THE “DEATH OF THE EGO” IN EAST‐MEETS‐WEST SPIRITUALITY: DIVERSE VIEWS FROM PROMINENT AUTHORS

Eastern religions, such as Hinduism and Buddhism, have traditionally held to the view that in order for an individual to fully benefit from their practice it was important to lessen or eliminate one's individual desires. Such practice was sometimes referred to as the “death of the ego” in order to emphasize its importance. However, the relatively recent popularity of East‐meets‐West spirituality in Western consumer cultures tends to emphasize the acceptance and transformation of one's ego rather than its death. This essay discusses sociological changes that have shaped and contributed to the popularity of East‐meets‐West spirituality in Western culture that in turn have brought about a modification of the principle of ego death. The views of six Western authors and practitioners of East‐meets‐West spirituality on the importance of the principle of ego death are compared and contrasted. Theories related to the management of self‐identity in consumer society can partly explain the modification of traditional Eastern religious practices, such as ego death, in order that they become relevant and appealing to a society that increasingly reifies the concept of the self. The implication is that the excision of the concept of ego death from the practice of East‐meets‐West spirituality may affect its efficacy.     

THE TRIADIC INTERSUBJECTIVE MATRIX IN SUPERVISION: THE USE OF DISCLOSURE TO WORK THROUGH PAINFUL AFFECTS3

The use of the psychoanalyst's subjective reactions as a tool to better understand his/her patient has been a central feature of clinical thinking in recent decades. While there has been much discussion and debate about the analyst's use of countertransference in individual psychoanalysis, including possible disclosure of his/her feelings to the patient, the literature on supervision has been slower to consider such matters. The attention to parallel processes in supervision has been helpful in appreciating the impact of affects arising in either the analyst/patient or the supervisor/analyst dyads upon the analytic treatment and its supervision. This contribution addresses the ways in which overlapping aspects of the personalities of the supervisor, analyst and patient may intersect and create resistances in the treatment. That three‐way intersection, described here as the triadic intersubjective matrix, is considered inevitable in all supervised treatments. A clinical example from the termination phase of a supervised analysis of an adolescent is offered to illustrate these points. Finally, the question of self‐disclosure as an aspect of the supervisory alliance is also discussed.     

THE ATTRACTION OF TOPOGRAPHICAL TECHNIQUE

The author argues that although the topographical model is useful for understanding certain psychological phenomena, its technical applications pose certain problems. The model's inherent tendency to bypass the analysand's ego capacities and mix his or her associations with the analyst's own make it less than adequate. There has never been a rapid evolution of psychoanalytic technique, and topographical and structural concepts have been applied in an unclear way. It is inaccurate to think that making the unconscious conscious is mostly characteristic of topographical technique, for the structural approach is a more comprehensive method for attaining this goal. The difficulties in transcending topographical technique seem to be related to certain historical inertias and irrational factors that make it especially attractive. Among these are the appeal of its simplicity, the gratification of epistemophilic and narcissistic tendencies, and the propitious ground for the analyst's projections that is provided by interpretations. The role of suggestion in topographical technique, its therapeutic effectiveness and its syntonicity are discussed and two brief clinical vignettes are presented. The author concludes that it is mainly because of its magnetic regressive features that this technique has not been superseded by the structural approach.     

Aesthetic experience

An initial clinical question, ‘Why does an analysand talk about his/her relationship with an aesthetic object?’ opens an investigation into the nature of aesthetic experience. Three principal aspects of the psychoanalytic approach are presented: sublimation, a Freudian concept concerning the vicissitudes of the drives; reparation, a Kleinian concept linked to depressive anxiety; and transformation, a concept of object‐relations theory about primitive ego‐states. The article discusses the psychic function of aesthetic feelings in mastering anxiety as related to ego, id and superego. The transformation of the experience of passivity is a common link underlying these aspects. Such transformation relies on tolerating ambiguous and contrary feelings within the self, fostered by contact with an aesthetic object. This balance can, however, be upset: two excessive forms of aesthetic experience ensue, namely, fascination and bewitchment. The first belongs to the experience of awe; the second can lead to claustrophobic anxiety. The initial clinical question requires an elaboration of aesthetic transference, a variant of the narcissistic transference, whereby the analysand invites the analyst to share his/her internal state as a common unspoken object.     

THE BLANK FACE OF LOVE: THE POSSIBILITY OF GOODNESS IN THE LITERARY AND PHILOSOPHICAL WORK OF IRIS MURDOCH1

This article explores the value of Iris Murdoch's metaphysical ethics for the theologian. Although, in many ways, Murdoch does appeal to the theologian, a subtle form of nihilism underlies her thought insofar as human goodness—in the form of loving attention—is only possible once the individual has overcome his/her ego by staring into the void and accepting the ultimate meaninglessness of reality. As this article demonstrates, Murdoch's replacement of transcendence with void rules out any form of real love or human goodness: only a dualistic exchange of gazes remains possible. Real, selfless love is only possible when the ego understands itself in the context of theological transcendence.     

The ego according to Klein: return to Freud and beyond

This paper explores fundamental dimensions of Melanie Klein's concept of the ego through a detailed study of the writings of Klein and her early colleagues (Paula Heimann, Susan Isaacs and Joan Riviere). The study examines three central issues: (a) the basic theoretical framework for Klein's conceptualization of the ego, and specifically how her conceptualization builds on Freud's structural and dual instinct models; (b) the processes involved in the development of the ego and its capacities (including the development from id to ego and from ego to superego); and (c) the view of the ego as an object of phantasy. Through this examination, the study demonstrates that Klein's conceptualization of the ego is firmly grounded both in Freud's formulations about the ego and in his theoretical and metapsychological approach to thinking about the ego. This counters the prevalent view that Klein was only focused on clinical understandings, unconcerned with theory and fuzzy in her abstract thinking. More specifically, it counters the view that Klein did not really have a concept of the ego in any well-structured sense of the term (Britton, 2003; Hinshelwood, 1994; Segal, 2001). The study considers the sources of these misconceived views. Finally, it argues that discarding such views allows us to appreciate better the richness of Klein's thinking, her theoretical affinities to Freud, and the role of theory in the development and justification of psychoanalysis.     

Regression in the Service of the Ego: A Case Study

A study was made of a 41 year old woman who was given psychological tests at the beginning of a five-year period of psychoanalytically oriented psychotherapy. From extensive material gathered from her therapist it was clear that: (a) Her pathology did not extend beyond the neurotic range; (b) she was a highly creative individual. Thus, it was of interest to note that her Rorschach contained many responses involving blatant primary process thinking. While such responses would be taken ordinarily as indicating a thinking disorder and consequently severe pathology, in this case they were seen as reflecting “regression in the service of the ego.” This led to a discussion of how this adaptive regression can be differentiated from pathological regression in psycho-diagnostic testing and to a consideration of some theoretical issues relating to primary process thinking.     

Orientations of psychotic activity in defensive pathological organizations

The author reviews some clinical experiences of the treatment of personality disordered patients suffering from internal domination of ego functioning by a defensive pathological organization. In particular, the function and purpose of perverse, sadistic attacks by the organization on the ego are considered and questions pertaining to technique are raised. It is suggested that different forms of sadistic, subjugating activity by pathological organizations may denote differences in intent borne of the type and severity of the psychopathology of the individual. Patients with severe narcissistic psychopathology for whom object contact has become associated with the arousal of intense psychotic anxieties seem more likely to be subjected to an invasive, annihilatory imperative by the pathological organization, the purpose of which appears to be to obliterate the experience of contact with any differentiated object, to avoid emotion and to use coercion to enforce a primitive identification by the ego with the psychotic organization in the mind. Certain patients with less severe narcissistic psychopathology, yet for whom object contact can also be associated with the arousal of psychotic anxieties due to intense or persistent conflict with the object, sometimes expressed as organized sadomasochistic clinging to a punishing and punished object (for example, in certain borderline or depressed patients) exhibit sadistic attacks that serve less to annihilate object contact and more to intrusively control and punish the object. Observations of these phenomena have been made by a number of psychoanalysts in recent decades and these contributions are discussed. This paper is addressed primarily to the implications for technique with such patients, particularly a need for triangulation of their experiences of oppression in order to loosen the controls over the ego by the pathological organization.     

The dynamic self in psychoanalytic psychology a formulation

Following Hartmann's theoretical formulations, the self has been explored primarily as a body of self‐representations coordinate to object representations; the dynamic organizations of the mind (the id‐egosuperego systems) have been seen as impersonal (nonself) functions.

This paper attempts a conception of the id‐ego‐superego structures as self‐functions in intimate relation to self‐representations. Building on an integration of Piagetian and psychoanalytic object relations frameworks (event theory), it proposes that the earliest self‐experience occurs in dynamic schemes of personally motivated interaction between self and nonself. These I‐schemes lay the groundwork for both the dynamic and the representational aspects of the self: Their structure results in experience characteristic of the dynamic id and in their character as undifferentiated interactions provides the base for the development of self‐ and object representations. Development occurs by integration and differentiation in processes of conflict resolution. The paper traces these developments in outline as they lead to the transition in the dynamic self from id to ego organizations, and in the self‐representations from part‐selves and part‐objects to a whole and individuated self in relation to whole objects.     

Exploring the Interplay of Trait Self‐Control and Ego Depletion: Empirical Evidence for Ironic Effects

Trait self‐control (TSC) has been conceptualized as a general and abstract ability to exert self‐regulation across multiple domains that has mostly beneficial effects. However, its relationship to situational depletion of self‐regulatory resources has received little attention. We systematically explore the interplay of trait and situational self‐control in two studies (total N = 264). In contrast with a positive view of TSC, the results show greater ego depletion effects for high (vs. low) self‐control abilities across such diverse domains as candy consumption (Study 1), risk‐taking behaviour (Study 2) and achievement motivation (Study 2). It is proposed that these ironic effects are attributable to high‐TSC individuals' less frequent active inhibition of impulses in everyday life and their resulting lack of experience in resisting acute temptations. A third study (N> = 358) corroborated this general reasoning by showing that TSC is indeed associated with less frequent impulse inhibition in daily routines. Our data point to a downside of dispositional self‐control in ego depletion paradigms. Other explanations and potential future avenues for resolving inconsistent findings across the literature are discussed. Copyright © 2013 European Association of Personality Psychology     

WHEN PATIENTS FACE THE DUAL THREAT OF DEPRESSIVE AND PARANOID PHANTASIES

A number of patients enter psychoanalytic treatment appearing to suffer from depressive anxieties in which they fear harming their objects, so they try to make amends and find a peaceful solution to perceived conflicts. However, over time these same patients reveal a deeper and darker form of internal chaos in which they are experiencing a combination of paranoid and depressive phantasies of an overwhelming nature. Primitive experiences of loss combine with persecutory feelings to bring about unbearable states of mind. Projective identification and splitting are used defensively but also increase this pathological internal situation. Attempts at reparation fail, leaving the ego to eternal loss and life without forgiveness. Dead and destroyed objects return for revenge, replacing hope with dread. These patients have an immature foothold in the depressive position while still struggling with paranoid conflicts. Rather than finding refuge in pathological organizations or regressing from one position to another, they face the constant threat of both paranoid and depressive experiences without any reliance on good internal objects to sooth, save, or guide them. Melanie Klein's theoretical discoveries in this area are discussed and clinical material is used for illustration.     

CORRECTIONS FOR THE "ON THE INTERNAL STRUCTURE OF THE MMPI" PAPER

Five validity studies of scales in the Study of Imagery are reported. Multistage Bonferroni procedures are used to evaluate significance of results. Scales of superego strength and id derivatives both correlate positively with neuroticism as measured by the Eysenck Personality Inventory. The scale of ego strength correlates positively with a measure indicating aspects of behavioral self-control. The scale measuring sense of identity correlates positively with measures of adaptive ego strength and of behavioral self-control, and negatively with a measure of behavioral conflict and one measure of toughmindedness.     

THE PSYCHOANALYST AND THE BABY: A NEW LOOK AT WORK WITH INFANTS

The author argues that objections to involving the infant in a relationship with an analyst have led psychoanalysts to overlook the possibility that the interaction between the infant and the analyst may be able to activate and retrieve those parts of the infant's inner world that have been excluded from containment and be conducive to a vitalisation of the emotional disturbance that can then become worked through in the mother-infant relationship. As long as the infant's ego is weak, the infant and the mother have a unique flexibility that enables them to repair disturbances in their relationship when the emotional container-contained link is (re-)established. Based on the assumptions (1) that a relationship can be established between the infant and the analyst, (2) that the infant has a primordial subjectivity and self as base for intersubjectivity and the search for containment, (3) that the infant has an unique flexibility in changing representations of itself and others that comes to an end as the ego develops, and (4) that the infant is able to process aspects of language, three cases, at the ages of 6, 18 and 20 months, are presented to illustrate what is considered to be a novel approach to work with infants.     

Matters of conscience and conscientiousness: the place of ego development in the Five-factor model

The Five-factor model (FFM; Digman, 1990; Goldberg, 1990) and Loevinger's (1994) theory of ego development are two active research traditions that are often construed as incompatible approaches to the study of personality. For example, each theory proposes a different view of the concept of conscientiousness. Loevinger argued that FFM conscientiousness, which emphasizes attributes such as order, self-discipline, and achievement striving, lacks a moral component and is more similar to the conformist stage in her theory. To investigate these claims, we administered the Revised NEO-Personality Inventory (NEO-PI-R; Costa & McCrae, 1992) and the Washington University Sentence Completion Test (WUSCT; Hy & Loevinger, 1996) to 120 university students on 2 separate occasions. Together, the five traits of the FFM significantly predicted item sum scores from the WUSCT (multiple R = .54). Unique linear relationships of Openness to Experience and Agreeableness with ego level demonstrated that the two theories proposed similar constructs. We argue that these two FFM dimensions have conceptual relevance to the cognitive and interpersonal aspects of the ego development construct. We draw further connections between these FFM dimensions, ego development, and human values.     

Ego transcendence in postmodern perspective

Based on the author's previous specification of the conventional ego mind as the primary barrier to “realization of the ground of consciousness,” postmodern perspectives on the ego mind barrier are compared with premodern and modern approaches. Postmodernists view the ego as a socio‐linguistic construct. Modern assumptions of consistent subjectivity and a unitary self or identity are rejected, and reduction of the ego mind barrier to transcendence is seen to follow from exploration of alternative self‐concepts. This perspective is manifest in theories of “possible selves” and in the contrast between formulations such as the “saturated self vs. the “empty self.” Though forms of ego transcendence likely in postmodern cultures will differ from those in premodern cultures, many of the same functions will be served, as may be observed in such phenomena as “ecomysticism.”     

‘Telepathic’ phenomena and separation anxiety

By discussing a treatment characterized by its difficult ending, the author strives to show the dynamic impact of separation on phenomena that can be seen as ‘telepathic’. Led to develop some inalienable attachment to her analyst in the primary transference, the analysand found herself caught up in the contradiction of her visceral dread of dependency, which compelled her to interrupt the work in progress. She then began to work out her analyst's comings and goings and to run into him in public places, as if to be assured of his immovability. This phenomenon arose with high frequency as the effect of some idealization of the maternal object aiming to deny the spatiotemporal gap. The chance that the experience of rejection via indifference may be repeated also entailed the transferential unfurling of a fantasy involving a double, undifferentiation counterbalancing the lived experience of separation. Furthermore, a ‘telepathic’ dream occurred as confirmation of this twin relationship which illustrates the analysand's refusal to renounce her narcissistic object. Projective identifications, agglutinated ego nuclei along with primitive cross‐identifications could, among other concepts, account for such phenomena which are projective in nature yet real all the same. Such mechanisms could have the power to relay thoughts the moment undifferentiated parts of the ego – if not unborn parts of the self – were activated in a potentially symbiotic zone. Marked by a feeling of dispossession, the analyst's countertransference not only seemed to underscore this hypothesis, it also gave a partial explanation for it. Until the analyst could recognize his own nostalgia for a symbiotic relationship, he had to encourage the occurrence of those unexpected meetings which stemmed from a convergence between the transference and the countertransference.     

Playing dead: an unconscious fantasy, bodily focused defenses, and their roots in infancy

A patient's unconscious fantasy of being her mother's dead baby emerged during the course of a long analysis, and was understood as her expression and explanation, constructed and elaborated throughout her development, of a fundamental and formative early infant state and experience. This patient's identification with a baby who had died before she was born was connected to her major complaint, a pervasive feeling that she could not act with intention, and to her obsessive ruminations, compulsive actions, and masochistic attacks on her body. The bodily based aspects and focus of these defenses were autistic-like, self-directed activities that can be understood as having their roots in what was experienced as catastrophic loss in the earliest weeks and months of life. Infant research, particularly on contingency detection, is especially useful in clarifying the ways in which these defenses may form, and in reconstructing and tracing the trajectories and intricate transformations of body ego, self- and other representations, and defenses from their earliest beginnings to their current manifestations in patients' fantasies and symptoms.     

THE RAPE OF MEDUSA IN THE TEMPLE OF ATHENA: ASPECTS OF TRIANGULATION IN THE GIRL2

The relationship between the Greek goddess Athena and her father Zeus, together with the competitive hostility she displays towards other females, is presented as illustrating some previously neglected aspects of triangular developmental conflicts in the little girl. Literature on ‘the Oedipus complex in the female’ is reviewed and discussed. The mythological early histories of both Athena and the female monster Medusa are examined for the light they can shed on female developmental vicissitudes and resultant conflicts in both women and men. Unconscious split representations of women as assertive, phallic and dangerous, or alternatively passive, castrated and receptive result in defensive repudiation of the idea that a woman can be both actively assertive and also feminine and sexual. Athena's enraged action of transforming the beautiful young maiden Medusa into a monster as punishment for the ‘crime’ of having been raped in her temple is discussed as illustrating an outcome of the lack of resolution of the little girl's early triangular conflicts.     

PATHWAYS OF PLEASURE

This article describes a mode of transference relationship in which the analysand has to contend with a psychic mobilisation that results from exchanges with the analyst-object and is related to the activation of pleasure in his/her own mental functioning. The patient's ego feels the internal and external excitations that stem from this mobilisation to be dangerous because of the anxieties about threatening intrusions that they raise. These anxieties arise along the contours of narcissistic flaws that give resonance to early traumatic experiences. The ego protects itself from the danger by organising narcissistic defences that oppose the impulses towards the analyst-object and foster a stagnation of the psychic work. The author puts forward the hypothesis that the patient's ego, not tolerating exposure to drive-related dangers, retracts into a mode of primary anality that is imprisoning and restrictive, setting up a fantasy of narcissistic nidification in which a part of the ego merges with an omnipotent primary object. The purpose of this strategy is to neutralise the excitations - as far as possible - while nevertheless maintaining the element of the drive excitation that forms the basis of the fantasy. The dynamics and the economy of the defensive organisation are examined in detail, as are the questions that these raise. A clinical case illustration is presented.     

Does counting to ten increase or decrease aggression? The role of state self‐control (ego‐depletion) and consequences

In this investigation, we experimentally test the interaction of ego‐depletion (low state self‐control), consequences, and decision‐making time on aggressive responses to an insult from a confederate. The results indicate that ego‐depleted participants respond more quickly and aggressively to an insult from a confederate. However, when a 30‐ second decision‐making delay is imposed, ego‐depleted participants reduce their aggression, but only if there are external consequences to being aggressive. In the absence of such consequences, ego‐depleted participants become more aggressive following a delay. Additionally, if a distracting cognitive load disrupts the 30‐ second delay, aggression levels do not change significantly, even if there are consequences. These results suggest people respond to aggressive triggers more impulsively when ego‐depleted.