnaire erotique, by Pierre Guiraud,
gives two meanings for white: (1) sperm, no doubt, says the author,
in the sense of 'egg white', and (2) a woman's sexual organs, which
links up with psychoanalytic conceptions on feminine castration and
the vagina.
W hat we have here, then, is a semantic bifurcation: the colour, the
Latin word albus, and emptiness, the Anglo-Saxon word blank. How
are these two senses associated? B. Lewin has described the blank
screen in dreams and the blank dream. For Lewin, the blank screen is
an oneiric representation of the breast after falling asleep following a
satisfying feed. The blank dream is an empty dream; that is, without
representation, but with affect. There is therefore a relation of
symmetry, complementarity and opposition between the breast as a
hallucinatory wish-fulfilment and the negative hallucination of the
breast. This is the hypothesis I argued in favour of in The Fabric of
Affect in the Psychoanalytic Discourse,20 prior to my description of
'blank psychosis', where I said that they are the two sides of the same
coin.
W hen the word blanc denotes the colour, it calls for black: 'the
secret blackness of milk', the reverse of 'the sweet milk of human
tenderness'. In Freudian theory, this black can be evocative of
violence or sadism. But black also represents nocturnal space, the
space of the disappearing object: breast, mother, mother's penis. In
this way, the semantics of colour link up with the semantics of form:
black represents depopulated, empty space. The primal scene in the
darkness echoes this disappearance of forms - with the intrusion of
noises. The word blanc represents, then, the invisible21 whereas its
semantic opposite is the light of dawn, dissipating nocturnal anxieties
but announcing the arrival of depressive feelings: 'Yet another day.'
\Vhat happens in blank psychosis? The ego carries out a decathexis
of representations which leaves it facing its constitutive emptiness.
The ego disappears in face of the intrusion of the excess noise which
needs to be reduced to silence. The stool which the Wolf Man passes
during the primal scene is polysemic in nature. Alongside the anal
erotic excitement procured by the onlooker, alongside the mother's
expulsion, I want to add the subject's self-expulsion. 'I don't care
because that drives me mad.'
It is not possible to conceive o f the mother's jouissance without the child.
Rather than developing this theoretically, I would prefer to relate the
words of a patient - she is English and there is no chance of her
having read my work - who said to me one day: 'All I know is that at
times I feel empty and I just have to be with someone at any cost';
then, after a pause, 'But maybe the emptiness can't be filled because
it's w ithin me and because there's no object that can fill it.' A few
months later she gave a precise description of her fear of nocturnal
solitude. 'At night, when I am alone, I can't sleep; I sit down and I just
can't stay there; my m ind is blank and I can't think. Then, I feel some­
thing in my stomach and I try desperately to make my m ind and my
stomach meet and I bend forward to make them meet up and it
doesn't work. As I can't work, I telephone somebody.'
This impossibility of thinking, accompanied by a dual feeling of
total separation, of intolerable solitude and bodily impulsion, is
described in the theory at the end of Chapter II and the beginning of
Chapter III of The Ego and the Id. Having considered the transition
from the unconscious to the preconscious by the linking of mnemic
residues of things with mnemic residues of words, Freud defines the
ego as a bodily surface - and he stops there. Then, in the next
chapter, he changes his theoretical register and tackles the problem
of the object in relation to melancholy and the role played in it by
incorporation. This theoretical leap between language and the object
is precisely what occurs in narcissistic and borderline structures
where the subject, lacking representation, and noticing his failure of
words, carries out a mutation and switches over to the level of
objects, in particular oral objects. The failure of phallic fixations
which language upholds - and which also involves the m outh -
reduces the subject to a metaphorical orality materialised in the
body. The breast invades the stomach occupying the empty space left
by representation. It is noteworthy that anxiety does not manifest
itself as such, but rather as a void. A void that is instituted to counter
the desire to be invaded by the instinctual object which is in danger
of making the ego disappear.
The relation between the blank and the drive motion can thus be
understood as the simultaneous interaction between a radical rupture
with the object and a decathexis of representation, with the intrusion
into the uncathected (unoccupied) space of a drive motion arising
from the part of the id which is most firmly rooted in the somatic
sphere. The two stages appear to be successive. In fact, the extreme
rapidity of this circular process is such that it is not possible to speak
of successiveness (it is only conceivable in the description made by
the subject apres coup); but, on the contrary, everything suggests that
there is a quasi-simultaneity, the blank operating against the intrusive
motion, the latter being understood simply as the effect of filling the
blank. The important thing is the disappearance of the mediation
offered either by representation or by identification. In the cases I am
describing, it is the movement which is essential.
Construction of the Ego and Narcissistic Structure
The ego, says Freud, is an organisation; it is this feature which distin­
guishes it from the id, which has none. This organisation, a
characteristic which is by no means negligible, is closely linked with
the fact that its energy has been desexualised (Inhibitions, Symptoms
and Anxiety, (1926 [1925]) p .14). Now Freud often linked the differ­
ence between object-cathexis and narcissistic cathexis with
desexualisation. In other words, the narcissistic process in which the
drives are redirected towards the ego is only achieved by means of a
relative desexualisation (as with sublimation), necessary for ego func­
tioning. It accounts for the corollary fact of the vulnerability of the
ego which, when it becomes disorganised, collapses22 (cf. 'Libidinal
Types', 1931). It would seem, then, that the energy converted by
desexualisation serves to constitute the specific aspect of ego-
cathexes: self-preservation, assuring its limits and its cohesion,
reinforcing its consistency (in all senses of the word), and so on.
Above all, this narcissistic process guarantees the ego's functioning
through the love that it has for itself: its faith in itself, if I may put it
like that. There are numerous parameters involved here: they include
the notions of the constancy of cathexes; freely circulating energy;
the sense of being distinct and separate from the object; the limited
permeability of its frontiers; the capacity to resist intrusions by the
object and its unpredictable variations; internal solidity and a toler­
ance of partial and temporary regressions, provided that the state
prior to regression can be restored, and so on.
This idyllic view of the ego is completely utopian. Counter­
balancing it is the narcissistic pride of autonomy with regard to the
object: self-sufficiency, the necessity to be permanently in control, the
tendency to megalomania and, finally, its 'captation' by imaginary
identifications, as Lacan rightly pointed out. All of which leads us to
conclude that the ego is characterised by an essential duplicity which is
inherent to its functioning in its status of serving several masters: the
id for which it has to provide real satisfactions; the super-ego to which
it has to submit; and external reality to which it has to attach great
importance. But these three masters, which require costly servitude,
are perhaps a lesser evil than the most tyrannical of the agents of
subjection which we have not discussed as yet; that is, the ego ideal,
the heir of primary narcissism. For the ego's well-being, its ataraxy, its
tranquillity for accomplishing its ideal tasks, are no longer states char­
acterised by a blessed sense of security, but imperatives. The ego has to
feel at peace - a futile quest if ever there was one and, moreover, one
that is dangerous, for nothing resembles peace more than the mortifi­
cation of sclerosis, a forewarning of psychical death.
 The ego is thus caught between compulsion and synthesis which,
notably, is a source of narcissism since it is responsible for the aspira­
tion to bind and unify itself and, owing to its dependence on the id,
the desire to be but one with the object. W hen obstacles, wherever
they may come from, stand in the way of the realisation of this unity
of two in one, the ego is left with the solution of identification which
achieves a compromise between ego and object.
It is now that the ego's contradiction becomes apparent: it wants
to be itself, but it can only achieve this project with the libidinal
contribution of the object with which it wishes to be united. It
becomes its captive. Imaginary 'captation' (Lacan) then alienates it in
its ideal identifications, any questioning of which triggers a serious
sense of failure, of transgression, or, rather, of a narcissistic flaw.
The question I am going to approach now will lead us to consider
the consequence of narcissistic scars. In fact, the word 'scar' is inap­
propriate. It is more a question of adhesions than scars; that is to say,
of sensitive, vulnerable zones, insofar as they are likely to revive pain.
When, in an acute and sub-acute state, a chronic form of organisation
sets in, it tends to create a narcissistic, protective and preventative
carapace against traumas; but at the price of a mortifying sclerosis
which undermines the pleasure of living. Coldness, distance and
indifference become efficient shields against the blows received from
the object. This arrangement which constitutes a psychical protective
shield, is not however without its shortcomings. Achilles had his heel,
and Siegfried the area of skin where the sword could penetrate. I
would even say that what characterises narcissistic structure is this
weak point in the armour, or coat of arms; a weak point that is soon
pinpointed by the object who suffers from being kept at a distance
and excluded from a close relationship, which is frozen by the narcis­
sistic subject. That this relationship of deprivation forces the object to
find the flaw, is merely the normal response of the shepherd to the
shepherdess. Taking vengeance is tempting for the object, especially
as the subject, contrary to what he believes, exhibits his weak point
in a provocative manner, as if he were appealing unconsciously for
this blow aimed at injuring him. A dilemma arises here between
narcissistic castration anxiety and anxiety linked to penetrating the
fantasmatic vagina. But it has to be realised that the fantasmatic
gaping hole is in no way a cul-de-sac, but rather a bottomless chasm.
Driven back on to his extreme defences, the subject is then caught
between separation anxiety, which signifies the loss of the object, and
intrusion anxiety, that is, the danger of being invaded by it, where the
desire for fusion is synonymous with being devoured by the object. In
other words the object is either lost, that is, dead, as far as the subject
is concerned, or phantom-like, that is, transformed into a vampire
thirsty for blood.
Subjected to these dangers, the narcissistic carapace, on the one
hand, protects the ego and feeds its omnipotent illusion of being free
of the object, thus bolstering its sense of ideal self-sufficiency, and, on
the other, has to deal with both separation and intrusion anxiety.
Intermediate measures are necessary in order to carry out the tasks
acquired by the signal function. However, the tendency to function
in an all-or-nothing mode will always be there. To counter this way of
functioning, there is only one possibility: the constitution in the
unconscious of a complex of object representations and affects
(fantasy) accompanied by the function of signal anxiety. On the basis
of this matrix a possibility emerges for the world of representation to
acquire autonomy through the formation of a singular language with
a twofold function: language, as 'translation', in the widest sense of
the word (dependent on objects), and language as an object which
speaks only of itself and represents thought.

Useful Distance and Effective Difference

W hat I have just been saying seems to me to provide a foundation for
Bouvet's theory of object relations in which he introduced the
concept of distance. Time did not allow Bouvet the chance to explore
this concept in more depth; a concept that goes much further than
the point to which he had developed it when he left it to us. Further,
in Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety Freud wrote that faced with an
im pending external danger 'all that the subject is doing is to increase
the distance between himself and what is threatening him ' (SE, XX,
p. 146). But he adds that repression does something more than this
when faced with a threatening instinctual process: 'it somehow
suppresses it or deflects it from its aims and thus renders it innocuous'
(ibid.). This does not, however, resolve the issue. There are two
remarks I wish to make at this point: everything depends on the rela­
tions of internal distance between the elements which have been
subject to the process of defence, the distance of which governs the
intelligibility of the analysand's discourse. M inim al distance creates
an effect of compression (Bion) which is very different from conden­
sation; maximal distance creates a laxity in the discursive fabric such
that the analytic material becomes very difficult to understand.
Furthermore, when we observe certain borderline structures we
frequently see that the spatial distance from the object has to be
established materially, that is to say, put into effect in reality. I
remember a young woman who had got herself appointed to the
Diplomatic Corps in order to be sent away as far as possible from her
father, to whom she was bound by fantasmatic incestuous relations,
and from her mother, with* whom she had a fusional relationship.
Needless to say, a few months after her posting, she became
depressed, was repatriated and had to go into a clinic. After falling in
love with a colleague, a period of erotomania, bouts of delusion and
recurrent psychiatric consultations followed. More than absolute
distancing, it was the idea of materialising events which was the
dom inant factor in her defence against anxiety. Similarly, in another
case, a young woman saw her narcissistic ambitions collapse after
being unsuccessful at a grande ecole, which had been the only way of
gaining recognition in the eyes of her father, a top-ranking civil
servant, and of her belittling mother. This failure plunged her into a
state of depression in which the narcissistic wound led her to make
serious attempts on her own life. She nonetheless became a distin­
guished sinologist, enthusiastically adopting the Taoist religion to
which she was initiated in China; but which she also practised at
home in Paris, converting the other members of her family.
In fact, useful distance and effective difference are the necessary
conditions for the ego's functioning in relation to the id, the super­
ego and reality. By useful distance I mean the internal distance where
the object can be used to meet the subject's demand. This brings to
m ind Winnicott's article The Use of an Object'23 in which he shows
how some analysands are unable to use the analyst or, in other cases,
are only able to use him to repeat the deficiencies of the environ­
ment; or again, as a support for repeated acts of destruction followed
by as many resurrections which satisfy both the object's destructive
omnipotence and sense of his own immortality. By effective differ­
ence, I mean the difference in free association between the elements
which are associated with the aim of facilitating the associative
process in a rapport of closure-disclosure that is optimal for the work
at the heart of analytic association. Analytic association, which others
call the therapeutic alliance, is the functioning en couple of the
analytic work, the importance of which Freud only seemed to appre­
ciate belatedly in 'Constructions in Analysis' (1937b), after 'Analysis
Terminable and Interminable' (1937a).
W hen useful distance and effective difference are replaced by an
unusable distance or an ineffective difference, the problem arises of
the functions of repression in their relations to the unconscious,
which are both constitutive of unconsciousness as well as its guardian.
This is certainly the case in neurosis; but its explanatory value remains
insufficient where borderline cases and narcissistic structures are
concerned, for which the concept of splitting seems more fruitful.
Repression is conceived of as a specific defence against sexuality and
castration anxiety. Freud declares that, while the infant does have a
propensity for anxiety, this first decreases before breaking out again at
the oedipal stage. He is saying, then, two things: that the normal
infant does not experience anxiety, properly speaking, before the
Oedipus complex, but also that castration anxiety is inevitable, normal
- normative, so to speak. W hen he writes, 'Eros desires contact because
it strives to make the ego and the loved object one, to abolish all spatial
barriers between them' (.Inhibitions, SE, XX, p. 121), he is pointing out
that contact is the common point between Eros and the destructive
drives; but, at the same time, he is implying that the Oedipus complex
inevitably contains within it the germ of the fear of castration, contact
being impossible: erotic contact with the desired object, destructive
contact with the rival. However, he also asks himself: 'Is it absolutely
certain that fear of castration is the only motive force of repression (or
defence)?' (ibid., p. 122). In fact, he is raising the question, implicitly,
of the prototypes or precursors of castration anxiety. Are these anxi­
eties related solely to object-libido? I doubt it.

Limits
Although repression is the most important structuring and defensive
mechanism enabling the ego to stabilise its organisation and ensuring
that cathexes circulate freely within it, it should be noted that the
cathexes which repression keeps away from the ego are essentially
object-cathexes. The question which arises, then, is to know whether
it is also repression which is at work when one is talking about ego-
cathexes. Repression, Freud points out, is the equivalent for the
internal world of what the protective barrier is for the external world.
It therefore seems logical to me to postulate that repression can be
conceived of as having two functions. O n the one hand, it keeps
object-cathexes, which may threaten the ego's organisation, at a
distance; on the other hand, on its outermost surface (just as a glove
has an inner surface in contact with the hand and an outer surface in
contact with the external world), repression constitutes a protective
layer whose function is to safeguard the limits or borders it gives the
ego. A sort of moving limit, subject to variation which has a certain
amount of play. The permeability of this limit is not constant; it can,
and indeed must, increase in what Bouvet called the rapprocher de
rapprochement, just as it can, and must, in face of any serious threat to
narcissism, draw itself in, reinforce itself, and even turn itself into a
carapace when the wound (narcissistic) is looming on the horizon.
And this is the right moment to recall that traumatic neurosis comes
about by surprise since signal anxiety has not come into operation due
to the ego's unpreparedness. The ego is not pre-pared (pre-pare24); it is
not ready to fend for itself. It is not inconceivable that masochistic
jouissance strives on each occasion to reconstitute the penetration, and
even the breach of the ego by means of the painful trauma, although
the latter is perhaps less painful than anaesthesia (erotic or aggressive)
and even, at a pinch, than aphanisis created by the loss of the object.
There is, then, a lim iting function, or a function bordering on
repression, which makes it an ego function both on the inside (in the
proximity of the id) and on the outside (in the proximity of reality
and the object). Analytic experience shows that, owing to projection,
these two limits sometimes tend to become but one.
The problem is to know how the advantage created by having
limits will overcome the drawbacks of losing limitlessness through
separating what is now on one side and the other. That is to say,
through having constituted an other, a difference. The solution
consists, on the one hand, in securing the consistency of the two
territories and, on the other, of finding ways to make them com m u­
nicate without trapping oneself in the dilemma of invasion and
evasion, that is, of the loss of proximity, the loss of the fellow man,
the Other. It means the way is open to the constitution of narcissistic
objects and transitional objects which, paradoxically, transcend the
difference Same-Other, Existing-Non-existing, Being-Non-being.
Consequently, the debate over the differences between borderline
cases and narcissistic structures seems to me to be very relative. One
way of settling the debate is to regard them all as classical borderline
cases primarily involving drives oriented towards the object, whereas
narcissistic organisations pose the problem of cathexes directed
towards the ego. Both face us with the unique question of the vicissi­
tudes of counter-cathexes and their different modalities - the object
and narcissistic dimensions forming reverse sides of the same reality.
This is why I continue to think that the mechanism of the double
reversal, which I described in 1966, guarantees this lim iting function
by opening two sub-spaces which are inter-communicating: that of
object-cathexes and that of narcissistic-cathexes. It is up to the
analyst to identify in the course of the transference which of the two
sub-spaces he is dealing with predominantly. It is important not to
mistake the nature of these cathexes too often.
Clinical indications such as the subject's anxiety, the particular
themes of the transference material and the defences involved, in
particular the language used by the analysand, can be of help to us
here.

Anxiety Linked to the One

It seems to me that what has been called narcissistic regression only
goes a small way towards characterising what I am trying to describe.
It is not necessary to outline the features of this again as everyone will
recall them without difficulty.
If we accept, as Freud has already pointed out, that in narcissism,
the ego seeks to be loved as its own ideal, it follows that the nature of
the love which the ego has for itself constitutes a system that is as
closed as possible. This division, the ego's love o f loving itself (Thou
shalt love thy neighbour as thyself is a commandment that is diffi­
cult to live up to, says Freud), or again the ego loving itself by loving
(when object-love is involved), is suggestive of self-sufficient self-love
and of a unity dually divided or o f a duality multiplied unitarily (1 :1 =
1, 1 x 1 = 1). It should be noted that these mathematical expressions
are psychologically contradictory, or at least paradoxical: there is
division which divides nothing, and multiplication which multiplies
nothing, in such a way that unity exists at the end of the operation
just as it does at the beginning. This is because unity must be
preserved at any price, and also because any deep breach of this unity
divides or multiplies into n parts (fragmentation). Neither into two,
nor into three, nor into any finite number. This is an appropriate
m om ent to refresh our memories of the difference between the ego
and the subject. The subject persists, even in the form of n, by contin­
uing to preserve relations between the n elements, whereas the
unitary ego is shattered into bits. Consequently, the problem of
anxiety comprises:

• the danger of unity

• duplication
• the unlimited infinite
• fragmented bits (the diasparagmos)
• annihilation = reducing to nothingness.

The last two of these present us with an opposition, which I think is

crucial, between chaos (diasparagmos) and nothingness (or nadir).
W hat does the ego want? It wants to be left in peace, to ignore the
external world - a source of excitation - and the internal world, as
soon as the phase of the purified pleasure-ego is over. W innicott
opened up a new area in psychopathology by creating the clinical
theory of dependency and the struggle against dependency, the quest
for autonomy; that is to say, etymologically speaking, the right under
a foreign occupation to govern oneself according to one's own laws. I
have often observed this in the course of certain analyses which
brought a very rich degree of instinctual material to what I thought
was the transference. The interpretation of this material was well
accepted by the analysand as long as the interpretation did not make
explicit reference to the transference; but it was regularly rejected
when it was formulated as an interpretation of the transference. In
other words, the analysand was quite prepared, as a result of the
analysis, and even in the analytic situation, to experience all kinds of
very rich feelings, even towards the analyst, whatever these erotic or
aggressive feelings were. W hat he could not accept was that the
analyst was the cause, the source and the object of these affects. He
had to be the only one involved. Goethe said: T love you, is that any
concern of yours?' I love (you). Ultimately, one could do away with
the 'you'; i love' is what is essential. W ho? That is contingent. In all
cases the ego saves its unity by negating the impact of the object, the
object as the cause of desire (Lacan).
W hen the transference towards the object exceeds the ego's
capacity for containing it, then a certain number of characteristic
themes emerge. W hile the theme of the mirror has been discussed
abundantly by analysts, that of transparency has received little atten­
tion. 'Between you and me there seems to be a glass wall, a
transparent mirror, separating us.' I have been struck by the frequency
with which this material has been observed by other analysts. One of
Anne-Marie Sandler's patients said to her: 'For me your words are like
the rain beating on the window panes but they do not penetrate
inside the house.' Roy Shafer talked to me one day about a patient
who told him he felt like a mirror which was slowly, slowly, cracking.
It is as though these patients felt threatened like the driver of a car
following a lorry on a road that has recently been resurfaced: the tiny
bits of grit flying up lightly into the windscreen transform it (or the
protective shield) into a spider's web.

Anxiety Linked to the Couple

The second figure is that of the mirror - a two-way mirror through
which one can see without being seen - enabling the analysand to
gain the advantage he believes the analyst has over him, and inducing
him to repress the most significant associations by inviting the analyst
to speak in his place: 'Say something, anything.' One day I understood
from a patient that this appeal was a repetition of the mutism in her
childhood. In order to defend herself against what she called her
mother's 'antennae', who understood her even when she said nothing,
the only way of protecting her autonomy was by developing a peculiar
thought process which thwarted her mother's intrusion, that is, no
meant yes and yes meant no, which made the analysis of her repres­
sion extremely complicated. She had created a private algebra in
which the minus sign replaced the plus sign, no taking the place of
yes. This went far beyond the function of repression. More than a
negation, it was a question of surviving by means of the resistance
which guaranteed her separate existence though a subverted and
subversive way of thinking about her representations and affects.
Everything was spoilt when hate towards the object upset this balance
and made her run the risk either of losing the object, or of being perse­
cuted in turn by the object through projective identification.
Elsewhere, the mirror is true to its nature, that is, all the figures of
duplication are represented in the imaginary relationship: total
identity between the analyst and analysand, similitude, complemen­
tarity, opposition, their variations being of little importance. W hat is
crucial is that the combination of the affects and representations of
the two partners in the analytic couple adds up to a perfect totality, in
the image of a perfect sphere whose centre is everywhere and the
circumference nowhere; a sphere which is smooth and absolutely
round, without the slightest roughness or irregularity. W hich amounts
to saying that the subject is trying to find the ideal mother, perfectly
adapted to the needs of the infans, with whom she is but one.
At this point I would like to make a clinical remark on homosexu­
ality and the narcissistic object. For many patients - among whom a
high proportion of women, for reasons which are inherent to the
primordial object relationship and feminine identity - assuming the
heterosexual position comes up against an obstacle that is difficult to
overcome: the heterosexual object cannot be assimilated because it is
foreign, completely different. Homosexual regression is in fact
governed by narcissism, which seeks at any price to find the Same (or
the homosexual counterpart), as if changing the object involved the
risk of losing the homosexual object, an object satisfying narcissistic
requirements.
These figures of duality appear in diverse clinical structures: the
patient with her private algebra was seized by indescribable anxieties
as she left the hairdresser's when the latter had not entirely fulfilled
her narcissistic plan, which was aimed at presenting her mother with
the splitting image of a 'rebellious street urchin', which was quite
sirrtply how she thought her mother saw her. Her mother had had a
miscarriage; the dead child was, of course, a boy. However conflictual
her relationship with her mother may have been, marked as it was by
alternation, intrusion and separation, for a long while the latter
remained the only object she could invest. Any interpretation which
suggested a paternal transference provoked anxiety, the father being
loaded with all the mother's projections and the vagina being threat­
ened by a destructive penis. Following a fantasy of capturing my penis
by actively raping me - a fantasy which was analysed and accepted,
since she took an active role in it - she had a distressing dream, a
nightmare in which her mother and her sister 'just walked into her
flat and went through her drawers'. This woke her up in a state of
raging anguish. After analysing this dream, the day before my
summer vacation, her sense of peace returned and she expressed her
gratitude. But unfortunately, as it happened, she had a flood in her
flat. She was in a state of panic and telephoned me after her last
session, saying, 'It's incredible, my fantasies are coming true'.
Particularly as two years before she had had a dream in which the
ceiling crumbled, letting through a flow of faecal matter which her
mother was trying to get rid of with a spoon. She had said to her: 'But
Mum, that's not the solution.' After the vacation, during which many
things had happened, there was another flood and a renewed state of
panic. This time I understood that she was confusing the boundaries
of her ego with the walls of her flat. But this remained less awful than
the fact that her neighbour was called M.G— , representing the initial
letter of her mother and father's first name. She had completely split
off the fact that I was also M. G— , (Monsieur Green) which brought
about an immediate regression. She had the fantasy of curling up in
my arms, in her mother's arms.

Anxiety Linked to the Ensemble

Lastly, I shall discuss anxiety linked to the ensemble. That is to say,
anxiety related to dispersion, fragmentation and breaking-up, against
which the defence of depersonalisation is established. This form of
anxiety is not the fear of emptiness, that is, of nothingness, but the
fear of chaos. It often finds outward expression in a total lack of
material order in life: the syndrome of living in a shambles, in a living
area to which strangers are not admitted. An area which is sometimes
confined to rooms that are closed to visitors, with closed drawers,
which even close relatives are not allowed to open, or a cupboard left
in an indescribable mess, out of sight. Unlike in 'housewife neurosis',
it is the psyche which is represented in these contents.
Fragmentation-anxiety has been discussed so extensively in
psychoanalytic literature that there is no need for me to enlarge on it
here. It has principally been described by authors who have been
interested in psychotic structures and has become synonymous with
the threat of psychosis. This is only true up to a certain point. We
need to bear in m ind that this temptation of fragmentation is not
always a sign of ego-regression, implying a danger of psychosis.
Depersonalisation is a defence against psychosis, not a psychotic
state. Temporary fragmentation can also be a defence against depres­
sion. It can be sought after in an almost perversely hedonistic manner
in drug addiction. Hysterics, we know, have an inclination in this
direction. I think it would be useful to recap on one or two clinical
facts relating to this point. The way to get out of fears of fragmenta­
tion is to seek at any price a substitute object which is present and can
be incorporated (a telephone call where simply the voice of the person
called is enough to interrupt the process; a tranquilliser which has a
magical calming effect; contact with an object of choice ^ the equiv­
alent of a teat - which the Americans call a pacifier).
W hat needs to be kept in m ind regarding fragmenting regression is
not its signal function, which is overwhelmed, but its relative value,
in relation to objects, in evaluating the equilibrium between unifying
solidification and nullifying liquefaction. The experience therefore
does not have the same consequences for rigid obsessional or para­
noiac subjects as for plastic hysterical or schizophrenic subjects.
In the transference it should be noted that experiences of fusion
are of limited duration; they give way quite rapidly to affective evoca­
tions from which figures of duality emerge: fragmentation-anxiety
has given birth to the dual relationship.25 However, this dual rela­
tionship, which is imaginary according to Lacan's terminology, is
unconscious. It therefore has to be analysed and, provided one is not
afraid of getting bogged down, interpreting it helps to overcome it.
W hat is important is to understand that the arithmetic progression 0,
1, 2, 3, ..., n does not obtain in the transference and that the figures
follow each other in a dispersed order, according to the subject's
oscillations.
But there is another area in which anxiety concerning the
ensemble manifests itself, and this is in group relations.
Group anxiety is a familiar feature in institutions where there is
often an obsessive fear of splits owing to the conflict between the
narcissism of members and group narcissism. Group anxiety is a form
of anxiety related to the super-ego and its reproaches linked to those
of the ego ideal, towards which one is always in debt. The response to
fragmentation-anxiety is duplicative splitting. One is divided into
two to avoid breaking up into bits (n).
These different forms of anxiety are reflected in each other: the
longihg for unity always involves nostalgia for dual fusion, or even
fragmentation; just as duality is always caught in the alternative of
moving towards the One or returning to the multitude. Likewise, the
multitude seeks unity under the banner of one person. The Great
Man', says Freud, in Moses and Monotheism.
The number of the code is always 3, a symbol of unity, of the
double duality uniting a subject with the object split into two (good
and bad), and of the crowd. The English say Two's company, three's
a crowd.' The Oedipus complex is thus the structuring structure. It is
reflected and reflecting: in the relation to the breast with a potential
father; in the primal scene with an excluded subject; and in the
Oedipus complex open to the twofold difference.
 The infant's relation to the breast heralds the primal scene, with
the sole difference that, in this case, the mother has more pleasure,
and with another person which excludes the infant. This is perhaps
what is the most tragically unthinkable thing for him.
Narcissism upholds the illusion of the an-Oedipus complex (not
anti-oedipal but non-oedipal) insofar as it only recognises the 'ego-1'
(le Moi-Je). Like God, the 'ego-I' claims to be self-begetting, without
sex, that is to say, without sexual limitation and without filiation,
thus without any structure of kinship.

Negation and Consistency

The stuff of which the ego is made, its texture, is the hallmark of its
consistency. We often speak of the rigidity or flexibility of the ego and
its defences. This descriptive image is true, but it is even more so
when narcissism is involved. Faced with the regressive mutations
characteristic of the absence of differentiation, rejecting the object is a
vital necessity for the narcissistic subject. Such a rejection is m oti­
vated by the independence of the object which acts of its own accord,
whereas the ego feels paralysed by it. Accepting the object means
accepting its variability, the risks that go with it, that is, the fact that
it can penetrate the ego and then leave it, thereby reviving intrusion
and separation anxieties. Moreover, as regression occurs in a state of
passivation, the ego senses the danger of total submission (referred to
by English authors as resourceless dependency). Under these conditions,
negation not only guarantees the ego's autonomy but, as patients say,
is what provides an axis around which consistency can organise itself.
'I am able to stand up, I've got good legs', says one patient. 'Rejecting
what you say when I feel you are getting too close, gives me a
backbone.' 'Wishing that all those closest to me, my wife and
children, were dead, is a way of protecting myself from all the trouble
which disturbs my ''peace of m ind'", says another. It can be seen,
then, that negation does not simply play a role here of economic
regression, but is essential if the ego is to consist of something. The
issue is to know how the introjection of an object which narcissises
the ego and increases its capacity for pleasure can lead to an inter­
pretation which is not tautological.
The mirror role given to the analyst has the purpose of confirming
what is not supposed to be seen in the material either by the patient
or the analyst; it is thus a source of approbation whereby the narcis­
sistic object supports the ego. Because of negation, the whole
difficulty lies in interpretation. It is a question of introducing, along
with the interpretative echo, a few dissonant, foreign elements, in
minute doses which the patient can integrate, a little bit like when
one gives a child unpleasant tasting medicine covered in jam. The
Other triggers the signal of negation so that the Same secures its own
identity. If the concept of identity has a meaning in analytic theory,
it can only be in relation to narcissistic vulnerability. Its only role is
to allow difference to emerge, once the illusion of unity has been
created.
Negation raises the issue of what I call negative investments. By
negative investment I mean investing a satisfaction that is absent or
denied, by creating a state of quietude (negating dissatisfaction) just
as if the satisfaction had, in fact, occurred.
This is the function I assign to negative primary narcissism.

A General Model of Psychical Activity

Anxiety linked to the One, the couple and the ensemble are thus the
narcissistic figures of the dangers which weigh upon the ego's
structure.
We need to show how this accomplishment of the ego is replicated
or reflected in the achievement of language and to tackle the problem
of language in narcissistic transferences or the narcissistic aspect of
transference.26 Anxiety, whether it be object-related or narcissistic,
cuts speech, making the body speak, or rather, gives way to cacophony.
Silence, the zero signifier of language, then becomes very tempting.
But silence is not only the suspension of speech, it is its very breath.
W hen silence is not manifest, and even when it does not mark the
pauses, the transitions, and the scansions of discourse, it is present in
the constitutive discontinuity of the verbal message.
I wonder, therefore, whether it is possible to postulate a general
model of psychical activity which would comprise three phases:

• The first period would be that of cathecting a pre-organisation of

perception and the unconscious fantasy accompanying it.
• v The second period would be one of negativity illustrated by the
image of blankness. This negative phase at the basis of disconti­
nuity would be the differential spacing of letters, words,
sentences, but also the spacing of all the forms of counter-
cathexis: repression, negation, denial, disavowal and foreclosure.
• The third period would be one of reorganisation as a retroactive
effect of the counter-cathexis on the cathexis, an after effect of
the second period on the first: the return of the repressed, the
denied, the disavowed and the foreclosed, the symptomatic
formations and psychopathological pictures of which show that
a plural logic is involved. The logic of the One, the couple or the
ensemble.
Narcissism, whether positive or negative, is concerned by these
clinical pictures. Its failure finds expression in narcissistic anxiety, in
which the subject's pretensions to wholeness are subjected to the
object's power which creates a source of tensions, contesting an order
that is over-organised, a factor of entropy, that is, of death. Psychical
life - like life - is merely a fruitful disorder. In vain, narcissism pursues
the mirage of resisting it. All erotism is violence, just as life does
violence to inertia.
Our difficulty in thinking about anxiety and its relations to narcis­
sism stems from the fact that our Western civilisation is narcissistic
without realising it It has imposed its WesternTcentrist outlook on the
world without thinking about its other: the East. West is West; East is
East. It is perhaps time we took interest in Eastern thought as the
shadow of our own thought. To conclude, I shall quote from the
chapter: 'Wise W ithout Knowing It' in The Book ofLieh Tzu:

Lung Shu said to the physician Wen Chih:

'Your craft is subtle. I have an illness, can you cure it?'
'You have only to command. But first tell me the symptoms of
your illness.'
'I do not think it an honour if the whole district praises me, nor
a disgrace if the whole state reviles me; I have no joy when I win,
no anxiety when I lose; I look in the same way at life and death,
riches and poverty, other men and pigs, myself and other men; I
dwell in my own house as though lodging in an inn, look out at
my own neighbourhood as though it were a foreign and barbarous
country. Having all these ailments, titles and rewards cannot
induce me, punishments and fines cannot awe me, prosperity and
decline and benefit and harm cannot change me, joy and sorrow
cannot influence me. Consequently, it is impossible for me to serve
my prince, have dealings with my kindred and friends, manage my
wife and children, control my servants. W hat illness is this? W hat
art can cure it?'
Then Wen C hih ordered Lung Shu to stand with his back to the
light. He himself stepped back and examined Lung Shu from a
distance facing the light. Finally he said:
'Hmm . I see your heart. The place an inch square is empty, you
are almost a sage. Six of the holes in your heart run into each other,
but one is stopped up. Can this be the reason why you now think
the wisdom of a sage is an illness? My shallow craft can do nothing
to cure it.'27

I am not claiming here to offer an alternative to our psychoanalytic

ethic. I think that psychoanalysis is about nothing more than
accepting our limits which involve the Other, our neighbour, who is
different But I think the East shows us how certain paths are prefer­
able to others. In the course of certain analyses it happens that
patients suddenly invest a space of solitude in which they feel at
home. This is not an insignificant result; but it is not sufficient. A
long period of time is needed before they are ready to abandon their
nest and are able to feel well at home, at a host's, or with anyone else,
and before they can enable this host to feel at ease with them. This is
only possible if the intersection between the two is limited in such a
way that each person remains himself while being with the other.
Being either completely the One or completely the Other is impos­
sible. This is perhaps the meaning of what constitutes the axis of
Freudian theory and which we trivially call castration anxiety, which
I can only conceive of as being paired with penetration anxiety.
Perhaps we will understand that the figure of psychoanalysis is not
the phallus, but the penis in the vagina, and/or, which is more diffi­
cult to imagine, the vagina in the penis.
Part Two
Narcissistic Forms
4
Moral Narcissism (1969)*

Virtue is not merely like the combatant whose sole concern in

the fight is to keep his sword polished; but it has even started
the fight simply to preserve its weapons. And not merely is it
unable to use its own weapons, but it must also preserve intact
those of its enemy, and protect them against its own attack,
seeing they are all noble parts of the good, on behalf of which
it entered the field of battle.
Hegel, The Phenomenology of Mind.

Because you have no inkling of these ills; The happiest life

consists in ignorance ...
Sophocles, Ajax.

Oedipus and Ajax

The legendary heroes of antiquity provide the psychoanalyst with an
inexhaustible source of material which he does not hesitate to draw
on fully. Usually he calls upon these lofty figures in order to embel­
lish a thesis. I will take as my starting-point an opposition that will
allow each one of you, by calling upon his memory, to refer to a
common example which might then bring one or the other of his
patients to mind. In his book The Greeks and the Irrational,1 Dodds
contrasts the civilisations of shame with the civilisations of guilt. It is
not irrelevant to recall here that according to Dodds the idea of guilt
is connected to an interiorisation, I would say an internalisation, of
the notion of fault or sin: it is the result of a divine transgression.

*This paper appeared originally in French in the Revue francaise de psychanalyse,

vol. 33, 1969. It was first published in English in the International Journal of
Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy, ed. by Robert Langs, vol. VIII, 1980-81. Trans.
Nancy Osthues. (Revised by Andrew Weller for this volume.)
Shame, however, is the lot of fatality, a mark of the wrath of the gods,
of an Ate, a merciless punishment barely related to an objective fault,
unless it be that of immoderation. Shame falls upon its victims inex­
orably: without doubt one must impute it less to a god than to a
demon - infernal power. Dodds connects the civilisation of shame to
a socio-tribal mode in which the father is omnipotent and knows no
authority above his own, whereas the civilisation of guilt, moving
toward a relative monotheism, implies a law above the father's. In
each of the two cases even the reparation of the fault is different. The
transition from shame to guilt is a road leading from the idea of
impurity and pollution to consciousness of a moral wrong.
In short, shame is an affect in which hum an responsibility barely
plays a part: it is the lot of the gods, striking m an who is liable to
pride or hubris, whereas guilt is the consequence of a fault, bearing the
sense of a transgression. The first corresponds to the talion ethic; the
second to the ethics of a more understanding form of justice. Without
generalising to any great extent, it seems that one might oppose these
two problematical questions, shame and guilt, by comparing the
cases of Ajax and Oedipus. Ajax, you may remember, was the bravest
of the Greeks after Achilles. W hen Achilles died, Ajax hoped to be
given his weapons, but instead they were offered to Ulysses. The
details of how this came about vary, depending on which version of
the myth you refer to. According to the earliest version, the choice
was made by the Trojans, who, having been defeated by the Greeks,
named the enemy they most feared. They named Ulysses who,
though perhaps not the bravest, was nonetheless the most dangerous
because he was the most cunning. According to later versions - and
Sophocles sided with this tradition - it was the Greeks themselves
who chose Ulysses.
Ajax thought this choice unjust and insulting. He decided to take
violent revenge by executing the Atridae - Agamemnon and
Menelaus - by taking the Argives prisoner and capturing Ulysses so
that he could whip him to death. However, Athena, offended by Ajax
for having refused her aid during the battle with the Trojans, drove
him insane. Instead of carrying out his exploit by fighting with those
he wanted to punish, he destroyed the Greeks' flocks in a bloody
slaughter while in a state of madness. The perpetrator of this
hecatomb recovered his sanity only once the wrong had been done.
Once he had recovered his sanity, he understood his madness. Driven
mad twice, from grief and shame, because he was unable to triumph
either by right or by force, and with his pride wounded, he
committed suicide by throwing himself - by impaling himself, says J.
Lacarriere, and it is quite probable - upon Hector's sword, which he
had received as a trophy.
 Reading Sophocles, one realises that shame is the key word of his
tragedy. The loud voiced rumour, mother of my shame', says the
chorus upon learning of the massacre. Madness itself is an excuse for
nothing - it is the worst shame of all - since it is a sign of the repro­
bation of a god. Here madness is dishonouring because it is
responsible for a murderous act devoid of glory. It ridicules the hero
who aspires to the highest degree of bravery by forcing him to
savagely destroy harmless animals. It burdens him with 'grievous
conceits of his infatuate glee'. As soon as sanity returns, it is evident
that death is the only possible solution. Having lost his honour, Ajax
can no longer live in the light of day. No tie can resist the tempta­
tion of nothingness. Parents, wife, children, all of whom will be
practically reduced to slavery by his death, do not suffice to hold
him back. He aspires to hell, praying for the night of death: 'O
darkness, now my light.' He leaves his remains behind him like an
impurity and lets those who held him in contempt decide what
course to take: exposure to the vultures or reparative burial. The ethic
of moderation is stated by the messenger: '"For lives presumptuous
and unprofitable fail beneath sore misfortunes wrought by heaven,"
the seer declared, "whenever seed of m an ceases to think as fits
hum anity!"'
It seems to me fitting to compare the example of Ajax with that of
Oedipus. Oedipus' crime was no less great. His excuse was disregard,
deception on the part of the gods. The punishment which he inflicted
upon himself obliged him to accept the loss of his eyes, which had
wanted to see too much; to banish himself, with the help of his
daughter Antigone; and to live among men with his impurity until
the very end. Before his death, he even allowed himself to become a
subject of litigation and dispute between his sons (whom he later
cursed), his brother-in-law and Theseus (under whose protection he
had placed himself). In the woods of Colonus, on the outskirts of
Athens, Oedipus waited for a sign from the gods. After the revelation
of his offence, his life was entirely devoid of pleasure, but it was the
life given by the gods and the gods took it back when they saw fit.
Above all, Oedipus then clung to his objects. They were his very life as
they helped him remain alive. He could not abandon them, even at
the cost of being manipulated by his children in a sinister fashion.
Oedipus hated some of his children (his sons, naturally) but loved his
daughters paternally, even though they were the fruit of incest. You
can see that we have opposed two problematical questions corre­
sponding to two types of object-choice and object-cathexis: in the
case of Oedipus, objectal object-cathexis, generated through the
transgression of guilt; in the case of Ajax, narcissistic object-cathexis,
generated through the disappointment of shame.
Clinical Aspects of Narcissism: Moral Narcissism
The apologue of Ajax, which has served as an introduction, raises an
immediate question for psychoanalysts: is it not evident that this
form of narcissism is in some way related to masochism? Is it not true
that self-punishment is in the foreground here? Before we settle the
question and decide whether masochism is, after all, what best qual­
ifies the theme of Ajax - who does not seek punishment but rather
inflicts it upon himself in order to save his honour, another key word
of narcissism - let us dwell for a moment on the relation between
masochism and narcissism.
W hile discussing the pairs tension-unpleasure and
relaxation-pleasure in The Economic Problem of Masochism' (1924),
Freud was led to dissect masochism, as an expression of the death
drive, into three substructures: erotogenic masochism, feminine
masochism, and moral masochism. I would like to propose a similar
dismemberment based not upon the effects of the death drive - a
theory to which I adhere completely - but rather upon those of
narcissism. It appears to me from clinical observation that one can
distinguish several varieties or substructures of narcissism:
Bodily narcissism concerns either the perception (affect) of the body
or representations of the body; the body as object of the Other's gaze
insofar as one is extrinsic to the other, just as the narcissism of bodily
sensation (the body as experienced from within) is a narcissism of the
scrutiny of the Other insofar as the one is intrinsic to the other.
Consciousness of the body and perception of the body are its elemen­
tary bases.2
Intellectual narcissism is displayed when self-control is invested by
the intellect in an over-confident manner which is often contradicted
by the facts. There is stubborn and untiring repetition that 'that
doesn't stop it from being so'. This form, which I will discuss no
further, recalls the illusion of dom ination by intellectualisation. This
i$ a secondary form of omnipotence of thought, an omnipotence of
thought brought about by secondary processes.
Moral narcissism, finally, which will be described in a later section.3
In The Ego and the Id (1923), Freud attributed a specific material to
each agency. W hat instinct is to the id, perception is to the ego, and
the function of the ideal to the super-ego. This ideal is the result of
instinctual renunciation; it opens the indefinitely rejected horizon of
illusion. It therefore appears that moral narcissism - insofar as the
relationship between morality and super-ego is clearly established -
must be included in a close relationship between ego/super-ego or,
more precisely, since it is a matter of the function of the ideal,
between the ego ideal/super-ego. W hat follows will show that the id
is in no way an outsider to the situation. If we suppose that the id is
dominated by the antagonism between the life drives and the death
drives, that the ego undergoes a perpetual exchange of cathexes
between the ego and the object, and that the super-ego is torn between
the renunciation o f satisfaction and the mirages of illusion, we believe
that the ego, in its state of double dependence on the id and the
super-ego, serves not two masters but rather four, since each of the
latter is split in two. This is what usually happens to everybody; no
one is free of moral narcissism. Therefore, the pleasure in our rela­
tionships is due to the general economy of these relationships,
provided that the life drive prevails over the death drive and that the
consolations of illusion prevail over pride in instinctual renunciation.
But this is not always the case. The pathological structure of narcis­
sism I should like to describe is characterised by an economy that
heavily burdens the ego by the twofold consequence of the victory of
the death drive, which confers upon the Nirvana principle (the
lowering of tensions to the level zero) a relative pre-eminence over
the pleasure principle, and that of instinctual renunciation over the
satisfactions of illusion. Hence there is an over-cathexis of the ego to
the detriment of the object.
Does not the dom inating effect of the death drive and instinctual
renunciation take us back to the severity of the masochistic super­
ego? Approximately, yes. Precisely, no.

Masochistic Fantasies and Narcissistic Fantasies

The true masochist', writes Freud (1924), 'always turns his cheek
whenever he has a chance of receiving a blow/ This is not the case
with the moral narcissist. Paraphrasing Freud, I would say, The true
moral narcissist always volunteers himself whenever he sees a chance
of renouncing a satisfaction/ Let us compare masochistic fantasies,
which are so revealing, with narcissistic fantasies. Where masochism
is concerned, it is a matter of being beaten, humiliated, befouled,
reduced to passivity (but a passivity that demands the presence of the
Other). Lacan4 feels that the masochist's requirement of the Other
arouses anxiety in the latter to a point where the sadist can no longer
sustain his desire for fear of destroying the object of his pleasure.
None of this holds true for the narcissist. For him it is a matter of
being pure and therefore alone, and of renouncing the world - its
pleasures as well as its unpleasures - since we know that one can
always get some pleasure out of unpleasure. Subversion of the subject
by the inversion of pleasure is within the grasp of many. W hat is more
difficult and more tempting is to be beyond pleasure-unpleasure by
vowing endurance, w ithout seeking pain, poverty, destitution,
solitude, even hermitage - all states that bring one closer to God. Is
God hungry or thirsty, is God dependent upon the love, the hatred of
men? Some may believe so but they do not know who the true God is:
the Unnameable. This profound asceticism, described by Anna Freud
(1936)5 as a defence mechanism common to adolescence in the
normal development of the individual, and to which Pierre Male6 has
often returned in his studies on the adolescent, can take pathological
forms. Suffering will not be sought after, but neither will it be avoided,
no matter how much energy is employed by the subject in doing so.
Freud (1924) says that in fact the masochist desires to be treated like a
child. The moral narcissist's plan is just the opposite. Like the child he
is, he wants to resemble the parents who, one part of him imagines,
have no problem dominating their drives. In other words, he wants to
be a grown-up. The consequences will be different in the two cases.
Through his masochism, the masochist masks an unpunished offence,
the result of a transgression, in the face of which he feels guilty The
moral narcissist has committed no offence other than that of
remaining tied to his infantile megalomania and is always in debt to
his ego ideal. The consequence of this is that he does not feel guilty but
rather is ashamed of being nothing more than what he is or ofpretending to
be more than what he is. Perhaps one can say that masochism operates
on the level of a relationship involving the possession of what has
been improperly obtained - Til-gotten gains seldom prosper' - whereas
narcissism is situated on the level of a relationship concerning being:
'One is as one is.'7 In the case of moral masochism the subject is
punished not so much for the offence but for his masochism, Freud
reminds us. Libidinal co-excitement uses the road of unpleasure as one
of the most secret passages leading to a pleasure of which the subject
is unaware. This is seen in the 'Rat Man', who told Freud about the
torture which aroused his horror and reprobation, yet felt a pleasure of
which he was unaware. In moral narcissism, whose aims fail (as do
those of masochism), punishment or shame is brought about by the
insatiable redoubling of pride. Honour is never in a position of safety.
All is lost because nothing can clean the impurity of soiled honour
unless it be new renunciations which will impoverish the relationships
with the object, leaving all the glory for narcissism.
The dom inant trait of the opposition is revealed here: through the
negation of pleasure and the search for unpleasure, the masochist
maintains a rich tie to the object which the narcissist tries to
abandon. The use of the adjective 'rich' may be criticised because we
are accustomed to giving the word normative qualities. Otherwise we
might say a substantial relationship with the objects, insofar as they
in turn nourish the fantasmatic objects which the subject will ulti­
mately feed upon.
 To resolve this conflict, the narcissist will make increasing attempts
to impoverish his object relationships in order to reduce the ego to its
vital object m inim um , thus emerging triumphant. This attempt is
constantly frustrated by the drives, which require that the satisfaction
involves an object. The only solution is a narcissistic cathexis of the
subject, and we know that when the object withdraws, is lost, or
disappoints, the result is depression.8
This remark leads us to understand the particularities of these
patients' treatments. Whereas masochistic patients present problems,
which Freud foresaw, of a negative therapeutic reaction that is perpet­
ually informed by the need for self-punishment, moral narcissists,
faithful and irreproachable patients, expose us, through a progressive
rarefaction of their cathexes, to dependent behaviour in which the
need for love and, more precisely, the esteem of the analyst, is the
oxygen without which the patient cannot breathe. More precisely, it
is a question of a need for a special kind of love, as it is aiming for the
recognition of the sacrifice of pleasure.
But, as Freud wrote in The Economic Problem of Masochism'
(1924), 'even the subject's destruction of himself cannot take place
without libidinal satisfaction'. W hat satisfaction does the moral
narcissist find in his impoverishment? The feeling of being superior
by virtue of renunciation; the basis of hum an pride. This recalls the
relationship between this clinical form of narcissism and the primary
narcissism of. the child and its tie to auto-erotism. If it was Freud who
said that masochism resexualises morality, I would like to add: narcis­
sism turns morality into an auto-erotic pleasure in which pleasure itself is
suppressed.

Partial Aspects and Derivatives of Moral Narcissism

The opposition between masochistic and narcissistic fantasies has
allowed us to come to the heart of the principal aspect of this struc­
ture. I shall now briefly consider some of its partial or derived aspects
before outlining its metapsychology.
I have already mentioned asceticism, when it lasts beyond adoles­
cence and becomes a lifestyle. This asceticism is quite different from
that which underlies a religious conviction or a rule, again in the reli­
gious sense of the term. It is, in fact, unconscious. It uses as a pretext
limitations of a material nature in order to force the ego to consent to
a progressive shrinking of its cathexes so as to tighten the ties
between desire and need, bringing the order of the former to the level
of the latter. One only drinks and eats for survival, not for pleasure.
One eliminates dependence on the object and desire (insofar as it is
different) through a meagre auto-erotism, devoid of fantasies, whose
aim is relief through hygienic evacuation. Or else one makes a
massive displacement on to work and immediately puts into action a
pseudo-sublimation which is more of a reaction formation than an
instinctual vicissitude through inhibition, aim displacement and
secondary desexualisation. This pseudo-sublimation will have a delu­
sional character because of its megalomaniac undertones,
amalgamated with an overall idealisation implying a denial of its
instinctual roots.
These last remarks lead us to consider a second aspect of moral
narcissism. It can be seen behind the features of a syndrome rarely
mentioned, but nonetheless very common: affective immaturity.
Affective immaturity, which we have gradually learned to recognise, is
not a benign form of conflict solution; far from it. On the one hand,
the term immaturity is well-deserved because this is indeed a case of
retardation whose consequences are as serious for the affective
cathexes of the subject as intellectual retardation is for the cognitive
investments. O n the other hand, affective immaturity is based upon a
substratum of denial of desire and its instinctual base. This denial justi­
fies the fact that early authors such as Codet and Laforgue9 have
classified it as schizonia, a psychotic form. One is often astonished by
the quasi-paranoid form of this behaviour. Affective immaturity is the
apanage of young girls but is also found in young men, with an
equally serious prognosis, if not more so. We know its banal aspects:
sentimentality, not sensitivity; a horror of hum an appetites, oral or
sexual; a failure in sublimation which would imply their acceptance;
the fear of sex, especially of the penis, which conceals a desire (present
in both sexes) of an absolute and incommensurable nature; and the
attachment to daydreams that are childish, affected and openly
messianic. Such people can be recognised in everyday life because they
often put themselves in the position of a scapegoat; this does not
bother them, so sure are they of their superiority over ordinary people.
These cursory elements may not be sufficient to enable us to
distinguish between hysteria and affective immaturity. The essential
difference seems to me to reside in the exorbitant amount of tribute
paid to the ego ideal in affective retardation. Here we must recall
Melanie Klein's remarks on idealisation.10 She saw idealisation as one
of the most primitive and most fundamental of defence mechanisms;
idealisation centred on the object or the self. It is this distinction of
an economic order that enables us to establish more clearly the sepa­
ration between hysteria and affective retardation, as though the latter
were the product of a highly exaggerated narcissism in the face of a
growing decathexis of the object.
One might fall into the trap of seeing behind all of this behaviour
nothing more than a defensive position against instinctual cathexis.
W hat characterises these choices is, above all, immense pride -
behind the misleading forms of intense hum ility - having nothing in
common with the ordinary performances of narcissism.11 There is, it
is true, a defensive meaning to this sheltering of the instinct and its
objects from vicissitudes. One can imagine that this arrangement
protects the subject and one sometimes has the impression that the
patient feels intense anxiety because cathexis appears to carry with it
the considerable risk of disorganising the ego. Just as the stimulus
barrier protects the ego by rejecting external stimuli which exceed a
certain am ount and which, because of their intensity, put the fragile
organisation of the ego in danger, so in this case the refusal of the
instinct aims at achieving a similar protection. It is true that these
patients feel extremely fragile and have the idea that admitting the
instinct into their consciousness would imply for them the danger of
perverse or psychotic behaviour. One patient told me that if she did
not watch herself constantly, if she let herself become passive, it
would not be long before she would become a bum. Now, everybody
is a bit of a bum - on Sunday, during a vacation - and more or less
accepts this; the moral narcissist cannot. This is why it seems neces­
sary to insist upon the narcissistic cathexis of pride.
Messianism is accompanied in women by an identification with
the Virgin Mary, who 'conceived without sin', a phrase whose conse­
quences have been very serious for female sexuality; it is a much more
dangerous notion than 'to sin without conceiving', to which women
also aspire. In men, the equivalent is identification with the Paschal
Lamb. This is not simply a matter of being crucified or of having one's
throat cut; it implies being innocent as a lamb when the holocaust
arrives. However, we know that the innocent have often been accused
by history of crimes they allowed in order to remain pure.
This idealised behaviour, always doomed to failure because of the
conflict with reality, involves, as I have already stated, shame rather
than guilt, dependence rather than independence. The idealisation
includes certain particularities within the analytic cure:

I. The analytic object is difficult of access, for the material is buried

beneath the narcissistic cloak of what W innicott would here call
a false self
II. The narcissistic wound is felt to be an infraction, an inevitable
condition of the coming to light of objectal material. Here mysti­
fication is directed not only toward desire but also toward the
subject's narcissism, toward the guardian of his narcissistic unity,
an essential condition of the desire for life.
III. The cure is anchored in actively passive resistance in order to satisfy
the subject's desire for dependence, a dependence which has the
 power to make him stay with the analyst eternally and to tie the
analyst to his chair, like a butterfly caught in the net of the
analytic situation.
IV. The desire for unconditional love is the sole desire of these subjects.
This desire takes the form of a desire for absolute esteem, an inex­
haustible need for narcissistic enhancement whose express
condition is the burial or putting aside of sexual conflict and
access to pleasure linked to the erotogenic zones.
V. Projection is a corollary of this desire and is brought into play with
the tactical aim of provoking the analyst's reassuring denial.
"Assure me that you do not see in me a fallen angel, depraved,
banished, who has lost the right to be respected.'

The Metapsychology of Moral Narcissism

W hat I have just outlined in descriptive terms must now be given its
metapsychological credentials. (I use the term metapsychology in its
general meaning.) Thus we must examine the relation of moral
narcissism to: (a) the varieties of counter-cathexes; (b) other aspects of
narcissism; (c) the development of the libido (erotogenic zones and
object relations); (d) id, ego and super-ego; and (e) bisexuality and the
death instinct.12

The Varieties of Counter-Cathexis

The concept of the defence mechanism has been considerably
extended since Freud. However, the multiplicity of defensive forms,
the catalogue of which is to be found in Anna Freud's The Ego and the
Mechanisms o f Defence (1936), does not enable us to account for the
structural particularities of the major forms of the nosography which
one vainly tries to ignore. Our only hope lies in thinking about
counter-cathexis - repression seen as a defence, not the first but
nonetheless the most important in the individual's psychic future.13
In effect, Freud described a series of forms which we must now reca­
pitulate and whose function is to regulate - to encircle - all of the
other defences.

1. Rejection or Verwerfung, which some, along with Lacan, translate

as forclusion (English foreclosure). One can argue about the word
but not about the thing itself, which implies a radical refusal of
the drive or the drive representation and which, directly or in
disguise, expels the drives, which nonetheless return through
reality, by way of projection.
2. Denial or disavowal, depending on the translation, or Verleugnung,
repression of perception.
3. Repression itself or Verdrdngung, which is specifically directed
toward the affect and the drive representative.14
4. Finally, negation, Verneinung, which is directed toward the faculty
of judgement. This is an admission into consciousness in a
negative form. 'It is not' is equal to Tt is'.

In its clearest and most characteristic aspects, moral narcissism seems

to correspond to an intermediate situation somewhere between rejec­
tion and disavowal - between Verwerfung and Verleugnung. Here I shall
point out the seriousness of its structure, which brings it close to
psychosis. Several arguments support this opinion. First, the idea that
it is a question of a form of 'narcissistic' neurosis, something which
clinical studies have accustomed us to consider with uneasiness. Next,
there is the dynamic itself of the conflicts, which implies a repudia­
tion of the drives associated with a repudiation of reality. There is a
refusal to see the world as it is; that is, as a battlefield upon which
hum an appetites indulge in an endless combat. Finally, there is the
considerable megalomania of moral narcissism, which implies a repu­
diation of object-cathexes by the ego. Nonetheless, it is not a matter
of repressing reality as in psychosis but rather of denial, a disavowal
of the order of the world and of the personal participation of the
subject's desire. In this regard, if we recall that Freud describes
disavowal in connection with the fetish linked to the sight of castra­
tion, we can see that the moral narcissist, making himself a sacrificial
object, fulfils a similar function by stopping up the holes through
which the absence of protection of the world reveals itself, with an
omnipotent divine image, in an effort to obstruct this unbearable
deficiency. 'If God does not exist, then anything is permitted', says
the hero of Dostoyevsky's The Devils. Tf God does not exist, then I am
permitted to replace him and to be the example leading people to
believe in God. I will therefore be God by proxy.' One can understand
that the failure of this undertaking brings about depression (in accord
with the mode of all-or-nothing) without mediation.

Other Aspects o f Narcissism

The three aspects of narcissism I have particularised - moral, intellec­
tual and bodily narcissism - present themselves as variants of the
cathexis which, for defensive reasons, or for reasons of identification,
are preferred according to the individual conflict configuration. But,
just as the narcissistic relationship is inseparable from the object rela­
tionship, the diverse aspects of narcissism are interdependent.
In particular, moral narcissism has a very close relationship with
intellectual narcissism. By intellectual narcissism, I mean that form of
self-sufficiency and solitary self-enhancement which makes up for the
lack of hum an desires with intellectual mastery or intellectual seduc­
tion. It is not rare for moral narcissism to ally itself with intellectual
narcissism and to find in this kind of displacement an addition to
pseudo-sublimation. A hypertrophy of desexualised cathexes, which
ordinarily occasions the displacement of partial pregenital instincts
(scopophilia-exhibitionism and sado-masochism), sustains moral
narcissism. We are familiar with the affinity certain religious orders
have for intellectual erudition. The aim of this intellectual research of
a moral or philosophic character is to find, through philosophy, or
God, reasons for an ethic which opposes an instinctual life, which
views it as something that must at any price not just be repressed or
surpassed, but extinguished. The shame felt for having an instinctual
life like every other hum an being gives the impression of hypocrisy in
relation to the unavowed aim of the work. This shame is displaced
into intellectual activity which becomes highly guilt-ridden. A term is
lacking here: one would have to say that it becomes shame-ridden, as
if the vigilant super-ego were to become an extra-lucid persecutor
who remembers and reads, behind the intellectual justification, the
desire for absolution for the remnants of instinctual life which
continue to torment the ego. Also punished is the fantasy of grandeur
involved in this kind of quest, which aims to provide a rational and
intellectual basis for the subject's sense of moral superiority.
In other cases intellectual activity, a synonym for the paternal
phallus, undergoes an evolution such that successful efforts made at
school in childhood become subject to a blockage during adolescence.
Here one ought to go more deeply into an analysis of sublimation and
regression from action to thought. As this would take us beyond the
limits we have set ourselves, a brief discussion must suffice:

• Intellectual activity, accompanied or not by fantasy, is highly

eroticised and guilt-ridden, but is above all felt to be shameful. It is
accompanied by cephalalgia, insomnia, difficulty in concentra­
tion or in reading, and an inability to make use of knowledge. It
is considered shameful because the subject, while engaging in this
activity, links it with sexuality: T read works of a high hum an or
moral value, but I do so in order to fool those around me and to
pretend to be what I am not - since my m ind is not pure and
because I have sexual desires.' It is not rare in this case to find that
the mother has accused the child of pretension or of unhealthy
curiosity.
• Intellectual activity can also represent an escape hatch for aggres­
sive instincts. To read is to incorporate power of a destructive
nature; to read is to feed upon the corpses of the parents, whom
one kills through reading, through possessing knowledge.
• In the case of moral narcissism, intellectual activity and the
exercise of thought are supported by a reconstruction of the world -
the establishment of a morality, a truly paranoid activity which
constantly remakes and remodels reality according to a pattern in
which everything instinctual will be omitted or resolved without
conflict.

To sum up, the system perception-consciousness, insofar as it is

narcissistically cathected, is in a state of 'surveillance', tightly
controlled and thwarted by the super-ego, as in the delusion of obser­
vation, but with a different type of economic equilibrium.
But it is above all with bodily narcissism, as one might suspect,
that moral narcissism has the closest relationship. The body as an
appearance and source of pleasure, seduction and conquest of others,
is banished. In the case of the moral narcissist, hell is not other people
- narcissism has eliminated them - but rather, the body. The body is
the Other, resurrected in spite of attempts to wipe out its traces. The
body is a limitation, a servitude, a termination. This is why the
uneasiness experienced is primordially a bodily uneasiness which
expresses itself in the fact that these subjects are so ill-at-ease with
themselves. The session of analysis which allows the body to speak
(intestinal sounds, vasomotor reactions, sweating, sensations of cold
or heat) is a torment for them because, though they can silence or
control their fantasies, they are helpless as to their bodies. The body
is their absolute master - their shame. (This intolerance of bodily
reactions suggests a reprisal against the body and its drives related to
an early relationship with the mother she herself being reluctant to
admit her own libidinal trends, which are reactivated through the
baby's reactions.) This is why, on the analyst's couch, these subjects
are petrified, immobile. They lie down in a stereotyped manner,
neither allowing themselves to change position nor to make any kind
of movement. It is understandable that in the face of this silence
which animates the relationship there is an eruption of visceral motor
activity. This is, of course, nothing but the displacement of the sexual
body, of that which does not dare name itself. During a session of
analysis, a fit of vasomotor reaction will cause the subject to blush,
and the emotion will bring on the tears which are the expression of
the hum iliation of desire. So, in contrast with the pleas of the body,
appearances will become repulsive, harsh, discouraging - even to an
analyst who is undemanding about criteria of attraction.
I am pointing out those aspects which appear to be defensive, but
here again we must not overlook the hidden and proud pleasure to be
found behind this humility. T am neither man nor woman, I am
neuter', one such patient said to me. It is important to note, however,
that this uneasiness, painful though it may be, is a sign of life. When,
after the analysand has succeeded in controlling anxiety in all its
forms, visceral included - and this is not so impossible as one might
think - the moment of silence arrives and then he experiences an
impression of frightful blankness. The lead helmet of psychic suffering
has been replaced by the lid of the coffin; and what is now experienced
is a feeling of non-existence, of non-being, of an internal emptiness far
more intolerable than what the subject was protecting himself from.
Before, at least, something was happening, whereas control of the
body prefigures a definitive sleep, a premonition of death.

Psychic Development: Erotogenic Zones and the Relation to the Object

This dependence on the body that we find in the narcissist, and
particularly the moral narcissist, is rooted in the relationship with the
mother. We know that love is the key to hum an development. In the
latter part of his work, Freud never ceased comparing the impre­
scriptible demands of the instinct with the no less imprescriptible
demands of civilisation requiring renunciation of the instinct. All
development is marked by this antinomy. In Moses and Monotheism
Freud makes the following comments on this:

W hen the ego has brought the super-ego the sacrifice of an instinc­
tual renunciation, it expects to be rewarded by receiving more love
from it. The consciousness of deserving love is felt by it as pride. At
the time when the authority had not yet been internalised as a
super-ego, there could be the same relation between the threat of
loss of love and the claims of instinct; there was a feeling of security
and satisfaction when one had achieved an instinctual renuncia­
tion out of love for one's parents. But this happy feeling could only
assume the particular narcissistic character of pride after the
authority had itself become a portion of the ego. (1939, p. 117)

Ttfis passage shows that it is necessary to look at the notion of devel­

opment from at least two angles: on the one hand, the development
of object-libido from orality to the phallic and then genital phases; on
the other, the narcissistic libido from absolute dependence to genital
interdependence. Now, the security which has to be gained can only
be acquired - so as not to suffer the loss of a parent's love - through
instinctual renunciation, which allows self-esteem to be acquired. The
supremacy of the pleasure principle, as well as evolution, is only
possible if from the start the mother guarantees the satisfaction of
needs, so that the field of desire can open as the order of the signifier.
This is also true in the sphere of narcissism, which can establish itself
only insofar as the security of the ego is guaranteed by the mother.
However, this security and the order of need can suffer from a preco­
cious conflictualisation brought on by the mother. Then one witnesses
the crushing of desire and its being dealt with as need. Also, because
of the impossibility of experiencing omnipotence and therefore of
surmounting it, the narcissistic wound leads to excessive dependence
upon the maternal object providing security. The mother becomes the
pillar of an omnipotence attributed to her, accompanied by an ideali­
sation whose psychotic-inducing character is well-known, particularly
since it is accompanied by the crushing of libidinal desire. This
omnipotence is even more easily created because it corresponds to the
mother's desire to bear a child without the contribution of the father's
penis. In short, it is as though the child, because of his conception
with the help of this penis, were a debased, damaged product.
D.W. W innicott has worked on this problem of dependence. He
has shown how the splitting off of the remaining part of the psyche
from what has been refused leads to the construction and adoption of
what he calls a 'false self (Winnicott 1975). The fact that this problem
of narcissism is contemporaneous with an orality in which depend­
ence upon the breast is very real, increases this reinforcement of
dependence even more. During the anal phase - when, as we know,
cultural constraints are important - the demands of renunciation
become imperatives and reaction formations predominate; at best,
one will end up with an obsessive and rigid character, at worst, with
a camouflaged psychopathic paranoid form bearing fantasies of incor­
porating a dangerous and restrictive object animated by an
anti-libidinal omnipotence. All of these pregenital relics will heavily
mark the phallic phase, conferring upon the boy's castration anxiety
a fundamentally devaluing character, and upon the girl's penis envy
an avidity of which she will be ashamed and from which she will hide
as best she can.

Id, Ego, Super-Ego

Let us examine narcissism in relation to the id. Here we can speak
only of primary narcissism. In a recent work, I demonstrated the
necessity of distinguishing between that which pertains to the id,
which is usually described by the term elation or narcissistic expan­
sion, and that which is the exclusive domain of primary narcissism,
which I characterize as the lowering of tensions to the level zero. We
have just seen that the plan of moral narcissism is to use morality as
a crutch in order to free itself from the vicissitudes involved in the tie
to the object; and so, by this roundabout method, to obtain liberation
from the constraints involved in the object relation, in order to give
the id and the ego the means to be loved by a demanding super-ego
and a tyrannical ego ideal. However, their effort at mystification fails:
first of all, because the super-ego is not so easily fooled; secondly,
because the demands of the id continue to be voiced in spite of the
ascetic manoeuvres of the ego.
If what I have said is the case - that is, if moral narcissism turns
morality into an auto-erotic pleasure - then one understands better
how the ego can be interested in these operations, using all the means
at the disposition of secondary narcissism, robbing the cathexes
destined for objects. Here is the travesty which permits it to say to the
id, according to Freud's phrase, 'Look, you can love me, too - I am so
like the object.' One might add, 'And at least I am pure, pure of any
suspicion, pure of any impurity.'
However, it is definitely between the super-ego and the ego ideal
that the relationship is the closest. I have insisted upon what Freud
described in 1923 and returned to repeatedly thereafter. He explains
the order of the phenomena proper to the super-ego: the function of
the ideal, which is to the super-ego what the instinct is to the id and
what perception is to the ego (Freud 1923). To recapitulate briefly: if,
at the start, everything is id, everything is instinct, and, more
precisely, antagonism of the instincts (Eros and destructive instincts),
the differentiation as to the external world leads to the existence of a
corticalisation of the ego that differentiates perception and, correla­
tively, the representation of the instinct. The division into ego and
super-ego, the latter having its roots in the id, leads to the repression
of id-satisfactions, and, at the same time, the necessity of picturing
the world not only as one wishes it to be but also as it is; that is, in
such a way that a system of connotations makes it possible to control
it. Secondarily, or by way of compensation, this leads to the setting
up of the function of the ideal, desire's revenge upon reality. It is
because this function - a function of illusion - is at work, that the
spheres of fantasy, art and religion exist.
For the moral narcissist, the ideal, which is capable of evolution,
while renouncing none of its original demands, retains its original
force. Finding its first application in the aggrandisement of the
parents, that is, in the idealisation of their image, the ego ideal
preserves all the characteristics of the relationship with the parents,
the mother in particular. In the case of these subjects, the love of their
ego ideal is as indispensable as the love they expect from their
mothers, as indispensable as the nourishment given by the mother
whose love was already the first illusion. T am nourished, therefore I
am loved', says the moral narcissist. 'Anyone who is not ready to
nourish me cannot really love me.' During therapy, the moral narcis­
sist will dem and and try to obtain the same unconditional
nourishment, or love, through a privation and reduction of cathexes
(the very opposite of the aims pursued by the therapy). Although his
demand makes h im terribly dependent, he ensures his domination
and the servitude of the Other. Here again we find the link between
love and security which we were speaking about earlier. To be shel­
tered - sheltered from a world which favours excitation - by the
analyst's narcissistic love as a guarantee of survival, security and love:
that is what the moral narcissist wants.
And the super-ego? We shall now discover one of moral narcis­
sism's most characteristic traits. In fact, the moral narcissist lives in a
state of constant tension between the ego ideal and the super-ego.
The idealising function of the ego ideal is seen for what it is: its
function as a decoy, a diverted occult satisfaction, a troubled inno­
cence. The super-ego reveals the trap of this travesty and refuses to be
taken in. In turn the ego ideal tries, through its sacrifices and holo­
causts, to ridicule the super-ego, which then pierces the 'sin of pride'
of megalomania and severely punishes the ego for its masquerade.
The ego ideal of the moral narcissist builds itself upon the vestiges of the
ideal ego: that is, upon a force of omnipotent idealising satisfaction
which is ignorant of the limitations of castration and which therefore
has less to do with the Oedipus complex of the oedipal phase than
with the preceding phases.
Here I would like to bring to your attention a remark concerning
the religious super-ego. Every super-ego carries w ithin itself a germ of
religion because it is created through an identification, not with the
parents, but rather with the parents' super-ego: that is, an identifica­
tion with the dead father, the ancestor. However, not every super-ego
merits the qualifying term religious. A specific feature of any religion
is that it takes the super-ego as its foundation and forms it into a
system - dogma - a necessary mediator of paternal prohibition. It is
certainly this feature that Freud was referring to when he called
religion the obsessional neurosis of humanity. Conversely, since there
is reciprocity, he also maintained that obsessional neurosis is the
tragicomic travesty of a private religion. Moral narcissists have
numerous similarities to obsessives, especially in regard to the intense
desexualisation they try to impose on their relationships with the
object and also in the deep aggression which they camouflage. I have
already mentioned the relation to paranoia. Grouping these observa­
tions, one can say that the more the ties to the object are maintained,
the more the relationships will be obsessional. The more these ties are
detached, the more the relationship will be paranoid. Any failure, in
the first case as well as the second, any deception inflicted upon the
ego ideal by the object, brings on depression.
Let me add a word about the relationship between shame and guilt,
and about Dodds' speculation that Greek mythology finds its echo in
individual pathological structures. Shame, as I have said, is of a narcis­
sistic order, whereas guilt is of an objectal order. This is not all. One
may also think that these feelings, the bases of the first reaction forma­
tions long before the Oedipus complex, are constitutive of the
precursors of the super-ego. This occurs before the internalisation of
the super-ego, heir to the Oedipus complex. Therefore, linking shame
to the pregenital phases of development not only explains its narcis­
sistic prevalence but also its cruel and intransigent character excluding
any possibility of reparation. Certainly this is a matter of schematic
opposition. Both shame and guilt always coexist. However, in analysis
a distinction must be made. Guilt in relation to masturbation is
connected with the fear of castration; shame has an irrational, primary
and absolute character. Shame is not a question of the fear of castra­
tion but rather of the prohibition of any contact with the castrated
person, insofar as he is the proof, the mark of an indelible impurity
that can be acquired through contact. It must be stated that only a
defusion of narcissism and the object-tie enables shame to have such
a great importance. As any defusion favours the liberation of the death
drive, suicide on account of shame becomes more understandable. Let
us go back to the ego. A point concerning sublimation was left
suspended and deserves further attention. I have mentioned pseudo­
sublimation, a form of sublimation others might call defensive
sublimation. To my way of thinking, this conception is not appro­
priate; it puts true sublimation, an expression of what is most noble in
man, in opposition to defensive sublimation, nothing more than a
failed sublimation. Undeniably, sublimations do exist which arise
from certain pathological forms. These can be viewed as emergency
exits from conflict, without necessarily being reaction formations. And
insofar as any sublimation is governed by the threat of castration, this
leads to the need to end the Oedipus complex, at the risk of running
even more serious risks for the libidinal economy. Thus sublimation
has the destiny of a drive. It is therefore a defence, one favoured by the
existence of drives whose aims are inhibited. W hat there is to say
about moral narcissism in this respect is instructive. One can observe
not only these escape sublimations, for which the subject will later pay
dearly, but also a process of inhibition, indeed a halting of the subli­
mation by secondary guilt (we must not forget that shame always
comes first) in the partial impulses, scopophilia in particular. When
the subject tends toward pseudo-sublimation, this mechanism is only
on rare occasions a pleasure: of a 'lesser value' in the eyes of the id than
sexual pleasure, but of greater value in the eyes of the super-ego. The
essential aspect of this vicissitude of the ego is the constitution of what
W innicott calls a false self which has taken over the idealising and
depriving forms of behaviour at the cost of what is called authenticity,
the difference being that the process is totally unconscious.
 In the face of this false self it is important not to disregard its
economic function. I have already mentioned that which functions as
a defensive process at the heart of moral narcissism, as well as that
which acts as a substitute satisfaction, that is, pride. But one must not
neglect the essential economic consideration that makes moral
narcissism and the false self underlying it the backbone of these
subjects' egos. It is therefore dangerous to attack it, lest the entire
structure crumble. Life, with its potential of disappointments, very
often does just this and then comes depression, or even suicide.

Bisexuality and the Death Drive

The ultimate aim of narcissism is the obliteration of the trace of the
Other in one's desire, therefore the abolition of the primary difference,
the difference between One and the Other. But what is the meaning of
the abolition of this primary difference in regard to the return to the
maternal breast? The aim of moral narcissism in this reduction of
tension to the level zero is either death or immortality, which is the
same thing. This explains why, confronted by these patients, we have
the feeling that their life is a protracted suicide, even when they
appear to have given up the idea of a violent death. However, this
suicidal form reveals how object inanition, consumption, are sacri­
ficed for the love of a terrible god: self-idealisation. W ith the
suppression of primary difference, one simultaneously brings about
the abolition of all the other differences, and, it goes without saying
of sexual difference. It is basically the same thing to say that desire must
be reduced to the level zero and to say that one must do without the
object which is the object of lack - the object becoming a sign that one
is limited, unachieved and incomplete. In Beyond the Pleasure Principle
(1920), Freud refers to the Platonic myth of the androgyne, a figure
evoking the fantasy of a primitive completion prior to sexual differ­
entiation. For the moral narcissist the inconveniences of sexual
differentiation must be suppressed by self-sufficiency. Narcissistic
wholeness is not a sign of health but rather a mirage of death.
Moral narcissism is a narcissism which is positive and negative at
the same time. It is positive in its concentration of energy upon a
fragile and threatened ego; negative because it gives value, not to
satisfaction, or frustration (this would be so in the case of
masochism), but to privation. Self-privation becomes the best bulwark
against castration.
There is a need for a differential analysis, according to the nature
of the deficiency; that is to say, according to sex. It cannot be repeated
often enough that the fear of castration concerns both sexes. Penis
envy concerns both sexes but with different particularities from the
start. The man fears castration of what he has, the woman of what she
could have. The woman desires a penis insofar as it is her destiny,
through coition or procreation, for example. The man desires a penis
insofar as his, like the female clitoris, is never sufficiently enhancing.
We must remember the indestructibility of these desires.
Moral narcissism enlightens us in this respect. In the case of a man,
it leads, through the behaviour of deprivation, to the following
defence: T cannot be castrated because I have nothing left; I am
stripped of everything and have put all my belongings at the disposi­
tion of whoever wants to take them / In the case of a woman the
reasoning would be: T have nothing but I want nothing more than
the nothing I have/ This monastic vocation in m an or woman is an
attempt to deny the lack or, on the contrary, to love it. T lack
nothing. I therefore have nothing to lose and even if I did lack some­
thing, I would love this lack as though it were myself/ Castration
continues to lead this chase, because this deficiency will be displaced
in the direction of the moral perfection to which the moral narcissist
aspires and which will constantly leave h im far from his self-imposed
demands. There, shame will expose its face, which will have to be
covered with a shroud.
The trace of the Other cannot be erased, even in the desire for the
One. For the Other will have taken on the face of the One in the
double which precedes it and which will repeat to it unceasingly: 'You
must love only me. No one but me deserves to be loved/ But who is
hiding behind the mask? The double, the image in the mirror? The
doubles inhabit the frame of the negative hallucination of the mother.
I shall not return to this concept, which I have already developed
(Green 1967). But I will extend this hypothesis here by demon­
strating that if negative hallucination is the base upon which moral
narcissism stands in its relationship with primary narcissism, then
the father is involved. The negation of the absence of the maternal
environment links up with the father as primordial absence, as an
absence of the principle of kinship, whose ulterior connections with
the'Law will be perceived. In the case of moral narcissism it cannot
be denied that this detour is aim ing only for the possession of a
phallus - a paternal phallus15 - as a principle of universal domina­
tion. The negation of this desire in the form of a celebration of
renunciation does not in the least change its ultimate aim. And it is
not by chance that in both sexes it is a matter of a negation of castra­
tion. God is asexual but God is the father. For the moral narcissist his
phallus is disembodied, void of its substance, an abstract and hollow
m ould.16
Before finishing with the relation between moral narcissism and
the death drive, we must return to the subject of idealisation. The
great merit of Melanie Klein (1946) was to have given idealisation the
place it deserves. For her, idealisation is the result of the primordial
splitting between the good and the bad object and, consequently,
between the good and the bad ego. This dichotomy overlaps the one
that exists between the idealised object (or ego) and the persecuting
object (or ego) in the paranoid-schizoid phase. Consequently, the
excessive idealisation of the object or of the ego appears to be the
result of splitting which attempts to m aintain (in the ego as in the
object) all the persecutory parts excluded. This point is confirmed in
clinical work. The idealisation of the ego is always the corollary of an
extremely threatening feeling, for the object as well as for the ego.
This links up with our observations on the importance of destructive
aggression in moral narcissists. Idealisation joins forces with om nipo­
tence in order to abolish, neutralise or destroy the destructive drives
that threaten the object and, through retaliation, the ego.
Here one can perceive more clearly the relations with masochism
which pose many questions for the interpretation of moral narcis­
sism. I consider masochism to represent the failure of the
neutralisation of the destructive drives oriented toward the ego:
hence the failure of moral narcissism and of its work of idealisation.
Moral narcissism should therefore be understood as a success of the
defence and, consequently, a success in the search for pleasure (mega-
lomaniacal) beyond masochism; megalomania arising from the
liberation from conflictual tensions. It should be understood that
moral narcissism is not the only way out in the face of a masochism
threatening the ego; rather, it is only one of several methods used to
keep this threat at a distance.
Should we conclude that moral narcissism is a protection from
masochism? I do not think so, since it is the dichotomy between
idealisation and persecution that is primary. Splitting shows the two
positions at the same time. It is necessary to emphasise the fact that
idealisation is no less mutilating than persecution in that it removes
the subject from the circuit of object relations. In order to make
things clearer, I would say that persecution underlies paranoid
delusion, whereas idealisation underlies schizophrenia in its most
hebephrenic forms. In its milder forms, this problem is obviously less
evident. Melanie Klein would say that in these cases the depressive
stage has been reached. This explains why the breakdown of the
moral narcissist takes on the face of depression and not delusion or
schizophrenia. In all of these cases, one can see that it is the intensity
of the destructive drives, uncontrolled by splitting, and the accentua­
tion of idealisation that are responsible for the regression. Thus, the
two positions, idealisation and persecution, go hand in hand. Beyond
this there is a chaotic state which does not recognise the primary
symbolising division, that of good and bad.
Technical Implications in the Treatment of Moral Narcissists
The treatment of moral narcissists poses delicate problems. I have
already pointed out some of the more serious obstacles to the treat­
ment's evolution. They involve difficulty of access to material tied to
the object relation beyond the reconstitution of narcissistic depend­
ence upon the mother (and therefore upon the analyst). In my
experience it seems that the key to these cures resides, as always, in
the analyst's desire, in the counter-transference. For eventually the
analyst, knowing that he has to continue such a relationship, finally
feels that he is his patient's prisoner. He becomes the other pole of
dependence, as in those cases when one does not quite know what
distinguishes the gaoler from the m an he is guarding. The analyst is
then tempted to modify this analytic situation in order to make it
advance. Since the least guilt-inducing variant is kindness, the analyst
offers his love, without realising that he is pouring the first drop into
the Danaides' barrel. But the fact is that the desire for this love is
always insatiable, and one must also expect to see the reserves of love
used up: they are limited and therefore exhaustible. It seems to me
that here the analyst is making a technical error because he is
responding to a desire of the patient, a move we know is always
perilous. Since it is a matter of moral narcissism, the analyst then
becomes a substitute moralist, indeed a priest. The result is that the
analysis loses its specific feature, the spring of its efficacy. It is exactly
as if one were to choose to respond to a delusional symptomatology
at the level of its manifest expression. To do so would be to create an
impasse, If not to commit an error.
The second possibility is that of the transference interpretation. As
long as it remains expressed objectively through the words of the
analyst, it only has a slight echo in this material covered by the
narcissistic carapace. One might as well try to awaken the sexual
desire of someone dressed in armour. There remains resignation. It is
certainly the least dangerous of all these attitudes. Let it be, let it
happen. Since the privations required by therapy have no effect other
than that of reinforcing moral narcissism, the analyst then risks
engaging himself in an interminable analysis, the patient's need for
dependence thus being largely satisfied.
So there seems to be no solution. There is, however, one that I
would not dare mention here without apprehension, if in certain cases
it had not allowed me to make perceptible advances. It is a matter of
(and the undertaking is perilous) analysing narcissism. Analysing
narcissism is a project which, in more than one way, could appear
impossible. However, after a sufficient passage of time - several years -
when the transference is well-established and the repetition behaviour
has been analysed, the analyst can resolve to pronounce the key
words: shame, pride, honour, dishonour, micromania and megalo­
mania. And he can thereby free the subject of a part of his burden,
since the worst frustration a patient can feel during an analysis is that
of not being understood. As tough as the interpretation may be, as
cruel as it may be to hear the truth, it is less cruel than the iron yoke
in which the patient feels imprisoned. Often the analyst cannot bring
himself to use this method, because he has the feeling he is trauma-
tising his patient. He therefore puts up a good front while within he is
ill-at-ease. If we believe in the unconscious we ought to suppose that
these attitudes, camouflaged by the civility of analytical relations, are
perceptible to the patient, through the most subtle indications.
The analyst must be an artisan of separation from the patient, with
the condition, however, that the patient does not feel that this sepa­
ration is a way of getting rid of him. Moreover, let me add that often
those who treat these patients, when face to face with the realisation
of their subjects' inaccessibility, get rid of them in most affable ways,
at least outwardly. In short, I am defending here nothing other than
a technique of truth, certainly not an orthopaedic technique. This
interpretative attitude can at times allow access to the problem of
idealisation-persecution, and can thereby uncover what is lurking in
the persecution implicit beneath the facade of idealisation. Protection
from persecution (from the object and suffered by the ego; from the
ego and suffered by the object) is, at the same time, an escape from
persecution in a camouflaged form. Through this, the object-tie to the
mother can be reconstituted. Then the ego's reproaches concerning
the object and the object's reproaches concerning the ego will be
evident. Recourse to narcissistic sufficiency can be accounted for only
by the deficiency of the object, whether this deficiency is real or the
result of an inability to satisfy the unquenchable needs of the child.

Heroic Figures of Moral Narcissism

Everything I have elaborated here, except for my apologue of Oedipus
and Ajax, is drawn from observing patients. Their implied narcissistic
regression makes them caricatures of the normal portraits that
anyone can discover among those around him. While not quite cari­
catures, certain heroic figures - other than Ajax, who is an extreme
case - may be contemplated.
Think of Brutus, for example, as portrayed in Shakespeare's Julius
Caesar. Brutus assassinated Caesar not because of desire or ambition
but because of patriotism; because he was a republican and saw in his
adoptive father a threat to the virtue of Rome. W hen one assassinates
for virtue, afterwards one is never virtuous enough to justify the
assassination: hence this refusal to tie oneself by oath to the other
conspirators, as each has to answer only to his own conscience.

... No, not an oath ...

And what other oath
Than honesty to honesty engaged
That this shall be or we will fall for it? (Act II, I)

Above all, honour! Brutus has already warned us: 'I love the name of
honour more than I fear death' (Act I, III).
This explains this act of insanity, for any political debutant,17
which permits the most feared of his rivals, Mark Antony,18 to make
the funeral oration. This is also why, before joining battle, he makes
violent reproaches to the courageous Cassius, his ally, whom he
accuses of being what we would call today a war profiteer. And thus,
finally, his suicide, offered as supplementary evidence of his incor­
ruptible virtue. His heroic cause, however, is not necessarily that of
the Republic, of the state, or of power.
Love also has its heroes of moral narcissism. The most beautiful of
them all is the analyst's patron saint, Don Quixote, particularly cher­
ished by Freud. Let us recall the episode in which Quixote goes to the
Sierra Morena and wants to live there as a hermit. He strips himself of
his few possessions and begins to tear his clothing, to batter his body
and leap around madly, all of which astonishes Sancho Panza. When
the latter demands an explanation, the hildalgo of pure blood
explains to this com m on m an that he is only conforming to the rules
of the code of love as stipulated in the novels of chivalry. Quixote is
seeking the feat capable of perpetuating his name in the name of love,
a love which must not only be pure, with no sign of carnal desire, but
which must also totally dispossess him of his fortune. He must come
to this destitution of himself and of his individuality, by imitating
Amadis or Roland, to the point of madness - or at least an imitation
of'ft. 'But I have now to rend my garments, scatter my arms about,
and dash my head against these rocks; with other things of the like
sort which will strike you with admiration.' This he says to Sancho
Panza, who tries in vain to reason with him . 'Mad I am and mad I
must be', adds Quixote whose madness here is a sign of virtue. And of
Quixote's description of Dulcinea as the 'ever honoured lady', Sancho
sees only that 'she will pitch the bar with the lustiest swain in the
parish; straight and vigorous, and I warrant can make her part good
with any knight-errant that shall have her for his lady. Oh, what a
pair of lungs and a voice she has ... and the very best of her is, that
she is not at all coy, but as bold as a court-lady ... .' Certainly this is
not the way Quixote sees Dulcinea. One can say that here it cannot
be a matter of narcissism but rather of objectal love; it is for the object
of love that Quixote inflicts upon himself privations and cruelty. But
no, it is only a matter of the narcissistic projection of an idealised
image and it is not the least of the strokes of genius of Cervantes that
he ends his book with Quixote's repudiation: 'No more of that, I
beseech you', replied Don Quixote, 'all the use I shall make of these
follies at present is to heighten my repentance.'
Doubtless Quixote and Sancho Panza exist, as Marthe Robert has
said, 'only on paper'. But they live in us if not in themselves. In the
same way, is not Falstaff the absolutely and completely amoral narcis­
sist, whose monologue on honour merits both our reprobation for its
coarseness and our admiration for its truth?19 We are caught between
an indispensable illusion and a no less indispensable truth.
All of these figures have been described by a philosopher. Have you
not recognised, again and again in these pages, Hegel and his 'beau­
tiful soul'? Concerned about the order of the world, wanting to
change it but anxious for his virtue, he would like to knead the dough
with which man is made, while at the same time keeping his hands
clean. But let us beware of following Hegel's example; having immor­
talised this beautiful soul with hispen, he could only conclude the
Phenomenology o f Mind with a triumph that could well have been that
of the beautiful soul.
We can feel, can we not, how close this beautiful soul of moral
conscience can come to the delusion of presumption, to this law of
the heart whose reference is paranoia? In any case, its narcissistic
character did not escape Hegel: 'Contemplation of itself is its objective
existence, and this objective element is the declaration of its knowing
and willing as something universal.' There is even its tie to the most
primary narcissism: 'Here, then, we see self-consciousness withdrawn
into its innermost being, for which all externality as such has
vanished - withdrawn into the intuition of the "ego" = "ego", in
which this "ego" is the whole of essentiality and existence.' The
consequence of this is 'absolute untruth, which collapses internally'.
Am I giving the impression of engaging in the denunciation of
virtue and the defence of vice? To do so would be to give in to a
fashion which today sees Sade as our saviour. I will content myself
with recalling the truth, pointed out by Freud, which makes an indis­
soluble tie between sexuality and morality, the diversion of one
automatically bringing about the diversion of the other. Georges
Bataille, to whom tribute should be paid by psychoanalysts, has
profoundly understood this consubstantiality of erotism and the
sacred.
 'I must earn your love', a patient said. To which we answered: 'Yes,
but what kind of love are you talking about?' She was obliged to
recognise, in spite of her vain and hopeless efforts, that Eros, that
black angel, for her had turned white. (Bataille 1957)

Conclusion
Several points have been left in suspense. First of all, it is necessary to
point out that the structure of moral narcissism here is far from being
rigid. It characterises certain patients by the predominance of its
features. No one is totally free of moral narcissism. One can also draw
attention to this structural particularity as a phase in the analysis of
certain patients. Moreover, though the cases I have described may
well have the outlines of this structure, they are not definitively tied
to it. They can evolve - experience has taught us this - and can attain
other positions. It is with satisfaction that we can observe favourable
evolutions in cases where they were no longer hoped for.
Let us also take another look at the ties between moral narcissism
and moral masochism. It is useful to distinguish them. Is not one a
camouflage for the other? Rather than considering their relationship
in terms of one covering or overlapping the other, I think that,
though their relationship is dialectical, a different series is nonethe­
less involved. If, however, one had to admit their oneness, I would say
that the true masochism is moral narcissism, insofar as there exists in
the latter an attempt to reduce the tensions to the level zero - the
final aim of masochism insofar as its destiny is tied to the death
instinct and the Nirvana principle. To repeat: the connection with
suffering implies a relationship with the object - narcissism reduces
the subject to itself, toward the zero which is the subject.
Desexualisation is directed toward the libidinal and aggressive
drives, toward the object and toward the ego. The open range given
to the death drive is aiming for the annihilation of the subject consid­
ered as the last fantasy. Here death and immortality converge.
In truth, extreme solutions are never encountered; all that one
establishes in clinical work, and particularly in the selectivity of
psychoanalytic practice, compared with psychiatric practice which is
broader, are orientations toward curves, moving to their asymptotic
limits. In this regard, the relations between shame and guilt are much
more complex than we have said. However, the destructive character
of shame is very important: guilt can be shared, shame cannot.
Nonetheless, ties are formed between shame and guilt: one can be
ashamed of one's guilt, one can feel guilty about one's shame. But the
analyst clearly distinguishes the levels of splitting when, faced by his
patient, he feels the extent to which guilt can be tied to its uncon­
scious sources and how it can be partially surpassed when analysed.
Shame, by contrast, takes on an irreparable character. The transfor­
mation of pleasure into unpleasure is a solution for guilt; for shame,
the only thing possible is the path of negative narcissism. A neutrali­
sation of affects is at work, a deadly enterprise in which a labour of
Sisyphus is carried out. I love no one. I love only myself. I love myself.
I do not love. I do not. I. O. The progression is the same for hate: I
hate no one. I hate only myself. I hate myself. I do not hate. I do not.
I. O. This progression of propositions illustrates the evolution toward
the affirmation of the megalomaniacal T in the last stage before its
disappearance.
5
The Neuter Gender (1973)

Although, for psychoanalysis, difference is sexual, the question of

bisexuality is related to psychoanalytic theory as a whole. W hat is the
position as far as abolishing - or as far as the fantasy of abolishing -
this difference is concerned? And how are we to situate this particular
problem if the reference points needed to localise it have not been
defined? So two stages are involved. First, we shall have to establish
the theoretical framework for our project; and then, within this
framework, we will attempt to elucidate the object of our study which
is called the neuter gender.

Reference Points for Psychical Bisexuality

The Point o f Departure: Sexuality between Biology and Psychoanalysis
No other question is better suited to demonstrate the relations
between the biological roots of the drive and psycho-sexual life than
that of sexuality. This privileged domain is well-suited for examining
Freud's hypotheses in the light of the scientific facts of biology, and
for^ comparing medical clinical experience with the findings of
clinical psychoanalysis in order to highlight their similarities and
differences. Now, so far, this confrontation has revealed profound
discrepancies which often confirm, and sometimes undermine,
Freud's metapsychological postulates. The contributions of post-
Freudian authors are not exempt from this new examination.

Point 1. Biological Sexuality and Psycho-Sexuality

Biological sexuality involves a series of relays spread out in time, each
of which plays its role in determining sexual identity (chromosomal,
gonadal, horm onal sexual identity, internal genitals, external
genitals, secondary sexual characteristics). The m ain fact is that
masculinity is the result of an active process (through the interven­
tion of a testicle provoking masculine characteristics), femininity
being the outcome of a passive process (obtained either as a result of
pathological defect or by the normal absence of a testicle provoking
masculine characteristics). One can therefore speak of a development
of biological sexuality, from conception to puberty, which is charac­
terised by a discontinuous and differentiated process. However, in the
hum an species a new mutative relay (Organiser 1) appears which is
superimposed on biological development. This relay is at the origin of
an autonomous psychological development which is different from
biological development and responsible for psycho-sexuality. The
hum an relay is the fundamental determinant of an individual's sexu­
ality (cf. Money, Hampson).

Point 2. Parental Wishes and Infantile Sexuality

This mutative relay is constituted by labelling the child with a sexual
gender, which may conform more or less to the individual's morpho­
logical sexuality (cf. the clinical data on intersexual states with genital
ambiguity: pseudo-hermaphroditism1). This labelling is closely
connected with parental wishes. Its mode of action finds expression
in the mother-child relationship from birth on until the child is
about two and a half years old. At this point, the individual experi­
ences and sees himself as clearly monosexual (Money, Hampson).

Point 3. Freud
The Freudian theory of bisexuality has had the merit of distin­
guishing psychical bisexuality from biological bisexuality.
Nevertheless, when he comes up against difficult questions, at many
points in his work, Freud maintains that the solution to the mystery
is to be found in biology, something which does not seem to be
confirmed by science today. Moreover, the Freudian theory of libido
development may nowadays seem to be too exclusively based on an
individual evolution underestimating the parent-child relationship,
or not related to it.

Point 4. Melanie Klein and Winnicott

By playing down the problem of castration and the difference between
the sexes, Melanie Klein's theory neglects bisexuality and, more gener­
ally, the problematics of sexuality in favour of the problematics of
aggression. On the other hand, Winnicott's theory puts the emphasis
on the parent-child relationship and takes into account the inter-rela­
tionships between processes of maturation and the maternal
environment, but perhaps underestimates the father's role and that of
parental sexuality. The role of maternal care can be interpreted in a
more metapsychological way than it was by Winnicott. Of course, I am
not talking about an external influence. Rather, one might conceive of
it as the necessary connection of two drive apparatuses linked to each
other by the difference of potential owing to their unequal develop­
ment (the coverage of the child's id-ego by the mother's ego-id). This
first connection would in turn be linked up with the father's drive
apparatus, in a metaphorical position (Lacan). Each of these three
apparatuses would initially be able to have a mediating function
between the two others. This first stage would be followed by a re­
organisation once monosexuality had been established.

Point 5. The 'Imprint' o f Desire: the Parental Fantasy

It seems probable that when a parent labels his or her child with a
sexual gender, it acts like a psychical imprint which, however, cannot
be likened to the mechanism as it is described in animals. This imprint
is constituted following the perception of the child's body as a sexual
form, which is strengthened or weakened thereafter by the parent.
The parental fantasy, in particular the mother's, therefore has to be
seen as playing a powerful inductive role in establishing individual
monosexuality. All eventualities are possible: ignoring sexual ambi­
guity (hermaphroditism or pseudo-hermaphroditism); rejecting a
biological sex without ambiguity (boy brought up as a girl, and vice
versa); unconsciously valuing the sex which the child does not have;
showing more or less total intolerance of an individual's psychical
bisexuality by means of repression and by making the individual feel
guilty for attitudes and tendencies which do not belong to his or her
biological sex, etc. One should bear in m ind that this psychical
impregnation is tied up with other factors such as perpetuating a
fusional relationship with the child beyond the period when this
should cease, the attitude vis-a-vis aggressivity, attempting to block
the transition of investment from the mother to the father and so on.
W hat needs to be emphasised here is that this impregnation is subject
to^ the influence of a parent who is himself (or herself) caught in a
conflict with respect to psychical bisexuality.

Point 6. Psychical Bisexuality and Personal Fantasy

There is reason to suppose, therefore, that an individual's psychosex­
uality is dominated by the mother's fantasy. The latter is constituted
on the basis of various parameters: an infantile desire to have a child
from her father or mother; the sex of this imaginary child; the
mother's acceptance of her own sex; the role the husband's (that is,
the child's father's) desire has in her own desire; desire for this desire,
and so on. O n the other hand, the individual's psychical bisexuality
is constituted by means of personal fantasy (more or less related to
the parental fantasy). It is through constituting the fantasy of the
other sex - the one we do not have but which we could have through
imagination, in the oedipal triangle - that psychical bisexuality is
organised, as Freud recognised.

Point 7. Psychical Conflict and the Fantasy of the Primal Scene

Psychical conflict occurs on several levels which are interconnected.
The individual's sex depends, then, on the way he is experienced and
perceived by his mother and father, on their convergent and diver­
gent desires for him, and on the way in which he experiences and
perceives himself in his convergent and divergent desires towards
them. This conflict is intimately tied up with the individual's narcis­
sism as well as his destructive drives. It culminates in the fantasy of
the primal scene (Organiser 2), which brings into play contradictory
desires and identifications.

Point 8. The Neuter Gender

Although this conflict ordinarily contributes to the organisation of
psychical bisexuality, another possible outcome can be found in
destroying sexual desire and therefore sexual identification. The
counterpart and complement of psychical bisexuality, whether
manifest or latent, thus seems to be the fantasy of the neuter gender,
neither masculine nor feminine, and dominated by absolute primary
narcissism. This crushing of drive activity leads the subject's idealising
and megalomaniac inclinations not towards the fulfilment of sexual
desire but towards a longing for a state of psychical nothingness in
which being nothing seems to be the ideal condition of self-sufficiency.
This tendency towards zero never, of course, attains its goal and finds
expression in self-restrictive behaviour of suicidal significance.

Point 9. The Oedipal Complex and the Castration Complex

Another mutative relay will organise all the earlier data during the
oedipal complex (Organiser 3) when bisexuality is put to the test. The
oedipal complex, always dual - positive and negative - culminates in
a double identification, masculine and feminine. These two identifi­
cations are not however of equal form; they are complementary and
contradictory, one dominating the other and concealing it, more or
less. The castration complex, as Freud describes it, possesses an indis­
putable heuristic value. It is a time of reorganisation. Before it, the
exchange of places and roles in fantasy did not involve any vectori-
sation of desire. Thereafter, maternal and paternal identifications,
governed by the castration complex, obey a law governing the flow of
exchanges. Bisexuality is the retroactive effect of this vectorisation.
The castration complex is only operative - in the strict and specific
sense denoted by the term castration - when the significance of the
sexual gender to which the individual belongs has been acquired. It is
not contemporaneous with the discovery of the difference between
the sexes, but with the m om ent when this discovery acquires an
organising significance. Overcoming the castration complex depends
on earlier stages which are reinterpreted apres coup as precursors of
castration (loss of the breast and weaning, the gift of faeces, and
sphincteral training). O n the other hand, it is important that the pre-
oedipal stages have not been too conflictual, to the extent of blocking
development, so that the castration complex can be elaborated. The
two-phases of libidinal development are of capital importance; the
period of latency, marked by repression, creating a major disconti­
nuity between infantile sexuality and adult sexuality.

Point 10. Sexual Reality and Psychical Reality

At the time of the oedipal complex, the conflict takes on the form of
an opposition between the individual's sexual reality and his psychical
reality. Sexual reality concerns the sex which is determined and fixed
before the third year; psychical reality concerns the fantasies which
are convergent or divergent with sexual reality. This conflict depends
to a large extent on the position adopted by the ego. Depending on
the case in question, the ego may completely deny reality (trans­
sexual psychosis) or accept sexual reality by splitting it off from
psychical reality, endeavouring to satisfy its fantasies by adhering to
them and acting them out (perversion); or, lastly, it may reject that
part of psychical reality which contradicts sexual reality (neurosis).
The ego's options are dependent on the pre-oedipal period and the
more or less mobilisable marks it has made on it. The vicissitudes of
biological and psychical development present us with a range of
structures (real hermaphroditism, pseudo-hermaphroditism, trans­
vestism, homosexuality, fetishism), each of which lays claim to a
distinct pathogeny and different therapeutic responses, commensu­
rate with the individual's demand (cf. Stoller).
n

Point 11. Primal Femininity and the Repudiation of Femininity

The determining role of factors stemming from the maternal envi­
ronment gives us reason to assume, along with W innicott, that,
because it is intricately tied up with the new-born child's biological
and psychological state of dependency, and in view of the latter's
prematurity, the feminine element of maternal origin should be
accepted and integrated in both sexes.2 This primal passivation may be the
object of a primordial repression which would account for Freud's
opinion that it is femininity that both sexes find most difficult to
accept. It goes without saying that, in boys, the acceptance of femi­
ninity should not result in making the acceptance of masculinity as
the individual's real sex more onerous. Conversely, in girls, this
primal femininity is real and different from secondary femininity,
which is only constituted after the phallic phase and gives way to
secondary maternal identification.

Point 12. The Difference between the Sexual Developments of Boys and
Girls
It cannot be emphasised enough that the sexual destiny of boys and
girls differs considerably. While both are attached to the feminine,
maternal, primordial object, when a boy's psycho-sexual develop­
ment is completed, he is able, by means of a single displacement, to
find an object of the same sex as the primordial object, whereas a girl
will have to find an object of a different sex to her mother's. Her
evolution destines her to object-change (the first displacement-
reversal, by means of substitution, is from the mother to the father),
followed by a definitive object-choice (the second displacement is
from the father to his substitute). This specificity of feminine devel­
opment accounts for the specific difficulties of feminine sexuality.

Point 13. The Limits o f Psychoanalytic Intervention

Cultural codes and ideology inevitably influence sexual destiny
through the parents' valuing or devaluing of their child's bisexuality,
a process in which collective ideas of masculinity and femininity play
their part. The fact remains that these variations are integrated in
individual conflicts at the parental level and that the basic induction
occurs in the parents', and particularly the mother's, matrix
exchanges with the child. The analytic situation certainly does not
constitute a mere repetition of this situation but, through transfer­
ence, it creates an analogical model. Nonetheless, the deeply
inscribed character of certain marks sets limits to the changes that are
likely to occur through psychoanalysis.

Bisexuality and Primary Narcissism: The Neuter Gender

More often than not the analyst has to deal with psychical bisexuality
in the form of a latent conflict which is uncovered during analysis.
Indeed, this is one of the difficulties of psychoanalysis and is m ani­
fested by the analyst's limited capacity to tolerate, to allow to
develop, to interpret with precision, the transference concerning the
imago of the sex which is not his own. So the problem analytic theory
has today resides in the fact that each of its two dom inant figures met
with this stumbling block in their own respective ways. Freud was
undoubtedly - he admitted as much himself - troubled in his analyses
of feminine sexuality by his embarrassment at feeling he was the
object of a maternal transference. And in spite of going 'deeper' than
Freud, Melanie Klein does not seem, for her part, to have learnt much
from analysing the paternal transference of her patients. Nonetheless,
if there is a problem, it is because the conflict here is unconscious.
In other cases, the analyst may have the opportunity of seeing
other structures where bisexuality is displayed or even actualised. (In
this case both heterosexual and homosexual activity can be observed.
It is nonetheless exceptional that both types are equally invested. The
neurotic nature of these cases is highly questionable. The perverse
structure falls a long way short of providing an adequate explanation
for the psychopathology of patients who present such characteristics.
In certain extreme cases of transvestism, bisexuality can even be
brought about through horm onal im pregnation by injecting
oestrogen.) I cannot go into all the details here concerning the obser­
vation of a patient I saw in 1959 at the Paris Centre for Psychoanalytic
Consultations and Treatment.3 I shall just give the m ain outlines
which will serve to illustrate the ideas I have put forward.
The subject in question was a female, somewhat stout, of sturdy
build, and even athletic in appearance. As soon as she was seated, she4
produced a photocopy of a document from the French Ministry of
Employment certifying that she presented feminine arid masculine
attributes with a feminine dominance and informed me that she had
undertaken steps to have her identity changed.
The case history is probably worth telling, not only because of the
sometimes fantastic turns in the singular destiny of this person - so
fantastic that one even wondered at times whether mythomania did
not enter into the clinical picture - but also because, as one listened
to her account, one got a glimpse of a maternal image to which she
was deeply bound. 'My mother hated me before I was bom; she told me
so was one of the first things she said at the beginning of two
consultations. The mother's feminine induction was reported in an
allusion to the child who had just told her of her success in obtaining
heb school leaving certificate: 'W hich teacher did you sleep with to
get through this exam?' As is usual in these cases the child was
brought up and dressed as a girl until she started school. Her public
transvestite practices began around the age of sixteen or seventeen
(disguising herself as a girl so as to be able to attend the neighbouring
village balls). As is also often the case, homosexuality was deeply
repressed. Not the least paradoxical aspect of the case - and this was
verified - was that the patient was living together with an older
woman with whom she participated in minor sado-masochistic prac­
tices of a completely puerile and infantile character. Thus, on
Sundays, she sometimes wanted to go out 'to have some fun' but
found she was prohibited from doing so by her friend, who chained
her to a stove to make her finish her washing and ironing first! The
patient accepted this treatment: she had the key of the padlock on her
but declined to use it. Anality pervaded the clinical picture and the
aspect of dirtiness was striking. The inside of the apartment was
reported to be repulsively dirty The domination she herself was
subjected to was converted into her own dominating approach at
work where, apparently, she worked wonders re-educating physically
disabled people.
The search for contradictory satisfactions was evident: her attitude
towards any form of authority, public authorities, for example, was
one of rejection, and her need to be kept under tight rein, to be
bullied and dominated meant she longed'to be in a passive position.
The quest here for a powerful maternal character is patently clear. On
the other hand, the poverty of sexual satisfactions is remarkable. The
fondling of her breasts - which had apparently developed as a result
of oestrogen injections given by the Germans during the war - was
the only pleasure she procured: 7t is as if my body were divided in two;
as if below the belt I didn't exist, or was another person.’
During our second meeting, the patient spoke of the periods she
had every twenty-eight days 'through rectal porosity’, and once again
produced certificates. 'A few days before my period, I am absolutely
impossible, irritable, nervous, etc. I have never accepted being a complete
woman.’ At this point I said to her: 'In fact you don't want to be either
a man or a woman', and, before I had time to add anything else, she
went on as if she had just understood something important: 7 think
you're the first person to get to the heart o f the matter; I don't want to give
up any o f the advantages o f the two sexes.’
In the rest of this meeting, we discussed the problem of a surgical
operation, for it was difficult to differentiate between transsexualism,
which involves a pressing demand for a sex change, and transvestism,
in which perverse practices seem to suffice for obtaining satisfaction.
The patient's reply is worth citing: 'You're telling me, Doctor; that when
I leave this room, I will have the choice between two solutions:
'On the right, is an operating theatre with all the equipment needed for
giving me a vagina, a uterus, etc. But once I had been operated on, I would
be an emasculated individual who would lose all his shape, put on weight,
find himself stripped of all his will and energy, who would be unable any
longer to make a living and would just be good for walking the streets and
getting screwed; well, in that case, I would refuse, and I'm sure you can't
guarantee me that that is not what would happen if I had an operation.
'On the left; there is a well-equipped laboratory which could give me
back my virility and make my breasts disappear with the help of hormonal
injections. There again, I would not believe you. I think there will always be
something feminine in me: I don't want to live as a man.’
 This development led me to point out that the image which she
was trying to give of herself was not that of a woman but of a mascu­
line woman. The patient agreed that this was, indeed, the impression
she gave. At this point a new stage of the story began - fantasy or
reality? - in which the patient talked about a situation in which he
claimed he felt he was 'entirely female'. This account concerns events
in which she served as a partner for a perverse burglar who would
break into apartments and then introduce our patient into them
saying, This is my place. Everything here belongs to me. Lie down on
the bed/ The partner would then throw himself on the patient,
having an orgasm almost immediately, and then order his partner to
take off 'her' clothes (a woman's clothing) and to take others from the
wardrobe of the burgled apartment, which they would then leave as
soon as the stolen clothes had been put on.
A notable fact here was that the theft never assumed proportions
other than symbolic. The ritual sometimes became more complex.
For instance, in each apartment that was burgled, the thief was
capable of requiring the patient to undress and remain naked. Finally,
this complicity came to an end since the perverse practices took a
sadistic turn which frightened the patient: he feared, it seems, there
was a real danger of being castrated. At any rate, during the time they
were living together, this was the only time that the feminine identi­
fication was complete: 7 had become his victim and I did whatever he told
me to do.'
This observation speaks for itself: the image of the phallic mother
stands out in this tragi-comic fresque, with the eclipsing of the father
as its shadow, so to speak. The patient appeals to the fantasmatic
imago of a father really castrating the woman with a penis. The struc­
ture of the case is dominated by the fantasy of the primal scene. It will
thus come as no surprise to learn that the subject's first sexual rela­
tionship was with a young girl, at his home, in his parents' bed - a
short-lived experience, during which they both lost their virginity,
artd which ended in their separating for good.
We will leave this patient recalling a family 'story' to which it is
tempting to attach great importance: 'My grandmother used to tell me
an anecdote in which I took extreme pleasure and which I would ask her to
tell again, even though I knew it by heart: it took place during an outing in
the country which my parents had made with some friends o f theirs. While
the women were conversing on the grass, the men were fishing trout in the
river. My father lost his footing, falling into the water and was completely
soaked. He took off his wet clothes and then had to make do with whatever
was at hand. Most likely out o f fun, more than necessity; each of the women
divested themselves of a piece o f their clothing in order to cover my father
who ended up being dressed entirely as a woman/
 This, then, was the story of someone who was given three first
names by his parents: Pierre (like his father), Marie (like his mother)
and Andre. His application for a change of civil status contained a
deletion, that of his paternal first name, and, an addition, a mute e to
feminise his personal first name, a symbol of masculinity. So he came
to be called 'Marie-Andree'. W hen I pointed out to him how he had
thereby excluded his 'father's name', he denied ferociously that this
could be anything other than a coincidence; although normally he
very readily confessed his perverse desires.
In a long footnote at the end of the fourth chapter of Civilisation
and Its Discontents Freud develops his views on bisexuality:

... if we assume it as a fact that each individual seeks to satisfy both

male and female wishes in his sexual life, we are prepared for the
possibility that those [two sets of] demands are not fulfilled by the
same object, and that they interfere with each other unless they
can be kept apart and each impulse guided into a particular
channel that is suited to it.5

Here, then, is a remark confirming that hum an sexuality is, indeed, as

the word used by R. Lewinter suggests, 'sexion'. Moreover, etymology
backs this up. The word sex is thought to originate from secare: to cut,
separate. Here the biological metaphor supports the fantasy, since
each of the two sexes separates in order to unite with the missing half
provided by the other sex. Psychical bisexuality takes its revenge for
this sexion-cession and recuperates through fantasy the jouissance
conceded to the sex one does not have. Bisexuality is thus closely
linked to the difference between the sexes. Where there is bisexuality,
there is also difference. Where there is difference, there is a cut, a
caesura, a castration of the potentialities for jouissance of the comple­
mentary sex: inverse and symmetrical. Claiming real bisexuality means
refusing sexual difference insofar as the latter implies the lack of the other
sex. If, by definition, each sex lacks the other, putting both sexes, so
to speak, on the same level, castration, the fantasy of castration, that
is, the absence or the loss of the virile member, symbolises and
subsumes this lack, whichever sex one may have. It is possible for a boy
to lose the sex he has, or, for a girl to materialise the lack of the sex
she does not have. Admittedly, a girl has something else: a vagina, a
womb that can be fertilized, as well as numerous and varied entice­
ments. It remains true that she does not have a penis. True enough, a
boy also lacks what a woman has; which he does not have. But these
assets are not visible at the level of the sexual organs. The nature of
imaginary capture is such that what can be represented is this addi­
tional or missing feature of the penis; an imaginary feature to be
symbolised. And there is good reason for thinking that penis envy is
not envy for this piece of flesh, but for what is fantasised about the
powers it confers, and which are conferred on it by parental desire.
Continuing to study this problem from this point of view is to
assume that certain problems have been resolved and affirms that the
male-female dilemma implicitly admits of their difference or, at the
very least, admits that the subject is a sexual being.
The patient I was speaking about earlier came to see me because of
his anxieties - anxieties, he said, which gripped him every morning
on waking, so that he wondered if that day would not be the day of
his death. The consultation revealed that this anxious state reflected
the time when he was a prisoner of the Germans, who were said to
have carried out femininising experiments on him . Each time he
woke up he wondered whether he would survive. Here death anxiety
and castration anxiety are connected.
The problem is not a simple one.
In La logique du vivant, Francois Jacob writes, 'But the two most
important inventions [of evolution] are sex and death/6 A fruit of
coincidence, perhaps, but united, in any case, by necessity. F. Jacob
speaks of death 'imposed from within like a prescribed necessity'. I will
not let myself be tempted here by the sirens of 'metabiology', and will
stay in the realm of clinical experience which is closely akin to myth.
In certain psychopathological structures in which sexuality as a
whole is rejected outright, without qualification or distinction, the
subject builds and constantly nourishes the fantasy of a-sexuality. The
subject claims to be neither masculine nor feminine but neuter.
Neither one nor the other, ne uter. He sees to it that any form of
hetero- or homosexual aspiration is expunged from his behaviour, as
from his desire. These cases are rare but they do exist. Of course, it is
a defensive position which can be overcome with analysis. This
fantasy of neutrality, constructed with the help of all the resources of
intemperate narcissism, bears the marks of the absolute despotism of
a tyrannical and megalomaniac ego ideal. For where desire is
concerned, everything is settled in an all-or-nothing mode: 'Since I
cannot have and be everything, I will have and be nothing.'
This fantasy could easily be elaborated in relation to the perception
of the maternal fantasy which wishes her child to be neither sexual
nor alive. But the quest for maternal love goes hand in hand with an
inextinguishable thirst for love and an exaggerated sensibility
towards any manifestation of rejection by the loved object, whether
it be a maternal or paternal substitute. Consequently, salvation is only
to be found in the fantasy of the neuter gender, in its states of undif­
ferentiated sexuality; a sign both of obedience to the mother's desire
as well as vengeance on her, through the violent rejection of her.
 It is remarkable, then, that the aspiration for Nothing is in keeping
with ascetic behaviour of reducing needs, just as primary narcissism
endeavours to reduce tensions to the level zero. Here 1 mean absolute
primary narcissism in the strongest sense of the term; that is, I am not
speaking of primary narcissism as it is used to describe the subject's
unification into a singular entity, but, on the contrary, of negative
narcissism which ardently seeks a return to the quiescent state. The
latter finds expression in suicidal behaviour which is more or less
disguised or acted out. In chapters 2 and 4, I showed that primary
narcissism should not be confused with primary masochism, precisely
because the concealing of jouissance by means of masochistic manoeu­
vres is absent here, the final goal being the extinction of all excitation,
of all desire, whether it is agreeable or disagreeable. This fascination
with death underlies a fantasy of immortality; for, being nothing is
simply a way of abolishing the possibility of no longer existing, of one
day lacking something, even if it is only the breath of life.
The fantasy of the neuter gender is closely akin to the myth
studied by Marie Delcourt.7 The complete hum an being, that is, the
union of the Father's spirit and maternal nature, is linked with the
symbol of the androgynous, self-begetting and immortal Phoenix.
There is nonetheless a further need for a baptism of fire which reduces
everything to ashes. The Gnostic idea puts the finishing touch to this
link between androgyny and deliverance from the flesh.
Totality is safeguarded and lack is denied. It is not in the positivity
of actual complementarity that sexual difference is abolished, where
Hermes and Aphrodite are but one, but in the even more radical
movement of a negative process in which the nothing is incarnated
and desire results in the death of desire and triumphs over the death
of desire. The One proves to be an impossible concept to think about.
Because it is made up of two different halves, which cannot be called
one because they are lacking something they need to be complete,
and because it is caught between the double and the half, only the
Zero seems safe. But in order for the zero to exist, it has to be named,
put into writing. But in so doing the One, which cannot be elimi­
nated, re-emerges beneath it.
Similarly, designating negative hallucination or castration
inevitably involves positivising them. Thus Freud attributed the id
with the neuter gender. But the id comprises all the clamour for life
of Eros, and also the silence of the destructive drives - the silence one
never hears. To be heard, it needs to be expressed with the help of
sounds or signs, which are inevitably too noisy and too garish to
represent it.
6
The Dead Mother*
For Catherine Parat

If one had to choose a single characteristic to differentiate between

present-day analyses and analyses as one imagines them to have been
in the past, it would surely be found among the problems of
mourning. This is what the title of this essay, the dead mother, is
intended to suggest. However, to avoid all misunderstanding, I wish
to make it clear that I shall not be discussing here the psychical conse­
quences of the real death of the mother, but rather of an imago which
has been constituted in the child's mind, following maternal depres­
sion, brutally transforming the living object, a source of vitality for
the child, into a distant figure, toneless and practically inanimate,
deeply impregnating the cathexes of certain patients whom we have
in analysis, and weighing on the destiny of their object-libidinal and
narcissistic future. Thus, the dead mother, contrary to what one
might think, is a mother who remains alive but who is, so to speak,
psychically dead in the eyes of the young child in her care.
The consequence of the real death of the mother - especially when
this is due to suicide - is extremely harmful to the child whom she
leaves behind. One can immediately attach to this event the sympto­
matology to which it gives rise, even if analysis reveals later that the
catastrophe was only irreparable because of the mother-child relation­
ship which existed prior to her death. In fact, in this case, one should
even be able to describe modes of relationship which come close to
those that I wish to expound here. But the reality of the loss, its final
and irrevocable nature, will have changed the former relationship in a
decisive way. So I shall not be referring to conflicts that relate to such
a situation. Nor shall I take into account the analyses of patients who
have sought help for a recognised depressive symptomatology.

*This chapter, written in 1980 and dedicated to Catherine Parat, was originally
translated by Katherine Aubertin. (Revised by Andrew Weller for this volume.)
 Effectively, the reasons which motivated the analysands of whom
I am going to speak to undertake an analysis barely touch on the char­
acteristic aspects of depression, in the preliminary interviews. O n the
other hand, the analyst immediately perceives the narcissistic nature
of the conflicts that are invoked, connected as they are with character
neurosis and its consequences on the patient's love-life and profes­
sional activity.
Before examining the clinical framework that I have just defined,
by exclusion, I must briefly mention a few references which have
been the second source of my ideas - my patients having been the
first. The reflections which follow owe much to authors who have
laid the foundations of what we know about the problems of
mourning: Freud, Karl Abraham and Melanie Klein. But in particular
the more recent studies of W innicott,1 Kohut,2 N. Abraham and M.
Torok3 and Rosolato4 have set me on this path.
Here then is the statement on which I shall be concentrating:
The most widely shared psychoanalytic theory entertains two
ideas. The first is that of object-loss as a fundamental moment in the
structuring of the hum an psyche, at which time a new relation to
reality is introduced. Henceforward the psyche is governed by the
reality principle, which takes precedence over the pleasure principle
which it also protects. This first idea is a theoretical concept and not
the result of observation, for this shows that a gradual evolution,
rather than a mutative leap, has taken place. The second generally
accepted idea is that of a depressive position, but this is interpreted vari­
ously by different authors. This second idea combines observed fact
and theoretical concept for both Melanie Klein and Winnicott. Both
ideas, it should be noted, are linked to a general situation referring to
an unavoidable event in the process of development. If previous
disturbances in the mother-child relationship make its passage or its
resolution more difficult, the absence of such disturbances and the
good quality of maternal care cannot help the child to avoid living
through this period, which plays a formative role in the organisation
of his psyche.
Besides, these are patients, whatever their presenting structure may
be, who seem to suffer from more or less intermittent and more or less
invalidating depressive traits, which seem to go beyond the normal
depressive reaction that periodically affects everyone. For we know
that a subject who never experiences any depression is probably more
disturbed than someone who is occasionally depressed.
So the question I ask myself is this: W hat is the relation that one
can establish between object-loss and the depressive position, as
general given facts, and the singularity of the characteristics of this
depressive configuration, which is central, but often submerged
under other symptoms which more or less camouflage it? What are
the processes that develop around this centre? W hat constitutes this
centre in psychic reality?

The Dead Father and the Dead Mother

Psychoanalytic theory, which is founded on the interpretation of
Freudian thought, allots a major role to the concept of the dead
father, whose fundamental function is the genesis of the super-ego, as
outlined in Totem and Taboo (Freud, 1912-13). W hen one considers
the Oedipus complex as a structure, and not merely as a phase of
libidinal development, this is a coherent point of view. Other
concepts derive from this: the super-ego in classical theory; the Law
and the Symbolic in Lacanian thought. This group of concepts is
linked by the reference to castration and to sublimation as the fate of
the drives.
O n the other hand, we never hear of the dead mother from a struc­
tural point of view. There may be allusions to this in certain
individual cases, as in the case of Marie Bonaparte's analysis of Edgar
Poe, but that concerns a particular event: the loss of the mother at a
very early age. There is a limitation imposed here by a purely realistic
point of view. It is not possible to explain this exclusion by invoking
the Oedipus complex, because one could referdto it in connection
with the girl's Oedipus complex, or again with the boy's inverted
Oedipus complex. In fact the answer lies elsewhere. Matricide does
not involve the dead mother as a concept, on the contrary; and the
concept which underlies the dead father, that is to say the reference
to the ancestor, to filiation, to genealogy, refers back to the primitive
crime and the guilt which is its consequence.
Now it is surprising that the general model of mourning that
underlies this concept makes no mention of the bereavement of the
mother, nor the loss of the breast. I am alluding to this not because
these are supposed to be prior to it, but because one is forced to notice
that there is no articulation between these two concepts.
In Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety (1926 [1925]) Freud cate­
gorised castration anxiety by including it in a series which also
comprises anxiety about the loss of a loved object, or a loss of its love,
anxiety related to the super-ego, and anxiety at the threat of the loss
of the protecting super-ego. We know, besides, that he was careful to
make the distinction between anxiety, pain and mourning.
I do not intend to discuss in detail Freud's thinking on this point,
because this would lead me away from my subject, but I should like
to make one remark: with castration it is the same as with repression.
First, Freud well knew that, concerning both, there exist as many
other forms of anxiety as other varieties of repression, and even other
defence mechanisms. In both cases he considers the possibility of the
existence of chronologically earlier forms, from which both derive.
However, in both cases he specifically fixes castration anxiety and
repression as a centre, in relation to which he places the other types
of anxiety and different varieties of repression, whether they come
before or after; which is proof of the structural and genetic character
of Freudian thought. This is clearly stated when he makes a primal
fantasy of the Oedipus myth, which is relatively independent of the
vicissitudes of the conjuncture which gives it its specificity for any
given patient. Thus, even in the cases where he notes the presence of
an inverted Oedipus complex, as in the 'Wolf Man', he asserts that the
father, object of the patient's erotic wishes, nonetheless remains the
castrator.
This structural function implies a constitutive conception of the
psychical order - constituting a symbolic organisation - which is
programmed by the primal fantasies. This path has not always been
followed by Freud's successors. But globally it seems that French
psychoanalytic thought, in spite of its divergences, has followed
Freud on this point. On the one hand, reference to castration as a
model has obliged authors to 'castratise', if I may express myself thus,
all other forms of anxiety; one speaks of anal or narcissistic castration,
for example. On the other hand, by giving an anthropological inter­
pretation of Freudian theory, one relates all the varieties of anxiety to
the concept of lack in Lacanian theory. Now, I believe that, in both
cases, one is doing violence as much to experience as to theory to save
the unity and generalisation of a concept.
It may be surprising that on this point I seem to dissociate myself
from a structural point of view that I have always defended. Thus,
what I would propose, instead of conforming to the opinion of those
who divide anxiety into different types according to the age at which
it appears in the life of the subject, would be rather a structural concep­
tion which would be organised, not around one centre or one
paradigm, but around at least two, in accordance with a distinctive
characteristic, different from those which have been proposed to date.
Castration anxiety can be legitimately described as subsuming the
group of anxieties linked by the 'little one detachable part of the
body', whether it be penis, faeces or baby. W hat gives this class unity
is that castration is always evoked in the context of a bodily wound
associated with a bloody act. I attach more importance to the idea of
'red' anxiety than to its relation to a part-object.
O n the contrary, whether referring to the concept of the loss of the
breast, or of object-loss, and even of threats relative to the loss of the
super-ego or its protection, and in a general manner, to all threats of
abandonment, the context is never bloody. To be sure, all forms of
anxiety are accompanied by destructiveness; castration too, because
the wound is, of course, the result of a destruction. But this destruc­
tiveness has nothing to do with a bloody mutilation. It bears the
colours of mourning: black or white.5 Black as in severe depression,
or blank as in states of emptiness to which one now pays justified
attention.
I defend the hypothesis that the sinister black of depression, which
we can legitimately relate to the hatred we observe in the psycho­
analysis of depressed subjects, is only a secondary product, a
consequence rather than a cause, of a 'blank' anxiety which expresses
a loss that has been experienced on a narcissistic level.
Having already described negative hallucination and blank
psychosis, I shall not return to what I have said on the subject, but I
shall attach blank anxiety or blank m ourning to this series.
The category of 'blankness' - negative hallucination, blank
psychosis, blank mourning, all connected to what one might call the
problem of emptiness, or of the negative, in our clinical practice - is
the result of one of the components of primary repression: massive
decathexis, both radical and temporary, which leaves traces in the
unconscious in the form of 'psychical holes'. These will be filled in by
re-cathexes, which are the expression of destructiveness which has
thus been freed by the weakening of libidinal erotic cathexis.
Manifestations of hatred and the processes of reparation that follow
are manifestations which are secondary to this central decathexis of
the maternal primary object. One can understand that this view
modifies even analytic technique, because to lim it oneself to inter­
preting hatred in structures which take on depressive characteristics
amounts to never approaching the primary core of this constellation.
The Oedipus complex should be maintained as the essential
symbolic matrix to which it is always important to refer, even in cases
of ^so-called pregenital or pre-oedipal regression, which implies the
reference to an axiomatic triangulation. However advanced the
analysis of the decathexis of the primary object may be, the fate of the
hum an psyche is to have always two objects and never one alone,
however far one goes back to try to understand the earliest psychical
structure. This does not mean to say that one must adhere to a
conception of a primitive Oedipus complex - phylogenetic - where
the father as such would be present, in the form of his penis (I am
thinking here of Melanie Klein's conception of the early Oedipus
complex: the father's penis in the mother's womb). The father is
there, both in the mother and the child, from the beginning. More
exactly, between the mother and child. From the mother's side this is
expressed in her desire for the father, of which the child is the reali­
sation. O n the side of the child, everything which introduces the
anticipation of a third person, each time that the mother is not
wholly present, and her devotion to the child is neither total nor
absolute (at least in the illusion he maintains in this regard, before it
is pertinent to speak of object-loss), will be attributable retrospectively
to the father.
It is thus that one must account for the solidarity linking the
metaphoric loss of the breast, the symbolic mutation of the relation
between pleasure and reality - established retrospectively as princi­
ples - the prohibition of incest, and the double figuration of the
images of mother and father, potentially reunited in the fantasy of a
hypothetical primal scene which takes place outside the subject. It is
from this scene that the subject excludes himself and constitutes
himself in the absence of affective representation, which gives birth
to fantasy, which is a production of the subject's 'madness'.
W hy is this metaphorical? The recourse to metaphor, which holds
good for every essential element of psychoanalytic theory, is particu­
larly necessary here. In an earlier work,6 I pointed out that there are
two Freudian versions of the loss of the breast. The first, which is
theoretical and conceptual, is that to which Freud refers in his article
'Negation' (1925). Freud talks about it as though it implies a unique,
instantaneous, basic event - decisive, it goes without saying, because
its repercussion on the function of judgement is fundamental. In the
second version, in An Outline of Psychoanalysis (1940a) in particular,
he adopts a position which is less theoretical than descriptive, as
though he were applying himself to infant-observation, so much in
vogue today. He accounts for the phenomenon, not theoretically, but
in a 'narrative' form, if I may so describe it, where one understands
that this loss is a process of progressive evolution which advances step
by step. Now I believe that the theoretical and descriptive approaches
are mutually exclusive, rather as perception and memory exclude
each other in theory. The recourse to this comparison is not only
analogical. In the 'theory' that the subject elaborates about himself,
the mutative interpretation is always retrospective. It is in the after­
math that this theory of the lost object is formed and acquires its
unique, instantaneous, decisive, irrevocable and basic characteristic.
The recourse to metaphor is not only justified from a diachronic
point of view, but also from a synchronic point of view. The fiercest
partisans of the reference to the loss of the breast in contemporary
psychoanalytic theory, the Kleinians, now admit, humbly watering
down their wine, that the breast is just a word to designate the
mother, to the satisfaction of non-Kleinian theoreticians who often
psychologise psychoanalysis. One must retain the metaphor of the
breast; for the breast, like the penis, can only be symbolic. However
intense the pleasure of sucking linked to the nipple, or the teat, might
be, erogenous pleasure has the power to concentrate within itself
everything of the mother that is not the breast: her smell, her skin,
the look in her eyes and the thousand other components that 'make
up' the mother. The metonymical object has become a metaphor for
the object.
One may note in passing that we have no difficulty in reasoning
in the same manner when we speak of sexual intercourse within a
loving relationship, in reducing the whole of a relationship, which is
far more complex, to the pairing 'penis-vagina', and in relating its
mishaps to castration anxiety.
From this one may understand that, by going more deeply into the
problems relating to the dead mother, I am referring to them as to a
metaphor, independent of the bereavement of a real object.

The Dead Mother Complex

The dead mother complex is a revelation of the transference. When
the subject presents himself to the analyst for the first time, the
symptoms of which he complains are not essentially of a depressive
kind. Most of the time these symptoms indicate more or less acute
conflicts with objects who are close. It is not infrequent that a patient
spontaneously gives an account of his personal history where the
analyst thinks to himself that here, at a given moment, a childhood
depression should or could have been located, of which the subject
makes no mention. This depression, which has sometimes appeared
sporadically in the clinical history, only breaks into the open in the
transference. As for the classic neurotic symptoms, they are present
but of secondary value or, even if they are important, the analyst has
the feeling that the analysis of their genesis will not furnish the key
to the conflict. O n the contrary, the problems pertaining to narcis­
sism are in the foreground where the demands of the ego ideal are
considerable, in synergy with, or in opposition to the super-ego. The
feeling of impotence is evident. An inability to withdraw from a
conflictual situation, inability to love, to make the most of one's
talents, to multiply one's assets, or, when this does take place, a
profound dissatisfaction with the results.
W hen the analysis is underway, the transference will reveal, some­
times quite rapidly, but more often after long years of analysis, a
singular depression. The analyst has the feeling of a discordance
between the transference depression - an expression that I am coining
on this occasion to oppose it to transference neurosis - and the
behaviour outside the analysis where depression does not break out,
because nothing indicates that the entourage perceives it clearly,
which nevertheless does not prevent the people close to him from
suffering from the object-relationship that the analysand establishes
with them.
W hat this transference depression indicates is the repetition of an
infantile depression, the characteristics of which may usefully be
specified.
It does not concern the loss of a real object; the problem of a real
separation with the object who would have abandoned the subject is
not what is in question here. The fact may exist, but it is not this that
constitutes the dead mother complex.
The essential characteristic of this depression is that it takes place in the
presence of the object, which is itself absorbed by a bereavement. The
mother, for one reason or another, is depressed. Here the variety of
precipitating factors is very large. Of course, among the principal causes
of this kind of maternal depression, one finds the loss of a person dear
to her: child, parent, close friend, or any other object strongly cathected
by the mother. But it may also be a depression triggered by a deception
which inflicts a narcissistic wound: a change of fortune in the nuclear
family or the family of origin, a liaison of the father who neglects the
mother, humiliation, and so on. In any event the mother's sorrow and
lessening of interest in her infant are in the foreground.
It should be noted that the most serious instance is the death of a
child at an early age, as all authors have understood. In particular,
there is a cause which remains totally hidden, because the signs by
which the child could recognise it are lacking, and retrospective
knowledge of it is never possible because it rests on a secret: a miscar­
riage of the mother, which must be reconstructed by the analysis from
minute indications. This is a hypothetical construction, of course,
which gives coherence to what is expressed in the clinical material,
which can be attached to earlier periods of the subject's history.
W h a t comes about then is a brutal change of the maternal imago,
which is truly mutative. Until then, as can be inferred from the
presence in the subject of an authentic vitality which came to a
sudden halt, remaining stuck thereafter in the same place, a rich and
happy relationship had been formed with the mother. The infant felt
loved, notwithstanding the risks that the most ideal of relationships
presupposes. Photos of the young baby in the family album show him
to be gay, lively, interested, full of potential, whereas later snapshots
show the loss of this initial happiness. Everything seems to have
ended rather like the disappearance of ancient civilisations, the cause
of which is sought in vain by historians by making the hypothesis of
an earthquake to explain the death and the destruction of palace,
temple, edifices and dwellings, of which nothing is left but ruins.
Here the disaster is limited to a cold core, which will eventually be
overcome, but which leaves an indelible mark on the erotic cathexes
of the subjects in question.
The transformation in psychical life, at the m om ent of the
mother's sudden bereavement when she has abruptly become
detached from her infant, is experienced by the child as a catas­
trophe; because, without any warning signal, love has been lost at
one blow. One does not need to give a lengthy description of the
narcissistic traumatism that this change represents. One must
however point out that it constitutes a premature disillusionment
and that it carries in its wake, besides the loss of love, the loss of
meaning; for the baby disposes of no explanation to account for what
has happened. Of course, being at the centre of the maternal
universe, it is clear that he interprets this deception as the conse­
quence of his drives towards the object. This will be especially serious
if the complex of the dead mother occurs at the m om ent when the
child discovers the existence of the third person, the father, and if the
new attachment is interpreted by him as the reason for the mother's
detachment. In any case, here there is a premature and unstable trian­
gulation. For either, as I have just said, the withdrawal of the mother's
love is attributed to the mother's attachment to the father, or this
withdrawal will provoke an early and particularly intense attachment
to the father, felt to be the saviour in the conflict unfolding between
mother and infant. Now, in reality, the father, more often than not,
does not respond to the child's distress. The subject is thus caught
between a dead mother and an inaccessible father, either because the
latter is principally preoccupied by the state of the mother, without
bringing help to the infant, or because he leaves the mother-child
couple to cope with this situation alone.
After the child has attempted in vain to repair the mother who is
absorbed by her bereavement, which has made him feel the measure
of his helplessness, after having experienced the loss of his mother's
loye and the threat of the loss of the mother herself, and after he has
fought against anxiety by various active methods, amongst which
agitation, insomnia and nocturnal terrors are indications, the ego will
deploy a series of defences of a different kind.
The first and most important is a single movement with two
aspects to it: the decathexis o f the maternal object and the unconscious
identification with the dead mother. The decathexis, which is principally
affective, but also representative, constitutes a psychical murder of
the object, accomplished without hatred. One will understand that
the mother's affliction excludes the emergence of any contingency of
hatred susceptible of damaging her image even more.
No instinctual destructiveness is to be inferred from this operation
of decathecting the maternal image. Its result is the constitution of a
hole in the texture of object-relations with the mother, which does
not prevent the surrounding cathexes from being maintained, just as
the mother's bereavement modifies her fundamental attitude with
regard to the child, whom she feels incapable of loving, but whom
she continues to love just as she continues to take care of him.
However, as one says, 'her heart is not in it'.
The other aspect of the decathexis is the primary mode of identifi­
cation with the object. This mirror-identification is almost obligatory,
after reactions of complementarity (artificial gaiety, agitation, and so
on) have failed. This reactive symmetry is the only means by which
to establish a reunion with the mother - perhaps by way of sympathy.
In fact there is no real reparation, but a mimicry, with the aim of
continuing to possess the object (who one can no longer have) by
becoming, not like it, but by becoming the object itself. This identifi­
cation, which is the condition for renouncing the object and at the
same time retaining it in a cannibalistic manner, is unconscious from
the start. Here there is a difference from the decathexis, which
becomes unconscious later on, because in this second case the with­
drawal is retaliatory; it endeavours to get rid of the object, whereas
the identification comes about without the subject's ego being aware
of it, and against his will. Hence its alienating characteristic.
In later object-relations, the subject, who is prey to repetition-
compulsion, will actively decathect an object who is about to bring
disappointment, repeating the old defence; but he will remain totally
unconscious of his identification with the dead mother, with whom
he reunites from then on by re-cathecting the traces of the trauma.
The second fact, as I have pointed out, is the loss o f meaning. The
'construction' of the breast, of which pleasure is the cause, the aim
and the guarantor, has collapsed all at once, without reason. Even if
one were to imagine the reversal of the situation by the subject, who
through negative megalomania, would attribute the responsibility for
the mutation to himself, there is a totally disproportional gap
between the fault he could reproach himself for having committed
and the intensity of the maternal reaction. At the most, he might
imagine this fault to be linked with his manner of being rather than
with some forbidden wish; in fact, being becomes forbidden for him.
This position, which could induce the child to let himself die
because of the impossibility of diverting destructive aggressivity to
the outside on account of the vulnerability of the maternal image,
obliges him to find someone responsible for the mother's black mood,
even if he is a scapegoat. It is the father who is chosen for this
purpose. There is in any case, I repeat, an early triangular situation,
because child, mother, and the unknown object of the mother's
bereavement, are present at the same time. The unknown object of
the bereavement and the father are then condensed for the infant,
creating a precocious Oedipus complex.
This whole situation, arising from the loss of meaning, leads to a
second front of defence:

(a) the releasing o f secondary hatred, which is neither primary nor

fundamental, brings into play regressive wishes of incorporation,
but also anal features which are coloured with manic sadism
where it is a matter of dominating, soiling, taking vengeance
upon the object, and so on;
(b) auto-erotic excitation establishes itself in the search for pure sensual
pleasure, organ pleasure at the limit, without tenderness, without
pity, which is not necessarily accompanied by sadistic fantasy but
remains stamped with a reticence to love the object. This is the
foundation for hysterical identifications to come. There is a
precocious dissociation between the body and the psyche, as
between sensuality and tenderness, and a blocking of love. The
object is sought after for its capacity to release isolated enjoyment
of an erogenous zone (or more than one) without the confluence
of a shared enjoyment of two objects, more or less totalised;
(c) finally, and more particularly, the quest for lost meaning structures
the early development o f the fantasmatic and the intellectual capacities
of the ego. The development of a frantic need for play which does
not come about as in the freedom for playing, but under the
compulsion to imagine, just as intellectual development is inscribed
in a compulsion to think. Performance and auto-reparation go hand
in hand to coincide with the same goal: the preservation of a
capacity to surmount the dismay over the loss of the breast, by
the creation of a patched breast, a piece of cognitive fabric which
is destined to mask the hole left by the decathexis, while
secondary hatred and erotic excitation are teeming on the edge of
an abyss of emptiness.

This over-cathected intellectual capacity necessarily comprises a

considerable part of projection. Contrary to widespread opinion,
projection is not always false reasoning. This may be the case but not
necessarily. W hat defines projection is not the true or false character
of what is projected, but the operation which consists in transferring
to the outside scene - the scene of the object - the investigation, even
the suspicion, of what has had to be rejected and abolished from
within. The infant has had the cruel experience of being dependent
on the variations of the mother's moods. Henceforth he devotes his
efforts to guessing or anticipating.
 The compromised unity of the ego which has a hole in it from now
on, realises itself either on the level of fantasy, which gives open
expression to artistic creation, or on the level of knowledge, which is
at the origin of highly productive intellectualisation. It is evident that
one is witnessing an attempt to master the traumatic situation. But
this attempt is doomed to fail. Not that it fails where it has displaced
the theatre of operations. These precocious idealised sublimations are
the outcome of premature and probably precipitated psychical forma­
tions, but I see no reason, apart from bending to a normative
ideology, to contest their authenticity. Their failure lies elsewhere.
The sublimations reveal their incapacity to play a stabilising role in
the psychical economy, because the subject remains vulnerable on a
particular point, which is his love life. In this area, a wound will
awaken a psychical pain and one will witness a resurrection of the
dead mother, who, for the entire critical period when she remains in
the foreground, dissolves all the subject's sublimatory acquisitions,
which are not lost, but w hich remain momentarily blocked.
Sometimes it is love which sets the development of the sublimated
acquisitions in m otion again, and sometimes it is the latter which
attempt to liberate love. Both may combine their efforts for a time,
but soon the destructiveness overwhelms the possibilities of the
subject who does not dispose of the necessary cathexes to establish a
lasting object-relation and to commit himself progressively to a
deeper personal involvement which implies concern for the other.
Thus, inevitably, it is either disappointment in the object or in the
ego which puts an end to the experience, with the reappearance of
the feeling of failure and incapacity. The patient has the feeling that
a malediction weighs upon him, that there is no end to the dead
mother's dying, and that it holds him prisoner. Pain, a narcissistic
feeling, surfaces again. It is a hurt which is situated on the edge of the
wound, colouring all the cathexes, filling in the effects of hatred, of
erotic excitement, the loss of the breast. In a state of psychical pain,
it is impossible to hate or to love, impossible to find enjoyment, even
masochistically, and impossible to think. There is simply a feeling of
being held captive which dispossesses the ego of itself and alienates it
to an unrepresentable figure.
The subject's trajectory evokes a hunt in quest of an unintro-
jectable object, without the possibility of renouncing it or of losing it,
and indeed, the possibility of accepting its introjection into the ego,
which is cathected by the dead mother. In all, the subject's objects
remain constantly at the limit of the ego, not wholly within, and not
quite without. And with good reason, for the place is occupied, in its
centre, by the dead mother.
 For a long period, the analysis of these subjects will proceed with
the examination of the classic conflicts: Oedipus complex, pregenital
fixations, anal and oral. Repression relating to infantile sexuality and
aggressivity, will have been interpreted without cease. Probably some
progress will be visible. But it hardly convinces the analyst, even if the
analysand himself seeks comfort by underlining the points on which
there would be cause for satisfaction.
In fact, all this psychoanalytic work remains subject to spectacular
collapses, where everything again seems to be as it was on the first day,
until the analysand realises that he can no longer continue to bluff
himself and finds himself forced to accept the insufficiency of the
transference object, that is, the analyst, in spite of relational manoeu­
vres with the supporting objects of lateral transference which have
helped him to avoid approaching the central core of the conflict.
In these cures I finally understood that I had remained deaf to a
certain discourse that my analysands had left me to deduce. Behind
the eternal complaints about the mother's unkindness, or her lack of
understanding or her rigidity, I could sense the defensive value of
these comments, against intense homosexuality. Feminine homosex­
uality in both sexes, for in the boy it is the feminine part of the
psychical personality which expresses itself in this way, very often in
the search for paternal compensation. But I continued to ask myself
why this situation continued. My deafness related to the fact that,
behind the complaints concerning the mother's doings, her actions, loomed
the shadow o f her absence. In fact the complaint against X concerned a
mother who was absorbed, either with herself or with something else,
unreachable without echo, but always sad. A silent mother, even if
talkative. W hen she was present, she remained indifferent, even
when she was plying the child with her reproaches. I was thus able to
picture the situation quite differently.
The dead mother had taken away with her, in the decathexis of
which she had been the object, the major portion of the love with
which'she had been cathected before her bereavement: her look, the
tone of her voice, her smell, the memory of her caress. The loss of
physical contact carried with it the repression of the memory traces
of her touch. She had been buried alive, but her tomb itself had disap­
peared. The hole that gaped in its place made solitude dreadful, as
though the subject ran the risk of being sunk in it, body and posses­
sions. In this connection I now think that the concept of holding, of
which W innicott spoke, does not explain the feeling of vertiginous
falling that some of our patients experience. This seems to me to be
far more in relation to an experience of psychical collapse, which
would be to the psyche what fainting is to the physical body. The
object has been encapsulated and its trace has been lost through
decathexis; there has been a primary identification with the dead
mother, transforming positive identification into negative identifica­
tion, that is, identification with the hole left by the decathexis (and
not identification with the object), and with this emptiness, which is
filled in and suddenly manifests itself through an affective hallucina­
tion of the dead mother, as soon as a new object is periodically
chosen to occupy this space.
Everything that can be observed around this nucleus organises
itself with three aims:

(a) to keep the ego alive: through hatred for the object, through the
search for exciting pleasure, through the quest for meaning;
(b) to reanimate the dead mother, to interest her, to distract her, to
give her a renewed taste for life, to make her smile and laugh;
(c) to rival with the object of her bereavement in the early triangula­
tion.

This type of patient presents us with serious technical problems

which I shall not go into here. On this point, I refer the reader to my
paper on the analyst's silence.7 1 greatly fear that the rule of silence,
in these cases, only perpetuates the transference of blank mourning
for the mother. I will add that I do not believe that the Kleinian tech­
nique of systematically interpreting destructiveness is of much help
here. O n the other hand, Winnicott's position, as it is expressed in his
article The use of an object and relating through identification'
(Winnicott 1969), seems appropriate to me. But I fear that Winnicott
somewhat underestimated the sexual fantasies, especially the primal
scene, which I will take up later on.

Frozen Love and its Vicissitudes: The Breast, the Oedipus

Complex, the Primal Scene
Ambivalence is a fundamental trait of the cathexes of depressives.
W hat is the situation in the dead mother complex? W hen I described
above the affective and representative decathexis of which hatred is
the consequence, this description was incomplete. W hat one must
understand, in the structure that I have expounded, is that the
inability to love only derives from ambivalence, and hence from an
overload of hatred, in the measure that what comes first is love frozen
by the decathexis. The object is in hibernation, as it were, conserved
by the cold. This operation comes about unknown to the subject, in
the following way. Decathexis is withdrawal of cathexis which takes
place (pre)consciously. Repressed hatred is the result of instinctual
defusion, any unbinding weakening the erotic-libidinal cathexis,
which, as a consequence, frees the destructive cathexes. By with­
drawing his cathexes, the subject believes he has brought them back
w ithin his ego, for want of being able to displace them on to another
object, a substitute object, but he is unaware that he has left behind,
has alienated, his love for the object, which has fallen into the oubli­
ettes of primary repression. Consciously, he believes his reserve of
love to be intact, available for another love when the occasion arises.
He declares himself ready to become attached to another object, if he
appears to be friendly and he feels loved by him . He thinks the
primary object no longer counts for him . In truth, he will encounter
the inability to love, not only because of ambivalence, but because
his love is still mortgaged to the dead mother. The subject is rich but
he can give nothing in spite of his generosity, for he does not reap
enjoyment from it.
In the course of the transference, defensive sexualisation which
had occurred hitherto, always involving intense pregenital satisfac­
tions and remarkable sexual performance, comes to a sudden halt,
and the analysand finds his sexual life dim inishing or fading away
almost to nothing. According to him , it is a matter neither of inhibi­
tion nor of a loss of sexual appetite: it is simply that no one is
desirable, or, if perchance someone is, it is he or she who is not
attracted in return. A profuse, dispersed, multiple, fleeting sexual life
no longer brings any satisfaction.
Arrested in their capacity to love, subjects who are under the
empire of the dead mother can only aspire to autonomy. Sharing
remains forbidden to them. Thus, solitude, which was a situation
creating anxiety and to be avoided, changes sign. From negative it
becomes positive. Having previously been shunned, it is now sought
after. The subject nestles into it. He becomes his own mother, but
remains prisoner to her economy of survival. He thinks he has got rid
of his dead mother. In fact, she only leaves him in peace in the
measure that she herself is left in peace. As long as there is no candi­
date id the succession, she can well let her child survive, certain to be
the only one to possess this inaccessible love.
This cold core burns like ice, and numbs like it as well, but as long
as it is felt to be cold, love remains unavailable. These are barely
metaphors. These analysands complain of being cold even in the
heat. They are cold below the surface of the skin, in their bones; they
feel chilled by a funereal shiver, wrapped in their shroud. It is as
though the core of love frozen by the dead mother does not prevent
the later evolution towards the Oedipus complex, in the same way
that the fixation will ultimately be overcome in the individual's life.
These subjects may outwardly have a more or less satisfactory profes­
sional life; they marry and have children. For a while all seems well.
But soon the repetition of conflicts contributes to turning the two
essential sectors of life, love and work, into failure: professional life,
even when profoundly absorbing, becomes disappointing, and
marital relations lead to profound disturbances in love, sexuality and
affective communication. It is in any case the latter which is most
lacking. As for sexuality, it depends on the later or earlier appearance
of the dead mother complex. It may be relatively preserved but only
up to a certain point. Love, finally, is never completely satisfied. Thus,
at one extreme, it is completely impossible; or, at best, it is somewhat
mutilated or inhibited. There must not be too much: too much love,
too much pleasure, too much enjoyment, whereas the parental
function on the contrary is hyper-in vested. However, this function is
more often than not infiltrated by narcissism: children are loved on
condition that they fulfil the narcissistic objectives which the parents
have not succeeded in accomplishing themselves.
Thus, if the Oedipus complex is reached and even overcome, the
dead mother complex will give it a particularly dramatic aspect.
Fixation to the mother will prevent the girl from ever being able to
cathect the imago of the father, without the fear of losing the
mother's love; or, if love for the father is deeply repressed, without her
being able to avoid transferring on to the father's imago a large part
of the characteristics that have been projected on to the mother. Not
the dead mother, but her opposite, the phallic mother whose struc­
ture I have attempted to describe.8 The boy projects a similar imago
on to the mother, while the father is the object of a homosexuality
which is not very structuring but makes him into an inaccessible
being and, as in the familiar descriptions, insignificant or tired,
depressed, and overwhelmed by this phallic mother. In all cases there
is a regression to anality. In anality the subject not only regresses from
the Oedipus complex backwards, in every sense of the term, but also
protects himself by the anal buttress against the tendency towards
oral regression to which one is always thrown back by the dead
mother, because the dead mother complex and the metaphoric loss of
the breast reverberate each other. One also always finds that reality is
used as a defence, as though the subject feels the need to cling to the
presence of what is perceived as real and untouched by any projec­
tion, because he is far from sure of the distinction between fantasy
and reality, which he does his utmost to keep apart. Fantasy must be
only fantasy, which means that one witnesses, at the limit, the
negation of psychical reality. W hen reality and fantasy are telescoped
together, intense anxiety appears. Subjective and objective are
confused, which gives the subject the impression of a threat of
psychosis. Order must be maintained at any price, by a structuring
anal reference which allows splitting to continue to function, and
above all keeps the subject away from what he has learned of his
unconscious. This is to say that psychoanalysis allows him to under­
stand others better than to gain insight into himself. Hence the
inevitable disappointment with the results of the analysis, even
though it is strongly cathected, narcissistically, more often than not.
The dead mother refuses to die a second death. Very often, the
analyst says to himself: This time it's done, the old woman is really
dead, he (or she) will finally be able to live and I shall be able to
breathe a little.' Then a small traumatism appears in the transference
or in life which gives the maternal imago renewed vitality, if I may
put it this way. It is because she is a thousand-headed hydra whom
one believes one has beheaded with each blow; whereas, in fact, only
one of its heads has been struck off. Where then is the beast's neck?
A habitual prejudice is that one should delve to the deepest level:
to the primordial breast. This is a mistake: that is not where the
fundamental fantasy lies. For just as the relation with the second
object in the oedipal situation retroactively reveals the complex
which affects the primary object, the mother, it is not by attacking
the oral relation face on that one can extirpate the core of the
complex. The solution is to be found in the prototype of the Oedipus
complex, in the symbolic matrix which allows for its construction.
Then the dead mother complex delivers its secret: it is the fantasy of
the primal scene.
There are many indications, albeit belatedly, that contemporary
psychoanalysis has understood, that if the Oedipus complex remains
the indispensable structural reference, the determining conditions for
it are not to be sought in its oral, anal or phallic forerunners, seen
from the angle of realistic references - for orality, anality or phallicity
depend on partly real object relations - nor in a generalised fanta­
sising of their structure, a la Klein, but in the isomorphic fantasy of
the Oedipus complex: that of the primal scene. I emphasise this
fantasy of the primal scene to stress the difference here from the
FreudiaVi position as it is expounded in the 'Wolf Man', where in the
controversy with Jung, Freud searches for proof of its reality. Now
what counts in the primal scene is not that one has witnessed it but
precisely the contrary; namely, that it has taken place in the absence
of the subject.
In the case with which we are concerned, the fantasy of the primal
scene is of capital importance. For it is on the occasion of an
encounter between a conjuncture and a structure, which brings two
objects into play, that the subject will be confronted with memory
traces in relation to the dead mother. These memory traces have been
forcibly repressed by decathexis. They remain, so to speak, in
abeyance w ithin the subject, who has only kept a very incomplete
memory of the period relative to the complex. Sometimes a screen
memory, of an anodyne nature, is all that is left of it. The fantasy of
the primal scene will not only re-cathect these vestiges, but will
confer on them, through a new cathexis, new effects which constitute
a real conflagration, setting fire to the structure which gives the
complex of the dead mother retrospective significance.
Every resurgence of this fantasy constitutes a projective actiialisa-
tion, the projection aiming to assuage the narcissistic wound. By
'actualised projection' I mean a process through which the projection
not only rids the subject of his inner tensions by projecting them on
to the object, but constitutes a reviviscence and not a reminiscence, an
actual traumatic and dramatic repetition. W hat happens to the
fantasy of the primal scene in the case that concerns us? O n the one
hand, the subject becomes aware of the insuperable distance that
separates him from the mother. This distance makes him realise his
impotent rage at being unable to establish contact with the object, in
the strictest sense of the term. O n the other hand, the subject feels
incapable of awakening this dead mother, of animating her, or giving
life back to her. But on this occasion, instead of his rival being the
object who had captivated the dead mother in her experience of
bereavement, he becomes on the contrary the third party who shows
himself apt, against all expectation, to return her to life and to give
her the pleasure of orgasm.
This is where the revolting aspect of the situation lies, which reac­
tivates the loss of narcissistic omnipotence and awakens the feeling of
an incommensurable libidinal infirmity. Of course, in reaction to this
situation there will be a series of consequences which may come
singly or in groups:

1. The persecution by this fantasy and hatred for the two objects
which form a couple to the detriment of the subject.
2. The classic interpretation of the primal scene as a sadistic scene,
but where the essential feature is that the mother either has no
orgasm and suffers, or else has orgasm in spite of herself, forced
to it by the father's violence.
3. A variation of the last situation; when the mother experiences
orgasm, she becomes cruel, hypocritical, playing it up, a sort of
lewd monster, that makes her the Sphinx of the Oedipus myth,
rather than Oedipus' mother.
4. The alternating identification with the two imagos: with the dead
mother, whether she remains in her unaltered state or gives
herself up to a sado-masochistic type of erotic excitation; with the
father, the dead mother's aggressor (necrophilic fantasy) or the
one who repairs her through sexual union. More often,
 depending on the moment, the subject alternates between these
identifications.
5. Erotic and aggressive de-libidinalisation of the primal scene to the
advantage of intense intellectual activity, which restores narcis­
sism in the face of this confusing situation, where the quest for
meaning (which was lost anew) results in the formation of a
sexual theory and stimulates an extensive 'intellectual' activity
which re-establishes the wounded narcissistic omnipotence by
sacrificing libidinal satisfaction. Another solution: artistic
creation, which is the support for a fantasy of auto-satisfaction.
6. The negation, 'en bloc', of the whole fantasy. Ignorance of every­
thing pertaining to sexual relations is highly cathected, making
the emptiness of the dead mother and the obliteration of the
primal scene coincide for the subject. The fantasy of the primal
scene becomes the central axis of the subject's life which over­
shadows the dead mother complex. This is developed in two
directions: forwards and backwards.
Forwards, there is the anticipation of the Oedipus complex,
which will then be experienced according to the schema of
defences against the anxiety of the primal scene. The three anti­
erotic factors, namely hatred, homosexuality and narcissism, will
conjugate their effects so that the Oedipus complex is adversely
structured.
Backwards, the relation to the breast is the object of a radical
reinterpretation. This becomes significant retrospectively. The
blank mourning for the dead mother reflects back to the breast
which, superficially, is laden with destructive projections. In fact
it is less a question of a bad breast, which is ungiving, than a
breast which, even when it does give, is an absent breast (and not
lost), absorbed with nostalgia for a relation that is grieved for; a
breast which can neither be full nor filling. The consequence of
this is that the re-cathexis of the happy relation to the breast that
existed prior to the occurrence of the dead mother complex, is
this time affected with the fleeting signal of a catastrophic threat;
and, if I dare say so, it is a false breast, carried within a false self,
nourishing a false baby. This happiness was only a decoy. T have
never been loved' becomes a new outcry which the subject will
cling to and which he strives to confirm in his subsequent love-
life. It is evident that one is faced with a situation of mourning
which is impossible, and that the metaphoric loss of the breast
cannot be worked through for this reason. It is necessary to add a
precision concerning oral cannibalistic fantasies. Contrary to
what happens in melancholia, here there is no regression to this
phase. W hat one witnesses above all is an identification with the
 dead mother on the level of the oral relation and with the
defences which arise from it, the subject fearing to the utmost
either the ultimate loss of the object or the invasion of emptiness.

The analysis of the transference by means of these three positions will

lead to the rediscovery of the early happiness that existed prior to the
appearance of the dead mother complex. This takes a great deal of
time; and one has to work it over more than once before marking a
victory; namely, before blank mourning and its resonance with
castration anxiety allow one to reach a transferential repetition of a
happy relationship with a mother who is alive at last and desirous of
the father. This result supposes one has passed through the analysis of
the narcissistic wound, which consumed the child in the mother's
bereavement.

The Characteristics of the Transference

I cannot dwell on the technical implications which arise in those
cases where one may identify the dead mother complex in the trans­
ference. This transference presents remarkable features. The patient is
strongly attached to the analysis - the analysis more than the analyst.
Not that the analyst escapes it, but the cathexis of the transferential
object, though it seems to present the whole scale of the libidinal
spectrum, takes deep root in a tonality of a narcissistic nature. Beyond
acknowledged expressions which give rise to affects, which are very
often dramatised, this can be explained by secret disaffection. This is
justified by a rationalisation of the type 'I know the transference is
but a lure, and that, in fact, everything is impossible with you in the
name of reality: so what's the use of it?' This position is accompanied
by the idealisation of the analyst's image, whether it is a question of
m aintaining it as it is or of being seductive to attract his interest and
admiration.
Seduction takes place through the intellectual quest, the search for
lost meaning, which reassures intellectual narcissism and constitutes
as many precious gifts for the analyst; all the more so to the extent
that this activity is accompanied by a richness of representation and
a gift for self-interpretation which is quite remarkable in contrast with
its meagre effect on the patient's life, which is only slightly modified,
especially in the affective sphere.
The analysand's language often adopts rhetoric here, which I
described in Chapter one: the narrative style. Its role is to move the
analyst, to implicate him, to call him to witness in the reciting of
conflicts which are encountered outside; like a child telling his
mother of his day at school and the thousand small dramas which he
has experienced to attract her interest and make her participate in
what he has been through during her absence.
One may guess that the narrative style is relatively unassociative.
W hen associations are produced, they coincide with a movement of
discrete withdrawal, which makes one feel that everything is said as
though it concerned the analysis of someone else not present at the
session. The subject disconnects, becomes detached, so as not to be
overcome by revivifying emotion, rather than reminiscence. When
he gives way to it, naked despair shows itself.
In fact, there are two notable features in the transference. The first
is the non-domestication of the drives: the subject cannot renounce
incestuous desire; nor, as a consequence, can he consent to mourning
for the mother. The second, and more remarkable feature, is that the
analysis induces emptiness. That is, when the analyst succeeds in
touching an important element of the nuclear complex of the dead
mother, for a brief instant, the subject feels himself to be empty,
blank, as though he were deprived of a stop-gap object, and a guard
against madness. Effectively, behind the dead mother complex,
behind the blank mourning for the mother, one catches a glimpse of
the mad passion of which she is, and remains, the object, which
makes m ourning for her an impossible experience. The subject's
entire structure aims at a fundamental fantasy: to nourish the dead
mother, to maintain, her perpetually embalmed. This is what the
analysand does to the analyst: he feeds him with the analysis, not to
help himself to live outside the analysis, but to prolong it into an
interminable process. For the subject wants to be the mother's polar
star, the ideal child, who takes the place of an ideal dead object, who
is necessarily invincible, because not living, which is to be imperfect,
limited, finite.
The transference is the geometric space of condensations and
displacements reverberating between the fantasy of the primal scene,
the Oedipus complex and the oral relation which are constituted by a
double inscription: on the one hand, peripheral and luring and, on the
other, central and veracious, around the blank mourning for the dead
mother. W hat is essentially lost here is contact with the mother, who
is secretly maintained in the depths of the psyche, concerning whom
all attempts of replacement by substitute objects are destined to fail.
The dead mother complex gives the analyst the choice between
two technical attitudes. The first is the classic solution. It carries the
danger of repeating the relation to the dead mother by an attitude of
silence. But I fear that, if this complex is not noticed, the analysis may
sink into funereal boredom, or into the illusion of a libidinal life,
finally rediscovered. In any event, the time for despair cannot be
avoided and disillusionment will be harsh. The second, which I
prefer, is one which, by using the setting as a transitional space,
makes an ever-living object of the analyst who is interested,
awakened by his analysand, giving proof of his vitality by the asso­
ciative links he communicates to him, without ever abandoning his
neutrality. For the capacity to support disillusion will depend on the
way the analysand feels himself to be narcissistically invested by the
analyst. It is thus essential that the latter remains constantly awake to
what the patient is saying, without falling into intrusive interpreta­
tion. To establish links which are proffered by the preconscious,
which supports the tertiary processes, without short-circuiting it by
going directly to the unconscious fantasy, is never intrusive. And, if
the patient does express this feeling, it is quite possible to show him,
without being excessively traumatising, the defensive role of this
feeling against a pleasure which provokes anxiety.
You will have understood that it is passivity that is at the heart of
the conflict here: passivity or passivation as primary femininity, femi­
ninity com m on to the mother and the infant. The blank mourning
for the dead mother will be the common body of their deceased loves.
W hen analysis has succeeded in rendering life, at least partially, to
the aspect of the child which is identified with the dead mother, a
strange reversal will take place. Restored vitality remains the prey of a
captive identification. W hat then happens is not easily interpretable.
The former dependency of the child upon the mother, at a time when
the infant still needs the adult, becomes inverted. From now on, the
relation between the child and the dead mother is turned inside-out
like the fingers of a glove. The healed child owes his health to the
incomplete reparation of the mother who remains ill. This is trans­
lated by the fact that it is then the mother who depends on the child.
This seems to me to be a different movement from that which is
usually described as reparation. It has less to do with positive acts,
which are the expression of remorse, than simply a sacrifice of this
vitality on the altar of the mother, by renouncing the use of these
new potentialities of the ego, to obtain possible pleasures. The inter­
pretation to give the analysand then is that it is as though his activity
was aimed at furnishing the analysis with an occasion to interpret,
less for himself than for the analyst, as though it were the analyst who
needed the analysand, contrary to the previous situation.
How is one to explain this change? Behind the manifest situation
there is an inverted vampire-like fantasy. The patient spends his life
nourishing his dead, as though he alone has charge of it. Keeper of
the tomb, sole possessor of the key of the vault, he fulfils his function
of foster-parent in secret. He keeps the dead mother prisoner, and she
remains his personal property. The mother has become the infant of
the child. It is for him to repair her narcissistic wound.
 A paradox arises here: if the mother is in mourning, dead, she is lost
to the subject; but at least she is there, however afflicted she may be.
Dead and present, but present nonetheless. The subject can take care of
her, attempt to awaken her, to cure her. But in return, if cured, she
awakens, is animate and lives, the subject loses her again, for she
abandons him to go about her own affairs and to become attached to
other objects - with the result that the subject is caught between two
losses: presence in death, or absence in life. Hence the extreme ambiva­
lence concerning the desire to bring the dead mother back to life.

Metapsychological Hypotheses: The Effacement of the Primary

Object and the Framing Structure9
Contemporary clinical psychoanalysis has been engaged in defining
more precisely the characteristics of the most primitive maternal
imago. In this respect Melanie Klein's work accomplished a mutation
in theory, even though she was mainly concerned with the internal
object, as she was able to picture it, both in the analysis of children
and the analysis of adults of psychotic structure, and without taking
account of the part played by the mother in the constitution of her
imago. Winnicott's work was born of this neglect. But Klein's disciples,
starting with Bion, recognised the necessity of readjusting her ideas on
this subject even though they did not share Winnicott's views. In fact,
Melanie Klein went to the limit of what could be attributable to a
group of innate dispositions concerning the respective strength of the
life and death drives present in the baby, the maternal variable hardly
entering into the question. In this she was following Freud's lead.
Above all, Kleinian contributions concentrated on projections
relative to the bad object. Up to a point this was justified in view of
Freud's denial of their authenticity. Frequently one has noted the way
he overshadowed the 'bad mother' with his immovable faith in the
quasi-paradisiacal bond uniting the mother to her infant. So it fell to
Melanie Klein to touch up this partiel and partial picture of the
mother-infant relationship; and this came all the more easily in that
the cases she analysed - whether children or adults - being mainly of
a maniaco-depressive or psychotic structure, revealed the evidence of
such projections. There is an abundant literature giving a full descrip­
tion of this omnipresent internal breast, threatening the infant with
annihilation, fragmentation and infernal cruelty of all kinds, and
linked in a mirror-relationship with the baby who defends himself, as
well as he can, by projection. W hen the schizo-paranoid phase starts
to give way to the depressive position, the latter, which coincides
with the unification of the object and the ego, has as a fundamental
characteristic the progressive cessation of projective activity and the
infant's growing capacity to assume his own aggressive drives. He
becomes 'responsible' for them, as it were, which in turn encourages
him to take care of the maternal object, to worry about her, to fear
losing her, by turning his aggressivity against himself owing to
archaic guilt, and with a view to making reparation. This is why, more
than ever, there is no question here of incriminating the mother.
In the configuration that I have described, where vestiges of the
bad object may persist as a source of hatred, I suspect that hostile
characteristics are secondary to a primary imago of the mother, where
she has found herself devitalised by a mirror reaction of the child who
was affected by her bereavement. This leads us to develop the hypoth­
esis that has already been proposed. W hen conditions are favourable
for the inevitable separation between the mother and the child, a
decisive mutation arises in the depths of the ego. The maternal object,
in the form of the primary object of fusion, fades away, making way
for the ego's own cathexes which are the source of his personal narcis­
sism. Henceforth the ego will be able to cathect its own objects,
distinct from the primitive object. But this effacing of the mother
does not make the primitive object disappear completely. The
primary object becomes a 'framing-structure' for the ego, sheltering
the negative hallucination of the mother. Most certainly, the repre­
sentations of the mother continue to exist and are projected inside
this framing structure on to the backdrop of the negative hallucina­
tion of the primary object. But they are no longer frame-representations
or, to make myself clearer, representations that fuse what comes from
the mother with what comes from the child. One may as well say that
they are no longer representations whose corresponding affects
express a vital character, which is indispensable for the baby's exis­
tence. These primitive representations hardly deserve the name of
representations. They are the compounds of barely outlined repre­
sentations, probably of a hallucinatory nature rather than
representative, and loaded affects which one. could almost call affec­
tive hallucinations. This is just as true in the hopeful state
anticipating satisfaction as in states of want. W hen these are
prolonged, they give rise to the emotions of anger, rage, and then
catastrophic despair. Now the effacing of the maternal object that has
been transformed into a framing structure comes about when love for
the object is sufficiently sure to play this role of a container of repre­
sentative space. The latter is no longer threatened with cracking; it
can face waiting and even temporary depression, the child feeling
supported by the maternal object even when it is not there. The
framework, when all is said and done, offers the guarantee of the
maternal presence in her absence, and can be filled with fantasy of all
kinds, even including aggressive violent fantasies which will not
imperil the container. The space which is thus framed constitutes the
receptacle of the ego; it surrounds an empty field, so to speak, which
will be occupied by erotic and aggressive cathexes, in the form of
object representations. This emptiness is never perceived by the
subject, because the libido has cathected the psychical space. Thus it
plays the role of primordial matrix of the cathexes to come.
However, if a traumatism such as blank mourning occurs before
the infant has been able to establish this framework solidly enough,
there is no psychical space available within the ego. The ego is limited
by this framing structure; but in the circumstances this frame
surrounds a conflictual space which strives to hold the mother's
image captive, struggling against its disappearance, and alternately
noting the revival of the memory traces of lost love, with nostalgia,
which is expressed by the impression of painful vacuity. These alter­
nations reproduce the ancient conflict of unsuccessful primary
repression, to the extent that effacing the primordial object will not
have been an acceptable experience, nor mutually accepted by the
two parties of the former mother-infant symbiosis.
Arguments on the theme of the antagonism between primary
narcissism and primary object-love are perhaps ... without object. It all
depends on the point of view adopted. That primary object-love can be
observed straightaway by a third party, an onlooker, can hardly be
disputed. On the other hand, that this love should be narcissistic from
the child's point of view could hardly be otherwise. Doubtless, the
debate has been obscured by differing uses of the term of primary
narcissism. If by such a term one wishes to designate a primitive form
of relation where all cathexes come from the child to start with - which
is probably distinct from auto-erotism which has already elected
certain erogenous zones on the baby's body - then, there is certainly a
characteristic primary narcissistic structure of inaugural forms of
cathexis. But if one means by primary narcissism the accomplishment
of a feeling of unity which is established only after a phase dominated
by fragmentation, then one must conceive of primary narcissism and
object-love as two modes of cathexis centred around opposite and
distinct polarities. For my part, I see here two successive moments of
our mythical construction of the psychical apparatus. I am inclined to
believe that the earliest primary narcissism encompasses all cathexes in
a confused way, including primary object-love, and even what we
might symmetrically call primary object-hatred, because it is this early
lack of subject-object distinction which characterises the type and
quality of the cathexes. It is when separation has been accomplished
that one may justifiably speak of later primary narcissism, as desig­
nating the ego-cathexes alone, as distinct from object-cathexes.
 To complete this description, I propose to distinguish a positive
primary narcissism (connected with Eros), tending towards unity and
identity, from a negative primary narcissism (connected with the
destructive instincts). The latter is not manifested by hatred towards
the object - this is perfectly compatible with the withdrawal of
positive primary narcissism - but by the tendency of the ego to undo
its unity and to proceed towards zero. This is manifested clinically by
the feeling of emptiness.
W hat we have described under the name of the dead mother
complex helps us to understand cases where the evolution is
unfavourable. We witness the failure of the experience of individu­
ating separation (Mahler) in which the young ego, instead of
constituting the receptacle for cathexes to come, after separation,
relentlessly endeavours to retain the primary object and to relive its
loss repetitively. At the level of the primary ego (which is fused with
the object) this gives rise to the feeling of narcissistic depletion,
expressed phenomenologically by the sentiment of emptiness, so
characteristic of depression, which is always the result of a narcissistic
wound experienced at the level of the ego.
The object is 'dead' (in the sense of not alive, even though no real
death has come about); hence it draws the ego towards a deathly,
deserted universe. The mother's blank mourning induces blank
mourning in the infant, burying a part of his ego in the maternal
necropolis. To nourish the dead mother amounts, then, to m ain­
taining the earliest love for the primordial object under the seal of
secrecy, enshrouded by the primary repression of an ill-accomplished
separation of the two partners of primitive fusion.10
It seems to me that psychoanalysts should have little difficulty in
recognising a familiar clinical configuration in the description of the
dead mother complex, which may however differ in one aspect or
another from my own account of it. Psychoanalytic theory is elabo­
rated on the basis of a limited number of observations, and it may
well be that what I have described covers both sufficiently general
characteristics to coincide with the experiences of others, and more
singular characteristics which would be particular to the patients I
have had in analysis.
Although I may perhaps have schematised the structure of this
dead mother complex, it is quite possible that it may be found in
more rudimentary forms. In this case one might imagine that the
traumatic experience to which I have alluded has been either more
discreet, or more tardy, taking place at a time when the child was
better able to bear its consequences, and so only resorted to a more
partial, more moderate depression, which was easier to overcome.
 It may seem surprising that I should attribute such an important
role to a maternal traumatism, at a period in psychoanalysis when
one tends to insist a great deal more on the vicissitudes of intra-
psychical organisation, and when one is more prudent about the role
played by conjuncture. As I indicated at the outset of this work, the
depressive position is a fact that is now recognised by all authors,
whatever explanations they may give. On the other hand, the
depressing effects of early separations between mother and infant
have been described for years, without however, any general accord
being established between the importance of the trauma and the
observed depressive manifestations. In the dead mother complex, the
situation cannot be reduced to the level of the com m on depressive
position, nor likened to the serious traumatisms of real separations. In
the case that I describe, there has been no effective break in the conti­
nuity of the mother-infant relationship. However, independently of
the spontaneous evolution towards the depressive position, there has
been an im portant maternal contribution which intervenes,
disturbing the positive outcome of the depressive phase and compli­
cating the conflict, because of the reality of maternal decathexis
which is sufficiently noticeable to the infant to wound his narcissism.
This configuration seems to me to tally with Freud's views on the aeti­
ology of the neuroses - in the wide sense - where the child's psychical
make-up is formed by the combination of his personal inherited
dispositions and the events of his earliest infancy.

Freud and the Dead Mother

The starting-point of this work is contemporary clinical experience
which has arisen from Freud's writings. I have not adopted the usual
course, namely to begin by seeking out the new approaches that
Freud's work opens up, but have preferred, on the contrary, to leave
this until the end of the chapter. In fact it is only at a late stage,
almost At the end of proceedings, that repression in me has lifted, and
that I have remembered retrospectively something in Freud that can
be related to my subject. It is not in 'Mourning and Melancholia'
(1917a [1915]) that I found Freud's support, but in The Interpretation
o f Dreams (1900). In the last chapter of the Traumdeutung, and already
in the first edition, Freud tells a final personal dream concerning
arousal by dreams (ibid., p. 583). It is the dream of the 'beloved
mother', and the only childhood dream he recounted, either in this
work or in his published correspondence. In this matter, Fliess'
psychical deafness made him one of Freud's dead mothers, after
having been his eldest brother. W ith the help of previous interpreta­
tions by Eva Rosenfeld and Alexander Grinstein, Didier Anzieu gives
a remarkable analysis of it in Freud's Self-Analysis.11 Here I cannot go
into all the details of this dream or the multiple commentaries to
which it gives rise. I shall lim it myself to the reminder that its
manifest content showed 'my beloved mother, with a peculiarly
peaceful, sleeping expression on her features, being carried into the
room by two (or three) people with birds' beaks and laid upon the
bed'. The dreamer awoke in tears and screaming, and interrupted his
parents' sleep. It was an anxiety-dream which was interrupted on
waking. The commentators who have analysed this dream, beginning
with Freud himself, have not paid sufficient attention to the fact that
it is a dream that could not be dreamed, a dream that might have
been a dream which had no end and which one would almost have
to construct. W hich of the two or the three - an essential hesitation
- will join the mother in her sleep? In his uncertainty, the dreamer
could stand it no more; he interrupted, killing two birds with one
stone, the dream and the parents' sleep. Detailed analysis of the
dream, both by Freud and his commentators, ends up with the
conjunction of two themes: that of the dead mother and that of
sexual intercourse. In other words, we find confirmation of my
hypothesis concerning the relation between the dead mother, the
primal scene and the Oedipus complex; here, besides the object of
desire, two (or three) people with birds' beaks are brought into play.
The associations shed light on the origin of these people derived
from the Philippson Bible. Grinstein's enquiry12 allows one to attach
this representation to Figure 15 of this Bible, which was a gift of
Freud's father, an illustration which becomes the object of a conden­
sation. In effect, in this illustration, it is not a question of gods with
falcons' heads, which was Freud's first association, but of two
pharaonic personages of Lower Egypt - I emphasise Lower - whereas
the birds surmount the columns of the bed. I think this is an impor­
tant condensation, for it displaces the birds from the mother's bed to
the head of the personages, of whom there are two here and not
three. Thus the mother is perhaps attributed with a bird-penis.13 The
corresponding text illustrates the verse 'King David follows the litter
(of Abner)', which, as Anzieu remarks, abounds with themes of incest,
parricide and, I should like to stress, fratricide.
Anzieu interprets the two personages correctly, I believe, as the
representations of Jacob Freud, a grandfatherly image, and Philipp,
the younger half-brother of Freud, a paternal image. This was, as
everyone knows, because Philipp, who was born in 1836, was himself
only one year younger than Freud's mother, and Freud had Philipp's
eldest son Emanuel as a playmate. In the dream the dead mother has
the expression of the maternal grandfather on his deathbed, on 3
October 1865, when Sigmund was nine and a half. Thus this is a
bereavement which must have had an effect on the relationship
between Amalie Freud and her son. The commentators have noted
the erroneous dating in this dream, which was not rectified by Freud.
He says he dreamed it when he was seven or eight years old, that is,
a year and a half or two years prior to the time of the grandfather's
death, which is impossible. Whereas others have simply noted the
error and corrected it, it seems to me a revealing lapsus, and it leads
me to conclude that it is not the bereavement of the maternal grand­
father that is in question, but a former bereavement. The significant
period in the error - a gap of one and a half to two years - reminds
me of another bereavement of the mother: that of Freud's younger
brother, Julius, who was born when Sigmund was seventeen months
old (almost a year and a half) and who died when he was twenty-
three months old (nearly two). Hence the double explication: two (or
three) people, namely Jacob, Philipp or Jacob, Philipp and Philippson:
Philipp's son, Julius; because in 1859, when Freud was three, he
dreaded that his mother might be pregnant again like the Nanny, and
that Philipp might have shut her in a cupboard, imprisoned her, or
more coarsely, 'had it off with her'.14
This, I shall note in passing, is why the young initiator, the
concierge's son who reveals the information on sexual intercourse, is
supposedly called Philipp. It is Philipp who copulates with Amalie,
and it is Philippson (Julius) who allows Sigmund to understand the
relation between copulating, giving birth and dying ... behind the
name of Julius, that of the painter Julius Mosen is forgotten, whom
Freud mentions in his letter to Fliess, on 26 August 1898.15 Mosen-
Moses, we know what follows, and also Freud's insistence on making
Moses an Egyptian, that is, to make the point clearly, not the son of
Amalie and Jacob, but of the concierge, or at a pinch, of Amalie and
Philipp. This also sheds light on Freud's conquest of Rome, if one
remembers that he quotes Livy (Freud 1900)16 in connection with the
incestuous dreams of Julius Caesar.
I understand better the importance of this age, eighteen months,
in Freud's works. It was the age of his grandson when he was playing
with the wooden reel (mother dead-mother resurrected), and who
died when he was about two; which was an occasion of intense
mourning, though it is minimised. This is also the age at which the
Wolf Man supposedly witnessed the primal scene.
Anzieu makes two remarks which link up with my own deduc­
tions. He shows, concerning the preconscious elaboration of Freud,
the rapprochement between Freud and Bion, who, besides love and
hatred, gave a specific place to knowledge as a primordial reference
w ithin the psychical apparatus: the quest for meaning. Finally, he
concludes that one should find suspect Freud's insistence on reducing
the specific anxiety of the dream, anxiety over the mother's death, to
something else.
There is only one other hypothesis pending, that of the oral rela­
tionship. Another dream which is in keeping with that of the
'beloved mother' refers to this, where the mother appears to be alive:
the dream of the Three Fates' (1900, pp. 204-5). In this dream Freud's
mother is making Knodel, and while little Sigmund is waiting to eat
them she intimates that he should wait until she is ready ('these were
not definite spoken words', Freud adds). One knows that his associa­
tions with this passage concern death. But further on, when he has
put the analysis of the dream aside, he comes back to it, to write: 'My
dream of the three Fates was clearly a hunger dream. But it shifted the
craving for nourishment back to a child's longing for his mother's
breast, and it made use of an innocent desire as a screen for a more
serious one which could not be so openly displayed' (ibid., p. 233).
Probably, and how can one deny it when the context is so pertinent,
but here again it would be as well to remain suspicious. One should
especially question this triple image of a woman in Freud's thinking,
which is examined again in the Theme of the Three Caskets': the
mother, the wife (or beloved), and death. The censure of the beloved
has been much discussed in recent years.17 I in turn wish to draw
attention to the censure of the dead mother: the mother of silence as
heavy as lead.
Now our trilogy is complete. Once again we are led to think of the
metaphoric loss of the breast, interrelating with the Oedipus
complex, or the primal scene fantasy, and that of the dead mother.
The lesson of the dead mother is that she too must die one day so that
another may be loved. But this death must be slow and gentle so that
the memory of her love does not perish, but may nourish the love
that she will generously offer to whoever takes her place.
Thus we have come full circle. It is again significant retrospectively.
I have known of these dreams for many years, as well as the commen­
taries to which they have given rise. They were inscribed in my m ind
as significant memory traces of something that seemed to me to be
obscurely important, without my knowing exactly how or why. These
traces have been re-cathected by the discourse of certain analysands
whom, at a given moment, I was able to hear, though not before. Is it
this discourse that permitted me to rediscover Freud's written word,
or is it the cryptomnesia of this reading that made me permeable to
my analysands' words? In a rectilinear conception of time, this
hypothesis is the correct one. In the light of Freud's concept of
Nachtrdglichkeit,18 it is the other that is true. Be that as it may, in the
concept of Nachtrdglichkeit, nothing is more mysterious than this
preliminary statute of a registered meaning which remains in
abeyance in the psyche while awaiting it's revelation. For it is a
question of 'meaning', otherwise it would not have been able to be
recorded in the psyche. But this meaning-in-waiting is only truly
significant when it is reawakened by a re-cathexis which takes place
in an absolutely different context. W hat meaning is this? A lost
meaning, re-found? It would give too much credit to this presigni-
ficative structure, and its rediscovery is much more of the order of a
discovery. Perhaps potential meaning which only lacks the analytic -
or poetic? - experience to acquire real meaning.
Postscript
The Ego, Mortal-Immortal (1982)
For Brigitte Pontalis

In modern societies, at least, death has become something scandalous.

This scarcely surprises us any more, and it probably should surprise us
more. W hen a loved one dies, even at an advanced age, we express our
regret, and sometimes even reproach those whom we feel were respon­
sible for not having saved their life; as if we had become accustomed
to considering the duration of life as unlimited, and its end as some­
thing that could be put off indefinitely. This attitude towards death is
a relatively recent one. Although it is difficult to say precisely when it
appeared, under the influence of a combination of circumstances - for
example, the longer period of peacetime after two particularly bloody
world wars; the improvement of the means available to cope with
natural catastrophes; medical progress and the lowering of infantile
mortality - it is clear that this new era is nothing more than the size
of a finger on the top of a mountain, when one considers how far
preceding centuries were marked by the presence of death in all soci­
eties and at all stages of history. It is equally surprising, moreover, that
this tendency not to resign ourselves to the inevitability of dying, or
to put it off as long as possible, is accompanied by a relative lack of
awareness concerning the accumulation of mass means of destruction.
Although one cannot speak of indifference here, one can nonetheless
point out that the wish to ward off this threat has not led to a general
mobilisation against the danger of war.
This is the paradoxical situation we find ourselves in today. It may
be that we are no longer in a position to appreciate the state of m ind
which reigned less than a century ago, at a time when death was a
worrying but familiar shadow in every living household, and when
religion still offered the supreme consolation.
We are not, I think, fully aware of the import of Freud's ideas on
the subject. Their genuine audacity has lost its edge because the
changes which have come about in other areas have made them seem
banal. Death is not represented in the unconscious: this is what he
asserted with the conviction of someone who had been there to see
for himself. Man cannot know what death is; either consciously or
unconsciously. In the unconscious there is nothing but representa­
tions of wishes and affects. A pure positivity, then, whose function is
precisely to counter the frustrations which reality imposes on our
capacity to fulfil our desires, making us experience these lacks on a
daily basis, be they big or small, of which death is merely the maximal
actualisation. Basically, Freud discovered the 'beyond' of religion,
which awaits the just, the virtuous or the.repentant, in the uncon­
scious, with all the limitations and reservations that this comparison
may give rise to.
Nevertheless, even if we cannot know what death is, or imagine it,
and even if the unconscious is unaware of it - in the sense that it has
no place for it - this does not, for all that, do away with man's aware­
ness of the fact that he is mortal. Freud was not satisfied with
struggling against religious illusion and dethroning the consciousness
of the philosophers by dashing the excessive confidence they placed
in it; he also insisted on contesting the actual content of the reflec­
tions inspiring this consciousness of death. W hile Western
philosophy as a whole, the source of his own culture, had continually
spun the web of discourse on death over the centuries, reworking it
indefinitely in the light of changing conceptions, and considering it
as one of the most noble achievements of hum an thought, Freud now
flung an abrupt judgement in the face of these thinkers: the fear of
death underlying the philosophical meditation of the one who is
called the being-for-death (I'etre-pour-la-mort)l is a snare, a mask behind
which m an hides in order to deny that the real issue is castration
anxiety. Such was his rash observation, which bordered on arrogance.
Freud wanted to show that it required less courage to allege that man
was tlje only being in the animal kingdom to speak at length about
death, ^knowing that he is mortal, than to recognise the limitations of
his consciousness, to play down his illusory vanity and, above all, to
accept the idea that the real motor of action, as well as of hum an
thought, was that which eluded the control of his will and conscious
being, that is, the unconscious, the invisible master pulling the
strings of the puppet 'consciousness'.
Was this provocation? In fact, it could not have been anything else
for Freud who was constantly pursuing his ideas on the unconscious
system to their logical limits. The radicalism of his views on the inex­
istence of death in the unconscious, owing to its lack of
representation there, is justified by the type of rationality character­
ising the primary process. It admits neither of doubt nor degrees of
certitude; it is unaware of negation and remains insensible to the
passing of time; and hence to any notion of time whatsoever.
Consequently, it is unable to conceive, in whatever form, of the end
to an existence animated by the sole exigency of wish-fulfilment. The
latter finds in this domain, having failed to do so in reality, ways to
satisfy itself by suppressing the obstacles which stand in the way,
thanks to means which allow it to circumvent the censor. The
supremacy of the pleasure principle is thereby affirmed.
In order to ensure the survival of the precarious entity which the
ego of the very young infant represents, consciousness, arising from
the constraints of external reality, is governed by the reality principle
- which is a good deal more vulnerable than the pleasure principle.
Ultimately, the final function of the first is to safeguard the second,
whose reign is only undivided in the unconscious. One of its most
significant manifestations is the negation of unpleasure connected
with the threat of castration. The latter arouses the most extreme
sense of horror: it constitutes the supreme threat of extinguishing
sexual pleasure, the foundation and prototype of all the others. The
unpleasure linked to the idea of death may be explained by the fact
that the latter, like castration, has the same implications. It contains
w ithin it the same dangers. By putting an end to the pleasures of
living, it basically involves losing the capacity for sexual pleasure.
Lacan (1977, p. 317) puts it more eloquently when he says: 'the
absence of Jouissance makes the Universe vain ... /
Thus the narcissistic wound - Freud dixit - inflicted on man by
contesting the sovereignty of consciousness, did not only deprive
him of the pride he obtained from being able to hold forth on death;
it became purulent as a result of being forced to realise that this
discourse formed a screen against his sole and unique reason for
anxiety, that is, castration.
We thought that we could console ourselves for the yoke of death
with the knowledge that we were mortal; and this knowledge gave us
the feeling that we could prepare ourselves for it: 'Philosophising is
about learning to die.' It was not resignation or submission to a blind
power in the face of which one bows helplessly; consenting to our
finiteness sustained the idea that death could find within us a
respected adversary. Not a slave but a free being, because he claimed
to be lucid. In fact, without realising it, we were not only ignorant of
death but also of ourselves, taking pride in the vanity of the nobility
in which our consciousness was cloaked, turning our backs on the
real source of our thoughts. The latter, tied up with far more prosaic
motives, were riveted to the quest for childhood pleasure, always
barred by the fear of seeing the possibility of its renewal fade away.
And even though some aspects of our behaviour seemed to indicate
that we were drawn towards unpleasure, this was merely the ultimate
ruse, a protective disguise, in which rigorous analysis soon discov­
ered, in the contrary of pleasure, the indelible mark of the state prior
to unpleasure: pleasure, again and always, whose initial aim was the
sexual pleasure linked with the earliest stages in our lives.
Descartes was once asked if children had a soul. He replied in the
negative, arguing that they were unstable, that their minds were
labile, always in movement, drawn towards play, that is, incapable of
accomplishing the mental process which was supposed to lead to the
irreducibility of the Cogito. It was only with Freud, Melanie Klein,
and, above all Winnicott, that we came to understand that children's
play was a serious matter which had such a necessary and extensive
role that it could include the most serious and profound mental activ­
ities of which adults were capable. For play can only be understood in
the light of fantasy; the latter being anchored in sexuality before
finding its fulfilment in sublimation.
An over-hasty interpretation would seek an explanation for castra­
tion anxiety, so closely linked in m an with sexuality, in ontogenesis.
But this was not how Freud saw things at all. His work makes it abun­
dantly clear that his conception of the development of libido
postulates the existence of specific programming - that is, program­
m ing which is linked to the species rather than the individual.
Sexuality is assumed to be governed by organising schema - primal
fantasies of seduction, castration, the primal scene, and even those
that are connected with the Oedipus complex - which shape the
burgeoning of individual experiences, giving them sense (direction
and meaning) by making a selection between certain events and
investing them in a specific manner; as well as by classifying them in
the way that thought is classified into philosophical categories. One
is naturally led here to think of Kant's a priori.
But what is acceptable and even commendable in philosophy is
difficult to accept for a theory which aims at scientific truth. Nothing
on a scientific level supports Freud's speculation concerning what he
called phylogenetic mnemic residues, for which primal fantasies are
supposed to be the psychical expression on an individual level. No
opportunity was missed for pointing this out to him. He treated these
objections with disdain: perhaps he was ahead of science. He even
replied that he had little time for this appeal to scientific knowledge
since he was not a scientist but a psychoanalyst. Under the circum­
stances, Freud proved to be curiously incoherent. He never ceased to
claim that psychoanalysis should have the status of a scientific disci­
pline, admitting no other criteria of truth than those of science. It was
not in his theory that one should expect to find a Weltanschauung;
one of those conceptions of the world with which philosophers had
nourished man's illusions. And so it was that on this subject he
erected a speculative system in honour of a supra-scientific dignity,
while sheltering behind a prophetic gift, and without providing the
slightest evidence for what he was advancing. What was it, then, that
sustained this unshakeable conviction? W hat others saw as reprehen­
sible rashness seemed to him to be entirely coherent, and was
probably the expression of a certain fidelity to himself which was not
immediately noticeable.
It may be safely argued that, if Freud found the referent of
psychical life in sexuality, it was not only because the latter is closely
connected in man with pleasure, but mainly because it is the function
which goes right through the individual. Not only because it affects
his relations with others, but also because it extends beyond his own
existence, before and after, linking generations together; ascendants
and descendants forming an unbroken chain. For this very reason it
cannot be conceived of from an ontogenetic point of view.
It has been said that the 'invention' of sexuality and death went
hand in hand. It is true that without sexual differentiation - in the
absence of 'sexion'- the indefinitely repeated scission of the same
organism conjures up a figure of immortality. But, along quite
different lines, one may also argue that, when the individual dies, a
part of him survives through the patrimony he has passed on to his
descendants. If, to this part, it has been necessary to add the part of a
partner of the other sex, something of himself will nonetheless be
transmitted which has migrated to a new hum an being. A relative
immortality, then, but immortality all the same; at least within the
space of a generation.
As for women, current day science makes returning to absolute
immortality possible. Parthenogenesis, which is capable of creating a
new hum an being identical to the parent, gives the mother-daughter
succession - the daughter becoming in turn the mother of another
daughter - an immortal character; but at the price, of course, of the
limitations involved in merely repeating the same. And so, in recent
times, there has been an affirmation of the superiority of the entirely
self-sufficient woman, able to love her own image in her offshoot. We
are now in a position to appreciate the links that exist between narcis­
sism and immortality. But there is something in it for object love as
well. Thus a husband who renounces the joys of paternity, to which
he has made a contribution, will be able to overcome the sadness of
seeing the object of his love affected by the wear and tear of time by
subjecting his wife to this reproduction of the same, thereby redis­
covering her in the flower of her long lost youth. He will even have
the immense satisfaction of having known her since her earliest
childhood days, just as she was before he met her!
 But it is now time to leave these musings, pleasant or terrifying as
they may be, and to return to Freud who did not suspect that they
could become a reality. To his m ind, sexuality was the life function
which relativised the individual's power. This can easily be seen from
the very earliest phases of his work. His first drive theory opposed the
(individual's) drives of self-preservation and the sexual drives; the
preservation of the species, although not directly perceptible, is
nonetheless the final aim. In other words, sexuality covers both the
domain of the individual and that of the species, whereas self-preser­
vation only concerns the individual. Thus sexuality, pleasure (already
considered as a threat to self-preservation at this stage of Freudian
thought) and the negation of death are linked by a com m on fate
which can only be brought to light through the analysis of uncon­
scious processes.
Strictly speaking, however, one cannot really speak here of immor­
tality. Being deprived of any representation of death and believing one
is immortal are only apparent equivalents. If death has no representa­
tive in the unconscious, the latter cannot claim immortality. This
denial, which excludes awareness of death, is not stated in terms of its
possibility and even less in terms of its ineluctability. The absolute
affirmation of life, in the form of fulfilling desire, has no antagonist.
At the very most, it has to face the censor but never the knowledge of
being mortal. This is why the reference to castration is pertinent. It is
materialised through the opposition 'phallic-castrated'. There is no
doubt that Freud's conception was phallocentric since, in his view, the
essence of all libido is masculine, in both sexes. W hich is also why
castration is of interest - in different ways - to both sexes, insofar as it
threatens any kind of pleasure which may arouse death anxiety with
extinction. W hen Freud analysed the reasons why he had forgotten
Signorelli's name, his associations led him to mention the Turks who
believe that without sexual jouissance life is not worth living. Does this
not atnount to saying that anything is better than being a eunuch?
Clearly, it is impossible to understand Freud's ideas without appre­
ciating their metaphorical value. The 'great Lord Penis' (Freud)2 is, to
use Lacan's expression, the signifier of desire, its bodily material
support. This phallic presence in which the Phallus, according to
Lacan, is the guarantor of the symbolic order, eclipses the vagina,
which, like death, is unrepresentable according to Freud. We may
wonder about the selectivity of Freud's memory which found in the
tragedy of Sophocles an intuition of the Oedipus complex while
forgetting why Tiresias, the psychoanalyst's ancestor, was castrated.
The vagina, which is capable of having nine times as much pleasure
as the penis, is said to be the signifier of nothing, and vagina envy is
said to be inconceivable. We have not finished with this 'repudiation
of femininity' which Freud held to be responsible for the limitations
of psychoanalytic treatment. For the moment, let me simply empha­
sise the transindividual function of sexuality, while pointing out in
passing that this function is embodied much more in women than in
men who, at a certain moment in their existence, may include within
the same organism two bodies in one, separated by a generational
difference and sometimes by a sexual difference.
W hen Freud modified his first drive theory in favour of the oppo­
sition between ego-libido and object-libido, sexuality being
distributed between the first and the second, immortality was not
absent from his thoughts, as the following citation from 'On
Narcissism: An Introduction' (1914) shows:

The individual does actually carry on a twofold existence: one to

serve his own purposes and the other as a link in a chain, which
he serves against his will, or at least involuntarily. The individual
himself regards sexuality as one of his own ends; whereas from
another point of view he is an appendage to his germ-plasm, at
whose disposal he puts his energies in return for a bonus of
pleasure. He is the mortal vehicle of a (possibly) immortal
substance - like the inheritor of an entailed property, who is only
the temporary holder of an estate which survives him. The separa­
tion of the sexual instincts from the ego-instincts would simply
reflect this twofold function of the individual.3

These lines clearly show the support which Freud felt he had found
in Weismann who had argued in favour of the opposition between
germen and soma. Only soma is mortal. Is it not fair to infer, then,
that between the immortality of soma and the bonus of pleasure
obtained in exchange for achieving the aims of germen, lies castra­
tion anxiety, forming a bridge between germinal plasma and somatic
plasma? Weissmann's ideas again provided backing for Freud a few
years later in the mutative leap in his thinking expressed by Beyond
the Pleasure Principle (1920). The speculative character of his reflec­
tions should not lead us to believe that Freud's thought was entirely
self-generated. For, a few years before, in 1911, he had undertaken
the analysis of Schreber's Memoirs in which the author's delusion
bore witness both to narcissistic regression, through libido flowing
back into the ego, which was now megalomaniac, and to the fantasy
of immortality present implicitly in-the fundamental theme of the
neo-reality Schreber had created. Due to his transformation into a
woman, by emasculation, and as a result of his coupling with God,
Schreber is alleged to have given birth to a new race of men. Freud
interpreted this desire for feminine jouissance as merely satisfying
passive homosexual wishes towards the Father in which castration
anxiety was foreclosed.
But it was not until a few years later, immediately before Beyond
the Pleasure Principle, in his article on The Uncanny' (1919), in which
Freud tackled the theme of the double - the object of a famous work
by Rank - that he explicitly introduced the ego's immortality. This
shift from the unconscious to the ego, inaugurating the first
authentic psychical expression of immortality, modified his earlier
views. The analysis of myths and literary texts concerning twinning
reveals the division of the ego into two halves - represented by the
twins - one of which is mortal while the other is often endowed with
the gift of immortality. Here, what is involved is no longer the
imm ortality of sexuality through biological vocation, nor the
absence of the representation of death in unconscious psychical life,
but of an ego belief which may sometimes become conscious under
the cover of fiction. In 1900, at a time when Freud was drawing his
conclusions from the analysis of hysteria, the normal universal
phenom enon of dreams had enabled Freud to demonstrate that the
unconscious was not the apanage of neurosis. In 1919, this demon­
stration was taken up again on the same grounds: delusion did not
have a monopoly either of the unconscious expressions of the ego's
immortality. The collective or individual fiction which men take
pleasure in transmitting and sharing without being suspected of
illness - they even find religion is elevating for their souls - shows in
the same way how the ego - or a part of it - considers itself immortal
among ordinary mortals.
It is from this point of view that it is really possible to speak of
immortality; that is, of a genuine denial of death at the heart of an
ego which knows it is mortal, its 'double' refusing to accept the
fatality of the term of its existence. The reference to sexuality is not,
however, challenged. But the immortality of the germen has no
presence in the psyche, any more than death is represented in the
unconscious. O n the other hand, the immortality of a part of the ego
corresponds to the biological mortality of soma and the conscious­
ness of death. It is narcissism - the effect of the sexualisation of the
ego drives - which is the cause.
W hen Freud designated the empty space of death in the uncon­
scious, he had discovered a truth which he felt was worthy of being
counted among the acquisitions of science. This certainly represented
a victory for the ego which was able to fathom a secret of the vast
territory eluding consciousness. And so, at the heart of this lucid ego,
which was able to see beyond itself, Freud discovered that the uncon­
scious had an accomplice, a traitor that was underm ining his efforts
to shed 'more light' on affairs.
 Once again it is necessary to link Freud's speculations, apparently
the result of analysing fiction, with the hard disillusionments of
clinical experience. At the beginning of his work, the unconscious
and the ego were in conflict. Freud saw the ego as his best ally in
treatment, for he had credited it with being the representative, at the
core of the psyche, of relations to reality. Before analysis, conscious­
ness overestimated its power, but its role was less negligible than was
supposed. It sinned through ignorance. All that was needed was for
the ego, with the analyst's help, to 'become aware of' and recognise
the real links between thing-presentations (unconscious) and word-
presentations (preconscious-conscious) in order to acquire a real
power over the unconscious and not only over the external world.
One is justified in wondering here whether Freud was not giving back
to philosophy a part of the territory he had taken from it. It is philos­
ophy, is it not, which has always claimed that it is through ignorance
that men lack wisdom? In short, if the causes of man's madness are
explainable by his ignorance of the unconscious, and if the method
which is supposed to free him from it no longer consists in
philosophising but in interpreting, the gap between the two disci­
plines, deep as it may seem, is not unbridgeable, in spite of Freud's
aversion for philosophers. It is indeed the task of a conscious human
being to strive for greater awareness.
This final illusion was to collapse in turn when Freud came a
cropper over certain rebellious neuroses, of which the case of the
'Wolf Man' is the sad paradigm. Contrary to all expectations, the
interpretation of the earliest memories, those of the 'primal scenes'
did not succeed in returning to the ego any of its possessions invested
by the unconscious. The rational ego seemed to refuse to put its own
house in order, even though it seemed to accept - not without
apparent conviction - the analyst's constructions. It slept with its eyes
open and remained closed to any understanding ... As the years
passed, Freud had to admit, reluctantly, that his confidence in this
uncompromising ego had been misplaced. Although it remained true
that the ego was able to respond adequately to certain exigencies of
reality, lest it wither away, it had now to be recognised that the former
ally was capable of concealing that half of itself - but was it only half?
- which it had formed in secret, where the wish to be immortal,
however unreasonable it seemed, could find refuge and credence. The
entire structure of the psychical apparatus needed reviewing in the
light of this deficiency; which was what justified the new conception
of the ego in the second topography. The ego, said Freud in 1923, is
largely unconscious; and to such an extent that certain of its essential
functions, the mechanisms of defence against anxiety, are uncon­
scious too. They had their rightful place in earliest childhood, when
they made use of the only psychical processes available to the still
undeveloped ego, trying to relieve it of the internal tensions it
suffered by resorting to mechanisms which were concerned less with
external reality than psychical reality. In adulthood, they become
obsolete, more disabling than useful, owing to their anachronism.
The ego clings to these beliefs of the past and does not give them up
lightly, even when they are correctly interpreted. It only accepts their
inadequacy half-heartedly, in those cases when it is not blind to the
point of understanding nothing of its own functioning, and, when
the analyst takes the trouble to dismantle the latter through the expe­
rience of transference.
The belief in immortality is thus rooted in the unconscious ego.
The raison d'etre for this topography is the sexualisation of the ego
drives. The ignorance of death in the unconscious has taken up resi­
dence in the ego. But, as the ego is also conscious - necessity obliges
- the agency which is a guarantor of rationality, and which knows
through its relations with external reality that it is mortal, contains
w ithin its recesses a megalomaniac understudy, ready to surge
forward to the point of eclipsing the other, sometimes for the
innocent pleasure of fiction, and, at other times, to uphold the faith.
It breaks into the open under the grips of psychosis. The ego, then, is
characterised by this very duplicity; its divided structure participating
in its most intimate functioning, which is concealed under normal
conditions, but openly visible in times of illness. The recognition of
material reality - the importance of which, moreover, should not be
minimised - and the ignorance of material reality by psychical reality
(unconscious): such is the dialectic which accounts for the fact that
the wish for immortality only acquires meaning by coexisting with
the consciousness of death.
Nonetheless, as things stood, in 1919, Freud still conceived of death
anxiety as a displacement of castration anxiety. Immortality was to
narcissism what the negation of castration is for object-libido. Yet
Freud was beginning to suspect that other factors were possibly
involved. He was too well-versed in the clinical psychiatry of his time
not to notice that Cotard's syndrome, observed in melancholy, and the
grandiose ideas found in the terminal phase of general paralyses and
other mental diseases, could not be interpreted in the name of narcis­
sism alone. Even within the framework of psychoanalytic treatments,
the resistance to healing called for other explanations than the ego's
obstinacy in exhausting itself by maintaining outmoded defences.
Few exegetes of Freud's thought have been struck by the close rela­
tionship linking the last drive theory and the second topography of
the psychical apparatus. The id, the ego and the super-ego replaced
the unconscious, the preconscious and the conscious; the latter were
reduced to denoting psychical qualities and stripped of their function
as agencies. Attention has mainly been given to the relations between
the two topographies, the second appearing to do no more than redis­
tribute the values of the first. In fact, the introduction of the death
drives totally modified the conception of how the psychical apparatus
functioned.
One can appreciate this by comparing Freud's views on melan­
choly in two different texts. The earliest, 'Mourning and Melancholia'
(1917a [1915]), expounds a conception prior to the final drive theory.
The latest, The Ego and the Id (1923) came three years after it. In the
first, melancholia is still seen from the angle of a libidinal fixation,
without any reference to the death drives. Admittedly, the oral canni­
balistic stage, at which melancholy is thought to remain stuck,
implies the destructive consumption of the object; oral sadism and
ambivalence are involved, but everything happens here within the
context of narcissistic and object-libido. Freud does not take into
account the highly destructive potential of this affection which
involves the greatest risk of suicide in the whole of psychiatry. In The
Ego and the Id, melancholy is designated differently, that is, as a 'pure
culture of death instincts'. Here, the ferocious antagonism between
the death drives and the life drives reveals the titanic combat taking
place in the psyche, and perhaps not only there. A defusion of the
drives is at work. Hence the dangerous quality of the crisis, since any
reduction in the mitigation of the drives has the effect of freeing the
death drives from their links with the Eros of the life drives. Their
freedom gives them an unsuspected destructive power when they are
no longer impeded by the yoke of Eros, which hitherto had succeeded
in binding them by eroticising them. It is as if the Eumenides, leaving
their dwelling place after a new matricide, returned to their former
identity as ruthless Erinyes, vampires demanding blood for blood.
From this point on, it was no longer possible for Freud to maintain
that all forms of death anxiety were substitutes for castration anxiety.
W hat might be true of transference neuroses (hysteria, phobia and
particularly obsessional neurosis) was no longer so of the narcissistic
neuroses, of which melancholia was the prototype, and probably
even less so of the psychoses.4
The analysis of melancholia shows the existence of a split within
the ego. A part of it identifies with the lost object - it is this loss for
the libido which is at the origin of the defusion - whereas the other
part retains its status. One can guess, then, how this refusal to accept
the object's death can contribute, by reflection, to the ego's fantasy of
immortality.
W ith regard to castration, Freud speaks of anxiety, that is, of a
danger; but, when he comes to deal with narcissism in mourning (and
not only there), he speaks of a narcissistic 'wound', as if it were no
longer merely a threat but an actual mutilation that was involved.
And, similarly, in transference neurosis, desire can use the detour of
secondary identification in order to obtain, by procuration, the grat­
ification from which the other person has benefited. In melancholia,
identification with the lost object (or the object that cannot be lost)
occurs in a primary mode. The ego 'takes itself' for the lost object. It
heaps reproaches on itself, accuses itself of the slightest peccadilloes,
attributing them with the seriousness of as many mortal sins. It
reviles itself and expects to be severely punished. But all this is just a
disguise. In fact, a part of the ego simply rises up against the other
part, as if it were its worst enemy, in order to conceal the wish to
mistreat the object; and, in this prolongation of existence constituted
by identification, to fulfil the sadistic wishes which were repressed in
the most distant past. Even suicide, so often successfully carried out
in melancholy, does not justify an interpretation in connection with
the oral phase of infantile sexuality. Owing to the confusion between
the ego and the object, a second death of the object is thus accom­
plished. Henceforth, an immortal union with it is consummated. The
nuptials with the object will no longer admit of any separation, in the
rediscovered, infinite and limitless paradise of orality. This is the view
presented in 'Mourning and Melancholia'.
W hen Freud returned to melancholia in The Ego and the Id, he
renewed his interpretation, examining it closely in the light of the
second topography. Now it was no longer two halves of the same ego
which split in order to fight each other. The splitting of the ego -
which Freud did not abandon, however, his final work being entitled
'Splitting of the Ego in the Process of Defence' (1940b [1938]) - was
replaced by the conflictual relation between the ego and that part of
it which had separated from it long ago: the super-ego. Melancholy
thus offers the distressing spectacle of the ego's persecution by the
merciless super-ego. It may be compared to Yahweh punishing his
chosen people because they were stubborn, making them pay the
price for being the chosen people with the wretched conscience
which Hegel was to identify in them. O n the surface the difference
between 1915 and 1923 would appear to be merely a slight nuance.
But, in fact, the new theory was quite different from the earlier one.
For Freud did not fail to point out that, unlike the ego, the super-ego
draws its resources from the id. In other words, the morality of which
it is the herald is anchored in the depths of the wildest agency in the
psyche, which are now haunted by the death drives as well as the life
drives, forming such an explosive mixture that any weakening of Eros
- whether it comes from external reality through m ourning or, from
internal reality, due to the excessive disappointment resulting from a
change in the object - creates out if this vital mixture a lethal potion.
Moreover, Freud did not miss the opportunity at a later juncture of
having a dig at Kant in passing, by pointing out that the categorical
imperative was far from being as immutable as he claimed; since
melancholy, primarily, but also the less serious forms of masochism,
show how the super-ego is subject to variations which rob it of any
transcendental character.
One year after The Ego and the Id, in The Economic Problem of
Masochism' (1924) - an appendix to the essay of 1923 - Freud went
even further. He distinguished between the masochism of the super­
ego, responsible for a desexualisation' of morality, and the
masochism of the ego, of mysterious origin, which proves to be an
even greater obstacle to treatment than the former. For the
masochism of the super-ego is the form bound by the death drives;
and, it should not be forgotten either, that the super-ego is a 'protec­
tive power of destiny' of which one can say that it protects the
individual by m aintaining the principal prohibitions laid down by
society. Whereas the ego's masochism reflects the diffuse impregna­
tion of the psychical apparatus by excessive destructivity spread over
all the agencies, in an unbound state, and thus not controlled.
The more Freud's thinking evolved, the more the ego struck him as
being incapable of fulfilling its tasks. As the servant of three masters
making contradictory demands - the id, the super-ego and reality - it
not only has to reckon with the blindness affecting its unconscious
part, but also with the poison which saps it from within, that is, the
death drive. It becomes the seat of a conflict, the full scale of which
is only revealed in illness, but which is present in us all. Caught
between its obstinacy in not abandoning its earliest libidinal fixations
which are incompatible with the limitations of external reality - that
of the physical world as well as the social world - and the destruc­
tivity of the death drives, whether their direction be centrifugal or
centripetal, it exhausts itself in stopping up holes, sealing cracks,
shoring up its walls, going from one damaged area to another in order
to keep itself upright. A pessimistic view, no doubt. Life seems so self-
evident that perhaps we ought to be more surprised that it can be
pleasant, just as Einstein said that we should be more surprised that
the universe is comprehensible.
There has been a great deal of speculation on the reasons which
induced Freud to put forward the hazardous hypothesis of the death
drive. He is suspected of having been affected by personal events
which are thought to have been responsible for this mutation
adorning the psychical apparatus with the shades of death. This
rather unconfident vision of the force of life is thought to have
replaced his earlier vision, which glorified the vitalising power of
sexuality, only because of the effects of ageing, resulting in less resist­
ance in face of the ordeals inflicted by fate (cancer, the loss of his
daughter and of his grandson, and so on). In fact, what we know of
Freud's biography rather suggests that his preoccupation with death
went back a very long time. It had existed since the birth of psycho­
analysis.5 The correspondence with Fliess testifies to this.
There one finds Freud, thanks to his adhesion to his friend's theory
of 'periods', indulging in calculations about the supposed date of his
death, especially as he felt his health threatened by heart symptoms
which were not all neurotic or psychosomatic. W hile there is justifi­
cation for thinking that the years of Freud's friendship with Fliess
were marked by a strong stimulation of his homoerotic sexual
impulses, which drove him into masochistic submission to the judge­
ments of the man he deeply admired, one should also draw attention
to the narcissistic exaltation of a mirror relationship which coloured
this friendship. And although there was no absence of ambivalence in
their relations - Freud encountered a resistance in Fliess to recog­
nising his own discoveries, whereas, for his part, he showed himself
to be very receptive to the views of the Berliner - the rupture between
them was probably due to a sort of fit in which he was carried away
by his own narcissism. In short, in this relationship with Fliess,
Freud's ego played a double role. He knew he was mortal and lent his
accomplishments the character of a race against death, while at the
same time libidinising this fear of death in what he called his 'left-
handedness' (homosexuality). On the other hand, he claimed to be
immortal - put more rationally, he was in search of the immortality
that he hoped his discoveries would bring him. And, in the final
analysis, it was this part of himself which took precedence over the
other. One only has to mention the fantasies he had when he was
analysing the dream of Irma's injection and imagining the marble
tablet commemorating the unveiling of the secret of dreams for
futurq passers-by.
Freud had had an analogous experience with another of his elders,
Breuer, to whom - with an excessive degree of modesty which may
have masked both his pride and his guilt - he attributed his own
discoveries. Whereas, in fact, it was the timidity of the co-author of
Studies in Hysteria - the limitations imposed on him by his over-
rational ego - which was the reason for their collaboration being
terminated.
First Breuer, then Fliess; but the series was to close with Jung, since
Freud, who was too affected by the disillusionment the latter - this
time his junior - had inflicted on him, decided to finish with the
snares of sublimated homosexuality.6 He took as much care as he
could with this crown prince, playing the tolerant father faced with
the outward signs of an Oedipus complex which was sufficiently
evident to enable him to recognise the patricidal wishes of the one on
whom he wished to confer his crown. Prince Hal donned his father's
crown before the latter had even expired. After a period of homo­
sexual submission - think of Freud's fainting fit during one of their
encounters - he broke off with the son, just as he had put an end to
his relations with his elders, whom he regarded unconsciously as
fathers rather than equals. Renouncing the idea of a premature death
and being concerned about his succession, as well as the future of his
work which he believed would be accepted more easily by a non Jew,
he pursued his conquest of immortality alone.
We know that among the reasons which drove Freud to abandon
his views on the redistribution of the drives into ego-libido and object-
libido, one - and not the least important - resided in the fact that he
considered this conception - elaborated after the break with Jung - too
close to the ideas of the latter who had preferred the path of dissidence
with a view to acquiring his own immortality. The theory that
accorded such an important place to narcissism was perhaps simply an
effect of a work of mourning which needed to be completed by
stressing the incompatibility of Freud and Jung's theories.
This probably explains why, once the final drive theory had been
set out in Beyond the Pleasure Principle, seven years after his initial
article on narcissism, Freud's interest in the latter waned. Narcissism
was just a detour, a stopping-place on the journey which accom­
plished its goal in 1921, a goal that was never again put in question
during the eighteen remaining years of his life. At this point, Freud
turned his back on narcissism; he did not even take the trouble to
explain to his disciples, not to mention the public he was trying to
reach beyond the members of the profession, how it was necessary to
re-evaluate his earlier ideas - which were, nonetheless, very
convincing - in the light of his new hypotheses.
One might think that, after 1920-21, Freud would have realised
that the ambivalence which had marked his successive relationships
with Breuer, Fliess and Jung, were just a screen. It was no longer the
conscious or preconscious hostility that the latter manifested towards
him which stood in the way of the full development of his genius, but
his own aggressivity directed against himself. In other words he was
his own worst enemy.
However, although ultimately it is to the death drive that we must
look for an explanation for this inhibiting process resisting the
completion of syntheses which is the charge of Eros, one cannot
overlook the forms in which the latter is linked with the death drives:
aggressivity directed towards others, homosexuality and narcissism.
The ego's immortality should also be thought about through this
prism which decomposes the elements one finds when one comes to
analyse more closely the creation of the double, thanks to which this
fantasy becomes conscious.
All this shows the complexity of what J.-B. Pontalis has rightly
called the 'work of death7 in Freud.7 Far from being justified in
thinking that, in regard to the death drive, the founder of psycho­
analysis gave in too easily to the temptation of advancing a fantastic
hypothesis, we would be m uch nearer the truth if we were to empha­
sise how much Freud resisted it. We only need to consider the other
case of dissidence, that of Adler, who threw out a line to Freud which
he did not seize. He m ight have let himself be tempted, even if it had
meant formulating differently what the limitations of his disciple
prevented him from conceptualising. O n the contrary, Freud took the
time he needed to think, delaying writing the text which must have
been fermenting within him for a long time before he actually put
into black and white the ideas which he initially presented with
caution, without demanding the slightest adherence to them. Doubt
was permitted on this issue, in contradistinction to other concepts
such as the unconscious, repression, the Oedipus complex and trans­
ference, which were the conditions sine qua non for the right to call
oneself a psychoanalyst. As the years passed, from 1921 to 1939, spec­
ulation was to turn into certainty. For him, at least.
The death drive works in silence, says Freud, the clamour of Eros
covering the muffled noise of its deleterious action. A silence that is
occasionally interrupted by some note of alarm whose trace is found
in writing. The Theme of the Three Caskets' (1913) ended with the
three female figures: the beloved one, the mother, and lastly Mother
Earth where bodies rest when life has left them. Well before he was
into old age, Freud had felt close to the old Lear. Unconscious
complicity linked him to Breuer; each of them had given their wives
the nickname Cordelia. The old m an carrying the young girl was
simply the inverted figure of the other, much more probable image,
of death carrying off the old man, still a child. Mythology has a
predilection for linking women with death. W hile such a representa­
tion can still justify an interpretation in terms of castration anxiety, it
is equally rooted in the depths of the collective unconscious which,
since the beginning of time, has made a parallel between death and
antenatal existence. In many cultures, and particularly during the
most archaic ages, the dead are laid in their sepulchre in the foetal
position. W hat idea is more widespread amongst the beliefs of many
peoples - and perpetuated by the monotheistic religions still in place
- than death as rebirth in another world?
The Uncanny' had ended with the silence imposed on us by the
impossibility of representing either death or the vagina. And so it is
that men are struck dum b in the face of this unthinkable notion. But,
worse still, how are women to experience themselves when they have
lost the representation of a part of their bodies and are reduced to
envying the sexual organ they do not have? Of course, the penis can
be verified by sight, whereas the vagina cannot. On the other hand,
this surely provides a very strong stimulation for representation.
Freud's phallocentric point of view leads to a significant confusion
of ideas. As far is sexuality is concerned, the evidence of the senses
gives the penis a representability which accounts for the displacements
and condensations which it can be subject to in the unconscious. But,
when it comes to maternity, Freud changes his strategy. Maternity can
be proved by the evidence of the senses.8 But the same phallocentrism
which confers the penis with an exclusive power of representation
functions the other way round here. In Moses and Monotheism (1939),
Freud attributed the development of intellectual curiosity to the uncer­
tainties of paternity; progress in spirituality consisting, according to
him, in according greater value to the processes of intellectual deduc­
tion than the evidence of the senses. In this case, women should be
credited with greater intellectual penetration on account of the deduc­
tions which they must be led to make by the hidden situation of their
genitalia. Freud rejected this idea. But for what reason?
Because the vagina, the 'former home of men' from which each
hum an being originates, which arouses in them the feeling of familiar
uncanniness or uncanny familiarity to the point that they are unable
to say anything about it, enveloping the feminine sex and death
within the same silence, makes an almost natural state of the feminine
condition, culture being the affair of man. The myth of woman as the
giver of life and death drove Freud both to idealise the mother figure
and to see in the repudiation of femininity - in both sexes - the reasons
for the obstinate tendency to remain ill. Here there was a danger of
seeing the mother - common to both sexes - as a threat to be warded
off, almost as great as that of death. Was this yet another manifestation
of castration anxiety? After the introduction of the death drive, it was
no longer possible to invoke it under all circumstances.
Post-Freudian psychoanalysis, the most remarkable figure of which
has been a woman, Melanie Klein, showed how idealising the mother
image was a denial of the persecutory anxieties to which she is
subject. The reference to psychosis - the schizo-paranoid and depres­
sive positions further a dichotomy which has been present in
psychiatry since Kraepelin, a contemporary of Freud - has replaced
the grids of neurosis which enabled Freud to decode the castration
anxiety lying behind death anxiety. For Melanie Klein, who was to
take Freud at his word concerning the death drive - and probably in
a way which was more foreign to him than familiar - neither the
vagina nor death lacked representation in the unconscious. One
might even think that they occupied almost the whole field. Freud's
phallocentrism, to which Lacan remained faithful - 'woman is not all'
- was dethroned by Melanie Klein's 'mammocentrism'. Well before
the question of castration arises, there is the issue of the good and bad
breast which is a factor of division from the child's earliest days. Well
before the baby - who is undoubtedly immersed in a world of
language - can speak, the 'thoughts' he may be assumed to have
revolve around an experience of annihilation. He owes his survival
simply to the Manichean mechanisms of defence which structure,
more or less efficiently, the universe, sometimes paradisiacal, some­
times infernal - but the latter leaves its mark more than the former -
which he inhabited in alternating states of bliss and terror.
W hat becomes of the ego's immortality in this context? Are we
obliged to resign ourselves to the possibility that the two versions are
irreconcilable? Perhaps not. By laying so much emphasis on the
vulnerability of the ego, overwhelmed by the multiple effects of
destructivity, one simply makes the fantasy of its immortality all the
more necessary.
Once again, it is at the level of primal narcissism that it reappears.
Immortality is a state of ego idealisation, and we know, moreover,
that the ego feels its existence is threatened. The invulnerability
which is thus conferred on it is closely linked to a state which may be
described either as self-sufficient bisexuality or as indifferent asexual-
isation; or again, as lacking sexual differentiation. That is, an ego
which would be all narcissism, thwarting an ego dependent on its
om nipotent primary object. In its more elaborate forms of expression,
the divided ego no longer needs the complementary object belonging
to the other sex. Narcissistic completeness no longer results from
fusion with the object; it now arises from the relationship the ego has
with its double. Just as it has been said that the ideal of auto-erotism
is 'lips kissing themselves', one might also detect in the fantasy of
immortality the symmetrical ideal of the ego making love to itself, or
to its double, without being concerned any longer either by castration
anxiety or by death anxiety.
The ego no longer merely defends its integrity or its unity through
its wish for immortality. It denies its limits both in space and time. It
no longer knows the finiteness of 'being there' or the wearing effect
of the here-and-now. The series of figures which are traversed by
immortality extends from the primitive fusion of the young ego with
the object to the ego's narcissistic cathexis of itself; then, to
cathecting the double, in a coherent evolving movement.
The psychotic danger begins with hypochondria: this may be
interpreted as the blocking of libido in one part of the body, which
then lives for itself, giving expression to the very first signs of
psychical fragmentation which will pull the ego to pieces if the
psychosis develops. It is now clearer why Freud dissociated the latter
from melancholy; because more than narcissistic regression is
required to account for what would indeed appear to be a destruction
of the ego's unity. And it is probably no coincidence that those who
defend the death drive are to be found today among the psychoso-
matists - at least those who belong to the Paris school, under the
direction of P. Marty.9
The concept of the death drive has given rise to different interpre­
tations by authors ranging from Hartmann to Laplanche. For the
former, the aspect of Freud's views that deserves acceptance is the
equal degree of importance that he placed on aggressivity and sexu­
ality. But what is at stake here is only the contingent of drives directed
towards the external world, which Freud simply saw as a secondary
derivation whose purpose was to drain off the main part of their
original lethality. Laplanche would prefer to speak of the sexual life
drives and the sexual death drives.10 Be that as it may, there are few
authors in the literature who acknowledge the necessity of giving the
forces of death the status of a group of drives. Even though the idea
of primal masochism would be rejected, masochistic turning against
the self and the importance of the reversal into its opposite (of love
to hate), threaten the ego sufficiently to oblige it to create the fantasy
of immortality, especially when it suffers from narcissistic deficiency.
Freud's radicalism drove him to make formulations which seem to
be in conflict with his initial conceptions. The hastening of life's
course towards death is not due to the exhaustion of a potential at the
end of its resources; it is the effect of an active, deadly process which
increasingly gains ground with age or in relation to the subject's
biological equipment. Sexuality is only vitalising provided it is put
under good guard. And now Freud, who had contributed so much to
giving it back the place he thought it deserved as the source of life,
was writing that the pleasure principle appeared to be in the service
of the death drive! It would seem to me that this idea was very influ­
ential for the work of Georges Bataille.11 The Economic Problem of
Masochism' placed the Nirvana principle, borrowed from Barbara
Low, in the foreground, acting in the service of the death drives, of
which the pleasure principle, in the service of the sexual drives, is
thought to be but a modified form in animate beings. It does not take
a great deal of effort to understand - the reference to Nirvana shows
this - that the death drive and immortality are related to each other.
We can see how unequal the struggle is between Eros and the death
drives, since the latter always have the last word. The individual, Freud
wrote shortly before his death, in one of his rare posthumous notes,
'perishes from his internal conflicts whereas the species perishes in its
struggle with the external world'. Throughout the course of his work,
the revolutionary affirmation tracing death anxiety back to castration
anxiety was to shrink away. Unconsciousness of death became uncon­
sciousness of the longing to die. Perhaps this needs putting in another
way: mourning for the mother's penis came to be included within the
more general category of object losses (part or total). Melancholia, the
misfortune of a few, echoes the prototype of mourning which is
perhaps the cause of the common misery against which psycho­
analysis declared it had no remedy as early as Studies on Hysteria
(1895c). If one reads Freud as one should, that is, backwards from 1939
to his beginnings, one is astonished to notice that the late principle of
Nirvana - the invention of which was yet again attributed here to
someone else - was already present in his thought under the name of
the principle of inertia (the unexcitability of non-cathected systems).12
Is it not the case that this psyche which shams death, on the pretext
of not wanting to see its quietude disturbed, in fact aspires to it
constantly without knowing it?
No one is spared depression, which is part of the hum an condi­
tion; it is the price we pay for being attached to objects which give us
joy in being alive. Fortunately, we will not all die of it. In most people,
the life drives give us a taste for living which at some time or other
will pall. The libido fights back, investing objects again, or re­
investing those which have been the cause of the disappointment
which led us to withdraw our investment from them. Even the
mourning of those closest to us, those who we thought to be irre­
placeable, comes to an end eventually. This is the great lesson given
by Montaigne and Proust. Forgetting is on the side of life, without
which immortality would be a burden. Repression also preserves.
W hen m ourning becomes interminable, this inconsolable loss should
not be attributed to love; but, on the contrary, to a feeling of hidden
or disguised resentment at being abandoned by the object.
In addition to the two kinds of arguments inform ing Freud's reflec­
tions on death - his reaction to events which had affected him, and
the resistance to recovery found in the negative therapeutic reaction,
which he attributed to masochism - there was also the evidence of
social life, that is to say, the 1914-18 war. Although he gave way to
nationalistic passion - how could he have done otherwise, with his
own children on the front? - he unquestionably found additional
encouragement here for advancing the hypothesis of the death drive.
The massacre of hum an life, occurring in what was called a world war,
might have led him to think that the first aim of this drive was the
death of someone else. This was only how it seemed. He took advan­
tage of this to extend the horizons of his lucidity in Thoughts for the
Times on War and Death' (part II 'Our Attitude towards Death')
(1915).13 There he pointed out how we are indifferent to the death of
others when they are not part of our libidinal patrimony. Even when
they are, however painful their loss may be, we eventually resign
ourselves to no longer counting them among our own. For in spite of
the enormous attachment which ties us to them, they are never more
than guests whom we welcome within us. Basically, they remain
strangers to our most intimate ego, which survives their passing away.
However, although death remains inconceivable for us, it is perhaps
the death of those who have been the objects of our love which has
whispered to us the idea of immortality.
In Totem and Taboo (1912-13), Freud set out many reasons
explaining why the thought of 'primitive peoples' exhibited a spon­
taneous belief in immortality. One of them shows us just how much
such a belief is explicable. The death of a person who has been
cathected libidinally and internalised in the ego in no way does away
with their existence within us. Not only do the traces left by memory
keep them alive in our psyche, but they reappear in our sleep in the
form they had many years before they took leave of the world. Even
though their body has gone, their soul lives on in us in the uncon­
scious. If their soul is immortal, then so is ours. Shadows haunt the
sleep of the living, plunging them into mourning without their even
realising it. 'The shadow of the object' [that is, its ghost] fell upon the
ego', we read in 'Mourning and Melancholia'. No doubt there is good
reason to suppose that this danger makes sleep impossible: Lady
Macbeth lived an interminable waking nightmare which only
stopped with death. The dead invite themselves when they have
something to reproach us with, or a debt to remind us of.
In short, we may think we have mourned our lost loved ones, but
this m ourning is never as complete as we think. The souls of the dead
live on in the unconscious, even if they are no longer thirsty for blood
and accommodate our taste for living. The close links between
mourning and the state of being in love naturally come to m ind here.
One succeeds the other, as its reverse side or its inverted double. If we
consider, as Freud did - although this is open to discussion - that
narcissism is impoverished by love, the overestimation of the object
going hand in hand with the underestimation of the ego,14 it is easier
to understand that, once the state of being in love has cooled off or
is completely over, the ego is bolstered with the sense of its own
worth and gives fresh impetus to its belief in its immortality. M.
Torok15 notes quite rightly that immediately following the death of a
loved one, and before the work of mourning proper begins, the ego
reacts to this loss by a brief period of euphoria - unexpressed, more
often than not, for obvious reasons - which does not merely explain
the denial of death but also the ego's trium phant satisfaction at still
being alive. Maniacal mourning, or the switch from m ourning to
mania, is an illustration of the defensive resources of the ego which
shows itself here to be much more than just 'supremely indifferent'.
There are, then, a stack of sufficiently persuasive arguments to
suggest that the ego's immortality has at its disposal a very large area
in the psyche, since it extends from normality to psychosis. Even if
there is justification for linking it with narcissism, it should nonethe­
less be added that it is also the same narcissism which is directly
affected by the death drives, within the ego. I do not think it is
possible to confine ourselves to Freud's formulations on narcissism, by
situating it entirely on the side of the life drives. Alongside positive
narcissism we need to put its inverted double, which I propose to call
negative narcissism. So Narcissus is also Janus. Instead of sustaining the
aim of unifying the ego through the activity of the sexual drives,
negative narcissism, under the influence of the Nirvana principle,
representing the death drives, tends towards lowering all libido to the
level zero, aspiring for psychical death. I think this is what may be logi­
cally inferred with regard to the fate of narcissism after the final theory
of the drives. Beyond the parcelling which fragments the ego, drawing
it back to auto-erotism, absolute primary narcissism seeks the mimetic
sleep of death. This is the quest of non-desire for the Other, of non­
existence, non-being; another way of acceding to immortality. The ego
is never more immortal than when it claims that it no longer has any
organs or body. Such is the case of the anorexic who refuses to be
dependent on his (or her) bodily needs and reduces these appetites by
means of a drastic inhibition, letting himself die, as one says so aptly.
It is not just individuals who let themselves die. There are also
whole civilisations w hich seem to be stricken with apathy,
renouncing their ideals and sinking into passivity; a forewarning of
their extinction, once they have lost all illusion with regard to their
future. This is an aspect of the final part of Freud's work which has
not b£en given sufficient attention by his commentators. If Freud
became increasingly convinced, day after day, that there were good
grounds for affirming the major role played by the destructive drives,
it was not because he was making an unreasonable generalisation on
the basis of what he had learnt from clinical experience. We know
that his am bition was not just to throw light on the mystery of
neurosis, or even of psychosis. The treatment of the neuroses was
simply one application of the method. Although less assured than
when it draws its conclusions from clinical work, observing the social
world confirms what the psychoanalyst's ear is able to decipher from
the conscious discourse. Societies - from the most 'primitive' to the
most civilised - repeatedly iterate their desire for peace and tear each
other apart in war, as in peacetime. Is it not true that war, in the last
analysis, is the best protection against the fratricidal danger of civil
war? Shakespeare was well aware of this already.
Civilisation is no more than the result of the balance between the
life drives and the death drives. It improves the lot of individuals,
enabling them to enjoy many advantages which are not available to
uncivilised peoples - who, incidentally, enjoy others. But it is also the
favoured terrain of the death drives. There is little in the way of tech­
nical progress which does not serve lethal ends. Moreover, civilisation
compels individuals to renounce drive satisfactions, thereby restricting
the field of Eros. It is Eros which facilitates repression, lends value to
sublimation, and tends towards auto-satisfaction. An ineradicable
narcissism leads to the idea that one civilisation is worth more than
the others. The conflict even occurs between so-called civilised
nations, giving free rein to barbarity which they justify with the most
noble ideals. This programme calls for compensations for the sacrifices
demanded of Eros, which cannot be satisfied by using aggressivity.
This was, no doubt, the function of the ideal, by means of religion
formerly, and then through political ideologies, both past and present.
The immortality of the gods was to have its counterpart in the
immortality of heroes (warriors, athletes, politicians, saints, philoso­
phers, artists and scientists). It is not unimportant to recall that
between Beyond the Pleasure Principle and The Ego and the Id, came
Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego (1921), in which Freud was
already making a prophecy, without realising it, about the destiny of
certain European societies which was driving them towards dictator­
ship. But in this instance he showed himself to be timid, for he did
not dare use the resources of the last drive theory which he had just
put forward. At a time when he was still hesitating over the signifi­
cance of his discovery and venturing into the social domain, he felt it
was wise not to add the hypothetical death drive to the conjectural
character of his exploration. But in Civilisation and its Discontents
(1930) he corrected this omission. Moses and Monotheism (1939) was a
continuation of Totem and Taboo (1912-13), boldly affirming that the
father was indeed killed by his sons - against all probability. This was
not so much in order to demonstrate the permanence of the Oedipus
complex, which had been part of collective life since the earliest
times, as to reaffirm the work of the death drive and the means by
which a nation resists its own extinction. This meditation on and
gathering around the Holy Book was its sole contribution, he said, to
the process of civilisation. Today, the political project has taken over
from the Scriptures.
Nowadays, it would seem that many societies no longer find the
means to give collective support to the fantasy of immortality by cele­
brating rites or commemorating the past. Deprived of its cement in
the community, immortality is neglected like an abandoned tomb. It
is relegated to the level of a peculiar belief, a 'private religion', still
strongly rooted in the psyche, but afraid of the criticisms of the
rational ego. Admittedly, this is just an outward reaction which has
little bearing on the internal world. The requirements of rationality
have nevertheless put an end to the security which the ego obtained
from a respectable and commendable shared conviction, its collective
expression being a source of nourishment for individual pride. Even
though everyone knows within himself that his neighbour cannot do
without this illusion either, the lost sense of com m union is missed.
This raises legitimate questions. W ithout this social system of
support, what will become of this essential form of expression of the
relationship between man and death, his death? It may be that soci­
eties which have maintained this faith in the immortality of
individuals who will have to pay the price for the coming of a utopian
golden age by sacrificing their lives, will be the ones to trium ph over
the others in which immortality has been reduced to nothing more
than an offshoot of the individual unconscious.
In any case, it is doubtful whether this more or less fanatical faith
can achieve its objectives without resorting to the destruction of
other societies inspired by different ideologies, and, as experience has
taught us, to internal violence. For the pursuit of megalomaniac
ideals (changing hum an nature!) results in many deaths. We should
be prepared then for the disillusionment which will certainly arise,
curbing the fulfilment of promises. Under the pressure of men and
events, these societies will perhaps be obliged to return to Eros certain
rights of which it has been plundered. This was already the conclu­
sion of Civilisation and its Discontents, more than fifty years ago. Is it
fair to hope that immortality, put to the service of Eros, will be able
to assign itself more modest aims, finding sufficient narcissistic satis­
factions in the pride of belonging to a cultural tradition, without
despising the others; and, of adding to the pleasures of belonging
those of filiation, the daughter of alliance? This is perhaps the nature
of the challenge which presents itself to modern man: the heavens
have been deserted by the gods and so he only has himself to rely on.
In his thoughts on life and death Freud found courage in stoic
morality. Today, it is perhaps no longer enough to prepare oneself
serenely for the eventuality of death. It is also necessary to try and
check the temptation to abandon ourselves collectively to it when it
threatens the planet with irreparable havoc.
Notes

Preface
1. This is a reference to the author's recollection of spending a few hours
sitting in an orchard. [Translator's note]
2. At the International Congress of Psychoanalysis in 1971, the
International Psychoanalytic Association, which was celebrating Freud's
return to Vienna in the person of his daughter Anna, proposed aggres­
sivity as the theme of reflection for its scientific debates. It was
noticeable that, fifty years after Beyond the Pleasure Principle, almost all
the analysts remained sceptical about the existence of the death drives -
with the exception of the Kleinians who, however, assigned a rather
different meaning to the death drive than Freud had.
3. In English in the original; author's italics.
4. Author's italics.
5. The reader may like to refer to my contribution on borderline cases in On
Private Madness. London: Hogarth Press, 1986.
6. By 'real' object, I do not mean we can determine the 'reality' of the said
object, which always remains elusive, but the presence within the subject
of a discourse which alienates him from himself but originates outside
himself, superimposing itself on his own discourse. It would be more
correct to speak of the object from outside being on the inside; though
there is little reason to doubt the reality of certain traumas suffered by
the external object.
7. Lacan's expression.
8. It is essential to understand that these displacements will inevitably only
result in imperfect solutions, always more or less unsatisfying - that's
life!, as we say. For the hope of finding the inaugural experience of satis­
faction again is a retrospective fantasy and the attempt to reproduce it a
lure. But it is also because of this that the libido is always searching for
new investments involving instinctual satisfaction that is more or less
sublimated.
9. In English in the original.
Chapter 1
1. London: Macmillan and Co., 1926, vol. 1, p. 314.
2. 'Likeness' attenuates the sense of 'image' by excluding the idea of parity.
The concrete term 'image' implies a physical similarity as between Adam
and his son (Genesis 5:3). It also implies a general similarity of nature:
intelligence, will and strength; man is a person. It makes way for a higher
revelation: the participation of nature through grace. (Genesis 1:26-27.
The Holy Bible, RSV.)
3. Freud, S. (1895b). Project for a Scientific Psychology, SE, I, p. 323.
4. Freud, S. (1910b). SE, XI, p. 211.
5. See the note in SE, XIV, p. 73.
6. See Chapter 2.
7. Grunberger, B. (1971). Narcissism. Paris: Payot.
8. Lichtenstein, H., 'Le role du narcissisme dans l'emergence et le maintien
d'une identite primaire', Nouvelle revue de psychanalyse, 1976, no. 7.
9. Laplanche, J. (1970). Vie et mort en psychanalyse. Paris: Flammarion.
10. Rosenfeld, H. 'A clinical approach to the psychoanalytic theory of the
life and death instincts: an investigation into the aggressive aspects of
narcissism', Nouvelle revue de psychanalyse, 1976, no. 7.
11. In English in the original. [Translator's note]
12. Kernberg, O. (1975). Borderline Conditions and Pathological Narcissism.
Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson, 1985.
13. Pasche, F. (1969a). A partir de Freud. Paris: Payot.
14. Lacan, J. (1966). Ecrits. Paris: Le Seuil.
15. See Green, A. (1999). The Fabric o f Affect in the Psychoanalytic Discourse.
Trans. Alan Sheridan. London: Routledge. First published in 1973 as Le
discours vivant. Paris: PUF.
16. Castoriadis-Aulagnier, P. (1975). La violence de Yinterpretation. Paris: PUF.
17. In The Complete Letters o f Sigmund Freud to Wihelm Fliess (1985). Trans.
J.M. Masson. London: Belknap Harvard Press, p. 390.
18. Green, A. 'Sexualite et ideologie chez Marx et Freud', Etudes freudiennes,
1969, nos 1-2.
19. SE, XIV, p. 100.
20. See Chapter 4.
21. Fe^lern and Grunberger have developed this point, often referred to by
the latter as 'narcissistic elation'.
22. There is a gulf in this respect between the Judeo-Christian and Eastern
religions. Whereas the Judeo-Christian religions clearly boggle at
thinking about emptiness, Zen makes it its point of reference. J.-F.
Lyotard (L'economie libidinale, Paris: Editions de Minuit) vigorously
denounces the Tao: Thirty spokes converge at the hub, but it is the
emptiness between them that makes the wheel turn' (Tao-te Ching, XI:
my translation). Curiously, his point of view is closely akin to Father
Merton's when debating with Suzuki (Zen, Tao and Nirvana), belief in
Christ excepted. As for Islam, it falls between the two. M. Shaffii shows
this clearly in 'Silence and Meditation', International Journal o f Psycho­
Analysis, 1973, p. 53.
23. At the end of his work, in the Outline {SE, XXIII, p. 188), Freud proposes
a different formulation which speaks volumes on this evolution: There
is no doubt that, to begin with, the child does not distinguish between
the breast and its own body; when the breast has to be separated from
the body and shifted to the “outside” because the child so often finds it
absent, it carries with it as an "object" a part of the original narcissistic
libidinal cathexis. This first object is later completed into the person of
the child's mother... .'
24. Freud, S. (1940b [1938]). 'Splitting of the Ego in the Process of defence',
SE, XXIII, p. 271.
25. 'A Metapsychological Supplement to the Theory of Dreams' (1917a
[1915]) in On Metapsychology. B. Lewin's notion of the blank dream screen
enables us to think better about the background against which dream
figures appear. However, one may wonder if it is still the hallucination of
the breast that is involved or if the blank does not represent the absence
of representation. Hindu thought points in this direction. Well before
neuro-physiological research, which led to the discovery of the cerebral
dream stage (a paradoxical phase) and the stage of dreamless sleep, The
Questions o f King Melinda (second century b c to second century a d ), a
Buddhist work, gave precise answers to these questions. King Melinda -
who is reminiscent of the Greek King Menander - is having a discussion
with a Buddhist sage, Nagasena. He asks: 'Venerable Nagasena, when a
man dreams a dream, is he awake or asleep?' 'Neither the one, O King, nor
yet the other. But, when his sleep has become light, and he is not yet fully
conscious, in that interval it is that dreams are dreamt. When a man is in
deep sleep, O King, his mind has returned home, and a mind thus shut in
does not act, and a mind hindered in its action knows not the evil and
the good, and he who knows not has no dreams. It is when the mind is
active that dreams are dreamt. Just, O King, as in the darkness and gloom,
where no light is, no shadow will fall even on the most burnished mirror,
so when a man is in deep sleep, his mind has returned into itself, and a
mind shut in does not act, and a mind inactive knows not the evil and
the good, and he who knows not does not dream. For it is when the mind
is active that dreams are dreamt. As the mirror, O King, are you to regard
the body, as the darkness sleep, as the light the mind' (vol. 2: IV, 8, 36.
Trans. T.W. Rhys Davids. Oxford: Clarendon, 1894).
Here we have the idea of the neuter (neither fortune = pleasure, nor
misfortune = unpleasure). The theory of the four states already existed in
earlier Upanishads (sixth century b c ). The Kausitaki-upanishad says:
'When a man is fast asleep and sees no dreams at all, then these become
unified within this very breath - his speech then merges into it together
with all the names; his sight merges into it together with all the visible
appearances; his hearing merges into it together with all the sounds' (in
Upanishads. Trans. Patrick Olivelle. Oxford: Oxford World Classics, 3, 3:
p. 217). Thus in the most ancient Upanishad (Brihadaranyaka), a king
and a Brahman arrive at a place where a man is sleeping and greeted him
in these words: 'O Soma, great king dressed in white!' (2, 1, 15: p. 25).
 For further study of these questions, see Les songes et leur interpretation.
Paris: Seuil, 1959.
26. In On Metapsychology.
27. David, C. (1971). L'Etat amoreux. Paris: Petite Bibliotheque, Payot.
28. SE, XIV, p. 78.
29. In italics in the original. [Translator's note]
30. In italics in the original. [Translator's note]
31. See Althusser, L. (1974). Philosophie et philosophie spontanee des savants,
Maspero.
32. And two counter-models: Schreber and Dostoyevsky. Too destructive.
33. Frege, G. (1971). Etudes logiques et philosophiques. Paris: Seuil. See Green,
A. 'L'objet a de J. Lacan', Cahiers pour l'analyse, 1966, no. 3.
34. We have shown in 'Repetition, difference, replication', Revue frangaise de
psychanalyse, 1970, no. 3, the kinship with the myth of Aristophanes in
the Symposium which Freud interprets in his own way with the genetic
code of Watson and Crick. T. Sebeok has defended the unity of all codes
or the way they interlock, from the genetic code to language (L'unite de
I'homme, Paris: Seuil).
35. Kirk, G.S. (1973). Myth. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
36. See La dissymmetrie (1973) by R. Caillois. Paris: Gallimard.
37. Here I should write nothing and leave a blank to avoid positivising the
concept. It is left to the reader to inscribe his own signifier.
38. See Donnet, J.L. and Green, A. (1973). L'Enfant de $a. Paris: Editions de
Minuit.
39. Bion, W. (1975). Brazilian Lectures. Rio de Janeiro: Imago Editora Ltd.
40. Constituted by combining two primary defences: turning around upon
the self and reversal into its opposite.
41. Laing, R.D. (1965). The Divided Self. London: Penguin.
42. This may be translated as: Closeness through rapprochement and close­
ness through rejection. [Translator's note]
43. Bouvet, M. (1969). Oeuvres completes. Paris: Payot, vol. 1.
44. A term coined by the author meaning 'to be put in a passive situation
which is constraining'. [Translator's note]
45. * See Engel, G. 'Anxiety and depression withdrawal: the primary affects of
unpleasure', International Journal o f Psycho-Analysis, 1962, no. 43,
f)p. 88-97.
46. For further exploration of this term, see Dylan Evans' (1996), An
Introductory Dictionary o f Lacanian Psychoanalysis (London: Routledge),
p. 97: a term 'coined by Lacan from the definite article la and the noun
langue) ... Lalangue is like the primary chaotic substrate of polysemy out
of which language is constructed, almost as if language is some ordered
superstructure sitting on top of this substrate: "language is without
doubt made of lalangue'". [Translator's note]
47. See Pontalis, J.-B. (1975). 'Naissance et reconnaissance du self, in
Psychologie de la connaissance de soi. Paris: PUF.
48. For memory: 'Having' and 'being' in children. Children like expressing an
object-relation by an identification: 'I am the object.' 'Having' is the later
of the two; after loss of the object it relapses into 'being'. Example: the
 breast. The breast is part of me, I am the breast/ Only later: 'I have it' -
that is, '1 am not it' ... (Findings, Ideas, Problems, SE, XXIII, pp. 299-300).
Let us recall that this note of 12 July 1938 begins by referring to identifi­
cation with the clitoris, thus to sexual difference and to the denial that
this interpretation arouses.
49. In English, and in italics, in the original text. [Translator's note]
50. An allusion to the words of Augustus in Pierre Corneille's Cinna, Act V,
III, 1696. London: Penguin Classics, 1975. [Translator's note]
51. 'On parle d'un enfant', Revue frangaise de psychanalyse, 1976, no. 40,
pp. 733-9.
52. See Green, A. 'La psychanalyse, son objet, son avenir', Revue frangaise de
psychanalyse, 1975, nos 1-2, pp. 103-34.
53. See Green, The Fabric o f Affect
54. An allusion to Homer's Odyssey, Book IX, 397. London: Everyman's
Library. [Translator's note]
55. Miller, J.-A. 'Theorie de la langue (rudiments)', Omicar, 1975, no. 1,
pp. 16-34.
56. Derrida, J. 'Le facteur de la verit£', Poetique, 1975, vol. 21, pp. 96-147.
57. Green, The Fabric o f Affect
58. Von Foerster, H. 'Notes pour une epistemologie des objets vivants',
L'unite de Yhomme.
59. Neyraut, M. (1975). Le transfert. Paris: PUF.
60. This painting has been reproduced for the cover page of L'Arc, no. 34,
dedicated to Freud. See Freud's commentary on it in his Introductory
Lectures on Psychoanalysis.
61. Grimal, P. (1951). Dictionnaire de la mythologie grecque et romaine. Paris:
PUF. Our interpretation is based on the dictionary article and not on the
original texts. An interpretation of interpretations.
62. See the Nouvelle revue de psychanalyse: 'Bisexualite et difference des sexes',
1973, no. 7.
63. Remember that Shakespeare did not invent the situation; it is already in
Holinshed (see Holinshed's Chronicle as Used in Shakespeare's Plays.
London: Dent & Outton). But he writes it.
64. For more details, see Green, A. 'Lear ou les voi(es) de la nature', Critique,
1971, no. 284.
65. Lear, the Fool, and Edgar.
66. Breuer, to whom he confided this, disclosed that he did the same.

Chapter 2
1. SE, XVIII, p. 59.
2. An Outline o f Psycho-Analysis, SE, XXIII, p. 150.
3. 'A Metapsychological Supplement to the Theory of Dreams', SE, XIV,
p. 222.
4. 'A Metapsychological Supplement'.
5. Author's italics.
6. SE, XXIII, p. 198.
 7. 'In consequence, the nervous system is obliged to abandon its original
trend to inertia (i.e. to bringing the level o f tension to zero). It must put up
with [maintaining] a store of Q>) sufficient to meet the demand for a
specific action. Nevertheless, the manner in which it does this shows
that the same trend persists, modified into an endeavour at least to keep
the Q?7as low as possible and to guard against any heightening of it - that
is to keep it constant (my italics)/ Project for a Scientific Psychology (1895b),
SE, I, p. 29 7.
8. Mentioned by Breuer, attributing it to Freud in the Preliminary
Communication as well as in a lecture given by Freud in 1893 (SE, III,
p. 36).
9. 'a principle ... which promised to be highly enlightening, since it
appeared to comprise the entire function. This is the principle of
neuronal inertia' (The Project, SE, I, p. 296).
10. Ibid., p. 297: 'All the functions of the nervous system can be comprised
either under the aspect of the primary function or of the secondary one
imposed by the exigencies of life/ The primary function is the trend
towards reducing the level of tension to the level zero; the secondary
function is that of keeping the quantity of excitation as low as possible.
11. The pleasure principle follows from the principle of constancy' (Beyond
the Pleasure Principle, Chapter I). Freud explains himself by adding imme­
diately afterwards:/... actually the latter principle was inferred from the
facts which forced us to adopt the pleasure principle'. To understand the
probable origin of this theoretical shift it is necessary to go back even
earlier. Since Freud felt an imperious necessity to preserve the theoretical
difference between primary and secondary, and, as, since 1911 (that is,
since his 'Formulations on the Two Principles of Mental Functioning'),
he had linked secondary processes to the reality principle, he could no
longer attribute the primary function to phenomena whose aim was to
bring tension to the level zero in order to free it entirely from excitation.
Instead, he was content with a relative value; that is, of keeping tension
constant or, at least, as low as possible. For the reality principle is simply
a supplementary detour imposed to safeguard pleasure and does not tally
with the trend towards stability.
12. '...It should be noted, however, that strictly speaking, it is incorrect to
talk of the dominance of the pleasure principle over the course of mental
processes ... the most that can be said, therefore, is that there exists in
the mind a strong tendency towards the pleasure principle, but that that
tendency is opposed by certain other forces or circumstances so that the
final outcome cannot always be in harmony with the tendency towards
pleasure. We may compare what Fechner remarks on a similar point:
"Since however a tendency towards an aim does not imply that the aim
is attained, and since in general the aim is attainable only by approxi­
mations ...'" (Beyond the Pleasure Principle, Chapter I, SE, XVIII, pp. 9-10.
13. Even though he did not name the two principles of inertia-Nirvana and
constancy-pleasure separately, up until 1915 it was clear from the text
what the differences between them were. The commentators of the
Standard Edition draw attention to this very clearly. In this respect, I
 should point out that I do not see the relations between the two princi­
ples in the same way. In my view, one should not divide, as the
commentators of the Standard Edition do, these two principles into the
principle of constancy, from which the principle of Nirvana is inferred,
and the pleasure principle, characterised by the tendency to master
stimuli by reducing tension to the lowest level possible and avoiding
unpleasure. In my opinion, the principle of constancy is confused with
this tendency to mastery that Freud attributes to the pleasure principle,
whereas we should put together the principle of inertia and the principle
of Nirvana from which the notion of mastery is absent and which the
subject endures. For although pleasure is indeed what the individual is
seeking, in many other notes Freud shows us that forces of another kind
are at work, with the result that this quest is itself subjugated. We should
nonetheless be grateful to Strachey and his colleagues for having identi­
fied the existence of two distinct functions. It is only in the first part of
Beyond the Pleasure Principle that the two principles are condensed. I
believe - without wishing to suggest that his presentation was artful -
that it was because he was soon going to argue in favour of a Beyond the
pleasure principle that he began by giving the latter as large a dimension
as possible. That Freud never really believed this is suggested by the
following citation from The Ego and the Id (1923): 'if it is true that
Fechner's principle of constancy governs life, which thus consists of a
continuous descent towards death ...' (SE, XIX, p. 47).
This point needs stressing, for the interpretation of modern versions
of primary narcissism depends on it. They are compatible with the sover­
eignty of the pleasure principle, the removal of tension - and, ultimately,
the annihilation of the conflict - which may account for the ego's
euphoria or ego-cosmicity. On the other hand, if the fundamental prin­
ciple is indeed that of reducing tension to zero (rather than
counterbalancing it) then primary narcissism cannot be held responsible
for the manifestations described, even if they retain their clinical value.
14. SE, XVIII, pp. 55-6.
15. and we shall henceforward avoid regarding the two principles as one'
(SE, XIX, p. 160).
16. The Nirvana principle, belonging as it does to the death instinct, has
undergone a modification in living organisms through which it has
become the pleasure principle ... It is not difficult to guess what power
was the source of the modification. It can only be the life instinct, the
libido, which has thus, alongside of the death instinct, seized upon a
share in the regulation of the processes of life' (ibid.).
17. 'On Narcissism: An Introduction', SE, XIV, p. 78.
18. In the sense of the term as used by Charles Bally.
19. 'We assume that mental life is the function of an apparatus to which we
ascribe the characteristics of being extended in space ...' SE, XXIII,
p. 145.
20. Ibid., p. 147.
21. Cf. Green, A. (2000). La diachronie en psychanalyse. Paris: Editions de
Minuit.
22. The first part of the Outline, to which Freud gave no title, contains two
chapters on the fundamental tenets, The Psychical Apparatus7and The
Theory of the Instincts', two further chapters derived from the first two:
The Development of the Sexual Function', which should be related to
the second, just as 'Psychical Qualities' should be related to the first, and
the chapter on dreams, which serves as an illustration, as the title indi­
cates, of the foregoing chapters.
23. SE, XVIII, p. 63.
24. Thus our analysis has shown us that what may be attributed to a hesita­
tion, or even an uncertainty, between the principle of inertia, on the one
hand, and the principle of constancy and the pleasure principle, on the
other, is not irrelevant here. The principle of inertia was affirmed as long
as the drive was not defined sexually in the 'Project' and, although later
Freud seemed to stress the relation between keeping the level of excita­
tion constant and pleasure, it was precisely because he intended to
introduce a conceptual element which had power over it, situated
beyond. The postulate he advanced was that of the compulsion to repeat.
And finally, it was when he no longer doubted that the death drive was
not just a working assumption but a fundamental fact, that he circum­
scribed the pleasure principle and redefined the Nirvana principle as an
abstract generality or virtuality of which the pleasure principle was a
modification.
25. The detailed report by Daniel Lagache particularly excels in its critique
of naturalising conceptions of the drive. The author principally sees the
latter as a 'latent object relation'. Do not these 'functional object rela­
tions', which pre-exist actual object relations, pose the problem of the
relations between the theory of the drives and the psychical apparatus?
Cf. La psychanalyse, vol. 6, pp. 18-22.
26. SE, XXIII, pp. 149 and 156.
27. In The Logic of Lacan's objet a and Freudian Theory: Convergences and
Questions', Interpreting Lacan: Psychiatry and the Humanities, vol. 6. New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1983. I tried to use these formulations
advantageously by applying them to the theoretical approach of psycho­
analysis.
28. Lacan, J. 'Remarque sur le rapport de D. Lagache', La psychanalyse, vol 6,
pt'121. [My translation]
29. Derrida, J. (1967). 'Freud et la scene de l'ecriture', L'ecriture et la difference.
Paris: Seuil.
30. Cf. 'Appendix B' which follows The Ego and the Id (SE, XIX, p. 63).
31. After the ego-id differentiation these narcissistic affects are transferred to
the ego. It is worth mentioning here Freud's note, found after his death,
on mysticism - in which feelings of elation and expansion are intense -
considered as self-perception, beyond the Ego, of the Id.
32. Notably in Beyond the Pleasure Principle: The difficulty remains that
psychoanalysis has not enabled us hitherto to point to any [ego-]
instincts other than the libidinal ones. That, however, is no reason for
our falling in with the conclusion that no others in fact exist.' And in the
Encyclopaedia article of 1922: 'Nevertheless, it has to be borne in mind
 that the fact that the self-preservative instincts of the ego are recognised
as libidinal does not necessarily prove that there are no other instincts
operating in the ego7(SE, XVIII, pp. 53 and 257).
33. The Ego and the Id, SE, XIX, p. 40.
34. SE, XXII, p. 97.
35. In his study #On the Universal Tendency to Debasement in the Sphere of
Love' (1912), Freud attributes certain psychical disturbances of sexuality
to the absence of a union between two currents of libido: the affectionate
current and the sensual current The affectionate current, the older of the
two, is the one that corresponds to the child's primary object-choice. It
carries along with it contributions from the sexual instincts which are at
the origin of erotic cathexes formed in the attachment or anaclitic mode.
The sensual current, which appears with the arrival of puberty and no
longer mistakes its aims, follows the earlier paths created by the currents
that pre-existed it. A failure in sexual activity stems from the fact that the
affectionate current is thought to have carried with it, along a divergent
path, the contributions of the primitive sexual instincts, so that the
cathexes of puberty, separated by the barrier of incest from infantile
cathexes, gain the upper hand in the final organisation (SE, XI, p. 180ff.).
36. One can find connections between these classical Freudian notions and
certain formulations of J. Lacan, without, however, making them
coincide entirely. In this division of labour, the cathexes which have
undergone the internal inhibition of the drive do indeed meet up with
the object, at the price of sacrificing the lack, whereas the drives which
find satisfaction in organ pleasure remain in waiting for a non-identified
addressee, wandering endlessly in devotion to the desire of the Other.
37. The Ego and the Id, SE, XIX, p. 31.
38. Adopting this point of view makes certain essential passages more intel­
ligible. Would Freud have got so deeply involved in the article on The
Psychology of Love', crediting the two currents with the same impor­
tance? Would he have built the problematics of social relations in
Civilisation and its Discontents around the opposition between genital
love and love with an inhibited aim if the second term in the pair did
not have the authority to make itself heard to the same extent as the
first? When, in the New Introductory Lectures, he retraces the theory of the
drives, he certainly seems to group together the change of aim and object
(sublimation) with the inhibition of aim by expressly distinguishing
them from other drives. Although 'Instincts and their Vicissitudes' only
defined the drive in terms of the demand made upon the mind for work
in consequence of its connection with the body, Freud added in the New
Introductory Lectures (XXXII): 'on its path from its source to its aim the
instinct becomes psychically operative'. It becomes easier to understand,
then, why he could not accept that this restraint, this reserve, was a vicis­
situde among others. It is difficult to see how things could have been
otherwise when we recall that already in 'Instincts and their Vicissitudes'
Freud, who was beginning to have an inkling of the nature of sublima­
tion, saw it as one of the four fundamental modes of the vicissitudes of
the drive, along with repression and the two reversals (upon the self and
 into its opposite). However, if our view that there is a coincidence
between the inhibition of aim with the loss of the object-breast and the
apprehension of the object-mother seems to brings us closer to that of J.
Laplanche and J.-B. Pontalis in the relation that they themselves estab­
lish between this structural moment and auto-erotism, the differences of
interpretation and points of discussion on the relation between narcis­
sism and repression will be made clearer in the course of this work. Cf.
'Fantasme originaire, fantasme des origines, origine du fantasme', Temps
modemes, no. 215, April 1964.
39. Let us note once again that it is the components of the drive that are
responsible for this and not the action of repression, however primal it
may be. One could almost say that they find a taker in repression. We
come across this assertion of 1912 again, almost unaltered, in the note
left by Freud after his death and dated June 1938 (SE, XXIII, p. 299). It is
worth pointing out that Freud recognises the role played by social prohi­
bitions, since he mentions the other major cause of the fragility of the
sexual function, that is, the prohibition of incest. In short, there are two
complementary series: one concerning the restrictions and limitations of
the super-ego, the other being intrinsic to the id.
40. 'For the ego, perception plays the part which in the id falls to instinct.'
'Speaking broadly, perceptions may be said to have the same significance
for the ego as instincts have for the id' (SE, XIX, pp. 25 and 40).
41. Ibid., pp. 37 and 38.
42. Ibid., p. 31.
43. Ibid., p. 30.
44. Ibid., pp. 30, 45 and 54.
45. This is further evidence that in Freud's mind there is a link between iden­
tification and this common group of phenomena: The effects of the first
identifications made in earliest childhood will be general and lasting'
(ibid., p. 31).
46. Ibid., pp. 46 and 54. This obviously does not work in favour of the idea
of a non-conflictual energy; here Freud is referring to the most lethal
aspect of Eros.
47. 'Conscious processes on the periphery of the ego and everything else in
the ego unconscious - such would be the simplest state of affairs that we
might picture. And such may in fact be the state that prevails in animals.
But in men there is an added complication through which internal
processes in the ego may also acquire the quality of consciousness.' And he
then goes on to speak about the function of speech. (SE, XXIII, p. 162).
48. The Ego and the Id, SE, XIX, p. 55.
49. The Outline, SE, XXIII, p. 162.
50. 'Fantasme originaire, fantasme des origines, origine du fantasme',
Hachette, 1985. Original publication in Les Temps modemes, 1964.
51. This was not their purpose. Laplanche and Pontalis set out to link fantasy
to the auto-erotic stage; but, since they rejected certain interpretations of
fantasy by suggesting that it originated with auto-erotism, it would have
been logical for them to exhaust the sources of Freudian theory on this
issue.
52. This idea may seem paradoxical because organ pleasure is obtained here.
In fact, what we wish to draw attention to is that auto-erotic pleasure
inhibits the pleasure of sucking the breast carrying milk.
53. 'Fantasme originaire', p. 1866.
54. Ibid., since Laplanche and Pontalis see in fantasy the emergence of desire
and regard the latter as originating during the auto-erotic period.
55. 'L'anti-narcissisme', Revue frangaise de psychanalyse, XXIX, 1965, p. 503.
56. SE, XIV, p. 134.
57. And certain passages in Freud lend weight to this interpretation at first
sight.
58. By the reality-ego, initially.
59. The Outline, SE, XXII, p. 163.
60. SE, XIV, p. 147.
61. At least in its early forms.
62. SE, XIV, p. 147 (Freud's italics); a statement that is repeated at the end of
the article. This quotation expresses unambiguously that repression
cannot be attributed with the power of constituting the unconscious
since, from Freud's point of view, at least, the distinction between
conscious and unconscious is pre-existent to it. Further, Freud implicitly
recognises the existence of defence mechanisms before repression comes
into operation. Here we have a striking example of the fact that, for him,
the oldest or earliest element is not always the most important; for there
is no question that, to his mind, repression was the most significant
defence mechanism.
63. SE, XX, p. 92. An essential difference between the protective shield and
repression lies, no doubt, in their respective natures: biological, in the
first case, and psychical, in the second.
64. There is an extreme ambiguity here, for the terms need to be related to
the contextual situations. Flight is an active phenomenon which, over a
period of time, has allowed a protective shield to be formed. In a way,
the latter has reaped the benefit of this resistance through blocking
activity from outside. That the internal barrier functions in the same way
does not obscure the fact that this defence comes into operation in
response to a situation in which the subject is essentially 'passivated',
that is, rendered passive in a way that is restricting; and, that flight,
which can now only turn inwards towards the subject himself, feeds,
preserves and works on such passivity. [Incidentally, passivation is a term
coined by the author (translator's note)]
65. We can find further indication of this in all the warnings Freud gave
against confusing repression and regression and notably in the lecture
(XXII) where he discusses their relations: 'thus the concept of repression
involves no relation to sexuality: I must ask you to take special note of
that. It indicates a purely psychological process, which we can characterize
still better if we call it a "topographical" one' {SE, XVI, p. 342). The whole
difficulty lies in the conception one may have of an internal flight from
an internal danger, and of a flight between different parts of a common,
but heterogeneous organisation. This Freud knew perfectly well: 'I think it
is probable that there are some defensive processes which can truly be
 likened to an attempt at flight, while in others the ego takes a much more
active line of self-protection and initiates vigorous counter-measures. But
perhaps the whole analogy between defence and flight is invalidated by
the fact that both the ego and the instinct in the id are parts of the same
organisation, not separate entities..., so that any kind of behaviour on the
part of the ego will result in an alteration in the instinctual process as weir
(Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety, SE, XX, p. 146).
66. My italics.
67. Addenda XI, SE, XX, p. 164. It is true that in a passage of a text preceding
this addendum, Freud comes very close to comparing primary repression
with the mechanism of the protective shield. But he reminds us imme­
diately of the limitations of the analogy: 'the protective shield exists only
in regard to external stimuli, not in regard to internal instinctual
demands'. Although he could not be certain, he suggested that perhaps
the emergence of the super-ego provided the demarcation line between
primal repression and after-pressure (ibid., p. 94). We can see even more
clearly now the meaning of this metapsychological rectification since
there is mention here, alongside the emergence of the super-ego, of the
differentiation between ego and id. In any case, the final formulation in
the Outline, where repression appears to be a rejecting behaviour towards
that which has already been accepted, seems to me to be the most inter­
esting, not because it is the last but because it is the most fruitful from a
heuristic point of view.
68. 'Repression', SE, XIV, p. 147.
69. Ibid., pp. 126-7 and 132.
70. XXXIII Lecture, SE, XXII, p. 113.
71. 'Instincts and their Vicissitudes', SE, XIV, p. 127.
72. Three Essays on the Theory o f Sexuality, SE, VII, p. 182.
73. 'On Narcissism: An Introduction', SE, XIV, p. 100.
74. 'Instincts and their Vicissitudes', SE, XIV, p. 132.
75. In spite of their apparent convergence, these two movements obey
different trends. The mother seeks to be reunited with her object in order
to form a greater unity with it, especially as the child's perception of and
contact with the mother have reactivated fantasies of intimacy with her.
The child's sole aim is to rediscover the conditions in which he was free
b f all perturbation.
76. It is remarkable that when separation in this sense occurs, the desire for
reunion which has thus been sacrificed may impinge in return on the
most fundamental functions of the drives of self-preservation; for
instance, the sleep of wetrnurses.
77. Beyond the Pleasure Principle. In other words, binding now has the
function which formerly belonged to discharge. Unlike discharge,
binding does not exhaust tension. By binding, it masters partly, and
preserves through linking, that which disappears by exhausting itself
through discharge.
78. This would not explain, for instance, why the 'o-o-o-o' is a prolonged
sound, whereas the ‘da ' only has a single scansion.
79. The Ego and the Id, SE, XIX, p. 30.
80. Beyond the Pleasure Principle.
81. It is striking that forming the Mobius strip involves two operations:
turning the strip round towards its initial extremity (against oneself) and
turning it inside out (into its opposite). All that is needed then is to join
up the two extremities. We are indebted to Lacan for examining the
applications of the Mobius strip in psychoanalysis.
82. Our discussion of the model of narcissism owes much to Lacan's teaching.
We have left aside his discussion of the concepts relating to this problem
which deserve a special study in their own right. Their examination
required that the present work be completed first. For a comparison of
certain common points, see The Logic of Lacan's objet a and Freudian
Theory: Convergences and Questions', Interpreting Lacan: Psychiatry and
the Humanities, vol. 6. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983.
83. Criticism may be raised against resorting to the Mobius strip as a model
on account of its highly abstract nature. Yet I recall having studied the
case of someone a few years ago who, in his personal fantasies, had
managed to create a double who walked on the 'opposite' side to the one
on which he himself was going without ever being able to meet up with
him, continually returning to the point of departure.
84. Cf. The "Uncanny"', SE, XVII.
85. It is certainly no coincidence that Freud introduced the drives of self­
preservation after making a study of the visual function and that
scopophilia is one of the two drives he refers to in his description of the
double reversal.
86. Hermaphrodite. Paris: PUF, 1958.

Chapter 3
1. Translation by A.C. Graham. London: John Murray, 1960, p. 22.
2. Freud, S. (1926 [1925]). Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety, SE, XX, p. 130.
3. Which does not preclude improving the conditions of birth as far as is
possible.
4. A problem that has already been raised with the institution of the
original reality-ego and the purified pleasure-ego.
5. For reasons of discretion, I shall not give clinical examples as an illustra­
tion, although my hypothesis is based on them.
6. Green, A. 'Le double et l'absent', Critique, May 1973, no. 312.
7. Proust, M. (1996). In Search o f Lost Time. London: Vintage Classics, vol.
5, p. 803-4. It is interesting to note that Proust placed this addenda to
the manuscript at a different place from the editors; that is, a few pages
later (clearly an error). If this was an unconscious slip, it is worth noting
that it occurred at the point when Marcel tells Albertine of his wish to
replace her with Andree. So the object (Albertine) finds herself caught
between the empty apparatus of the subject, on the one hand, and the
object which succeeds her and takes her place, on the other. Between two
deaths: one that is still to come and another that has already occurred.
8. Bouvet, M. 'Depersonnalisation et relations d'objet', Revue frangaise de
psychanalyse, 1960, 24 (4-5), p. 611. Cf. my contribution, pp. 651-6.
 9. SE, XIV, p. 298.
10. Green, A. The Analyst, Symbolization and Absence in the Analytic
Setting', in On Private Madness, London: Hogarth Press, 1986.
11. This does not contradict the idea that identification can be imaginary -
identification with an image of the object rather than with the object
itself. It is with respect to the imaginary aspect of representation that
identification brings about transformation.
12. The quantity of cathexes can diminish favouring an elevation of their
level.
13. R. Diatkine has pointed out that this failure of the object to adapt is a
constitutive aspect of the relationship, and that it is a source of fruitful
stimulation in later development.
14. This terminology does not belong to traditional psychoanalytic vocabu­
lary and was even rejected by North American psychoanalysis as a title
for a round table discussion at a Congress of the International
Psychoanalytic Association.
15. 'Sur la douleur' (psychique), in Entre le reve et la douleur. Paris: Gallimard,
1978.
16. This may be related to what Rosolato calls the unknown relationship.
17. Donnet, J.-L. and Green, A. (1973). L'enfant de Qa. Paris: Editions de
Minuit.
18. Bloch, O. and Von Wartburg, W. (1996). Dictionnaire etymologique de la
langue frangaise. Paris: PUF.
19. The French word blanc means both 'white' and a 'blank space'.
[Translator's note]
20. Originally published in French as Le discours vivant, 1973. English trans­
lation by Alan Sheridan. London: Routledge, 1999. [Translator's note]
21. Or, more generally, the imperceptible, the insensible, and, ultimately, the
unthinkable and the inconceivable.
22. In 1960, with regard to the discussion of M. Bouvet's paper
'Depersonnalisation et relation d'objet', I suggested the following
formula to characterise the decompensated narcissistic relationship: The
ego breaks up but does not yield' (Le Moi rompt mais ne plie pas).
23. In Playing and Reality. London: Tavistock, 1971.
24. In French: Parer = to fend off; pare-excitation = the protective shield.
[Translator's note]
25. Cf. Green, A. (1986). The Analyst, Symbolisation and Absence in the
Analytic Setting', in On Private Madness. London: Hogarth Press. Original
publication in the Revue frangaise de psychanalyse, 1974, vol. 38,
pp. 1190-230.
26. By way of indication: insofar as language constitutes a homeostatic struc­
ture in relation to material and psychical reality, in relation to thought,
it plays, the role of a third reality which overcomes the opposition of the
other two by means of its predicative and constantly assertive function.
Autonomy of the subject.
27. The Book ofLieh Tzu, p. 82.
 1. Dodds, E. (1951). The Greeks and the Irrational. Berkeley: University of
California Press.
2. Cf. Chapter 2: 'Primary Narcissism'.
3. It goes without saying that we do not see any correspondence between
the three forms of masochism and the three forms of narcissism.
4. Lacan, J. (1966). Ecrits. Paris: Le Seuil.
5. Freud, A. (1936). The Ego and the Mechanisms o f Defence. Revised edition,
The Writings o f Anna Freud. New York: International Universities Press;
London: Hogarth Press, vol. II.
6. Male, P. (1956). 'Etude psychanalytique de l'adolescence', in S. Nacht
(ed.) (1967). De la pratique a la theorie psychanalytique, Paris: PUF.
7. Is the example which we have found in Ajax in contradiction with what
we have just been saying? Ajax killed himself because Achilles' arms were
given to another person. In his case, what was involved was a relation­
ship to possessions of which he was deprived. But let us not be mistaken
here. What Ajax suffered from was a wounded self. This was because he
had not been recognised as the most fearsome of warriors, of which the
arms of Achilles, forged by Hephaestus, were a symbol. It was a phallic
attribute that he was lacking, but in as far as this would procure him the
admiration of friends and enemies. Which is why his reaction was one
of shame, as if their attribution to another was a mark of his decline and
worthlessness. The distinction between the most courageous (which he
was) and the most fearsome (which Ulysses was, owing to his cunning)
was meaningless for him. He could only face dishonour by abandoning
life and all the objects which kept him attached to it.
8. Pasche, F. (1969). 'De la depression', in A partir de Freud. Paris: Payot.
9. Codet, H. and Laforgue, R. (1925). 'Les arrierations affectives: la
schizonoYa', devolution psychiatrique, vol. I.
10. Klein, M. (1946). 'Notes on some Schizoid Mechanisms', in Envy and
Gratitude and Other Papers, 1921-45. The Writings of Melanie Klein.
London: Hogarth Press, vol. III.
11. Of course, this narcissistic hyper-cathexis is the consequence of an
irreparable narcissistic wound.
12. We will not consider metapsychology in terms of the three points of
view, dynamic, topographical and economic, each taken separately. But
under each heading it will easy to see what belongs to each of them.
13. I am thinking here of the distinction in Latin between prima and summa,
defended by G. Dumezil.
14. Contrary to accepted opinion of recent years, I think, for my part, that
affect is repressed and not simply suppressed. Cf. Green, A. (1999). The
Fabric o f Affect in the Psychoanalytic Discourse. Trans. Alan Sheridan.
London: Routledge. First published in 1973 as Le discours vivant. Paris: PUF.
15. Or rather, parental. For the paternal penis is only the principal figuration
and derivation of a parental penis which also belongs to the image of the
phallic mother.
16. A phallus which, in short, has a double inscription: positive phallic and
negative vaginal.
17. Cassius is aware of this and whispers to Brutus: 'You don't know what
you're doing/
18. But, also, it seems the most loved by his object of love, Caesar, who at
this point in time seems to prefer Mark Antony to Brutus.
19. Prince. 'Why, thou owest God a death/
Falstaff. "Tis not due yet: I would be loath to pay him before his day.
What need I be so forward with him that calls not on me? Well, 'tis no
matter; honour pricks on me. Yea, but how if honour prick me off when
I come on? How then? Can honour set to a leg? No. Or an arm? No. Or
take away the grief of a wound? No. Honour hath no skill in surgery
then? No. What is honour? a word. What is that word, honour? Air. A
trim reckoning! Who hath it? he that died o' Wednesday. Doth he feel
it? No. Doth he hear it? No. It is insensible then? Yea, to the dead. But
will it not live with the living? No. Why? Detraction will not suffer it.
Therefore I'll none of it: honour is a mere scutcheon; and so ends my
catechism' (Henry IV, I, V, I).

Chapter 5
1. Kreisler, L. 'Les intersexuels avec ambiguite genitale', La psychiatrie de
Venfant, XIII, 1970, pp. 5-127. Consult the large bibliography.
2. Playing and Reality (1971), Chapters 5 and 6.
3. Centre de consultations et de traitements psychanalytiques de Paris.
(Translator's note]
4. The alternate use of masculine and feminine to refer to the subject is
inevitable in view of the extent to which the analyst, the misled spec­
tator of this hybridisation, was alternately caught between illusion and
reality.
5. Freud, S, SE, XXI, p. 106, footnote 3.
6. Jacob, F. (1971). La Logique du vivant. Paris: Gallimard.
7. Delcourt, M. (1958). Hermaphrodite. Paris: PUF.

s
Chapter 6
1. Winnicott, D. (1971). Playing and Reality. London: Tavistock
Publications.
2. Kohut, H. (1972). The Analysis o f the Self. London: Karnac Books.
3. Abraham, N. (1978). 'Le crime de l'introjection', and Torok, M. (1978)
'Maladie du deuil et fantasme du cadavre exquis', in Abraham, N.,
Uecorce et le noyau. Paris: Aubier-Flammarion.
4. Rosolato, G. (1975). 'L'axe narcissique des depressions', Nouvelle revue de
psychanalyse, 1975, no. 9, pp. 5-34.
5. ‘Noir ou blanc' - in French blanc can mean either 'white' or 'blank'. In this
chapter it has the latter meaning, 'empty', throughout. [Translator's
note]
 6. Green, A. The Borderline Concept', in On Private Madness, Chapter 3.
London: Hogarth, 1986. First published in Borderline Disorders, ed. Peter
Hartocollis. New York: International Universities Press, 1977.
7. Green, A. (1973b). 'Le silence du psychanalyste', Topique 23.
8. Green, A. (1968). 'Sur la mere phallique', Revue frangaise de psychanalyse
32.
9. 'La structure encadrante': this notion combines in the word 'cadre' the
meaning of 'frame', but is also used in the French sense of the 'setting',
'le cadre analytique' (of technical importance in this paper). [Translator's
note]
10. What I have just described cannot fail to evoke the very interesting ideas
of N. Abraham and M. Torok. However, even if, on numerous points, our
conceptions converge, they differ elsewhere on a theme to which I
attach great importance, namely the clinical and metapsychological
significance of states of emptiness. The manner in which I attempt to
account for them is taken up in a continuous thread of thought, where,
after having tried to define the heuristic value of the concept of negative
hallucination and proposing the concept of 'blank psychosis' with J.-L.
Donnet, I have in this work been engaged on the elucidation of what I
call blank mourning. One might summarise these differences by stating
that narcissism constitutes the axis of my theoretical reflection, whereas
N. Abraham and M. Torok are essentially concerned with the relation
between incorporation and introjection, with the crypt-like effect to
which they give rise.
11. Anzieu, D. (1986). Freud's Self-Analysis. London: Hogarth Press.
12. Grinstein, A. (1972). 'Un reve de Freud: les trois Parques' (Freud's dream
of the three Fates), Nouvelle Revue Psychanalyse 5.
13. Bird = oiseau, also a familiar term for penis. [Translator's note]
14. The French here is: et que Philippe ne I'ait enfermee dans un coffre, 'coffree'
ou, vulgairement, ' tringlee'. [Translator's note]
15. Masson, J.M. (ed.). (1985). The Complete Letters o f Sigmund Freud to
Wilhelm Fliess, 1887-1904. London: The Belknap Press.
16. SE, IV-V, p. 398n.
17. Fain, M. and Braunschweig, D. (1971). Eros etAnteros. Paris: Payot.
18. Fr. I'apres-coup; SE, 'deferred action'; more recently Jean Laplanche has
suggested the term 'afterwardness'; An Introductory Dictionary ofLacanian
Analysis (1966) gives 'retroaction'.

Postscript
1. Here I am extending Heidegger's expression to cover the philosophical
tradition.
2. Letter to Fliess, dated 24 January 1897.
3. SE, XIV, p. 78.
4. We know that initially Freud included melancholia and schizophrenia
among the narcissistic neuroses. In 1924, he decided to limit this descrip­
tion to melancholia, classifying schizophrenia as belonging to the
category of the psychoses proper.
5. Not to mention the years before that, concerning which we lack first­
hand information.
6. Ferenczi, and other epigones who wanted to have this place in Freud's
heart, were wasting their time.
7. Pontalis, J.-B. (1978a). Entre le reve et la douleur. Paris: Gallimard.
8. Except in transference.
9. Marty, P. (1976). Les mouvements individuels de vie et de mort et L'ordre
psychosomatique. Paris: Payot.
10. Laplanche, J. (1970). Vie et mort en psychanalyse. Paris: Flammarion.
11. Bataille, G. (1957). L'erotism. Paris: Minuit.
12. See the Project for a Scientific Psychology (1895b) in SE, I, pp. 283ff.
13. SE, XIV, pp. 273ff.
14. In L’etat amoreux (Paris: Petite Bibliotheque Payot), C. David has pointed
out that love can also increase narcissism, creating in the lovers a feeling
of exaltation, accompanied by a state of elation, as a result of identifying
with the overestimated object; and particularly when the love is recip­
rocal. It could be said that under these circumstances it is the couple
which thinks it is immortal, which might explain the phenomenon of
joint suicide at the height of love, as in the case of H. von Kleist.
15. Torok, M. (1978). 'Maladie du deuil et fantasme de cadavre exquis', in
L'ecorce et le noyau by N. Abraham, pp. 229-51. Paris: Aubier-Flammarion.
References for the French Edition

The previously published texts have been revised. The modifications have
mainly concerned the form, with few changes to the content. The rare addi­
tions were designed to clarify what had been formulated somewhat too
elliptically in the earlier publication. I would like to thank Olivier Green for
the help he has given me in finalising the manuscript.

'Un, Autre, Neutre: valeurs narcissiques du Meme', Nouvelle revue de psych­

analyse: Narcisses, 1976, no. XIII.
'Le narcissisme primaire: structure ou etat?', I'lnconscient, no. 1, 1966, no. 2,
1967.
'L'angoisse et le narcissisme', Revue frangaise de psychanalyse, 1979, XLIII,
pp. 45-87.
'Le narcissisme moral', Revue frangaise de psychanalyse, 1969, XXXIII, no. 3.
'Le genre neutre', Nouvelle revue de psychanalyse: Bisexualite et difference des
sexes, 1973, no. VII.
'Le narcissisme, hier et aujourd'hui', hitherto unpublished.
'La mere morte', lecture given to the Paris Psychoanalytic Society, 20 May
1980, hitherto unpublished.
'Le Moi, mortel-immortel', hitherto unpublished.
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Index

Abraham, Karl 171 linked to the One 91, 119-21,

Abraham, N. 9, 25, 171 126
Achilles 132 separation 21, 92, 115, 125
Adler, Alfred 216 signal anxiety 92, 106, 116,
adolescence 136 118
adultomorphic imagination 18 and transference 119
affective immaturity 139 see also castration anxiety;
affects 94-5, 96-8, 105 death anxiety; depression;
Agamemnon 132 narcissistic anxieties
aggressivity 13, 14, 33, 42, 147, Anzieu, D. 196-7, 198
223 apres-coup, concept of 199-200
and Freud 215, 219 Artemis 44
aim-inhibited drive 64-6, 68, 70, asceticism 8, 16, 136, 137-8
72, 75, 80, 90 asexualisation 218
Ajax 131, 132-3, 134, 153 Athena 132
alter ego 26, 41 Atriadae (Agamemnon and
Ameinias 45 Menelaus) 132
amoebas 62 authenticity 148
anaesthesia 119 auto-erotism 10-11, 15, 18, 72-5,
anal phase 145 80-2, 84-5
anorexia nervosa 222 and asceticism 137
anti-narcissism 9, 34, 74 and dead mother complex
Antigone 133 180, 194
anxiety 91-3, 98, 101-7, 119-24, and desire 74
127-8 and introjection 87
and blank psychosis 112, 113 and moral narcissism 146
definition of 107 and narcissism 100, 218, 222
and destructiveness 174 object choice 6, 19
and lack 173 and pleasure principle 77
linked to the couple 91, and primal ego 4, 5
121-3, 126 and self-sufficiency 90
linked to the ensemble 91, and sexual enjoyment 13
123-5, 126 autonomy 120-1
auxiliaries 29, 30-1, 33
auxiliary ego 103
Balint, M. 9, 31-2
Bataille, Georges 155-6, 219
being 30-1
'beloved mother', dream of 196-9
Benveniste, E. 32
binding and unbinding 23-4, 27,
36, 41, 44, 71-2
biological sexuality 158-9
Bion, W. 9, 16, 26, 110, 116, 198
birth trauma 92, 93
bisexuality 45, 91, 149-51,
158-69
biological 159
and castration complex 161-2
and personal fantasy 160-1
and primary narcissism 163-9
psychical 159, 160-1, 163,
167
self-sufficient 218
see also sexual difference;
sexuality
black 174
blanc 10, 26, 111
blank 111-12, 113, 174
blank mourning 174
blank psychosis 10, 26, 111, 112,
174
bodily narcissism 134, 143-4
body image 96
Bonaparte, Marie 172
Book ofLieh Tzu 91, 127
Bouvet*,'M. 28, 31, 97, 116
breast 24, 79, 82, 113, 125, 199
absent 188
and dependence 145
divine 8
good and bad 188, 218
having and being 30
loss of 77, 93, 175-6, 180, 181
and auto-erotism 81, 84
and castration anxiety 173
and mourning 172
and narcissism 11, 90
metaphor of 175-6
and narcissism 145, 149
negative hallucination of 112
and Oedipus complex 66,
124-5, 185
sexual object 18, 72
Breuer, J. 214, 215, 216
British Psychoanalytic Society
107
Brutus 153-4
captation 114, 115
Cassius 154
Castoriadis-Aulagnier, P. 10, 29,
39
castration 43, 45, 147, 159, 169,
172, 203
fantasy of 167-8, 204
castration anxiety 117-18, 128,
148-50, 161-2, 172-3, 202
and death anxiety 168, 203,
206, 210, 211, 217
and narcissism 13, 20
narcissistic 115
and ontogenesis 204
and sexual intercourse 176
cathexis (investment) 4, 7, 8-9, 9
narcissistic investment 17-22
negative investments 126
primary 62-4
see also narcissistic object-
cathexes
Cephissus 44, 45
Cervantes, M. de 155
chaos (,diasparagmos) 91, 120, 123
character 11-12
child
death of 177-8
incomplete development 94
civilisation 223
Codet, H. 139
communicabiliae 40
communication 91
complementarity 91, 109, 169,
179
conjunction and disjunction 23-4
conscious 210-11
constancy, principle of 53, 54, 56
container/containment 103,
193-4
Cotard's syndrome 210
counter-cathexis 140-1
counter-transference 41-4, 152
creativity 21
Cronian myth 19
culture 44
cumulative trauma 108-9
David, C. 20
dead father 172
dead mother 170, 172, 176
dead mother complex 176-83
blank mourning 190, 191,
194, 195
and breast 188
and loss of meaning 180, 189
and mother-child relationship
191-2
and primal scene 186-8, 190
and psychoanalytic treatment
182, 186, 189, 190-1
death 24, 90, 168-9, 216, 217
attitudes to 20, 201-4
negation of 90, 206
preparation for 224
death anxiety 168, 203, 206, 210,
i 211,217
death drives 23, 60-1, 81, 83-4,
90, 219, 222-3
and bisexuality 10-1
and desexualisation 66-9, 156
and Eros 61, 63, 64, 83,
215-16, 219
and Freud 52, 54-5, 59,
213-14, 216, 219-20, 223
interpretations of 219
and Klein 9, 217
and life drives 22, 24, 49, 69,
135, 211
and masochism 134, 213
and melancholia 211
see also destructive drives
decathexis (disinvestment) 17
and blank psychosis 26, 112,
113, 174
and dead mother complex
178-9, 180, 182-3, 186, 196
fainting 110
and idealisation 139
decussation 79
defence 77-8, 98, 116, 140, 178,
218
against psychical pain 108,
109
asceticism 136
and character 11
and dead mother complex
179, 180
depersonalisation 123
and fear of inertia 28
idealisation 139
regression 8, 117
and repression 90, 173
sublimation 148
temporary fragmentation 123
unconscious 49, 209-10
see also protective shield;
regression; repression
Delcourt, Marie 89, 169
delusion 27, 33, 98, 101, 208
paranoid 151
and rationalisation 12
and transference 111
dementia praecox 4
denial (disavowal) 139, 140, 141
dependence 120, 125, 139-40, 152
and love 144-5
depersonalisation 28, 31, 123
depression 106, 141, 147, 171, 220
and ambivalence 183
black of 174
dead mother complex 176,
195, 196
and disappointment 32, 100,
101, 137, 149
and idealisation 151
and narcissistic wounding 32,
117
see also anxiety
depressive position 171, 192-3,
195, 217
Derrida, J. 39, 60
Descartes, R. 204 Echo 44, 45
desexualisation 7, 11, 66-9, 114, effective difference 117-18
139, 142, 156 ego 4, 5, 29-30, 31, 48-9, 62-4,
destructive drives 103-4, 151, 67, 68
169, 222 and affects 95
and Eros 23-4, 27, 48, 60-1, as agency 29, 96, 98-9, 104
66, 118 and anxiety 106, 118-19
and narcissism 12, 44, 49 autonomy 125
see also death drives binding 83
destructiveness 174, 178, 181, 183 birth of 92-4
development, stages of 18-19 in blank psychosis 112
Diatkine, R. 32 consistency of 125-6
diphasic sexuality 94 construction of 114-16
disintegration 104, 110 and delusion 98
disinvestment see decathexis dreamless sleep 63
dismissal/repudiation 77-8 and drives 103
dispersion 91, 123 and id 86, 94, 114
displacement 108, 139, 142 immortality 23, 25, 208, 218,
dissociation 31 219, 222
distance 115, 116-17, 118 impotence of 12
compression and condensa­ and libido 7
tion 116 limits 118-19
useful 117-18 and moral narcissism 145-6
Dodds, E. 131-2, 147 negation 125-6
domination/mastery 14 origin of 8-9
Don Quixote 154-5 and pain 108, 110, 118-19
Donnet, J.-L. 32, 111 persecution by super-ego 212
Dostoyevsky, E 141 primal 4, 5
double 218 and psychosomatic syndromes
double reversal 11, 78-81, 85, 90, 98
119 and reality 64, 209, 210, 213
and Mobius strip 27, 87, 88 and repression 75-8
and passivation 31 splitting 212
dreamer, narcissism of 19-20 struggle against object 103
drive-obj£ct dichotomy 94 thanatophilic 23
drives 22-4, 58-61, 64-6, 69-70, and trauma-object 98-101
75, 81-2 unconscious 49, 209-10, 213
and auto-erotism 73 and unification with object
and frustration 102 97-8
and narcissism 9, 13-14, 15 unitary cathexis 7-8, 9, 10, 11
non-domestication of 190 unity of 41, 181
pregenital 9, 33, 65, 66 see also Self
see also death drives; destruc­ ego defences 98
tive drives; Eros; Freud, S., ego drives 72, 87
drive theory; life drives; ego ideal 14, 67, 81-3, 89, 101,
sexual drives 114
Dulcinea 154-5 and affective immaturity 139
 and group anxiety 124
intransigence of 88
and moral narcissism 147
moral narcissist and 136
and narcissism 19
and super-ego 93, 134, 145,
146
see also ideal, function of;
ideal ego; super-ego
ego-libido 207
ego-love 60
ego-relatedness 24, 97
ego-representations 94-6, 97, 99
Einstein, A. 213
emptiness 17, 91, 112-13
see also nothingness
Entzweiung 57
epistemophilia 5
Epops 45
Erikson, E.H. 48
Eros 52, 58, 69, 169, 212, 223
and death drives 61, 63-4, 83,
211, 215-16, 219
and destructive drives 23-4,
27, 48, 60-1, 66, 118
see also life drives
erotic libido, and aggressive
libido 92-3
erotogenic masochism 134
erotogenic zones 144-5
Eumenides 211
existence, affect of 27-8
expansion 16-17
explosion and implosion 28
fainting 110-1
false self 27, 139, 145, 148-9, 188
family, as extension of ego 16
father 102, 145, 174-5, 178,
179-80
dead father 172
Fechner, G.T. 52-3, 54
Federn, E. 94
feminine masochism 134
femininity 159, 191, 217
repudiation of 162-3
Ferenczi, S. 39
fixation 93
Fleiss, W. 196, 198, 214, 215
flight 77-8
floating attention 34
foreclosure 140
Foerster, Heinz von 40
fragmentation 49, 91, 101, 106,
123-4
Frazer, J.G. 3
Frege, G. 26
Freud, Amalie 198
Freud, Anna 136, 140
Freud, Jacob 197, 198
Freud, Julius 198
Freud, Philipp 197, 198
Freud, S.
absence 84, 85
aggressivity 215, 219
anxieties 104, 105, 106, 108,
117-18
auto-erotism 72-3
birth trauma 92, 93
bisexuality 159, 167
castration anxiety 172-3, 206,
211-12
dead mother 196-200
death 20, 47, 201-2, 203, 208
death drive 52, 54-5, 60-1,
213-16, 219-20, 223
defences 140-1
delusion 33
destructive drives 23, 27, 222
distance 116
double 208, 216
drive theory 22, 52, 64-5,
66-74, 87, 103, 206
durability 69-70
ego theory 30, 48-9, 98-9,
114, 134-5, 146, 209, 213
ego and id 62, 68, 71, 75,
76
and ego ideal 89
ego-libido and object-libido
215
and ego-representations
94-5
fainting 110-1
Freud, S. (continued)
femininity 162, 163-4
and immortality 214, 215, 221
inhibitions 94
language of analyst 36
loss 97, 171, 175
love 144
masochism 134, 135, 136, 137
melancholia 211, 212-13, 219
mother-infant relationship 192
narcissism 49-52, 56, 82,
89-90, 101, 215, 221-2
Narcissus myth 46
Oedipus complex 172, 173
paranoia 35
passivation 31
phallocentrism 206, 217, 218
philosophy 209
play 204
pleasure principle 52, 55-6,
59, 64, 77
primary identification 32
primary narcissism 50, 52-3,
62
principle of inertia 52-4, 72,
220
protective shield 69-72
psychical apparatus 58
psychical pain 105
repression 76, 77, 78-80,
85-6, 116, 173
sexual difference 149
sexuality 22, 57, 65, 204,
206-7, 217
stages'of development 18-19
sublimation 43, 60, 64, 69
theory of narcissism 4-9,
10-11, 12-16, 24
frozen love 183-9
fusion 28, 31
germen 207
Gillibert, Jean 8
God 19, 21-2, 136, 141, 142, 150
Goethe, J.W. von 121
good-enough mother 102
Grinstein, A. 196, 197
group anxiety 124
group narcissism 124
Grunberger, B. 9, 48
guilt 13, 131-3, 142, 147-8, 156-7
see also shame
Guiraud, Pierre 112
hainamoration 26
Hartmann, H. 8, 9, 29, 43, 48, 219
hatred 180, 183-5, 193, 194-5
Hector 132
Hegel, G.W.F. 131, 155
Helicon 45
Hermaphrodite 46
holding 93, 102, 182
homosexuality 109-10, 122, 164
feminine 182
hypochondria 88, 97, 104, 106,
108, 109, 218-19
hysteria 7, 123, 139, 208
id 25, 67-9, 71-2, 75-6, 83-4,
134-5, 212-13
and narcissism 145-6
neuter gender 169
origin of 8-9
id-ego differentiation 62-3, 75,
79, 81, 94
ideal, function of 15-16, 66-9,
72, 90, 134, 146, 223
ideal ego 14-15, 67, 99
see also ego ideal; ideal,
function of
idealisation 15-16, 43, 93, 139-9,
150-1, 152
self-idealisation 103, 149
see also ego ideal; ideal ego
identification 11, 69, 86, 90, 99,
115
and affect 105
and religion 147
with analyst 33
with dead mother 179, 183,
187, 188-9, 191
and defence 109
with father 68
imaginary 17, 100, 114
 and negative hallucination 85 Kernberg, O. 9, 33-4
primary and secondary 20, 'King Lear' (Shakespeare) 46-7,
105, 212 216
projective 101, 103, 109, 111, Klein, Melanie 9, 43, 159, 164
122 idealisation 139, 150-1
with Virgin Mary 139 maternal imago 192, 217-18
identity 9, 11-12, 16, 29-30, 48, mourning 105, 171
126 play 204
illusion 134, 135 Kleinians 48, 175, 183 .
immortality 89, 205-10, 211, Kohut, H. 9, 17, 29, 33-i, 42, 48
218-19, 223-4 Kraepelin, E. 217
Freud and 214, 215, 221
incestuous desire 190 Lacan, J. 9-10, 32, 43, 57, 61,
indifference 10, 17, 23 124, 203
individuation 29, 33 captation 114, 115
inertia hainamoration 26
fear of 28 and lack 173
principle of 8, 23, 52-4 Law and Symbolic 172
infans, adult identification with and linguistics 29, 38, 40
17-18 masochism 135
inhibitions 94, 99 mirror stage 81
instincts see drives object as cause of desire 121
intellectual activity 142-3 and Other 27
intellectual narcissism 134, 141-2 and phallocentrism 206, 218
internalisation 81, 131 Lacarriere, J. 132
introjection 73, 87-8 lack 39, 99-100, 149, 150, 173
intrusion anxiety 115 Lady Macbeth 221
intuition 50 Laforgue, R. 139
investment see cathexis Lagache, D. 14
'Irma's injection' dream 214 Laing, R.D. 28
language 10, 12, 126
Jacob, F. 168 auxiliaries 30-1, 33
Jacobson, Edith 29, 48 lalangue 39
Jakobson, R, 30 metaphor for ego and thought
Joseph, and Pharoah's dreams 24 12
jouissance (sexual enjoyment) and metonymy 39
13-14, 43, 119, 167, 169, in narcissistic discourse 28-33,
207-8 36-41
absence of 203, 206 object as complement 32-3
and pain 37, 105 pronouns 32
Julius Caesar 153-4 reflexive 38
incestuous dreams of 198 and representation 39-41, 116
Jung, C.G. 4, 6, 7, 24, 30, 49, self-referential system 30
186, 214-15 subject 29-30
verbs 31-2
Kant, I. 204, 213 see also representation
Keats, J. 23 language-object 38
Laplanche, Jean 9, 12, 15, 29
anaclitic object relations 82,
93
auto-erotism 72, 73, 74
and drives 219
Law 37, 43, 150, 172
Lebovici, S. 48, 82
Leonardo da Vinci 5, 6, 19, 24
Lewin, B. 28, 112
Lewinter, R. 167
libido 1, 31, 69, 144, 211, 220
Lichtenstein, H. 9, 29, 48
life drives 22, 49, 69, 135, 220
see also Eros
Liriope 44
love 6-7, 15, 20, 137, 144, 146-7,
152, 154-6
and dead mother complex 185
and hate 26
love-object 18-19
maternal 168, 178-9
unconditional 140
Low, Barbara 23, 55, 219
Mahler, M.S. 29
Male, Pierre 136
Mark Anthony 154
Marty, P. 219
masculinity 158-9
masochism 10, 16, 135-7, 169,
219, 220
and death drives 134, 213
and narcissism 134, 135-7, 151
maternal care 159-60, 171
maternal depression 170, 177
maternal imago 177, 186, 192-4
maternal love 31-2, 168, 178-9
meaning, loss of 200
megalomania 104, 114, 151
melancholia 98, 105, 113, 188,
210-13, 219
Menelaus 132
mental pain 106
metalanguage 38
metaphoro-metonymic oscilla­
tion 33
metonymy and metaphor 39
Miller, J.-A. 39
mirror 11, 27, 103, 121-2, 125
'mirror' transference 9
mnemic signs and symbols 104-7
Mobius strip 27, 87, 88
monosexuality 159, 160
Montaigne, M. de 220
moral masochism 134, 156
moral narcissism 134-5, 136
derivatives of 137-40
heroic figures of 153-6
metapsychology of 140-51
treatment 152-3
Moses 24-5
mother
and death of child 177-8
death of 170, 172
idealisation of 145
mirroring role of 27
negative hallucination of 84-6
omnipotence 145
separation from 77, 83, 84,
86, 92-3
see also maternal care;
maternal love
mother-child relationship 93, 99,
102-3, 144-6, 170-1, 192
and sexuality 159
mourning 97, 98, 105, 110, 170,
172, 212, 220-2
and anxiety 92-3, 104
blank mourning 174, 183,
188, 189, 190
and mania 222
and object-loss 220
see also dead mother
Nachtrdglichkeit (Fr; I'apres-coup)
199-200
Nacke, P. 7
narcissism
as agency 48
analysing 152-3
autonomy of 9, 33, 114
clinical aspects of 134-5
and desire for the One 25,
86-7, 90
 and drives 13-15, 22, 33, 82
and ego ideal 89, 120
illness of youth 46
and immortality 205, 210, 222
and masochism 134, 135-7,
151
obstacle to communication 91
origins of 18-19
as psychoanalytic concept 4,
9-10
secondary 88, 90, 146
and western civilisation 127
narcissistic anxieties 97, 101,
103, 107, 127
and psychotic anxieties 101-4
narcissistic investment 17-22
narcissistic libido 144, 211
narcissistic object-cathexes 20,
32, 34, 36, 43, 104-5, 107,
114
narcissistic objects 17-22, 43, 119
narcissistic personalities 13, 20
narcissistic pride 14, 114
see also pride
narcissistic rage 109, 614
narcissistic regression 119, 153,
207
narcissistic structure 114-16
narcissistic transference 33-41
and metonymy and metaphor
39
and object transference 34
and resistance 35
and silence and discourse
35-41
narcissistic withdrawal 16-17,
101, 103, 104, 110
narcissistic wound 32, 109, 118,
139, 189, 191, 203, 212
narcissistic-cathexis 93, 97, 104,
114, 119
narcissistic-libido 63, 94
Narcissus 21-2
and bisexuality 45
eye of 88
myth of 5, 6, 44-7, 89
paradox of 38
negation 141
negative hallucination 87, 111,
112, 169, 174
of mother 84-6, 88, 89, 90,
150, 193
negative investments 126
negative narcissism 10, 17, 24,
26, 126, 169, 222
negative therapeutic reaction 220
Nemesis 44
neurosis 93-4, 98, 208, 222
Neuter 10, 17, 23, 26, 27, 37
neuter gender 158, 161, 163, 168,
169
Nirvana 52
Nirvana principle 8, 23, 26, 71,
220, 222
and masochism 156
and pleasure principle 55, 56,
63, 69, 135, 219
see also pleasure principle;
principle of inertia
nothingness 26, 120
see also emptiness
Nunberg, H. 14
object 7, 17-19
as cause of desire 121
as complement 32-3
external and internal 102-3
independence of 125
part-object and whole object
19, 32, 43, 91
object-choice 6, 13, 20, 26, 70
object-libido 63, 94, 118, 144,
207, 210-11
object-loss 18, 20, 171, 173, 177,
220
and depression 32, 171-2, 177
and pain 108, 119
see also separation anxiety
object-love 60, 102-3, 194, 205
object-relations 9-10, 97, 179,
181
anaclitic 87, 93
and distance 116
object-representations 97
oceanic feeling 16, 19
oedipal phase 93, 118, 147
Oedipus 24, 44, 131, 132, 133
Oedipus complex 19, 124-5,
161-2, 172, 174, 204
and affection 66
and anxiety 118
and dead mother complex
184, 185, 186, 188, 190,
199
permanence of 223
and super-ego 19, 147, 148
One 8, 10, 169
anxiety linked to 91, 119-21,
126
desire for 25, 86-7, 90
dual unity 25-6
and Other 26, 27-8, 37-8, 41,
91, 128
oral cannibalistic stage 211
Other 10, 18, 119, 126
invasion by 28
see also One, and Other; Same
and Other
Ovid 44, 46
pacifiers 124
pain 92, 97, 104, 181
see also psychical pain
paranoia 23, 35, 44, 105, 147,
155
paranoid-schizoid phase 151, 192
parental fantasy, and sexuality
160
parthertogenesis 205
Pasche, F. 9, 29, 60, 74
passivation/passivity 28, 31, 125,
162, 191, 222
Pausanius 45
penetration anxiety 128
penis envy 145, 149-50, 167-8,
217
perception 67, 134
repression of 140
persecution 151, 153
personalisation 29
personation 48
perversion 6-7
phallic phase 145
Philippson Bible 197
Phoenix, legend of 89-90, 169
phylogenesis 106
play 204
pleasure principle 18, 54-6, 59,
64, 77
and life and death drives 52,
83, 219
and Nirvana principle 55, 56,
63, 69, 135, 219
pleasure-unpleasure 105, 135,
136, 157, 203-4
and reality principle 55, 171,
175, 203
see also Nirvana principle
Pontalis, J.-B. 29-30, 82, 216
auto-erotism 72, 73, 74
pain 107
preconscious 210-11
pregenital drives 9, 33, 65, 66
preservation of species 22, 61, 70,
206
pride 67, 132, 135-7, 149, 224
see also narcissistic pride
primal ego, and auto-erotism 4, 5
primal femininity 162-3
primal scene 161, 175, 183,
186-8, 190, 204
primary narcissism 5-9, 17, 25-6,
32, 48-90, 145
absolute 7-8, 50-1, 55, 93, 222
and neuter gender 161
objectless 32
and zero excitation 7, 26,
53, 62-3, 76, 169
and auto-erotism 137, 222
and moral narcissism 150
positive and negative 195
and primary object-love 194
primary object love 9, 17, 194
primitive fragmentation 49
principle of inertia 52-4, 72, 220
see also Nirvana principle
projection 27, 87-8, 140, 180,
187
projective identification 101, and melancholia 98
103, 109, 111, 122 narcissistic 119, 153, 207
pronouns 32 and psychical pain 108
protective shield 69-72, 75, 77-8, psychosomatic 104
79, 115 Reich, W. 43
see also defence rejection 140, 141
Proust, M. 95-6, 220 renunciation 68, 134-6, 145
pseudopodes (boundaries) 27 repetition-compulsion 179
psychic development 144-5, 148 representation 43, 44, 58, 86,
psychical activity, model of 126-8 112-13
psychical apparatus 94, 98, 103, and affects 94-5, 96-7, 106,
104, 209 112, 122
and drives 58-61 dead mother complex 193
psychical death 28, 111, 114 ego-representations 94-6, 97,
psychical pain 104, 105, 106, 99
107-11 and language 28, 32, 39-41,
causes of 108-9 57
defence against 108, 109 and negative narcissism 10
psychical rebirth 110 unconscious 67, 99, 116
psycho-sexuality 159 see also language; negative
psychoanalysis 24-5, 127-8 hallucination
and scientific knowledge repression 42, 59, 78-82, 85-6,
204-5 90, 94, 116
psychosis 12, 104-5, 219, 222 and auto-erotism 6
psychosomatic regression 104 and castration anxiety 172-3
psychosomatic syndromes 98 and dead mother complex
psychotic anxieties 101-4 183-4, 196
purified pleasure ego 14 decathexis 174
'Purloined Letter' 39 as defence 140-1
and distance 117-18
Racamier, P.-C. 48 and ego 75-8
Rank, O. 11, 92, 208 and Eros 223
Rat Man 5, 136 limiting function 118-19
rationalisation 12 and mourning 220
reality 12-19, 26, 35, 43, 209 and narcissistic neuroses 12
as defence 185 primary 194, 195
external 35, 103, 109, 114, Robert, Marthe 155
203, 210, 212-13 Rosenfeld, E. 196
internal psychical 43, 103, Rosenfeld, H. 9
162, 185, 210, 212 Rosolato, G. 33, 39, 171
and unconscious 40
reality principle 18, 54, 55, 75, Sade, Marquis de 155
171, 203 sadism 11
regression 98, 103, 114, 123-5, sado-masochism 15, 142, 164
142 Same and Other 23, 27, 37, 41,
as defence 8, 117 44, 45, 111
homosexual 122 Sandler, Anne-Marie 121
schizo-paranoid position 217 and death 205
Schizonia 139 defence against 118
schizophrenia 105, 151 development in boys and girls
Schreber case 12, 18-19, 33, 207 163
Schwind, M. von 42 female 139
sclerosis 114, 115 and Freud 22, 56, 65, 204,
scopophilia 5, 11, 148 206-7, 217
scopophilia-exhibitionism 142 and immortality 208
Self 9, 29, 34, 35, 48 infantile 159, 162, 212
see also ego and morality 155
self-deprecation 32 and parental transference
self-esteem 6 163-4
self-idealisation 103, 149 and parental wishes 159, 160
self-mastery 39 and personal fantasy 160-1
self-object 17 and play 204
self-observation 89 and psychoanalytic interven­
self-preservation 13, 69, 114 tion 163
and ego-love 61 role of 4, 7, 13, 207
and inhibition of aim 70 and self-esteem 6
preservation of species 22, 61, and trauma 100
70, 206 see also bisexuality; jouissance
and sexual drives 4-5, 22, 64, Shafer, Roy 121
74, 206 Shakespeare, William 24, 46-7,
self-sufficiency 114, 116, 141, 153
149 shame 131-3, 136, 139, 142-3,
self-withdrawal 28 147-8, 156-7
separation, from mother 77, 83, see also guilt
84, 86, 92-3 signifier
separation anxiety 21, 92, 115, heterogeneity of 35
125 order of 76-7
sex, origin of word 167 and representative 39^40
sexual desire, destruction of 161 silence 35-41, 126
sexual difference 19, 89, 163, Sisyphus 157
167-9, 207 sleep, and dreams 50-2
and bisexuality 149, 158, 162, societies, self-destructive 222-3
167 soma 207
and transference 36 somatic dementia 104
see also bisexuality Sophocles 131, 132, 133
sexual drives 18-19, 22, 66, 74, soul 204, 221
87, 206 see also immortality
sexual reality 162 specific action 103
sexuality 15, 93-4, 98, 158-69, Spiegel, L. 48
219 Spitz, R.A. 48
adult 162 splitting 106, 145, 151, 156, 162,
biological 158-9 185, 212
and dead mother complex states, theory of 56, 57, 63, 70
185 Strachey, J. 62, 75, 89
structures, theory of 56, 57, 63, and counter-transference 41-4
70, 75 and dead mother complex
Styx 45 176, 184, 189-92
subject 29-30, 93 delusional 111
subjective object 17 and fusion 124
sublimation 7, 24, 27, 69, 90, 93, interpretation 152
142 narcissistic 33-41
aim of analysis 43 paternal 122
and aim-inhibited drives 64 and sexual difference 36
and creation 27 transference depression 176-7
and dead mother complex transference neurosis 212
172, 181 transitional objects 100, 119
and Eros 223 transvestism 164-7
and Freud 43, 60, 64, 69 trauma-object 96, 98, 100-1, 102,
and play 204 103-4
pseudo- 139, 142, 148 triangulation 102, 161, 174
suicide 45, 148, 149, 154, 170, twins, myths of 26
212 Tzu, Lieh 91, 127
super-ego 20, 43, 134-5, 145-6,
210, 212-13 Ulysses 84, 132
and ego 13, 98, 134 unconditional love 140
function of 67, 89 unconscious 210-11
and group anxiety 124 and death 202, 206, 208
internalisation of 148 laws of 24-5
loss of 173 and neurosis 208
and moral narcissism 147 unintegrated state 110
and Oedipus complex 19, unitary ego 7, 98-9, 100, 120
172 unity 39, 120
Power of Destiny 91, 92-3,
213 vagina 122, 128, 167, 206-7,
and religion 147 216-18
and shame 142 and castration anxiety 112,
Symbolic 172 115, 176
symptoms 104 discovery-rediscovery of 19
syntagma 29, 33, 39 verbs 31-2
vesicles 27, 62, 71
Tausk, V. 88 Virgin Mary 139
tessera 26 vision 8
Thespiae 45 psychogenic disturbances of 4,
thought, sexualisation of 5, 7, 5
12
Three Fates' dream 199 Weismann, A. 22, 207
Tiresias 44 Weltanschauung 204-5
Torok, M. 171, 221 Winnicott, D. 9, 27-8, 30, 38,
total ego 29 192
transcendental speech 41 dependence 120, 145
transference 99, 119, 120-1 ego-relatedness 24, 97
Winnicott, D. (continued)
false self 27, 139, 145, 148-9
holding 93, 102, 182, 183
mourning 171
and pain 110
play 43, 204
reactive behaviour 108
sexual drives 74
sexuality 159-60
subjective object 17
transitional object 100
wish-fulfilment 203
withdrawal 12
Wolf Man 112, 173, 186, 198, 209
'wooden reel' 85, 198
zero 23, 25, 26-7, 28
zero excitation 52-5, 90, 145, 222
and absolute primary narcis­
sism 76, 169
and moral narcissism 149, 156
and self-sufficiency 81
see also Nirvana principle;
principle of inertia