Chapter 3

Self-Analysis: Freud and I/me

It's spooky rereading these case histories. Larry Lyons, a past (unrequited) love object sent them to me in Moscow from Paris 9 years ago, I gave them to Volodya, another past (unrequited) love object. Here I am with the ghosts in my mind and all around me back here in Moscow. The newly discovered, formerly censored, past which is being dredged up by glasnost is like the society's unconscious, though it is being brought to light, not in bits and pieces on a psychiatrist's couch, after which the scattered fragments are masterfully forged and the patient resurrected to carry on his life. They are exploding, amid cries of anguish and cynical calls for a wholesale rejection of the poisonous perversions of the revolutionary and Stalinist past. It's a mass psychic breakdown, triggered by the death of a father figure (Brezhnev) in the classical model (Ratman, myself). Who would correspond to Margaret Thatcher as (anti)hero, in the recovery of a patient? How can one make sense of people's almost religious faith in a mentally unstable Boris Yeltsin, as 'knight in shining armor'. Reality always looks completely different than it should.

Russia's revolution was a mass perversion taking hold of society. Rejecting the fetish of money and private property, to fetishized bourgeois society, was itself a fetish. Having entered that fetish, how easy it is for me to fall into the worship of the glittering West, the norm here in moth-eaten, cynical, corrupt, fetishized Moscow. My occasional flashes of anger at Thatcher out there and my childhood memories within calm me and restore my sanity and equilibrium, at least for a moment. Thank you, Freud!

What happened since I last read these case histories? Well, apart from glasnost, a lot, and then again, not so very much. My sex life has gone almost nowhere, though I get glimmers of change now and then, and I don't want to be passive and submissive as a rule. In fact there are people I really want 'to possess', though they're still only male. The fear of women lingers on. I'm convinced the desire for male sexuality has a religious source beyond its neurotic origins (because of?). I've become convinced of this in the last year. Learning of Alister Crowley's magical use of sex struck an intuitive chord (i. e., gave me an erection); I experienced an intense eroticism near a small deserted chapel on a hill-top near Tskhneti in Georgia, and felt the magic of 2 guys fucking as I masturbated in the woods nearby.

How women fit in in my case, I don't know, though a dream I had in Tbilisi (Sharon and the sub-basement) suggests to me that there was some childhood sexual experience which I have since blocked out and for which I was punished (I only remember necking with her in the back of the car driving home from the beach). And/or maybe it was with Carole. I remember mother was pregnant with Sharon during one of the worst periods of Carole's breaking out. Sex with guys never seemed to be problematic for me, though it has never led to a permanent bond, which I feel is my tragedy.

My loneliness and insecurity personally has sapped me of any desire to make something of myself materially. (Revenge against father/mother?) My embracing of socialism and communism 15 years back and my love affair with Russia was my secret defiance of my father and his comfortable world, my mother and her prudishness, and my sister Carole and her ugly sensuality (which itself was a rebellion against my mother and father). Now that the love affair with Russia has faded, exposed as a perversion under Stalin and stagnation, I seem to be set adrift again, but well advanced and without a profession or material skill. I do have intense feelings, an accumulation of knowledge (dulled by dope) which could ripen into wisdom, and generally good health. But can I overcome a broken 'romance' of such proportions? Do I 'replace' my love object with another illusion? With myself? With someone (m/f)? With nothing? With God?

My love for young people and children has grown over the years, which I have nursed along by teaching economics and music, being a counselor at a kids' camp, and being a 'peace activist'. Having no genetic offspring or stable family life makes life difficulty, but there are outlets for your love if you search them out. How I cursed the lessons and classes at Seneca College, SEE School and the Marxist Institute, and how I've missed the students here! [Maybe it was the relatively guilt-free period of early puberty - fooling around at summer camp and with Bill Mulholland, Jamie Tiller, Dean Patrick, Larry Mosely - that I yearn for, or merely the eternal simplicity and innocence of youth]

The biggest change in the last 9 years of course, for me was the death of my father, and my alienation from my family. Freud's Rat Man was not so interesting the first time, and I was subsequently drawn to Marcuse, Reich, Jung, Alice Miller, and the Freudian Marxists as humanizers of Freud. But his system still is fresh in relation to my hunger for self-analysis. The unconscious (pleasure principle) and dreams (where the unconscious only partially pushes through the censorship of the conscious) are what I need to understand.

Several characteristics of the Rat Man hit him. His obsessions seem to stem from an early fear that he spoke his feelings aloud to his parents without realizing it, reflecting the child's natural awareness of the as yet not entirely represented unconscious (I remember telling mother I don't like her friend while the woman was standing there, mother's hard, cold smile as she ushered the woman out, and her rage-filled beating). His early rage against his father was buried but remained active in his unconscious and led to the eruption of obsessions and suicide attempts due to guilt long after his father died. (I remember my rage when my father hit me and cursed me as we were preparing to leave on holiday when I was 8 or 9).

The sexuality of the neurotic remains primarily autoerotic (masturbatory). The childhood trauma and its repression resurface at puberty in neurotic symptoms, displacing and repressing one's sexual drive. (Uh-hu.)

The Rat Man needs uncertainty and doubt to draw him away from reality and isolate (protect) him from the world (dislike of watches). (Uh-hu.)

The survival of intense opposites - generally conscious love and unconscious hatred - paralyses the will, the unconscious hatred growing and infecting the neurotic's sexuality, and surfacing as symptoms and even a split personality. When the hatred breaks forth, it performs the same act of repression against now repressed love, this perhaps being a characterization of a hysteria. Freud proposes that with repressed hatred, the sadistic component of love is "exceptionally strongly developed from constitutional causes". The compulsion then is a displaced compensation for the doubt and fear of harm to the love/ hate object. When the neurotic's indecision on a matter is resolved, he must fanatically pursue his decision, however trivial or absurd, with his dammed up energy. These are auto-erotic displacements, not relating directly to the love/ hate object. (Uh-hu.)

The regression from sexual cathexsis is to looking or knowing (Paul likes to watch vs I like to read), where the early infantile sexual instincts which were thwarted in the neurotic. The sublimated version of the latter is characterized by brooding and the sexualization of the process of thinking rather than the content of thought (mental masturbation). The obsessive thought substitutes for an aggressive act against the love/ hate object.

My obsessions have been intellectualism, asceticism, aestheticism, radical politics, homosexuality and self-debasement. Support of the SU is motivated by defiance of my father (authority) along the lines of Rat Man, loaded with guilt (it might harm him), and the need for a mother substitute. In obsessions, "the thing to be warded off invariably surfaces in the very means to ward it off"; i.e., my own selfishness and authoritarian nature surfacing in my politics, social relations; rejection of intimacy replaying the lack of intimacy in relations with mother; the resentment of wealth and success - the flipside of love of humiliation and masochism. To the extent that hatred for father/ mother was continually repressed, politics and intellectualism became the obsessions, displacing hatred of parents onto hatred of society rationalized by asceticism.

I recall some hysterical moments: my reaction to mother touching my underwear drying on the clothesline leading to uncontrollable rage and paralysis of will, prompted by fear of castration. Guilt over father's death perhaps triggered my return to the SU to try to compensate (empathise with dying SU).

Coming here now has created a confluence of ontogeny and phylogeny for me. The SU is suffering mass neurosis. I cathect with the revelation of the hypocrisy of the social order as I proclaim the hypocrisy of my family. The only option is to develop self-reliance and outgrow hero-worship. I have a Ratman-like split personality: rebel/ conservative, ascetic/ sensualist, aesthetic/ animal, masochist/ sadist (my dream of 4 Erics playing bridge with fifth watching). My love obsessions tend to be phallic mothers, masculine, but dark-haired and cold, like mother (vs blond and sensual, like father). Maybe the SU itself is this for me - evil, dark, other, pursued fanatically (irrationally) like an obsessive symptom. I provoke failure as revenge against father/ mother.

But the neurosis has its up side - leading to religious enlightenment (eternal fatherly love), art, self-discovery through exile/ alienation (Dante), travel, various professions, hatred of hypocrisy and lies, love of nature, altruism.

In the case of paranoia, Dr. Schreber, Freud describes the stage of narcissism as when the libido passes from auto-eroticism to object-love. The child unifies his sexual instincts to obtain an object-love, at first his own body. Freud explains a homosexual fixation as the result of not going beyond this stage, demanding the same genitals of one's love-object (i.e., one's own). All children in fact insist that both sexes have the same genitals, and it is a trauma for them to learn otherwise, leading to castration/ Electra anxiety. Male friendship shows the trace of this narcissism, and male-bonding assures each other of one's genitalia. Being 'stuck' at this stage leaves people open to the 'sexualization of the social instincts' (sexualization of friendship) which can undo the sublimations which have been achieved.

Also in the case of Schreber, Freud defines the mechanisms at work in the symptoms: repression (internal - detachment of libido from loved ones), and distortion and projection (external - reattachment gone bad). The patient has withdrawn his libidinal cathexsis from his environment. Thus he becomes indifferent to his surroundings, they become irrelevant to him. His vision of the end of the world is the ultimate projection of the internal catastrophe of his repression. His subjective world has come to an end through his withdrawal from it. The delusion formation is an attempt at recovery, though his relation to his environment is now a hostile one. (Uh-hu.)

My indifference to my surroundings and attraction to religion follow Schreber's own withdrawal and religious paranoia. It all points to the need to reattach my libido to my surroundings in a positive way.

The case of the Wolfman involved the child witnessing the primal scene where he identified with his mother being made love to by his father from behind (leading to castration fear, anal eroticism, desire to return to the womb to replace mother as love object), and seduction by his older sister (leading to a passive hostile attitude toward women, sexual preciosity and reinforcing castration fear). His regression from genital (masturbation) to earlier pregenital sexuality (anal eroticism, sadistic play with animals, irritability and tantrums (inducing beatings)) was triggered by his nanny's threats of castration. The sadism converted into masochism since the animals and insects he tormented also represented little boys (i.e., himself) being chastised and beaten for masturbating. His tantrums were subconscious attempts to get his father to beat (i.e., seduce and make love to) him and to assuage his guilt over this desire and from his masturbation. Since no stage in sexuality is completely replaced by another, both sadism and masochism, genital and pregenital sexuality continued in the patient in a state of ambivalence, making his character unstable.

Much of this rings true to my own situation. My father's loudly proclaimed playful seduction of other women combined with my mother's equally vocal distaste for any manifestation of sexuality encouraged an identification with her, a passive attitude towards sex, and a desire to cathect with father. A kind of witnessing of the primal scene.

Carole's loudly proclaimed sexuality and the subsequent angry scenes, are etched in my memory as a kind of seduction (leading to fear of and hostility to women). Her sex play with boyfriends in the back laundry room were disgusting and exciting (I was 10-12) and I smoked and drank at one of her parties when my parents were away. I also ruined a record of hers in a frenzied dance ("Let's Twist Again") - my slipper flew off and hit the record - a cause of guilt and embarrassment. She was often rough, cruel, and teasing as well (as apparently she was with Fred). Once we were playing "Queen for a Day" - I was declared queen and she yanked my arm and I fell into the coffee-table and had to be rushed to the hospital for stitches.

I don't recall being cruel to animals or having a lot of tantrums, or having an anal fixation. I was not keen to be fucked the first time and only really enjoyed it after my adventure in Tashkent at age 29. I have craved it at times since, more so now, wanting to feel like I'm being loved by a man, enjoying his sexual excitement and experiencing intimacy with him. Somehow, I don't think this is so neurotic (maybe it's even religious or a higher sexual experience), but it doesn't make for a secure balanced life, a feeling of self-respect, or a long-term relationship. Though there have been times when a potential relationship seemed able to blossom, I sooner or later turn cold and feel trapped (though Fred once told me he felt exactly that way the day after he got married).

What triggered the sexual regression I don't know - maybe it was the constant pressure against sexuality following Fred's scandal when I was still in mother's womb (the sex ring at the country school, which he told me about in our last meeting, after I broke relations with the family). The move to the city (age 5) was a cause of anxiety. The subsequent years - till high school (age 13) were difficult. I remember feeling lonely, persecuted at school (teased as effeminate for figure skating). My first love object was probably Robert Gillespie, a ringleader in junior high who had a slight hare-lip but was attractive and already tall. I remember seeing one of his balls hanging out of his underwear when we had to change in a washroom. And there was Bob Downer who grabbed my balls on a dare once to my great humiliation. On the other hand, high school was great - I had friends, enjoyed learning, music, skating, traveling. I had several male friends whom I was crazy about - Bill Young among them, but no consummated sexual relationship till university. While the Wolfman's homosexuality was repressed and was evident only in symptoms (constipation, social withdrawal, mental breakdown), mine surfaced though in a guilt-ridden neurotic way, achieving no permanent cathexsis. It did not lead to total social withdrawal, though my dramatic moves are partly this. I still have great trouble coming with someone, freezing up and feeling anxiety.

The Wolfman also turned to religion as a father substitute. His anal eroticism is manifested in his irrational attitude to money. It's not subject to his conscious control due to his repressed passive homosexuality and the fact that money is ultimately a gift. Thus he was alternately stingy and overly generous. (Uh-hu.) My sublimation of academic and work success as a gift to father (cathexsis) fell apart when he died. Freeing his repressed homosexuality freed the Wolfman of his related constipation and gave him some control over his attitude to money. (Uh-hu.)

Receiving money can also have the meaning of giving birth and become a means of achieving feminine (homosexual) satisfaction (for the donor it represents power and male genital control). (Uh-hu.) His father gave his sister money once and he screamed until she gave it to him, i.e., until he received sexual satisfaction from his father. I cherish presents from my father substitutes. This all leads back to the need to return to the womb so that you can be copulated with by your father, be reborn and bear him a child a la Apollo.

The sexual m/f aspects had been spit up in the Wolfman. At the onset of genital sexuality (3 years old), an intense homosexuality had arisen. The sado-masochistic traits developed out of this early development. To preserve itself, the ego was forced to repudiate sexuality with anxiety and phobias. The wolf dream (with large white tails his castration fear) was a reaction against passive femininity, rather than a triumph of masculinity.

For me, the m/f coexist ambivalently. My own feeling of being immature perhaps reflects the fact that the ego's resolution of my sexuality was never complete. My lack of severe obsessions and phobias reflects a stronger constitution than the Wolfman's, but the problems are still unresolved, and anxiety and depression are my neurotic symptoms. I still have unresolved fears of castration behind my homosexuality, though they are at least partially conscious. I must come to grips with my neurotic relationship to my father. Now that he is dead, I can't have sexual satisfaction from him. I must find it in life.

"A Case of Homosexuality in a Woman" casts doubt on the likelihood of curing homosexuality. Freud attributes 3 aspects to homosexuality: physical hermaphroditism, m vs f mental attitude, and choice of object. The patient took a male attitude and chose a homosexual love object. The coquette love object represented both her female and male ideals, reminding her of her older brother, being forthright, slender, and of severe beauty. The neurosis 'worked' in that her father was incensed and mother tolerant.

In reverse, this case has parallels for me - revenge against mother for denying me sexuality during the period of Oedipal revival, assuming a more passive feminine role with respect to masculine straight males, not really wanting a homosexual lifestyle. My love objects must fulfill both m and f ideals, reminding me of my mother and elder sisters.

The patient's attempted suicide, Freud interprets as revenge against her father and a desire to kill him, the betraying love object, but turning the death-wish against herself. It followed a scene where both her father and the coquette rejected her (her mother having already taken her place by having the baby). Thus, she had no love object and became totally desperate. My own suicidal feelings have a similar genesis - desire to take revenge against (kill) my mother turning into killing myself. After father died, my feeble attachment of libido to him was no longer accessible, mother was no substitute, so feelings of despair increased. Freud states that suicide can represent sexual wish-fulfillment, so my own suicide would be sexual fulfillment with mother (it would have to be tragic, violent, and final in her mind).

Freud concludes that male homosexuality in general relates to a mother fixation, that everyone is basically bisexual, and that homosexuality has physical, mental, and object choice components which are not synonymous. We are left with culturally determined categories of m and f as active and passive, and where there are no longer strict traditions regulating the social accommodation of one's sexuality, it's 'each man for himself' and the luck of the (family) draw. So make do with what's on your plate. Recognize it and try to digest it.