Lawrence Josephs

Priming the Primal Scene: Betrayal Trauma, Narcissism, and Attitudes Toward Sexual Infidelity

We used mindset priming techniques to conduct an experimental study (N = 316) designed to assess ideas derived from psychoanalytic theory. Specifically, we investigated the possibility that the unconscious activation of the Oedipal situation would lead people—especially men and individuals who possess narcissistic personality features—to become more prohibitive toward sexual infidelity in romantic relationships. Results supported this hypothesis, which was tested using a new scale of attitudes toward sexual infidelity. Although men and narcissists tend to be more permissive towards sexual infidelity in general, when they are led to identify and empathize with the victim of betrayal, they become as disapproving of extra-dyadic sexual involvement as are women and low narcissists. Correlational evidence indicates that narcissism is positively associated with the likelihood of having affairs, the number of partners cheated on, and (for women but not men) the likelihood of being cheated on. In addition, the (self-reported) occurrence of parental cheating behavior is positively associated with ones eventual likelihood of cheating on others. Among daughters (but not sons), a history of parental cheating is associated with increased narcissism and the likelihood of being cheated on. Potential explanations and clinical implications of our findings are discussed.

The Impulse to Infidelity and Oedipal Splitting

Freud suggested that the child perceives parental intercourse as an act of infi delity by the desired but unfaithful parent. Parental sexual infi delity is felt to be a major narcissistic injury that gives rise to fantasies of revenge. A defensive organization arises to manage this trauma and its attendant revenge fantasies. That organization involves splitting of the desired parent into faithful and unfaithful parts, displacement of hostility on to the rival parent, and identifi cation with the desired but unfaithful parent resulting in the impulse to infi delity. Romantic fantasies of escape and rescue from evil rivals provide guilt free ways of satisfying fantasies of oedipal revenge. In those fantasies the evil rival is turned into an injured third party who gets his or her just deserts as the romantic couple gets to live happily ever after. This defensive organization may embroil patients in complicated love triangles as adults for which they may seek treatment. Analyzing the repudiated narcissistic wound of parental infi delity and the disguised revenge fantasies that defend against that wound may provoke narcissistic rage towards the analyst as a moralistic, possessive, controlling, envious, and spoiling oedipal parent.

Assessing Progress in Analysis Interminable

A case study is provided of a schizoid patient in her mid-sixties who in a lengthy analysis had made significant clinical improvement. The treating analysts impression of clinical improvement was independently verified through systematic analysis of transcripts of audiotapes of thirty-six sessions over a four-year period of treatment. The patient showed significant improvement on measures of character pathology, object relations, mentalization, and superego anxiety. The results suggest that some patients with entrenched character pathology who seem to be in analysis interminable may still make clinically significant improvement. It is suggested that the scientific status of psychoanalysis would be greatly enhanced if the anecdotal evidence generated in private practice were supported by independent verification. The current study illustrates one methodology, “case study plus,” for providing independent verification while retaining the richness of the traditional case study.

THE SEDUCTIVE SUPEREGO: THE TRAUMA OF SELF‐BETRAYAL

The author describes a pathological manifestation of the approving superego that functions as a perversely seductive superego. In this process, the seductive superego rationalises and makes ego‐syntonic a gratification of forbidden wishes that will result in unconscious punishment. The author argues that the seductive superego torments the self by teasing it with the presence of a tantalising but forbidden object of desire and then by inflicting shame on the self for its timidity, which prevents it from pursuing the object in spite of the dangers. He suggests that the seductive superego inflicts a betrayal trauma upon the self by unconsciously actualising a sado‐masochistic fantasy of seduction, surrender and betrayal, along with a humiliating punishment for surrendering.

A Comparison of Archaeological and Empathic Modes of Listening

A Comparison of Archaeological and Empathic Modes of Listening Lawrence Josephs, Ph.D. ARCHAEOLOGICAL LISTENING COULD be defined as a manner of listening in which the analyst attempts to derive the unconscious meaning (latent content) of the patients communications through a process of deciphering the manifest content. The essence of archaeological listening was articulated by Freud (1900) in his method of dream interpretation, which came to serve as a prototype for the interpretation of all aspects of subjective experience, since remembered dreams, like any other form of conscious mentation, were thought to reflect a compromise between the conflicting and unconscious forces within the mind. In this model, conscious experience was presumed to be but a pale reflection of unconscious activity. The unconscious is the true psychical reality; in its innermost nature it is as much unknown to us as the reality of the external world, and it is as incompletely presented by the data of consciousness as is the external world by the communications of our sense organs (Freud, 1900p. 613). The archaeological metaphor is apropos in terms of the topographic model, in that unconscious activity reflects a regression (i.e. a return to the past) when compared with conscious mentation. Freud described three types of regression that may be discerned in unconscious activity: (a) topographical regression, in the sense of the schematic picture of the Ψ-systems which we have explained above; (b) temporal regression, in so far as what is in question is a harking back to older psychical structures; and (c) formal regression, where primitive methods of expression and representation take the place of the usual ones (1900p. 548). In temporal regression, a dream or, for that matter, any other

The view from the tip of the iceberg

In recent years there has been a growing interest in refining the technique of ego defense analysis. All of these approaches share in common an attempt to work closely with the patients free associations, to interpret at a level that is accessible to the patients consciously observing ego, and to avoid bypassing the analysis of the patients most surface-level resistances in an effort to understand unconscious conflict. These innovations reflect a commendable effort to work in a way that is rigorously empirical, that respects the patients autonomy, and that minimizes the pressure of the analysts transferential authority in the patients acceptance of the analysts interpretations. Despite the undeniable value of these technical innovations, such approaches to ego defense analysis may inadvertently result in certain overemphases in technique that may unnecessarily constrain the analytic process. They may result in a sort of obsessive tunnel vision that is overly focused on small details to the exclusion of the larger picture. An approach that counterbalances the microscopic and the macroscopic analysis of ego defense is recommended.

Self-Criticism and the Psychic Surface

It is postulated that the surface of the mind reflects a variety of shifting self-syntonic and self-dystonic contents striving to achieve a stable homeostatic balance. Shifts between self-syntonic and self-dystonic contents are seen to reflect an underlying intrasystemic conflict within the superego between conflicting superego injunctions. These shifts possess a cyclical quality, as self-syntonic contents become self-dystonic and as self-dystonic contents become self-syntonic. This conceptualization of the psychic surface has implications for a comparative study of psychoanalytic technique and for implementing the technical recommendation to work from surface to depth. It is suggested that the analysts interpretations become assimilated within cyclical processes of superego reaction and repair.

Seduced by Affluence: How Material Envy Strains the Analytic Relationship

Abstract Normative standards of affluence may function as a seductive ideal. Normative standards of affluence reflect a fantasy of material comfort that the ordinarily successful person possesses that enables him or her to live a happy life. Failing to live up to this standard evokes feelings of longing, resentment, envy, and shame. Yet attaining normative standards of affluence may be severely disillusioning. One discovers that in the compulsive pursuit of normative standards of affluence many other values may have been sadly sacrificed, leading to a sense of self-betrayal. This dynamic may be enacted in the analytic situation as bourgeois bohemian patients are treated by bourgeois bohemian analysts.

The observing ego as voyeur

A resistance to self‐observation and self‐reflection is discussed in which there is a perversion of the observing ego. The observing ego has been unconsciously recruited in the service of enacting an unconscious fantasy: the fantasy of being an excited observer of a primal scene who is punished for making forbidden observations. This voyeuristic observing ego is pathologically enmeshed in a love triangle with the patients seductive superego (i.e. identification with the desired but unfaithful parent) and with the patients punitive superego (i.e. identification with the rivalrous parent). This unconscious scenario is played out in the clinical situation as the patient unreflectively cycles through phases of denial (i.e. self‐seduction) and moral masochism (i.e. self‐betrayal). A case study illustrates how humor may be employed to free the observing ego from being enthralled by a perverse superego. Humor may unconsciously enable a rebellious attitude toward the omnipotent sadism of a perversely oppressive superego and thus enable the observing ego to break free from its pathological enmeshment.

The primal scene in cross-species and cross-cultural perspectives

A review of cross‐species and cross‐cultural research suggests that, throughout most of human behavioral evolution, children may have been enlightened as to the facts of life by observing parental intercourse and then imitating it in sexual rehearsal play in the context of a continuously rising curve of sexual desire and sexual knowledge throughout childhood. Concealment of the primal scene and prohibition of cross‐generational, bisexual, and ‘polymorphously perverse’ childhood sex play may be of relatively recent origin in human cultural evolution, buttressed by the instillation of culturally acquired sexual disgust in sexually conservative cultures. Looking at the primal scene in cross‐species and cross‐cultural perspectives utilizing the adaptationist framework of contemporary evolutionary biology can challenge normative assumptions that may still be embedded in psychoanalytic theories of species‐wide psychosexual development.