THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF THE SELF

1. THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF THE SELF VELIMIR B. POPOVIĆ, PH.D. JUNGIAN PSYCHOANALYST

2. EGO AND SELF: TERMINOLOGY

3. W. James (1910) “I” vs. “me”

4. “I” – the self as knower and doer “me”, or myself as known or experienced

5. Concerning the “myself”, as known, W. James included: • a material self which contained one’s body, one’s family and one’s possessions; • a social self which was a reflection of the way other people see the individual; and • aspiritual self, which included emotions and desires.

6. James recognized that all these aspects of the self were capable of evoking feelings of heightened or lowered self-esteem.

7. Finally, James described the self as carrying a feeling of basic unity and continuity.

8. C. H. Cooley (1912) • “self” as that which is designated in common speech by the pronouns of the first person singular – I, me, mine, myself. • The self is characterized by stronger emotion than is the non-self.

9. Cooley introduced the concept of the “looking-glass self” – the individual perceiving himself in the way others see him/her.

10. G. H. Mead (1934) • Mead argued that the self-concept in fact arises out of the individual’s concern about how others react to him. • Mead also hypothesized a “generalized other” to account for generalized feelings about oneself.

11. G. W. Allport (1955) - Proprium • “Proprium”: • Awareness of a bodily self. • Sense of a continuity over time. • A need for self-esteem. • An extension of the “I” or ego beyond the borders of the body. • An ability to synthesize inner needs and outer reality. • A self-image, a perception and evaluation of the self as an object of knowledge. • There is the self as knower and doer. • There is on occasions a need to increase tensions, expand awareness, seek and meet challenges etc.

12. Ego and self in psychoanalysis

13. S. Freud • 1896: “das Ich” (the Ego); Freud regarded the ego as as the organ of defence, and, at the same time, he knew that some defences are unconscious; • 1914-1915 he distinguished between: • ego instincts ( here ego means oneself) and • object instincts.

14. the Ego vs. the Super-ego • “primary narcissism” – state of the infant as that of boundaryless self-love where self and not-self ware as yet undifferentiated; • child’s ego develops out of this state by displacement of libido on to the mother and later on to an ideal.

15. S. Freud (1923): ”The ego and the id” • The ego is a coherent organization of mental processes. • Consciousness is attached to ego (it controls the approaches to motility and goes to sleep at night, and even than it censors the dreams). • It is responsible for repressions and resistances. • Part of the ego is unconscious, and “behaves exactly like the repressed” in producing powerful effects.

16. Freud derives neuroses from a conflict between the coherent ego and the repressed which is split from it (and contained in the Id). • The ego is in fact part of the Id which has been modified by the direct influence of the external world through the medium of perceptions. • The ego mediates between the instincts (the Id) and the external world through the reality principle and not through self-regard.

17. Freud describes the ego in its relations to the Id as like a man on horseback; often, he says, the man has to guide the horse where he wants to go. • The ego is first and foremost a body ego, ultimately derived from bodily sensations, and itself the projection of the bodily surface.

18. M. Klein, D. Winnicott & E. H. Erikson • M. Klein uses the concept “ego” to mean both: • the subjective “I” or “myself”, and • the “system ego”, with its various stage-appropriate ways of enhancing, depending and strengthening itself. • Thus, the ego arises out of some mental representations of itself

19. E. H. Erikson (1950) • The ego is an “inner instrument”, evolved to safeguard order within the individual. • For Erikson, the ego is kind of person dwelling between the extremes of the “bestial” impersonal id and the conscience which is often harsh and restrictive. • The ego keeps tuned to reality and integrates the individual planning and orientation.

20. Finally, for Erikson, the ego is clearly a self with human feelings, closely related to well-being and good self-esteem; • He extends the concept of the “I” to that of a personal identity and describes “ego growth” and its failures. • Personal identity has primarily mediating function between inner and outer needs, between instincts and standards, etc.

21. D. W. Winnicott (1965) For Winnicott, the ego represents an integrating function of the brain present from the beginning (thus, an anencephalic child would have an id and no ego, whereas an baby with a normal brain would already have an ego as well as an id).

22. So, for Winnicott the ego is there from the start. • In fact, the ego is the starting point from which a self-representations develops. • Thus, the ego is a function of personality which permits a unified development of subjectivity.

23. The self arrives only after the child has begun to use the intellect to look at what others see or feel or hear, and what they conceive of when they meet this infant body. • Ego development depends on ego-supportive mother. • Differentiation into “I” and “you”, into “I” and “non-I”, the development of subjective objects and of objectively experienced objects, and of capacity for realism proceeds gradually so long as the mother understands the child’s reality limitations.

24. Thus, for Winnicott the ego is original integrating function, while the self is oneself as distinct from other people, and its emergence is importantly dependent on how others experience an individual; in other words, self is a function of reflection from others.

25. H. HARTMANN, H. KOHUT & O. KERNBERG • H. Hartmann (1950) was the spearhead of the psychoanalytic theorizing about the ego/self. • Hartmann was the first to make a clear distinction between “ego” and “self”.

26. For Hartmann, the ego is not defined in terms of self-feeling, the experience of “I”, or any other subjective experience or subjectively experienced datum, but as a system of adaptive and integrative functions hierarchically arranged. So, functions of defense and antinstictual aspects are included in the functions of the ego.

27. In similar way as Winnicott, Hartmann defines the self as experiental: it has to do with feelings and subjective experience and with the distinction between myself and not-me. • For example, he says that: “it will therefore be clarifying if we define narcissism as the libidinal cathexis not of ego but of the self” (1964).

28. He distinguished three phenomena: • the ego, a structure or a hypothetical mental suborganization encompassing the mind’s executive and instrumental functions and the defense mechanisms; • the self-representation, which is the person’s (conscious and unconscious) mental conception or image of him/herself; • the self proper – the actual objective person, his/her body, his/her identity as seen or known by an external observer (therefore for him the self was not truly a psychological concept at all).

29. H. KOHUT (1971, 1977) • Hartmann’s bifurcation of “ego’ from “self” helped H. Kohut in his clinical work on narcissism and narcissistic disorders as well in his theoretical considerations. • The “self” is not just a set of subjective images, ideas, and the like but a psychological structure of central importance to the personality.

30. The self in Kohut’s terminology has to do with the representation of the self in the psyche, analogous to the representations of other persons and things in the psyche (“object-representations”). • The self develops through “transmuting internalizations” of what he identified as normal early infantile phases: the grandiose self and idealized “selfobject”.

31. In the first of these stages, the infant feels omnipotent, grand and omniscient, and in the second he/she attributes power and grandeur to the main parental figure (“selfobject”). • In Kohut’s self psychology the term ‘selfobject’is used to refer to the subjective or intrapsychic experience of another person (strictly speaking not the person herself) who is felt to be necessary for the maintenance of the cohesion, vitality or integrity of the self. A selfobject is anyone who keeps us feeling glued together and enhances our sense of wellbeing (Kohut, 1971; 1977; 1984).

32. So to speak, baby experiences important figures (“selfobejcts”), unconsciously, not as fully separate, independent individuals, but as extension of, or part of, the self. Hence, the term “selfobject” designates the lack of full self-other separation and the infant’s fundamental structural dependency on such primitively conceived “others”.

33. In infancy, the selfobject must provide the baby with certain particular forms of responsiveness in order for the early phases to develop fully and then be internalized, forming self-structure. • On the other hand, the absence of these responses prevents adequate structure from being formed, and as a consequence of this deficiency, the self’s “cohesion and firmness depend on the presence of a selfobject and … it responds to the loss of the selfobject with simple enfeeblement, various regressions, and fragmentation” (1977).

34. Such subjects have not achieved the type of mature, integrated self-image and self-structure – “nuclear self” – which is necessary before people can be related to as truly separate “objects”.

35. So, the child’s selfobjects must respond adequately for these needs - to be loved, protected and mirrored - in order to help the infant to integrate them into the structures of his/hers personal self. • Kohut believed that the need for selfobject relationships begins in infancy and remains throughout life. This need matures but never leaves us.

36. Kohut’s work leads to a very different value system than the autonomy-independence emphasis of classical psychoanalysis. Selfobject theory is consistent with the notion of the underlying unity of all consciousness. We are linked to each other by means of our relationships, which act as a kind of ‘glue’ binding us together.

37. We are always selves embedded in a matrix of selfobjects who are responsive to our needs to varying degrees, in ways that sustain us or bind us together. We are never selves in a psychological vacuum. • Intrapsychically the self does not end at the skin. It includes those who are affectively important to us. Selfobject experiences are subjective; intrapsychically and often unconsciously the other is acting as a part of the self, carrying out functions that the self cannot provide for itself and in this way acting as a psychological extension of the self. Thus, selfobject needs are like cement for the developing personality.

38. In infancy, qualities of the child’s self, such as its structural integrity and vitality, are determined by the qualities of his selfobject relationships, since they are used as the building blocks of the child’s own sense of self. To the extent that the selfobject milieu is helpful, the self develops with cohesion and resilience; to the extent that the milieu is unresponsive to the child’s unfolding selfobject needs, the self develops varying degrees of structural deficit and proneness to fragmentation. When the child’s selfobject needs are unmet, they remain active but immature; there is then a lifelong need to find someone to supply them. The mirror-hungry or idealization-hungry personality lacks the internal glue which would make him or her feel put together, and so constantly searches for cohesion externally by means of a relationship or situation which will provide what is missing.

39. Major selfobject needs: 1 Mirror needs. These include such needs as those for affirmation and confirmation of our value, for emotional attunement and resonance, to be the gleam in somebody’s eye, to be approved of, seen, wanted, appreciated and accepted. Here the developmental necessity is to transform healthy infantile grandiosity and exhibitionism into mature adult self-esteem, normal levels of ambition, pride in performance and an inner sense of one’s own worth.

40. 2 Idealization needs. These include the need for an alliance with, or to be psychologically a part of, a figure who carries high status and importance, who is respected, admired, wise, protective and strong. This figure can be a source of soothing when this is needed; he or she is both calming and inspiring. The intrapsychic experience of merger with the idealized selfobject lends us the strength to maintain ourselves when we are afraid or gives us direction when we are in search of meaning and goals. The developmental thrust here is both towards the capacity to be self-soothing and also to have an inner sense of direction based on one’s own ideals and goals.

41. 3 Twinship, kinship or alter ego needs. These involve the need for sameness with others, and the sense of being understood by someone ‘like me’. To be in a community of people of shared beliefs and attitudes in which one belongs, or to have the sustaining presence of even one such person, is supporting and enhancing to the self.

42. 4 The selfobject of creativity. During periods of taxing creative activity there may be a need for transient merger with another person. 5 The adversarial selfobject (Wolf, 1988). There is sometimes a need for a benign adversary acting as an opposing force who allows active opposition. This confirms one’s autonomy at the same time as that person continues to be supportive and responsive.

43. 6 Efficacy needs allow us to feel that we can have an effect on the other person and that we are able to evoke what we need from him. ‘If I can elicit a response I must be somebody.’ • All of this emphasis on our ineradicable connection to others moves psychotherapy out of what Stolorow and Atwood (1992) call ‘the myth of the isolated mind’.

44. O. Kernberg (1982) • For Kernberg, the self is one aspect or manifestation of the functioning of the entire personality – an organizing array of images, memories, experiences, ideas, and other psychic “representations” that pertain to the person as subject – or self.

45. Kernberg reserves the term self for “the sum total of self-representations in intimate connection with the sum total of object representations” (1982). • He was of opinion that the infant normally has many different self-representations, only some which reflect positive feelings, while others involve anger, fear, and other dysphoric affects. • From this perspective, each person may be said to have not one but many “selves”, which reflect the varied and often conflicting forces in the mind.

46. Sometimes, Kernberg speaks of a self as “an ego function and structure that evolves gradually from the integration of its component self-representations into a supraordinate structure” (1982). • On other occasions he was of opinion that the self as the term is meaningful only when defined in terms of self-representations.

47. The self in Gestalt therapy “Self” refers to the system of contact making and withdrawal at any given time. Self is a person’s experience associated with figure forming in the figure/background process by which contacts between the person and the environment are regulated. Self is the power that forms a Gestalt from the person-environment field. It is not in the person; rather it is experience of the person of the person-environment matrix, depending upon the environmental background as well as the animal-organismic background of the person for the elements that are composed into the figure during the contact-making and withdrawal process. … Self is the creative adjusting carried forward by the person acting as agent, … self is the person in action. (P. Lichtenberg, 1987).

48. Personality: is a specific and relatively stable way of organizing the cognitive, emotive and behavioral components of one’s experience. The meaning (cognitive) that one attributes to events (behavioral) and the feelings (emotive) that accompany such events remain relatively stable over time and give an individual a sense of identity (G. Delisle).

49. E. POLSTER • From Polster’s perspective human being does not have one self but “ a population of selves”; • all those selves are real, i.e., if one self is obscured from person’s attention it does not mean that it is more/less real than the manifested self; • all these selves need to be coordinated with each other; • each self has identity of its own.

50. According to Polster, “selves are formed by a configurational reflex, which takes the disparate details of personal experience and forms them into a unified patter.”