Narcissism and the Literary Libido. Marshall W. Alcorn Jr.
concept. The term applies equally well to situations where we imagine ourselves as different from what we are, as we try to imagine ourselves as like another, and situations where we imagine others as different from what they are, because we want them to be like ourselves. In the former case, we try to change ourselves in order to be more like others. In the latter case, we try to change—or perceive others differently—in order treat them like ourselves. Identification is crucial for all rhetorical functions, but the term identification oversimplifies the complexity of the psychological processes involved in responding to the discourse of others. For reasons I soon make clear, I have decided to elaborate on Burke’s term, identification, by giving special emphasis to another related term, narcissism. Recent study of narcissistic processes has yielded a more complete understanding of the various forms and intensities of identification.
The term narcissism is associated with the Greek myth of Narcissus and its theme of self-love, and is used by both psychoanalysts and literary critics to describe a wide range of conscious and unconscious, interpersonal and intrapersonal phenomena. If we turn to Freud to discover precisely what narcissism means, however, we are likely to turn away more confused. In his 1910 footnote to “Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality,” Freud associated narcissism with autoerotic self stimulation and speculated that such tendencies could explain homosexuality.2 By 1914 Freud saw wider applications for the concept of libidinal “self-love.” In “On Narcissism: An Introduction,” Freud used the concept of narcissistic cathexis (the self’s investing energy in itself) to explain narcissistic rewards to be gained from sleep, schizophrenia, and hypochondria.3 These conditions, Freud postulated, offer satisfaction because they offer a regressive experience of returning to early childhood’s blissful oneness with the mother. Freud still imagined narcissism as a particularly self-reflexive dimension of experiencing and pursuing desire, but he began to take an interest in the concept’s potential to make sense of various transformations of libido. In his account of mourning in 1917, Freud explained the mourner’s loss of “libidinal” interest in the external world in terms of narcissism. Mourners, he suggested, lose interest in the outside world because they have “narcissistically” withdrawn libido into the self.
Freud’s concern for the puzzling symptoms of mourning, profound dejection, cessation of interest in the external world, inability to love, general inhibition of all activity, and a lowering of self-esteem, indicates an important truth about the nature of human libidinal attachments. People seldom respond to major loss by simply choosing and pursing a new object of desire. Instead, people suffer a feeling of emptiness that must be “worked through” before “transformed libido” can be directed to new objects. A physically painful experience of emptiness must be suffered by the self; a complex process of suffering must be accepted and endured before “libido” can be redirected again to the outside world. If an old refrigerator quits working, people typically junk it and eagerly go out to buy a new model. If “Lassie” dies, however, no one quickly dumps the body and walks happily to a well-stocked pet store. Changes in deeply invested objects of human desire are not simple affairs. Changes in desire often require complicated changes in people. To explain these changes adequately, one must understand Freud’s observations about “transformations in libido” and its relation to narcissism.
Literary theory and rhetorical theory most often talk about transformations in value, rather than transformations in libido. We often think of changes in value as a rational (or an irrational) process that proceeds forward as if the subject were an inert appendage being dragged along by other very different forces. In some cases this is true; but it is not true in those cases that affect us most. As Jameson’s quote (see chap, epigraph) suggests, major transformations in value must occur first at the level of transformations in the “libidinal investment of the individual subject.” The changes that most require rhetorical skill, those made difficult because of deep investments in ideas and values, require complex libidinal transformations.
My intention in this book is to demonstrate that the central focus for rhetorical study should not be language exclusively, but should include the relations between language and libidinal structures. Libidinal structures are the components of self-structure. These structures are composed by our interaction with language and experience and they modify our sense of both ourselves and the world. If we look carefully at literary language, we can see interactions between self-structure and libidinal structure driving rhetorical operations. In order to understand this claim, however, we must develop a greater understanding of libido. I have claimed that the concept of identification can be more thoroughly understood by examining psychoanalytic research on narcissism. I also want to suggest that narcissism can be more thoroughly understood if we examine its relationship to libidinal transformations.
The concept of libido has always been charged with ambiguity, but psychoanalytic theory has found the term very handy for discussing the flow of human desire and for describing changes in the object or intensity of desire. Heinz Kohut talks of libido as a force that makes people and objects seem interesting. Libido is an energy investing objects (both human beings in the psychoanalytic sense of the term and material everyday objects like cars and clothes) with appeal and desirability.4 In the crudest sense, libido is the force of sexual attraction. This sexual dimension should not be underestimated. Stephen Mitchell points out that “sex is a powerful organizer of experience,” subtly affecting the tone of our perceptions.5 In common experience, however, the sexual energy of libido often seems quite diffuse. People are libidinally invested in many objects—clothes, cars, computers, guns, coffee makers. This does not mean that there is an explicit sexual experience generated by these objects. But it does mean that the investments made in these objects are not trivial. How can we understand this attachment? How can we understand, for example, the reluctance of the adult to junk an old coffee maker?
Mitchell’s discussion of the child’s early “sexual” experiences is helpful here: “Bodily sensations, processes, and events dominate the child’s early experience. . . . The child draws on and generalizes from the major patterns of bodily experience in constructing and representing a view of the world and other people.”6 These early constructions and representations are linked to strong feelings of pleasure and pain, and are “libidinal” systems of fantasy and memory that become building blocks for experience and self-identity. Because infantile sexuality is so poorly understood, libidinal perception and libidinal experience are also poorly understood. But it is clear that some modes of thinking and perceiving are especially energetic and linked to bodily experience. This form of experience seems related to the idea of “gut level” experience. It is similar to the child’s experience of the world, because this form of thinking is experienced in the body, not just in the mind. It is more “attached” to things—attached, for example, to old clothes or old coffee makers. Consequently, it is a mode of thinking more vivid, more intense, and more interesting than usual.
In addition, it operates according to its own principles, often indifferent to the demands of rational thought. Both Freud and Lacan argued that humans develop logical abstract thought in order to free themselves from childlike attachments to objects and images. But logic and abstract thought do not end more primitive thought attached to objects; it simply pushes it into the unconscious. According to Freud, “The system Ucs contains the thing-cathexes [the libidinal investments] of the objects, the first and true object-cathexes.”7 We might thus consider the unconscious not simply as a reservoir of repressed or forgotten memories, but as a system of unconscious libidinal attachments that affects our attention to and response to conscious objects.
Understood in the broadest sense, libido is a “psychic energy” that can invest almost anything with an attractiveness that does not at all seem sexual. Both advertising and art attempt to orchestrate the flow of libido in order to reposition or revalue