XI

A DIFFERENTIATING GRADE IN THE EGO


If we survey the life of an individual man of to-day, bearing in mind
the mutually complementary accounts of group psychology given by the
authorities, we may lose the courage, in face of the complications that
are revealed, to attempt a comprehensive exposition. Each individual is
a component part of numerous groups, he is bound by ties of
identification in many directions, and he has built up his ego ideal
upon the most various models. Each individual therefore has a share in
numerous group minds--those of his race, of his class, of his creed, of
his nationality, etc.--and he can also raise himself above them to the
extent of having a scrap of independence and originality. Such stable
and lasting group formations, with their uniform and constant effects,
are less striking to an observer than the rapidly formed and transient
groups from which Le Bon has made his brilliant psychological character
sketch of the group mind. And it is just in these noisy ephemeral
groups, which are as it were superimposed upon the others, that we are
met by the prodigy of the complete, even though only temporary,
disappearance of exactly what we have recognized as individual
acquirements.

We have interpreted this prodigy as meaning that the individual gives up
his ego ideal and substitutes for it the group ideal as embodied in the
leader. And we must add by way of correction that the prodigy is not
equally great in every case. In many individuals the separation between
the ego and the ego ideal is not very far advanced; the two still
coincide readily; the ego has often preserved its earlier
self-complacency. The selection of the leader is very much facilitated
by this circumstance. He need only possess the typical qualities of the
individuals concerned in a particularly clearly marked and pure form,
and need only give an impression of greater force and of more freedom of
libido; and in that case the need for a strong chief will often meet him
half-way and invest him with a predominance to which he would otherwise
perhaps have had no claim. The other members of the group, whose ego
ideal would not, apart from this, have become embodied in his person
without some correction, are then carried away with the rest by
'suggestion', that is to say, by means of identification.

We are aware that what we have been able to contribute towards the
explanation of the libidinal structure of groups leads back to the
distinction between the ego and the ego ideal and to the double kind of
tie which this makes possible--identification, and substitution of the
object for the ego ideal. The assumption of this kind of differentiating
grade [_Stufe_] in the ego as a first step in an analysis of the ego
must gradually establish its justification in the most various regions
of psychology. In my paper 'Zur Einführung des Narzissmus' I have put
together all the pathological material that could at the moment be used
in support of this separation. But it may be expected that when we
penetrate deeper into the psychology of the psychoses its significance
will be discovered to be far greater. Let us reflect that the ego now
appears in the relation of an object to the ego ideal which has been
developed out of it, and that all the interplay between an outer object
and the ego as a whole, with which our study of the neuroses has made us
acquainted, may possibly be repeated upon this new scene of action
inside the ego.

In this place I shall only follow up one of the consequences which seem
possible from this point of view, thus resuming the discussion of a
problem which I was obliged to leave unsolved elsewhere.[61] Each of the
mental differentiations that we have become acquainted with represents a
fresh aggravation of the difficulties of mental functioning, increases
its instability, and may become the starting-point for its breakdown,
that is, for the onset of a disease. Thus, by being born we have made
the step from an absolutely self-sufficient narcissism to the perception
of a changing outer world and to the beginnings of the discovery of
objects. And with this is associated the fact that we cannot endure the
new state of things for long, that we periodically revert from it, in
our sleep, to our former condition of absence of stimulation and
avoidance of objects. It is true, however, that in this we are following
a hint from the outer world, which, by means of the periodical change of
day and night, temporarily withdraws the greater part of the stimuli
that affect us. The second example, which is pathologically more
important, is not subject to any such qualification. In the course of
our development we have effected a separation of our mental existence
into a coherent ego and into an unconscious and repressed portion which
is left outside it; and we know that the stability of this new
acquisition is exposed to constant shocks. In dreams and in neuroses
what is thus excluded knocks for admission at the gates, guarded though
they are by resistances; and in our waking health we make use of special
artifices for allowing what is repressed to circumvent the resistances
and for receiving it temporarily into our ego to the increase of our
pleasure. Wit and humour, and to some extent the comic in general, may
be regarded in this light. Everyone acquainted with the psychology of
the neuroses will think of similar examples of less importance; but I
hasten on to the application I have in view.

It is quite conceivable that the separation of the ego ideal from the
ego cannot be borne for long either, and has to be temporarily undone.
In all renunciations and limitations imposed upon the ego a periodical
infringement of the prohibition is the rule; this indeed is shown by the
institution of festivals, which in origin are nothing more nor less than
excesses provided by law and which owe their cheerful character to the
release which they bring.[62] The Saturnalia of the Romans and our
modern carnival agree in this essential feature with the festivals of
primitive people, which usually end in debaucheries of every kind and
the transgression of what are at other times the most sacred
commandments. But the ego ideal comprises the sum of all the limitations
in which the ego has to acquiesce, and for that reason the abrogation of
the ideal would necessarily be a magnificent festival for the ego, which
might then once again feel satisfied with itself.[63]

There is always a feeling of triumph when something in the ego coincides
with the ego ideal. And the sense of guilt (as well as the sense of
inferiority) can also be understood as an expression of tension between
the ego and the ego ideal.

It is well known that there are people the general colour of whose mood
oscillates periodically from an excessive depression through some kind
of intermediate state to an exalted sense of well-being. These
oscillations appear in very different degrees of amplitude, from what is
just noticeable to those extreme instances which, in the shape of
melancholia and mania, make the most painful or disturbing inroads upon
the life of the person concerned. In typical cases of this cyclical
depression outer exciting causes do not seem to play any decisive part;
as regards inner motives, nothing more (or nothing different) is to be
found in these patients than in all others. It has consequently become
the custom to consider these cases as not being psychogenic. We shall
refer later on to those other exactly similar cases of cyclical
depression which can nevertheless easily be traced back to mental
traumata.

Thus the foundation of these spontaneous oscillations of mood is
unknown; we are without insight into the mechanism of the displacement
of a melancholia by a mania. So we are free to suppose that these
patients are people in whom our conjecture might find an actual
application--their ego ideal might be temporarily resolved into their
ego after having previously ruled it with especial strictness.

Let us keep to what is clear: On the basis of our analysis of the ego it
cannot be doubted that in cases of mania the ego and the ego ideal have
fused together, so that the person, in a mood of triumph and
self-satisfaction, disturbed by no self-criticism, can enjoy the
abolition of his inhibitions, his feelings of consideration for others,
and his self-reproaches. It is not so obvious, but nevertheless very
probable, that the misery of the melancholiac is the expression of a
sharp conflict between the two faculties of his ego, a conflict in which
the ideal, in an excess of sensitiveness, relentlessly exhibits its
condemnation of the ego in delusions of inferiority and in
self-depreciation. The only question is whether we are to look for the
causes of these altered relations between the ego and the ego ideal in
the periodic rebellions, which we have postulated above, against the new
institution, or whether we are to make other circumstances responsible
for them.

A change into mania is not an indispensable feature of the
symptomatology of melancholic depression. There are simple melancholias,
some in single and some in recurring attacks, which never show this
development. On the other hand there are melancholias in which the
exciting cause clearly plays an aetiological part. They are those which
occur after the loss of a loved object, whether by death or as a result
of circumstances which have necessitated the withdrawal of the libido
from the object. A psychogenic melancholia of this sort can end in
mania, and this cycle can be repeated several times, just as easily as
in a case which appears to be spontaneous. Thus the state of things is
somewhat obscure, especially as only a few forms and cases of
melancholia have been submitted to psycho-analytical investigation.[64]
So far we only understand those cases in which the object is given up
because it has shown itself unworthy of love. It is then set up again
inside the ego, by means of identification, and severely condemned by
the ego ideal. The reproaches and attacks directed towards the object
come to light in the shape of melancholic self-reproaches.[65]

A melancholia of this kind may also end in a change to mania; so that
the possibility of this happening represents a feature which is
independent of the other characteristics in the symptomatology.

Nevertheless I see no difficulty in assigning to the factor of the
periodical rebellion of the ego against the ego ideal a share in both
kinds of melancholia, the psychogenic as well as the spontaneous. In the
spontaneous kind it may be supposed that the ego ideal is inclined to
display a peculiar strictness, which then results automatically in its
temporary suspension. In the psychogenic kind the ego would be incited
to rebellion by ill-treatment on the part of its ideal--an ill-treatment
which it encounters when there has been identification with a rejected
object.