Identity, narcissism and the emotional core

Abstract

This paper describes the course of an analysis which demonstrates how borderline and narcissistic functioning can be understood in terms of a struggle with issues of identity. It shows how such functioning can come to exert a profound hold on the individual and why it seems, at times, a matter of life and death to the patient to avoid states of separation from the analyst. The paper suggests that these complex phenomena can be understood, perhaps surprisingly, in the simple terms of the nature of affect itself. The concept of the emotional core is introduced to embody and highlight that which lies beneath both Jungian and Freudian models (offering a potential bridge between the two models)--namely the psyche's essentially affective nature. It is suggested that the emotional core can serve as an organ of perception giving the individual both their primary relation to reality and an emotional attachment to others. This emotional core is understood to function in a narcissistic manner to preference experiences of sameness and in aversion to experiences of difference--a view consonant with Stern's understanding of infant development where the infant is able to distinguish self from other from the beginning of life (as Fordham also held); taking up Stern's terminology, it gives the individual a 'core' sense of being. There is, however, no stable, on-going sense of 'I' associated with this form of functioning as the individual is immersed in the latest affect to enter consciousness (as in the borderline state of mind) and consequently the individual comes to rely intensely on the other to determine their sense of being (the other becomes a self-regulating other in Stern's terms). The development of ego-functioning gives a more stable and on-going sense of 'I' to the individual, giving contact with the broader personality, allowing the individual to be less reliant on the other and orientating them to reality in a way more fitting to their overall needs. The paper describes how consciousness, which is not seen as identical with the ego, moves between the mode of functioning of the ego and that of the emotional core, i.e., shifting in and out of states where projective identification predominates. It elaborates the range of self-experience encompassing spiritual experience and states of disintegration (which are understood to have a similar structure) on one side, to ego-based experience (which can itself be defensive and rigid at times) on the other. It explores the consequences of such a view for analytic technique and relates it to the Jungian view of the self and the Freudian unconscious.

Envy and difference

“…It is for this reason that Meredith‐Owen (2008) correctly recognizes the absence of the vertex of envy in my earlier discussion of Rachel (West 2004). Meredith‐Owen takes an essentially Kleinian line in regard to envy, quoting Money‐Kyrle, who says that all adults encounter some difficulties with ‘the recognition of the breast as a supremely good object, the recognition of the parents’ intercourse as a supremely creative act, and the recognition of the inevitability of time and ultimately death’ (Money‐Kyrle 1971, p. 103), and that the chief of these impediments to availing ourselves of these gifts of life is envy.…”

“…Rachel was in her early fifties when I first met her. I have discussed her case before (West 2004, 2007), describing how she experienced enormous rage at the boundaries of the analysis in the face of her desperate need/wish for soothing, empathic responses to her emotional distress; for example, for me to tell her what I was feeling, to hug her, or to respond outside of session times to her terror and anguish.…”

“…I suggest that the aversion to separation, difference and otherness is universal in early functioning (the narcissistic functioning of the psyche [West 2004, 2007]), as the infant needs a sufficient degree of sameness to be able to cope with new experience and to recognize, categorize and contain it. I am not suggesting this preferencing of sameness is an overt behavioural principle, like the pleasure principle, e.g., ‘act so as to maximize sameness’, but rather that it is an implicit function of core consciousness which structures the development of the mind itself.…”

‘Go! Sterilise the fertile with thy rage’ Envy as embittered desire

“…(Knox 2005, p. 621, 623) This persuasively accounts for a cluster of Jim's characteristics-his 'mindless' attempts to evacuate anxiety, his repudiation of responsibility and his compulsive enactments. And the link with early experience of helplessness (his crying in his cot memory) leading to suppression of desire for reciprocal intimacy and substitution of a need to control the emotional and behavioural responses of the other is a theme also explored by Marcus West (2004). His paper vividly describes how his empathic attempts to accommodate the escalating rage of his analysand led to impasse and then crisis as his reserves of 'agape' felt exhausted by her belligerent, demanding entitlement.…”

Tradition and originality in the transference: a Coleridgean commentary

“…Marcus West's case study in this Journal ‘Identity, narcissism and the emotional core’ is one illuminating instance of this (West 2004). I had an experience of a trainee who seemed to have the knack of raising professional analytic issues in the session that just happened to be current concerns of mine.…”