Ego, cancer of the self

So much has been said about the ego and the self by philosophers, psychologists, spiritualists, and metaphysicians that it is ultimately best to stick to simple linguistics. Psychoanalysis hardly distinguishes between the two concepts. Metapsychoanalysis, for its part, involves psychic and metapsychic processes that other approaches do not take into account. We will therefore attempt to provide a definition of these entities that considers both language—and thus common sense—psychoanalysis, and the specificities of metapsychoanalysis.

We say for instance: it is “me” who speaks, it is “me” who does, it is “me” who suffers, etc. We will therefore call “me” the psychic instance which expresses itself by saying “I”, or “Me”. At this level, introspection is enough to get everyone to agree. When someone speaks this language, we know exactly what they mean by having experienced the same inner situation. It is also perfectly normal and useful to the group for the individual to express and think of himself by saying “I am such and such”, “I do such and such a thing”, “I know or I do not know such a fact” etc.

The notion of ego, on the other hand, evokes those of selfishness and egocentricity. We will therefore use “ego” to designate an aspect of the psyche, undoubtedly very close to « me » / « I, » , but characterizing a psychic functioning where the individual is opposed to others, attacks or destroys himself, cuts himself off from the community. , takes himself for the center of the world, demands more than he deserves, appropriates what does not belong to him, does not share, allows himself what harms others or what harms himself.

We immediately see that two people whose « Me » obeys the first formula can get along without any particular problem, while two people speaking or acting in the name of their ego are led to oppose, devalue each other, despoil each other, harm each other… The ego therefore generates a form of relationship penalizing all community life (starting with couples), and ultimately penalizes the individual himself.

In other words, the « Me » brings harmony, while the ego brings about suffering. In line with the heuristic “error ↔ suffering”, it is therefore appropriate to wonder whether the ego is not part of an unnatural psychic structuring. This presupposes that the modalities of education or the early period of development deviated from natural laws and did not allow the structuring of an « Me » in accordance with what human nature should be.

Of course, fatalists will say that egoism or egocentricity are innate, and that only proper education can curb them. « philosophically correctness » intimates that we make fun of a Jean-Jacques Rousseau as he claims men are good by nature and only society makes them bad. Such an attitude however excludes a priori the discovery of factors likely to explain the distortions of psychic functioning. Secondly it excludes the possibility of correcting the principles of education or other data of the early environment which condemn our children to inherit the same distortions. It is therefore fundamentally sterile. Let us see what are the perspectives that metapsychoanalysis can open.

A first factor, determining for the psychic structuring, goes back to very early childhood, to the period when the ego is formed. As psychoanalysis teaches, this instance arises from the differences that may arise between id drives and reality. The child, for example, wants a candy, or a toy, his mother refuses him, he thus learns to be patient, acknowledge authority, to restrict his desires. Likewise if his mother agrees but the candy box is empty or the toy lost. The way in which this learning takes place becomes part of his psyche and will determine his future behavior whenever a need faces limits imposed by social or material environment.

It stands to reason how a certain balance between the situations where desires is or is not fulfilled, is healthy. Excessive deprivation leads the to withdraw into himself, the child then learns to suck his thumb rather than go to others to meet his needs, at the cost of discovering himself unusually possessive the day he finds a way to true satisfaction. On the contrary, systematic satisfactions anchor the illusion of omnipotency, the contempt of others and tendency to fall on aggressiveness in the event of frustration. In either case, the « I, » is not constructed properly and leaves room for what will appear later in the form of an ego, with the resulting tendency either to shut down or invade the whole of the « Me ».

However, this learning process is influenced by the nature of the food. The perception of flavors varies with foods consumed in their natural form, whereas it remains much more constant with prepared foods (cooked, seasoned, mixed, etc.). A child with access to fruits and other natural products is therefore more frequently confronted with flavors that shift from pleasant to unpleasant. The pineapple they enjoy might become spicy while eating it; the strawberry they ask for, remembering its aroma from the day before, will suddenly seem bitter and not very sweet; the carrot, one day delicious, will become unappealing, so that they learn that their search for pleasure is not always successful. These gustatory experiences are so powerful because the oral cavity is particularly active in early childhood (the child learns about the world through their mouth), and also because the pleasure derived from food is linked to the survival instinct, and therefore to the anxieties of death that lie deep within the psyche.

The natural balance between pleasurable and unpleasant experiences is, so to speak, reversed if the child is given prepared foods: their pleasantly sweet porridge never becomes bitter or spicy, so the child learns to label it simply as “porridge.” Strawberry candy always tastes like strawberry candy; it never turns unpleasant: the taste of candy can thus become an unconditional concept. Similarly, if the child dislikes the taste of spinach, it will always seem equally disliked. More generally, it is the representation of pleasure as a guaranteed extension of desire that takes root in the ego. This can be seen as the origin of paranoid tendencies, characteristic of the ego, which are nonexistent in the natural context.

To delve deeper into this brief demonstration, you can visit the page “Alliesthesia and Paranoia” on the website “Instinctothérapie”.

A second sensitive period plays a key role in the organization of psychic structures: the one psychoanalysts call the Oedipus complex. The child seems to experience amorous impulses, more or less sexualized, initially directed towards their mother. They then suffer from seeing the mother reject their advances in favor of those of the father, whom they perceive as a rival. This rivalry conditions their psychic structuring in an ambivalent mode of possessiveness and hatred of the third party, determining their behavior once they reach adulthood. This simplified model, based on Freudian theory, is challenged by metapsychoanalysis because it fails to consider the metapsychological purpose of non-reproductive love and sexual drives.

Nevertheless, early emotional deprivation and the learning of rivalry lead to a psychic structure dominated by the ego: opposing others, suffering from their successes, wanting to possess the object of love to compensate for frustration, or withdrawing into oneself—these are characteristics that will disrupt relationships with others and lay the foundations for social isolation, mutual misunderstanding, a distorted perception of giving and ownership, a lack of empathy, and other causes of conflict and suffering.

One point must be made: the early Oedipal situation, stemming directly from our Judeo-Christian morality, is likely not a natural one. In many primitive societies, children enjoyed considerable freedom; nothing prevented them from approaching the adult of their choice, thus avoiding the same frustrations. This was still largely the case in France until the 18th century (see, for example, the Chronicle of Heroard, the court physician who described the childhood of Louis XIII hour by hour). Even beyond the origins of humanity, among bonobos, the primates genetically closest to humans, “erotic” relationships are surprisingly frequent and uninhibited, whether heterosexual, homosexual, or intergenerational. For more information, see the Essay on Metapsychoanalysis in Light of Freud, Jung, Reich, and Lacan.

We can therefore assume, apart from any moral considerations, that the behavioral patterns specific to our society, both in terms of food and sex, generate unnatural learning situations, explaining the production of an excessive ego marked by both paranoid and neurotic tendencies, with the resulting suffering.

Note that the ego appears in this regard as a means of defense against environmental constraints too far removed from drive requirements as they are genetically programmed: the paranoid tendency is a way of questioning reality or of fantasizing it as it should be; the neurotic tendency represents an attempt to live the repressed impulses through various expedients. The two aspects unfortunately have this in common that they compromise the subtle functioning of the non-reproductive amorous and sexual impulses and make them fail in their metapsychic goal. So that the “fight against the ego” appears as a prerequisite for the rehabilitation of this primordial function. Metapsychoanalysis makes it possible to at least partially correct the psychic structures of adults, in particular by rehabilitating relational situations closer to nature. The oedipal situation is triangular, so that by responding to adulterous impulses, inevitable in any relationship, not by excluding the third party, but including him/her, it is possible to relive between adults the relational model which would have allowed a correct structuring of the ego.

Hence the spontaneous absorption of the oedipal trauma, and the development of metapsychic faculties. Food hygiene also closer to nature, also ensures a learning of taste alliesthesia, leading the individual to perceive the attitude of desiring as unsecure, and pleasure as the reward of a constant state of wonder and obediance to reality : The opposite of paranoid functioning. In other words, metapsychoanalysis is a form of ego therapy, or even: the natural treatment par excellence against the ego …

We say for example: it is “me” who speaks, it is “me” who does, it is “me” who suffers, etc. We will therefore call “me” the psychic instance which expresses itself by saying “I”, or “Me”. At this level, introspection is enough to get everyone to agree. When someone speaks this language, we know exactly what they mean by having experienced the same inner situation. It is also perfectly normal and useful to the group for the individual to express and think of himself by saying “I am such and such”, “I do such and such a thing”, “I know or I do not know such a fact” etc.

We immediately see that two people whose « Me » obeys the first formula can get along without any particular problem, while two people speaking or acting in the name of their ego are led to oppose, devalue each other, despoil each other, harm each other. . The ego therefore generates a form of relationship penalizing all community life (starting with couples), and ultimately penalizes the individual himself.