The Ontological Self.

For our module of the Self, Subject & Person we were given the following assignment brief:

If the ‘self’ is a construct shaped by genetics/biology/environment how might the understanding of a ‘true self’ enable or constrain the mirroring of personality within culture.

I decided to deconstruct this brief and analyse it through an psycho-ontological lens

Introduction

This essay will be an act of academic perversion in which self and the constructs of true or false self will be disavowed. The units of selfhood can be looked at through the biopsychosocial model but what about the ontological? Redfearn (2018) dubs these basic units of self as ‘sub-personalities’ in an attempt to overcome the ontological and theoretic disparities existing between schools of psychotherapeutic thought. This essay adopts a similar tactic in the spirit of an integrative and intersubjective approach, by weaving complimentary and non-complimentary concepts. Specific terminology will be used explicitly referencing certain theory without intention of excluding another. Not all ontological and etiological claims of self, respective to each theory, are mutually compatible. Though certain reference points may be adapted for coherence in integrative case formulation and immediacy of the therapeutic relational encounter. This adaptation, or ironically perversion, of theory is necessary as a recurrent theme throughout will be how therapeutic theory defining self, places limits on understanding and receiving self and has implications for how theory may impact authentic relation and understanding within the therapeutic encounter: That by which we frame, we constrain!

Culture

The mirroring of personality within culture speaks to the etiological installation of subjectivity within the person, of which the true and false self are conceptually part of. For Winnicott and Buber, being-in-relation is the ontologically primary from which an ‘individual’ grows out through. However, for Lacan, an aspect of relating to a subject, or conceptualised self, may begin decades prior to that subject or actual person being born (Luepnitz, 2009).

As I have previously written, Culture in Lacanian writing serves as the arbiter of certain rules in which human figures are subordinate to. Such rules include ‘prohibition of incest’ — and conversely the prescription of exogamic union (e.g., extrafamilial object choice) — which is culturally inherent in the constitution of the neurotic subject (Rodriguez, 1996). This cultural law impacts the subject in a manner equivalent to Oedipal Law. Therefore, prohibition against fulfilment of incestuous desire rules man’s sexuality; to enjoy sexuality is to adhere to constraints imposed by the law of Other. This law, or ‘discourse’ of The Other, constitutes the locus of desire and language. It is introjected via the familial human figures who relationally delegate to the infant a world cultural rule (Rodriguez, 1996). So, the person does not get a choice in which pre-existing discourse is instantiated, therefore instantiating, of self and subject.

Foucault (1990) states a discourse is a set of knowledge with its own internal structure and logic which produces social realities, identities and desires. The repetition of discourses come to seem natural thus transmit in shaping the subject unquestioned, yet they remain non-static and can be the processes of struggle between subjects (Westbrook, 2020. p.20). Additionally, ‘the discourse of the Other’ serves as the Lacanian definition of the unconscious, as such Rodriguez (1996) clarifies that it is the unconscious which aggregates the internalized objects, rather than the family per se. To be a subject, perceived with having agency, is to be limited by the laws of a culture (Luepnitz, 2009) and thus Neurotic, rather than Perverse in structure which entails a disavowal of culture (Verhaeghe, 2008). For Lacan (1938) an infant’s internalized constellation of relationships with family imagoes are a feature of ‘normative’ cultural/family structures. The family has a significant role in the ontogenesis of the Neurotic’s subject structural afflictions (Lacan, 1938) which are further pertinent as existential expressions of the individual subjective drama. Yet Lacan (1969/2007) defined the symptom as being the representation of truth of the family experience, thus the symptom correlates to the family’s’ symptomatic structure, be it Neurotic, Perverse or Psychotic. However, the question remains: if we only look at self through these lenses, do we restrict what self can be?

Truth, True Self and False Self

The conclusion of the Lacanian premises above is that onto-normative neurosis is a ‘manifestation of’ and necessary price of admission to the discourse of that Other. However, if the mirroring of personality within culture facilitates such admission, what is the implied cost? Luepnitz (2009) argues that supporting ‘truth of the subject’ is not equivocal to facilitating the emergence of ‘true self’ (TS). Nor are Perversion and True Self equivocal terms in psychoanalytic literature. Thus, it implies to be within culture, one must be shaped into a non-innate or default ‘self’, which arguably is not true to the infant’s natural way of being. For Winnicott (1960. pp.144–145) the instantiation of the False Self occurs via a relational process with the good-enough (or not good-enough) mother. A self’s ontogenesis and subsequent development cannot be referenced as process solely pertaining to the infant. The infant’s expression of true self informs the mother’s internal object representation of that infant, adapting her unconscious ego and reciprocally returning form(s) to the infant via her caretaking. As Bollas (2007) states “There is no pure culture of true self” (p.17) inasmuch as the mother’s mothering also is mediated from culture by virtue of herself being a subject within an Other and its intrinsic discourse.

However, Winnicott (1960. p.148) ultimately reduces the True Self to the detailing of one’s experiences of sensory-motor aliveness, thus truncating the theory of True Self as an inseparable relief that only functions to bolster the formulation of the False Self (or the self the infant assumes in order to confirm with familial environments and thus wider society). This reduction of the True Self as ‘an idea’ is somewhat ironic considering the lengths Winnicott goes in describing it as a holistic process that engenders spontaneity and creativity of play and its symbolization functions. Although from this perspective it is difficult to argue that ‘true self’ is static as the essay brief proposes, unless one is referring to unchanging aspects of innateness, genetic endowment and biological inheritance that are constitutive and innate of the physical human and by extension their behavioural expression.

Albeit this criticism too may be overly reductive. Non-psychical aspects such as character may refer to a degree of maladaptive patterns of behaviour or defences, however analytic theory continuously argues that which Bollas (2007. p.10) builds upon True Self; referring to character as ‘the idiom of our personality’. By which he means the unique presence or characteristic expressed by our being. This expression is found over a lifetime through the objects selected and used to cultivate our needs, interests and wishes (see Addendum: Self’s Construction).

The true self may only be a potential as the spontaneous gestures are never free from an other’s interpretation. Thus, they are intersubjective, whose evolution depends on the caregiver’s facilitation (Bollas, 2007). This dialectic is not without conflict, albeit such conflict is essential as Winnicott (1960) states the compromise (i.e., constraint) is a developmental achievement in which the ego-organization can adapt to the environment in effort to avoid annihilating impingements on the true self. Thus ‘psychic life’ is an outcome of dialectic between the unique personality idiom and actual world of human culture (Bollas, 2007).

By extension, the true self does not exist in isolation as a hidden autonomy but represents a set of bespoke possibilities unique to the person. Yet the articulation of which is subject to the nature of lived experiences, e.g., the choices and uses of objects in the actual world (Bollas, 2007). The very act of defining True Self, as Bollas has, may ironically be a constraint on the concept as such definitions may detract from the intrinsic indefiniteness that accounts for the ‘experience of aliveness’ which otherwise may only be intuitively grasped (Eckler-Hart, 1987). In contrast, the false self is no less authentic than the true self; its adaptivity of defensive structures are aspects of the person. The adaptive False Self is not to be jettisoned in therapy but integrated with the True Self of potential expression (Orbach, 2018). The goal of analysis as opening and facilitating the intercommunication between our various selves, with sub-personalities constituent of the person being subject to change/evolve from mutative experiences of interpretation (Redfearn, 2018)

Therapy

Failing the presence of a good-enough mother, analysis is said to be the second chance in which the good-enough analyst facilitates the client’s increased coherence and experience of wholeness. As such the self that emerges from both dyads has the capacity for growth and maturation (Luepnitz, 2009). Through the medium of the analyst’s empathy, the subjective world of the analysand becomes accessible to understanding (Atwood & Stolorow, 2014. p.5).

With the intersubjective field of modern analysis, the structures that (predominate) in the transference are the subject’s configurations of self-and-other relating with which the analyst is assimilated into. Through this working-through phase of the analytical process there is an invitation for synthesising alternative modes of experiencing self and others (Atwood & Stolorow, 2014. pp.47–48). Essentially, through the alliance and trust of the therapeutic relationship clients may have the dialogues (metaphorical or literal) that they would have wanted to have with important relational others. Consequently, they can experience their subject-self as being witnessed without shame, fear or guilt from another. Thereby their sense of self-worth and reckoning with traumas of the past begin to shift (Adame, 2020). Bollas (2007) argues it is this transference state which sponsors the generation of a client’s novel psychic experiences that the success of the analysis rests upon.

Meta-Culture: Constraints on Psychotherapy.

The discourse of the culture may also influence the discourse of the therapy. To parallel the Lacanian concept of Other as ‘culture-ergo-sum-self’ and subject; the therapeutic culture informs how we as practitioners further instantiate and reify the development of ‘self’. Balint conceived of the ‘apostolic function’ whereby he argued that the language inherited by trainee therapists (analysts) is formulated a specialised, and perhaps esoteric, frameworks that have a determining influence on what is understood by the therapist, which may reciprocally influence what the client expresses (Gomez, 1997). The cluster of associations emanating from analytic terminology and pedagogy influence the assumptions made about their view on their client’s material. For this reason, interpreted content made by the therapist to the client transmits the language by which clients will formulate an understanding of themselves, if communication is possible. Inversely, emergent client material may be taken as self-fulfilling confirmation of theory (Gomez, 1997).

Similarly, within humanistic theory, acting in congruence with one’s subjective experience defines authenticity. However, self-actualization centres upon the individual yet their relational world is conceived as a contextual background for their growth process. In this conception the individual is primary, in some way separable, to relationship and wider community (Adame, 2020). Both Rogerian and analytic theories converge on the idea that greater discrepancies (incongruence) between public and private self predicts anxiety (Tunnell, 1984).

The proposition that personality-mirroring is constrained by culture can hinge on the following argument: The culture through which we interpret a client’s communications covertly biases or shapes the space left for the client’s communications (in terms of transference) and authentic self-emergence. Thus, clients who are obliged to learn or internalise the therapist/analyst language are prone to developing a surface-adaptation as Balint put it, which is akin to a Winnicottian false-self (Oppenheim-Gluckman, 2015). It is this reason why Balint emphasises ‘relationship leading to maturation’ over ‘insight via interpretation’. The latter assumes the client’s level of ability to take in communication as idea rather than the experiencing them as action (Gomez, 1997).

Furthermore, therapists can over-rely on technique to assuage their own anxiety during encounters with the client (Gomez, 1997). Eckler-Hart (1987) found that some trainees take refuge in the stereotypical analytical stance by remaining overly abstinent to transference. The use of techniques adhered to ‘too rigidly’ was obtrusive to the assimilation of spontaneous self into psychotherapeutic repertoire. In the vicissitudes of training there is an implicit demand on therapists to not be ‘as alive’ with the client as they otherwise would be elsewhere. Thus, there is a necessity in the mobilization of a therapist’s defences (Eckler-Hart, 1987) and a constraint of true being. While the over-reliance on the ‘therapist role’ to avoid vulnerability interferes with optimal ‘being with’ the other person; the balance of therapeutic training is learning to be spontaneous and securely use the self without being vulnerable to impingements of our true selves. (Eckler-Hart, 1987).

This sentiment is echoed by Cvetovac and Adame (2017) who argue that the evolution of theory informing practice may create stigmatising effects on how therapist’s view their own wounding if such theory underpins aspects of wounded selfhood as shortcomings and liabilities rather than ubiquitous human experiences through which wisdom and empathy may be cultivated.

Use of True Self

Capitulation to a defensive ‘role of therapist’ has implications for treatment. Bollas (2007) states we can neither analyse nor ‘see’ the true self but only facilitate it through the momentary use of our own self, as it only exists in the client’s experience. A therapist who has allowed themselves to be used as an object is in a position to acquire knowledge into (the client’s true self through the) nature of such use. Bollas (2007. pp.16–17) provides the example of a client’s wry comment being amusing: it is argued that if the therapist’s reception to the comment results in an authentic chuckle, this is indicative of the therapist’s true self being used by the client to facilitate an element of joy in relation to an object. Alternatively, if such a comment is enacted through defensive contrivance, the therapist’s sense of awkwardness may be evoked by the client’s false self, thus complementing their own discomfort. True self exists through using its objects (Bollas, 2007), yet there is always an aspect of the client’s subject phenomenological experiencing that is unknown to the therapist (Gomez, 1997).

The client’s true self using a therapist’s true self could be understood as ‘the force of the client’s unique characteristic being finding itself through experiences of the object’. Thus, the therapist may gain knowledge of the client’s patterns of personality, but the aim is to find experiences for establishing true self in life (Bollas, 2007). The question remains, how do therapists distinguish the true use of them from the client’s internalised object-relations? Bollas (2007) suggests it is the transference and countertransference, where the internal information expresses a coercion into an object-relation script. True Self to True Self relating and the authenticity of an I-Thou encounter does not demand perfection or absence of adversity, any aspect we disavow of ourselves potentially forecloses us from being in optimal dialogue as we may disavow it this aspect in others too (Adame, 2020).

Demands of False Self: I — It

Such demands emphasize how some clients initially approach therapy with an ‘I-It’ relation, exclusively relating to the therapist with instrumentality; Lacan posited that transference occurs prior to analysis, as soon as it is assumed there is a ‘subject-who-is-supposed-to-know’ (Gallagher, 1995. p.12). The clients internalised working model anticipates that there is some enlightened ‘other’ who is ‘supposed to know’ the client’s signification, or more simply, a meaning of the analysand’s speech. Yet such knowledge is not equivocal to actual knowledge of the analyst, nor can the analyst know the actual signification (Lacan 1981. p.253; Fink, 2009). Such instrumental use of the other compares to Freud’s assertion about repetition compulsion with primary objects (imagoes) of infantile phantasies; the degree to which an individual’s libidinal needs are repeatedly unsatisfied in reality, there is an unconscious anticipation that these needs will be met and satisfied with every new person that is encountered (Freud, 1912).

The sacrificed spontaneity within the I-It, may parallel the sacrificed natural organismic responding of the false self. It is through the gradual process of holding that some clients may develop an I-Thou relating (Adame, 2020). Buber (1957) states that is the psychotherapist’s whole being, the “selfhood hidden under the structures erected through training and practice” (p.95) that is ultimately demanded by the client. But the therapist’s true self does not exist to comply to the demand of the other (Eckler-Hart, 1987) as being forced into a mode of responding through a repetition of the clients pre-existing object relations is antithetical to the aims of the work. This is not to assume that therapists are above or exempt from I-It relating.

Conclusion

Through cultural models of language and social discourse we can experience ourselves as being multiply constituted having access to self-reflexivity through interpretation and transferential juxtaposition of our multiple subject positions (Barvosa-Carter, 2001. p.128). Therefore, we need not necessarily see the production of subjectivities, (be they false or true) as aspects of a singular cultural transmission but respective to various cultural axes. How we define self potentially constrains our understanding of self and therefore the reception of the other, but arguably it may be more functional to have some working model of self rather than nothing at all. If we can conceive of self in some way that fosters change from repetitive maladaptive relating and attachment, then such constraints are clinically useful. In much the same way a false self is required for onto-normative admission to culture proper, the culture of therapy pedagogy requires false self as an adaptive compromise function in the genesis of therapeutic training. Yet capitulation to therapy pedagogy and technique may hinder the creative spontaneous gesture. Hence the inter-subjectivist approach, be it MBT or Existential I-Thou relating, at least gives us extraneous frameworks in which to comprehend connectivity from pseudo-relating. As therapists we should grow awareness of our inherited beliefs of self-and-other, so these believes do not further constrain the client’s sense of presence, reception and potential for mutable relating.

Addendum: Self’s Construction.

To the reader, it may seem ironic to assume a distinction exists between discussing personality as an abstraction and experiencing ourselves as subjective phenomena. However, if we are to look at the individual’s subjective dynamic, devoid of external interaction, a process of mutually reciprocal dichotomy constitutive of selfhood is posited to exist: Davies (1996. as cited in Celani, 2010) describes the inner world of the person as being composed of ‘averagable’ and ‘irreconcilable’ self and object representations. This is consistent with the aformentioned ‘sub-personalities’ of Redfearn (2018).

In psychodynamic literature the self is somewhat constituted from an external shared discourse that is internalised via the caregiver-child dyad and diluted through the person’s unique phenomenological innateness and subjectivity. Thus, self is constituted relationally. Furthermore, the development of body-ego and its union with body depends on the primary caregiver’s handling (Redfearn, 2018). However, it begs the question: with internalization, what dynamic processes of instantiating self-hood are unique to the individual, independent of external relating? Ogden (2018) argues that through the gradual threshold processes that enable infants’ capacity to experience themselves as the interpreter of their perceptions, the infant as a ‘subject’ is born. Ogden elaborates that the experience of ‘I-ness’ is a comprehending sense that emerges concomitantly within the space when differentiation between symbol (paranoid-Schizoid) and symbolized (depressive) occurs. Therefore, the ‘I’ is the interpreter of one’s symbols, the mediator between thoughts and the sense of thinking, finally as an intermediary between lives experiences and self. Ogden (2018) finally argues that this differentiation between symbol/symbolized and emergence of I-ness are mutually affording processes that co-create reciprocally, rather than one creating the other linearly.

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