Narcissism and the Literary Libido. Marshall W. Alcorn Jr.
is narcissistic because it engages the narcissistic dialectics that contribute to the ongoing regulation of the self-system and thus greater mastery of psychic conflict. Literary engagement relaxes the ego, so it can entertain conflict and take pleasure in narcissistic dialectics that in other contexts would be too threatening. Last, reading is narcissistic to the extent that it experiments with imaginary libidinal investments and transformations.
Theorists from Freud to Lacan have described narcissism differently, but there is one thread that runs through all these theoretical positions: an interest in the nature, quality, and fluidity of libidinal investments. Freud first began to develop a complicated notion of narcissism when he saw its potential to explain transformations in libido. More recently, Otto Kernberg has developed his own understanding of narcissism by emphasizing the relationship between narcissism and the “vicissitudes of libido.” According to Kernberg, “Narcissism cannot be divorced from the study of the vicissitudes of both libido and aggression and from the study of the vicissitudes of internalized object relations.”21 For Kernberg narcissism is a term covering those processes whereby the various internal components—libido, aggression, and internalized objects—of the self are modified. Kernberg’s account of narcissism broadens Freud’s account by seeing narcissism in developmental and not exclusively pathological terms.
Kernberg’s explanation of the relationship between narcissism and libido is especially interesting because it suggests that libidinal attachments are not driven fundamentally by instinct, but driven by a culturally and psychologically conditioned flow of desire determined initially and most forcefully by early identifications with parents and caretakers. Stated simply, what we want is determined by whom we identify with. This simple statement, however, oversimplifies the relationships involved. A direct quote from Kernberg will give a fuller sense of the range and implication of his insight:
Libido and aggression differentiate out of the undifferentiated matrix common to the ego and the id. The organization of these two drives occurs under the influence of the developing internalized object relations, [that is, early self-structure building identifications with others] which, in turn, are integrated under the organizing influence of affects. . . .
The biologically determined intensity of affects can be channeled into ever more complex intrapsychic motivational systems; but—except under extreme circumstances—there is no direct mechanical relationship between biological pressures and psychic functioning.22
The so-called “drives” of attachment and hostility come to us as feeling states as we participate in and imitate the subjectivity of those around us. The intensity of emotion—pleasure and pain—is partly a biological experience, but it is also an experience determined and structured by intrapsychic components. It is structured and made complicated by “developing internalized object relations,” or our use of the emotional structures of others as components in our own inner identity patterns. Thus, for Kernberg, it is not so much biology as various libidinal and aggressive organizations found in memory, identification, and perception (organizations of libidinal investments) that lay down structures that shape enduring patterns of human pleasure and pain.
Heinz Kohut, in a similar argument, suggests that “drives” are not biologically programmed “instincts,” but are derivatives of early forms of identifications. For Kohut, humans are “driven” most primordially by a desire to enlarge or secure the “being” of the self. Any “abnormalities of the drives,” Kohut argues, are merely “the symptomatic consequences of [a] . . . central defect in the self.”23 Kohut, like Kernberg, disavows traditional Freudian theory. He argues that how we feel and what we want are largely the result of complex patterns of libidinal investments—not of instincts (innate biological drives)—directed primarily by our particular attachments, identifications, and interactions with others.
When narcissism is seen in the larger context of libido theory rather than in the more limited context of maladjusted behavior, we will be in a better position to understand the configurations of perception, emotion, and cognition that fund rhetorical transformations. The work of Kohut and Kernberg distinguishes between narcissistic personality disorders and narcissistic strategies for defense or development common to all people.24 Kohut diverges more radically from classical psychoanalytic theory than Kernberg, but both men propose a theory of ego development emphasizing the role of narcissistic investments in the formation of the internal structure of the self. The particular nature of our libidinal investments in processes such as empathy, identification, idealization, loss, and mourning, for example, can alter who we are and what we think. It seems only too true, thus, that the “rhetoric” of early character formation is the work of libidinal investment.
This theory of development (found in different ways in both object-relations theory and self-psychology) emphasizes that the structure of the self develops initially in terms of the child’s earliest identifications. Identification means, as Thomas Ogden states, not only “a modeling of oneself after the external object, but, as in the case of superego formation, a process by which the functions of the external object are instated within the psyche.”25 The self thus takes its internal structure, its being, its emotions, fears, and motivations, from its interaction with others in its world. Identification is not simply a gesture that identity performs; it is a gesture that can form and transform identity.
Freud’s work indicates that identifications follow the paths of our libidinal investments.26 Our most profound identifications, however, seem to be in response to the experience of loss. First of all, we suffer when a person close to us is lost because, as Freud says, we are “unwilling to abandon” our libidinal attachment to the object (the person). Though the object is gone, we cannot abandon it, and we are unwilling to accept substitutions. The object is present in our imaginations, and we persist in our attachment to it.
We are able to “work through” the experience of loss gradually as we come to internalize the lost properties of the object. Internalization occurs when libido attached to the object is not abandoned, but instead withdrawn to the self-structure of the mourner. The person in mourning, instead of giving up that which is lost, appropriates for subjectivity particular qualities belonging to one lost. A mourner internalizes for self-structure certain qualities of the person lost. In many cases, these are “admired” qualities” and they become self functions; for example, we may internalize a parent’s discipline or nurturing concern when we lose that parent. Human character is thus changed because of this narcissistic “transformation of libido.”
Acts of identification are not always as consequential as those acts of identification that heal the psychic wound of loss. But all acts of identification, attachment, and admiration can be considered narcissistic. Narcissism, in the broadest sense, does not refer to a specific model of deviant behavior. It refers to a theoretical understanding of the dynamic relationships between our “internalizations” of “external” objects and our libidinal models of aspiration and identity. Although many theorists continue to emphasize the primary importance of early childhood experience in the development of self-structure, contemporary theorists are more open to considering the impact of adult experience on character.
Theories of narcissism seek to understand the ways various needs and self-images are activated or adopted in times of stress. Narcissism refers most fundamentally to a process: “the cathexis of the self,” the self’s libidinal involvement with itself, its mode of investing energy in evaluative, protective, and developmental functions. In order to develop, the ego must cathect itself and must have itself as the object of its own aspirations. If the ego did not cathect itself there would be no superego, no ego ideals, and no truly human behavior. Thus the growth of human identity is necessarily “narcissistic” in the broad sense of the term. Such a usage