Tuesday, March 30, 2010

Szondi Ego Analysis Section 1,1 of page 1

Lipot (Leopold) Szondi, Ich-Analyse [Ego Analysis]

Translated by By Arthur C. Johnston, PhD
© 2008



Please Observe: The copyright of this article (in German or in English) belongs to the Szondi Institute and to Dr. Arthur C. Johnston. This means you may not duplicate this article without their permissions.



[DIV 1.1 (Long page) Book Chapter XIV]



Negation.  Denial.



Concept and Forms of Negation



Negation is the partly unconscious and partly conscious elementary striving of the ego with avoidance, denial, inhibition, alienation, and repression of definite demands, ideas, and ideals.



The extreme goal of negation is destruction of the imagination [Desimagination], thus the destruction of the ideals of being and having, in short: Destruction.  Denial is thus fundamentally the antipode of incorporation.  The result of introjection is, as is well known, the identification with the object.  The result of negation, on the other hand, manifests itself in counter identification.



Introjection (k+) and negation (k-) form a functional pair of opposites.  We call the wholeness of both functions: The position taking k ego or ego systole or ego constriction.  Ego systole is a between-factorial ego concept.  Because the constriction is originally directed against the expansion and against the diastole of the internal world and not against the external world.



If the systole overvalues the relation of the person to the external world, then this is mostly pathological.  [Thus, for example, with the negativism of the catatonic.] With the denying constriction, the ego is compelled to contain, on the one hand, its readiness for boundless expansion and its excessive projection capability and, on the other hand, however, also to deny the have ideals of introjection since they appear to it useless and impossible.  Ego systole is consequently constantly a deflation or a deprojection or a countering of introjection.  That means: The denying ego systole is taking a constricting position against inflation, against projection, and against introjection.  How can the ego, however, take a position against the ego diastole?  Only by the means that it turns itself outward and examines reality.  That is the end goal of the task of the "k" ego.  Reality testing can, according to Freud, take place in two directions.



The ego tests on the one hand if the strivings, ideas, and ideals are good or bad.  The good will be accepted and introjected (k+); the bad denied and cast out  (k-).



On the other hand the ego tests reality by determining if the contents of the projections and inflations are or are not to be found actually in the external world.



Only through this reality testing directed to the external can the position taking k ego limit the inflative or projective ego diastole.  This fact can clarify the apparent paradoxical experience that namely the "constricting k ego" turns the person to the external world -- thus he or she becomes extraverted; on the other hand, the "expanding" p ego turns him or her to the internal world -- thus becoming introverted.



Similarly as with projection one can also with negation differentiate a primary and a secondary process.



Primary negation is exclusively leveled at the inner realm and is satisfied by constriction of the ego diastole tendencies.  This constriction is executed precisely through reality testing and thus through extraversion.  The "k" ego calls virtually for help from the external world in order to defend itself against the danger of boundless diastole in the interior world. This restricting form is healthy and expresses itself in adaptation.



Secondary negation, however, goes further.  It does not content itself with the limiting of possession [or obsession] (p+) or projection (p-), but destroys all ideals of having.  It draws the ego back from the external world completely.  Consequently the ego capsulates itself from the outer world completely.  It consists of an ego barrier to the inner realm (k-!!) as also to the outer (C - -).  Psychiatry would speak of negativism and catatonia.  The sick person locks himself also completely from the environment: He does not speak, doesn't react, doesn't eat, etc.



Introjection and negation are consequently both reality testing k ego functions.  With the introjection this reality tester says yes; with negation, no.



In our culture negation is the most frequently used elementary function of the ego; on the other hand, it is projection in the case of primitives.  This fact was experimentally established by us1 first and then confirmed by others in the first place by F. Soto Yarritu 2 and E. Percy.3



The position taking k ego can deny personal, collective, and familial contents of the p ego, and consequently yields thus the well-known three forms with negation: (1) Personal, (2) collective, and (3) familial denial.



1.  Personal Negation



(a) Psychoanalytical Interpretation



Negation is personal, when the ego denies ideas, strivings, or ideals that once belonged to the personal stock of the repressed unconscious.



The circumstance that S. Freud until 1926 had recognized repression as the only important manner of defense in the teachings on neuroses makes it understandable why he has given the definition of "denial" only from the standpoint of repression.  It is: "Denial is a manner of bringing up repressed knowledge, actually already a raising-up of repression but certainly no acceptance of the repressed...." "A repressed representation or thinking content can penetrate thus to consciousness under the condition that it lets itself be denied."4



From the teachings of Freud on denial we present the following statements:



1.  Denial is an intellectual and conscious judgment function.



2.  With this process the intellectual function separates however from the affect process.  Then through the denial, the result of the repression process is only made to come back, namely that the conception contents of repression do not succeed to become conscious.  Through the denial process a path for the repressed idea is made open to consciousness; the idea is however denied.



The essential in repression -- namely the affective part -- undergoes nevertheless immediate denial.  Freud says, "Something in judgment denies; fundamentally it consists in something of the greatest love that the ego must repress.  The condemnation is an intellectual substitute for the repression; its no is a sign thereby as an original certificate for something that was 'made in Germany.'"5



Denial consequently according to psychoanalysis is a release of repressed contents to consciousness, whose contents subsequently are denied nevertheless through the intellectual judgment function.



3.  In addition, however, also introjection and, consequently, introjective identification, according to psychoanalysis, is a judgment function.  Freud finds the difference in the following:



The judgment function of the ego works in two directions, and indeed at one time in the "pleasure ego" and another time in the "reality ego."  The "pleasure ego" asks: Should the perception and idea be or not be accepted into the ego?



The judgment function of this "pleasure ego" is evident: That all good should be incorporated in the ego -- orally expressed "eaten up"; all bad on the other hand should be -- as foreign to the ego -- denied -- or more orally "spit out."  Introjection is thus, from the standpoint of the pleasure ego, out of the choice of the good and the assimilation of the good into the ego.



On the other hand denial is the fate of all that is strange and an outside being, and thus is bad.  One can say: Denial is the result of the xenophobia of the ego.



The second question is placed by the reality ego.  It says: Is the idea present in reality?  This is a question of reality testing.



Freud states, "Experience has taught that it is not only important if a thing (object of satisfaction) possesses 'good' characteristics; that is, the acceptance is deserved by the ego, but also if it is present in the outer world so that one can seize it according to one's need."6  He sees the first purpose of reality testing therein that the ego must satisfy itself if an object corresponding to the representation still further exists in the outer world and if consequently that there is a real possibility for it to be found again.



4.  The condition for setting up of each reality testing is according to Freud: The loss of objects, which made possible real satisfactions in the past.  This thesis of Freud is indicated experimentally by us through the coupling of the reactions m- and k -.



5.  Freud goes still further and makes the bold attempt to attribute the origin of intellectual judgment capabilities - including those of reality testing and denial -- to the roots of the primary drive excitations.  He states: "Affirmation -- as substitute for union -- belongs to Eros; denial -- the result of ejecting -- belongs to the destructive drive [Thanatos].7





(b) Fate Analytical [Schicksalsanalytsche] Interpretation



In psychoanalysis the process of denial is considered as a process of second degree.



Denial is for the psychoanalysts constantly a secondary and intellectual substitute for repression, which always represents the primary process in the soul's depths.



The interpretation of fate psychology [Schicksalspsychology] deviates from the Freudian principles.  Two events have contributed to this deviation in the definition of denial.



First, the circumstance that after 1926 in psychoanalytical theories of defense, repression had generally lost also its exclusive and ubiquitous position.8  One begins to recognize besides repression also other independent kinds of defenses.



Second, in particular the results of experimental ego analysis since 1935 has forced us to interpret denial as a primordial elementary function of the ego.  From the standpoint of experimental ego analysis we must represent the processes in the case of negation as follows:



I.  Negation is an elementary function of the ego, which actually is of such an elementary nature that it represents an ego radical just like projection, inflation, and introjection.



II. Negation is not to be understood as an intellectual replacement of repression, but repression is itself only a subordinate form of the elementary ego function of negation.  Precisely in that consists the revision of the negation concept.  In the ego teachings of fate analysis negation is a principal concept, a genus proximum; repression, on the other hand, is only a first among parts [primus inter pares], thus only one of the important subordinate parts, which -- as also with the other denial defense forms -- are subordinate under the chief category of negation.



III. Negation is not always a conscious intellectual judgment function of the ego as psychoanalysis assumes. The ego can deny demands and ideas that are not conscious. We enumerate the following variations of unconscious negation:



1.  Unconscious negation of unconscious projections: Unconscious adaptation.  This process is the chief form of denial and makes up the essence of each adaptation to reality.  Pleasure demands and power expansions are transferred out of the personal and frequently also out of the familial and collective unconscious, and the position taking ego denies them, without the person himself being made conscious either of the process of projection or of negation.



2.  Unconscious negation of unconscious obsessions [possessions], of inflations, and of doublings.  They appear clinically in the form of inhibitions.  The person, however, becomes conscious neither of inflation nor of negation.  Frequently however the obsession or the doubling tendency (ambitendency) becomes conscious; on the other hand, the process of denial in the form of inhibition is discharged unconsciously.  This is particularly the case with conversion hysteria.



3.  Unconscious negation of latent femininity, respectively abandonment: Estrangement.



This process leads to clinical phenomena that is registered as estrangement and depersonalization or, perhaps, as jealousy delusions.  In these cases the person is missing the slightest suspicion that he denies his abandonment or his femininity.  Its clinical symptomatology expresses itself only in the uncomfortable feeling that all is strange, dead-like or gray, that the objects of the world have become flat or small, that sounds come as if from a distance, etc.  In addition one observes increased self-observations (hypochondria).  That the person denies something and, in particular, what he denies remain completely unconscious to him.



4.  Of course the prohibited need as also its denial with the repression is constantly unconscious.



5.  Negativisms, in particular with catatonic schizophrenia, are unconscious denial processes, which -- as we proved experimentally -- lay hidden as unconscious destruction of false ideal formations (destruction of imagination and iconoclastic destructions).9  The denial of ideal formations up to destruction is unconscious for the sick person.



6.  The unconscious negation of the backgrounds [the background ego].  The drive dialectic research with the complementary method has convinced us that the ego of the foreground (the so-called foreground ego) must often either deny the whole background or negate particular functions of the background, in particular the background ego.  Naturally this negation of the backgrounds likewise is an unconscious process.10  Thus with the adaptation (Sch = - -) of the foreground ego constantly is denied the narcissistic ego of the background, which must be everything and have everything (Sch = + +).



The foreground ego of the inhibited man (Sch = - +) denies energetically his antipode in the background, namely the autistic undisciplined background ego (Sch = + -). In the case where repression is established, the repressing and denying power of the foreground-ego (Sch = - 0) in particular is against the background ego, which actually affirms the femininity and consequently supports the same sexuality (Sch = + ±).



The ego analyst in the case of negativist-destructive catatonia and the catatonoid (Sch = -!! - or Sch -!! 0) has convinced us that the sick person with the destructive denial is trying to destroy mostly the background needs, which precisely lead to exaggerated ideal formation and hyper-identification (Sch = +!! +).  The greater the negativism in the case of a sick person, the greater is the demand to have everything (k+!) and to be everything (p+!).



Naturally this process in the case of catatonia is likewise unconscious.



These only briefly cited results of ego analysis have moved us to revise the denial concept.  We maintain:



Denial is no intellectual and conscious process, where the person tries to make the repressed return.  Negation is a primary, mostly unconscious elementary function of the ego, which exhibits the following five manifestations:



1.  Adaptation:                                Sch = - -

2.  Inhibition:                                   Sch = - +

3.  Estrangement:                             Sch = - ±

4.  Repression:                                 Sch = - 0

5.  Negativism:                         }     Sch = -!!  -

     Destruction of imagination: }     Sch = -!! 0

     Destruction:                         }     Sch = -!!! - or -!!! 0.



The common factor in these five ego processes is denial: Which manifests itself in the test in the reaction: k-.



The separating of the differences among the five negation forms consists, on the one hand, in the phase differences of the ego diastole, thus in factor p (p = - or + or ± or 0) or, on the other hand, in the quantity of denial.



*



In the theories of defense we will treat in detail the five subordinate forms of the main defense category "negation" in all their relationships.



Adaptation, inhibition, estrangement, repression, negativism, and destruction are all only different forms of the same saying no.  Saying no is the most human and nevertheless the most fateful [verhängnisvollste] statement of humans.  The differences in this saying no go in two directions.



First of all, whether that which the person denies represents an object of projection or inflation or both ego diastolic processes or introjection.



Secondly, whether the strength of the denying is an adapting, inhibiting, estranging, repressing, or substantial destructing force.  Briefly, the quantity of the denying strength determines the expression form of the denial.



 If the ego in adaptive form says no and if the denied object is a wish that it has transferred into the world, then one consider this adaptation.



Says the ego no to all that which can be promising for being great and being everything, and this demand to being like God becomes denied through constriction of one's ego function, thus one speaks about inhibition.



The ego says no to the abandonment and to all demands of femaleness, which move in one, and these demands are energetically ejected and denied continuously, then estrangement presents itself.



Says the ego no in pathologically repressing something about which it itself knows no more but which it has known before, thus one speaks of repression.



Says the ego inflexibly and rigidly no to everything that it wishes deeply to have and to be, then we speak of negativism.



If the ego destroys with violence all ideals, which it had once itself practiced with devotion, thus one speaks of destruction of imagination and of destruction both in the case of criminals and unrestrained maniacs.



The what and the how much of denial is consequently different.  Saying no is constantly the same in all these forms of denying taking of a position.



And consequently the form and the degree of saying no of this elementary function of the ego becomes one of the most important factors of existence [Daseins], which determines the fate of the individual and the history of mankind.



2.  Collective Negation



One can consider the phenomenon of collective negation under two aspects.  First a denial is then of a collective nature, when the individual avoids, denies, inhibits, estranges, or represses not personal but definite universal human impulses and ideas from the collective unconscious.  The denied contents in this case belong to the collective and not to the personal stock of the soul.  The designation "collective" will signify in this case consequently the collective origin of ideas or impulses negated by the individual.  Thus, in the same sense as we have emphasized the collective nature with projection, inflation and introjection.



One can call collective negation, however, also all rules and prohibitions of religion, the state, the group, the clans, by which any collective group denies certain behaviors of individuals.  If the denying court is the person himself, then the prohibition comes from within, and the denied need is other than that of a collective nature.  If, on the other hand, the denying court is a collective group (group, clan, state, church, etc.), then the prohibition comes from outside, and the person is compelled by moral, religious or state limitations to renounce a personal or collective need.



In the first volume of Triebpathologie [Drive Pathology] we have specified as follows the differences between ethics and morals:



Ethics is the inner prohibition and the inner law against killing and against incest love.  It is based on the root factor e.  This prohibition bears constantly a "holy" (sacred) character.



Morals is the outer prohibition against certain behaviors that are prohibited by society.  Morals are based on the root factor hy. It develops the shame barriers. Fate psychology sees the commonality of these two kinds of "shrinking or narrowing" in that ethical as well as moral defense mechanisms represent affective derivations.  Both are phenomenon of the paroxysmal circle.  We have grounds, however, to assume that the ego as also with the so-called affective kinds of defense remains the leading court.  Without the ego there is neither ethics nor morals.



Under this criterion collective negation can originate at one time with the help of the internal law, the ethics.  In this case the ego denies a collective need -- like killing or incest -- out of an inner prohibition.  At other times, however, the collective negation appears as a moral denial, whereby thus a personal felt demand is denied because the outside power of the group (clan), class, society, country, municipality, or church prohibits and punishes the behavior.



There are however collective needs, which from the ego as well as from within, thus by the ethical censor as also from the outside -- that is through shame barriers of the group morality -- since primeval times have been denied in a double way.  Such a collective need, in our opinion, is incest love.



Incest Taboo as Collective Negation



The word incest stems from incestare = to pollute and to stain.  Some languages consider incest "blood shame" [Blutschande].



Legally by incest is understood sexual intercourse between relatives in the sense of parents and children, grandparents and grandchildren, brothers and sisters, and in some countries even among those related by marriage.



The problem of incest is divided psychologically into two subordinate questions. First of all: Is the incest love a collective need or a rare aberration of certain ill persons? Secondly: Is the incest inhibition -- as taboo and as incest barrier -- purely social, stemming from the outside and that is taught and thus an acquired characteristic of the human child or, however, a collective and hereditary safety mechanism against the incest love?



Point 1. Historically one must accept -- as the sexual physician Hermann Rohleder11 from Leipzig has shown -- that sexual intercourse between blood relatives, and in particular between brothers and sisters, was somewhat completely natural with prehistoric people. This custom was preserved still into historical time as with the Arabs. (Strabo explained that an Arab king's daughter is to have sexual intercourse with her fifteen brothers.)



According to Rohleder, incest was found as somewhat completely natural and occurred with permission not only with the old Egyptians, Persians and Peruvians but still today the custom with the Weddas in Annam and on Ceylon. Myths, sagas and legends of all peoples encourage the collective nature of incest love. "The Incest Motif in Poetry and Saga" was treated by 0. Rank and that likewise speaks for the collective nature of incest love.12 We find a further collection of symbols of incest in the works of C. G. Jung. 13 The ubiquitous nature of incest wishes was emphasized by Freud not only with neurotics but with those in the normal course of development. He writes: The first object choice of humans is regularly incestuous, with the male directed toward mother and sister, and it requires the sharpest prohibitions in order to hold this continually effective infantile predisposition from being implemented.



In a correctional institute for neglected girls in Budapest, we found that 28% of the girls had incest relations with their brother or father. Much of this speaks for the fact that one is able to obtain statistically only a small part of the cases and that in the country the experience of incest love indeed occurs still more frequently than in the large city.



Incest love bears thus the indication of a collective need.



Point 2. From where however does the prohibition come against incest love? From where the incest barrier?



Historically it is certain that incest love not always, not everywhere, and not for all members of a community was forbidden. From history it is well-known that people slated for inbreeding with the old Egyptians with strict relationship inbreeding were paired - indeed even with incest marriage. The kings of the Ptolemy line constantly married their own sisters.14



At the time of the old Persian realms (from 550 to 330), under the kings Cyrus, Darius and Xerxes, the direct incest marriage was at the highest peak. Brother and sister, father and daughter, and mother and son wed each other. Among the highest and leading castes of the rulers incest marriage was even the law.15 After Cambyses had arranged that the rulers would have to marry their sisters and even their daughters, the degeneration of this ruler family quickly progressed. Herodotus indicates that Cambyses was married to his sister, Artaxerxes. (According to Plutarch he should have been married to his daughter Sysimithres and according to Curtius even with his mother.16)



To a large extent the Persian realm through the incest marriages of the ruler families, throne changes, and murder (incest murder), the rule within a short time collapses. The inbreeding of the people accelerated naturally also the degeneration.



The old Peruvian is according to Rohleder democratic in inbreeding and in incest among the people. Because with the old Peruvians inbreeding and incest marriage was a national custom not solely in the governing but also in the bourgeois families. An Inca (ruler) was allowed to marry only his own biological sister and no other. From the blood of the sun, from which they believed to be descended and to be held pure, the other castes of the Peruvian had also to marry the sister, the daughter, and even the mother. The warrior married likewise his sister.17



These historical facts speak against the interpretation that incest prohibition and incest taboo would be a natural, inherited, and collective striving of humans. Incest love is however nevertheless subjected to taboo.



The Polynesian word taboo S. Freud has translated in the sense of "holy inhibition." With this expression he wanted to express the two opposite directions of action of taboo. Taboo is called, on the one hand, holy and consecrated (something as sacred); on the other hand forbidden, dangerous, terrible and impure.18



Freud stresses that taboo with primitives is neither a religious nor a moral prohibition.19 He says: "The taboo prohibitions are devoid of each explanation; they are of unknown origin; for us are incomprehensible; they appear natural to those who stand under its rules."20 According to Freud's opinion the primitive puts a taboo in place where he fears a danger. He constructs the history of the taboo according to the model of the compulsory prohibitions that were imposed from the outside on "a generation of primitives at one time and that nevertheless probably were impressed thus upon them violently by the earlier generation. These prohibitions concerned activities toward which existed a strong predisposition. The prohibitions were maintained then from generation to generation, perhaps only due to tradition maintained by parental and social authority. Perhaps however they have in the later organizations already "organized" as a piece of inherited psychological possession. Whether there are such "innate ideas" and whether they caused alone or in cooperation with the education the setting up of that taboo, who would be able exactly to decide for the question under discussion (for the incest taboo)? But from maintaining the taboo would be invoked, one has the idea that the original pleasure that each prohibition is concerned with is also still continued by the people having the taboo. These people have thus toward their taboo prohibitions an ambivalent attitude; they would like in the unconscious nothing better than to trespass it, but they are afraid before it; they directly are afraid because they would like it, but the fear is stronger than the desire. The desire in addition however with each individual is unconscious as it is with the neurotic."21



The interpretation of Freud on the origin of taboo prohibitions with primitives leans thus rather in the direction of the exogamy [caused by external conditions]. The primitives were imposed upon and pressured violently from the outside. Only the desire to do what is most strictly denied by the taboo prohibition seems to be, also according to Freud, a collective need. Most ethnologists see social mechanisms in the taboo prohibition. Thus also in the incest prohibition.



By careful inquiries among different authorities and supported by his own observations in Northwest Melanesia with the natives of the Trobriand islands (British New Guinea), Bronislaw Malinowski arranged the taboo prohibitions to the degree of their severity as follows:



"1. By far the strictest is the prohibition against brother and sister incest; it is the principal item of the suvasova [the breach of exogamy] taboos; violations occur extremely rarely both in reality and in legend.



2. Blood shame with the mother is considered as unnatural and unimaginable; cases are not well known; it is an important form of the suvasova; it is not spoken of with the same abhorrence as of the brother and sister incest.



3. Sexual intercourse with one's own daughter is not called suvasova; there are no supernatural punishments for it; it is felt as extremely bad; several cases of it are well-known.



4. Sexual intercourse with the daughter of the sister of the mother is a form of suvasova, occurs rarely, is very bad, and is constantly kept secret; with discovery it is more severely punished.



5. Sexual intercourse with the sister of the wife does not belong to suvasova but however is bad; marriage whether now in form of polygamy or with the sister of the deceased wife meets strong disapproval, but it occurs, while love relations are not rare.



6. Sexual intercourse with the mother-in-law or with the wife of the brother is improper and is however not suvasova and occurs apparently infrequently.



7. Sexual intercourse with classified luguta (my sister) is suvasova; it is forbidden by tribal law and threatened by supernatural punishments and is however frequently practiced and is as it were much sought after."22



Still another important relationship remains to be mentioned by the name of tabugu (sister of the father or daughter of the sister of the father), which already has been explained as counterpart to luguta (sister, if a man speaks). The sister of the father is the model of the lawfully permitted and even sexually recommended woman -- certainly only in the theory of the natives -- because in reality the daughter takes this place.



Against the sister of his father a man in sexual things has to behave himself just the opposite as with his own sister. Sexual intercourse with the father's own sister is completly fitting and proper. "It is very good, if a boy copulates with the sister of his father."



"Sexual intercourse between a man and his aunt on the paternal side plays a role in the theory and in idioms as symbol, but scarcely in real life. She is for him the symbol of all legally permitted women and simply sexual freedom. She may advise or give him support as a couple, but only in very rare cases does he have sexual intercourse with her.  She belongs to an older generation, and what remained of their sexual attractions are mostly not too enticing for her. But if she and her nephews wish it, then they may sleep together; only a certain decorum must be practiced if she is married. Marriage with the aunt on the father's side, although permitted and even desired, seems never to occur; I also only  succeeded in discovering one case among living persons or an excessive quantity from the historical records.



On the paternal side the young man finds the correct replacement for his aunt in their daughter. Both are judged as particularly suitable for sexual intercourse and for marriage. Often as children they become promised in engagement to each other (see Chapter IV, 4). The natives say that their cousin on the paternal side should be first with whom a boy should act sexually, if his age permits it.



The designation tabugu is expanded however soon since other girls who belong to the same sub-clan and clan as the cousin; finally it becomes equivalent, via going beyond the usual limited classification terminology to "all women, who do not belong to the clan of the sister." The usual classification terminology extends within the boundaries of the clans. The widest meaning the word mother extends to all those from the clan of the mother. But the word tabugu in the sense of "legally permitted woman" extends over three clans and covers approximately three quarters of the females as opposed to a quarter of women who are forbidden."23
(Very long page continued as 1.2 of page 1)
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