Ideal of the Ego - Ideal I: Split, Conflict, Continuity
By Irimia Corneliu.
1 Jul, 2007
The condition of being in love, constant oscillation between outmost happiness and pure suffering is a "combination of sexuality and ideals" (Julia Kristeva). The term of „ideal" inevitably leads to a third: narcissism. The ideal of the ego makes the connection between the development of narcissism and the searching of the object as the „other". During this process, narcissism, as creative matter, changes its nature: from a closing inside sign, it becomes, due to the other's idealization, source and drive of objectified love.
Let's start analysing this problematic by presenting one of Masud Khan's patients, chosen to exemplify his theoretical argumentation in the article "Ego Ideal, Excitement and Threat of Annihilation".1 After long and difficult years of analysis, this schizoid patient lets his analyst see a jealously hidden side of his personality. First, we must notice that the patient only lived "under the cover of four distinct characters". The character which is of interest to us is "a perfect being". For instance, he sees himself playing golf just like a champion (though he is completely ignorant of this sport). In his phantasms, he was nevertheless a good player, endowed with the ease and ability of a professional. With the help of an interpretation in analysis, he discovers that somewhere, deep inside him, there is the idea that he is able to perfectly do whatever he wishes, without having to undergo the tedious obligation of learning. A perfect and magical ideal is hidden behind these personality features. The subject seems to be waiting an ideal and idyllic existence; he is hoping to reach perfection and the happiness of being alive. All the attempts of the other characters he was made of were „a way of killing the time, while he was waiting for the moment when his ideal ego either reached an active existence, or was totally annihilated. Our subject was passively waiting to become his ideal ego, a creative being full of love and vitality, a perfect being."2
Ideal Ego Description
We have already seen that Freud, in "An Introduction to Narcissism" suggests that the ideal ego is built on basis of parents attributing all perfections to their child. Being perfect and at shelter from any critics (coming from the inside or from the outside) is a characteristic feature of the ego. The person in love behaves towards his object as a mother towards her child. The subject changes the other into a perfect being. A fascinated behaviour redefines all the other's traits and makes them positive. A slight inflation of admiration can be noticed. What is the process that makes this over-evaluation possible?
Hugo Bleichmar3 notices that certain decisive traits make the person in love metamorphose the global depiction of the lover into a perfect portrayal. The reason for this is the existence of a fundamental condition that must be satisfied - a certain physical or moral trait, a certain intellectual quality or a certain kind of erotic satisfaction given by the object. From the moment when that condition is fulfilled, it influences the perception of all the other traits, and a certain valorisation of the holistic representation of the object appears. The strength and weakness of idealization is based on this: if the subject can no longer preserve the illusion that certain (compulsory) traits are present in the object, all the ideal construction falls into ruins.
What usually happens is that a subject is unaware of this process occurring in overestimation: I need this peculiar feature and I love him for being as I wanted, he is perfect because I love him. More often than not, a reversal takes place.
It seems to us that this process of bestowing everything that is good and beautiful upon a single person is rooted in the ideal ego. In the development phase when the ideal ego prevails, the subject attributed everything that is good to his own ego (therefore to one object only) and everything that was bad belonged to the external world. It happens the same with falling in love: the subject loves the other by projecting his ideal ego onto him. Love chooses what is overestimated in reality, and respects what it is not.
Idealization - with its imposing, phantasmatic, unconscious characteristic pertaining to the ideal ego - must be opposed to ideals (pertaining to the ideal of the ego). It is freed from the idea of omnipotence and it is granted a specific identity, adapts better to reality by surpassing it at the same time. In order to understand this relationship, we can compare the projection of the ideal of the ego (for instance, there is this case of an Olympic champion whose achievements give rise to enthusiasm) and the projection of the ideal ego (in passion). For that particular sport in which he is the winner, the champion becomes that person embodying the ideal of the ego, and in this posture he is the best, the only one. But the admiration he makes the object of is not extended to other features, to his intellectual or moral qualities. There is no equalizing the whole with the part. His deeds do not deserve to be admired for the simple fact that they are his deeds (as in passion), but because each deed is judged in itself, his performances are evaluated by comparing them to a norm. The champion is the embodiment of an ideal of the ego, and not of an ideal ego.
Ideal Ego and Object: Two Face to Face Mirrors
How does M. Khan describe the moments when the patient projects his ideal ego onto his object, the analyst? These are moments of subject-object fusion, when they become one person only. In those moments, communication seems to be "difficult and useless": the analyst, as a good and ideal object (ideal ego), and the patient as an ideal self, did not need any verbal relationship (...). Communication, understanding and insight were felt by the patient as irruptive and redundant activities.
We can assume that if the object changes into the ideal ego, the subject expects the other to act in the same way: the object would want the other to be the ideal ego of the object. This closed circuit of primitive idealization common with passion can be pictured as a device made of a mirror (the subject) placed in front of another mirror (the object). Images are endlessly sent from one mirror to another. Finitude understood as content, identity, consistency, is lacking. This image can account for the relationship existing between a parent and his baby. a) The parent sees in his baby an ideal being, he sees his own ideal ego embodied in a baby. This helpless baby is taken for someone who lacks nothing. There is a certain tendency of worshipping him as a small god (His Majesty the Baby, as Freud names him in 1914). b) On the other hand, this endless power is projected by the baby onto the ideal parent when he starts realizing his own helplessness. The parent personifies the image of a "same self", but with larger dimensions, and providing thorough protection. In this closed circuit of primitive idealization, the imaginary, the phantasmatic, are commonly met. Limit, castration, cannot be accepted by either part.
How can one get out of this circuit? Paradoxically, idealization is the answer: the subject opens itself to the object by projecting onto the latter its own ideal of the ego. The real object only appears after this detour. The solitary world of narcissism, the world of One, changes into the other's world via the closed world of a relationship in two. The subject (monad) opens itself to the world on the condition that in the beginning, it undergoes the experience of a couple's life. The object must have a double condition: he must be familiar enough - since it is a projection surface of the ideal - but also heterogeneous enough towards the ego, so that the two mirrors cannot send to each other the same image, and the ego accept the other as different from itself. The mother is the first being representing simultaneously the Same and the Other.
Abandoning the Ideal Ego: Attack or Idealization of the Object?
The subject in which the ideal ego is overwhelming presents a radical cleavage between what is good - interior - loved, and what is exterior - hated - bad. Thus, he comes to live only within his inner world, the only one he can stand. If he turned to the outer world, he would see it as being inhabited only by persecutors. In this context, the "healthy" reaction (Winnicott) would be the aggressive behaviour, the attack by the subject as a defensive means against persecuting objects. But while the relationship with the mother is symbiotic, dependency and denial of hatred stop any possibility of attacking it. From this point on, there are certain possible ways:
a) Remaining at the edges of this ideal ego, idealizing its pleasures and satisfactions, remaining at the level of the ideal ego, without being able of creating an ideal of the ego (see M. Khan's patient). At the level of the ideal ego, satisfaction works according to the principle of all or nothing, fulfilling the desire, or dying. Khan's patient who saw himself playing golf like a champion, says that he restrained himself from playing not out of shame (as the analyst would believe), but because he was certain that if he played, the play would end in a disaster. In the poetry of the troubadours, the first to speak about "love" in XIIth century Europe, inspired by Arab writings, in Raimon de Miraval`s verses depicting his love for his ideal Lady, we find a similar idea:
« She has so many charming ways
For which Happiness alone can account. (...)
For this, I kindly ask her to receive me immediately
If not, she must reject me forever. (...)
If she wants to reject me
All I have left is dying, for because of my love for her
I haven't asked the love of another lady.
If she pleases, she can destroy her own possession.
As did the man who betrayed God ».4
Comments to these verses can only start by pointing out a very well known idea: troubadours demand everything from their lady; nevertheless, paradoxically, this object so much idealized, is chosen only for its inaccessibility. The poet expressly says that, unless his beloved does not bestow her favours upon him, death is his only option. However, choosing this married, unreachable lady, of a high social rank, doesn't mean that desire is also forbidden, its satisfaction hiding an unspeakable danger? This is not a matter of « satisfaction or death » but of « satisfaction and death».
This functioning mode under the sign of the pleasure principle appears as having a negation value of the lady's reality which only exists to be loved and incorporated as a double or as an idealized part of the ego, or which is hated when she doesn't fit the patterns of the ego. What we have here is a primary way of not investing the other (completely different from repression).
b) In order to come back to the issues of getting out of the empire of the ideal ego, we must point out another: external objects are divided into good and bad, into idealized and bad.
c) Another solution is replacing the ideal ego with the ideal of the ego. The ego succeeds in placing a new requirement, as urgent as the pulsional satisfaction following the pleasure principle, which it replaces. Instead of the satisfaction of pulsion, its contrary settles down. The function of the ideal of the ego is the one idealizing renunciation. As A. Green noticed: "Pride becomes a purpose higher than satisfaction (...).5 Less emphasis is placed on turning a necessity into a virtue than on turning a virtue into a necessity".
Idealizing the Ego, Idealizing the Pulsional Purpose
The ego's idealization is the ideal ego. Everything related to the omnipotence of the ideals is included into the ideal ego. We point out here the sense of belongingness to narcissism, the ideal ego being the narcissistic basis of the ideal of the ego.
By its negative, non-constructive side, the ideal ego blocks the temporary organization of the individual, as well as everything related to the reality principle. This ego only made of pleasure (Freud's purified ego-pleasure), created according to the pattern of omnipotence, and corresponds to crystallized Self-image that excludes any change. Satisfying this ideal must be thorough and immediate: we speak about everything or nothing and about unless it is now, it will never be. It stays outside time, events, and possible accomplishments pertaining to real life experience. At this stage, the other does not exist as such; it is only a self-division, creating the illusion of completion and eternity.
We wouldn't like to leave the impression that the term of ego is pejorative. In reality, the existence of this development phase is essential, since it sets the basis of the ego experienced as good, which allows for a healthy self-investment and for the introjection capacity of the object. It permits the access of the ego to the narcissistic contributions and to an active and positive relationship with the ego, thus offering reasons for the extension and the increase of the ego's purposes and interests. The ideal ego has a positive role as a vector, allowing for the structuring of the ego and of the superego.
The ideal ego represents a standard for the ego's future satisfactions. The phantasm according to which there was once a total satisfaction pushes the subject towards a permanent quest. Idealizing the ego gives birth to a myth - the personal paradise - and supports the belief in a possible achievement. This hope has a capital importance for pulsion. It shows that idealization is not a late destiny of the investment as an object, "an original and constitutive datum of pulsional functioning".6 We notice how idealization is not only a process meaning a protection to the upper spheres - from the point of view of value (in connection with sublimation, nobility) but, as idealization of primitive experiences, it becomes a vector of a retrograde movement. Therefore, idealization is a structural property influencing the whole life of the subject as an organising axis of psychic life.7
2) Idealizing the pulsional purpose gives a narcissistic pleasure following two ways: ecstasy and exultation. Exultation is the "projective surface of narcissism. It is overflow, invasion of the object and of the world. This means wanting to experience a higher tension, a generalized and everlasting orgasm, an achievement aiming at reaching a superhuman performance. The prototype is not the sleep following the feeding of the baby, but the great oral satisfaction given by the object's devouring".8 Ecstasy is closely connected with the ideal ego, by means of the phantasm of moving inside the mother's belly, by the possibility of aiming at the maximum drop of tension (according to the death pulsion). Death appears here as the only enemy deserving attention: defeating it by mental or physical means becomes the narcissistic ideal by excellence.
In contrast with the ideal ego, the ideal of the ego is directed to the future, it is under the sign of Eros, it aims at reaching the other, the object. This is no longer nostalgia for the primary object, but an aspiration for a "big" object. We are now in an oedipal world. The other (the father) brings in alterity, it becomes a rival, it is no longer a double. The setting up of the oedipal complex points out the difference between sexes and generations. This experience is lived as a decline of the omnipotent ideal. It is of paramount importance for the subjective structuring since it depends on the capacity of giving up the mother's ideal object in order to accept loss, castration. The child is endowed with an ideal to reach, and stops being his own ideal. Thus, the ideal of the ego allows for making the shift to the temporality of existence, the reaching of success, the acceptance of the risk and lack of certainty.
* Psychotherapist - psychoanalyst. PhD in Psychopathology, Paris 7 - Denis Diderot University
1 M. Khan - Moi idéal, excitation et menace d'annihilation (Ego Ideal, Excitement and Threat of Annihilation), in "Le soi caché" (The Hidden Self), translated by. C. Monod, Paris, Gallimard, 1976, p. 229-254.
2 Ibid., p. 237.
3 H. Bleichmar - Le discours totalisant. Le moi idéal et l'idéal du moi: les effets de deux types de discours (Holistic Speech. Ideal Ego and Ideal of the Ego: Effects of Two Discourse Types) , Topique, 1982, t. 12, n° 29, p. 85-113.
4 Raimon de Miraval - Chansons (Songs), in René Nelli, Le roman du troubadour Raimon de Miraval (Novel of the Troubadour Raimon de Miraval), Paris, Albin Michel, 1986, p. 168.
5 A. Green - Narcissisme de vie, narcissisme de mort (Life Narcissism, Death Narcissism), op. cit., p. 105.
6 A. Green - L'idéal, mesure et démesure (Ideal, Measure, and Lack of Measure), op. cit., p. 30.
7 Ibid., p. 15.
8 Guy Rosolato - Le narcissisme (Narcissism), op. cit., p. 17.