Our Tragic Flaw

I have just finished reading a wonderful book by an old professor of mine, Jonathan Lear, called Freud. In it, he gives a very succinct and accessible account of how Freud's three psychic structures--the id, ego, and super-ego--come into being. Freud believed that all internal conflict originates with these different structures of the personality warring with one another.

In a sense, I think I must agree with Freud, but it seems to me that he leaves out something quite essential that I have argued (in Our Tragic Flaw) must be taken into account if we are to understand the ultimate sources of internal conflict.

Freud's theory posits the following (and please forgive me for any errors here, I am hardly an expert on Freud). We are born all id--that is, we are packets of needs demanding fulfillment; and where fulfillment doesn't come immediately, these unmet needs give rise to fantasies of fulfillment. As we discover that the world is not perfectly compliant with our needs/wishes, and that we must modify our engagement with the world to fulfill them, we develop the ego (called by Freud the reality principle). The ego, therefore, is an internalization of the social world into the personality of the infant. In a later stage (in Freud, as a result of the Oedipal conflict), the child internalizes the moral injunctions (and its associated guilt or shame) of the same-gendered parent, which becomes active in the psyche in the form of the super-ego.

One can see a similar unfolding in Our Tragic Flaw (pp. 62-78), though you will find no reference to the terms id, ego, or super-ego. In this account (which is, in this respect, by no means original to me), the Oedipal conflict makes no appearance, nor is it necessary, to explain the introjection of morals, shame, or guilt into the personality. Rather, recent research suggests that parents actively train their children in social mores and basic survival skills and, in so doing, very often inadvertently introduce paralyzing shame into the character of their children. This explanation does not require the extravagance of the Oedipal complex. (See Freud, pp. 180-185, for Lear's clear but necessarily tortured account of the super-ego.)

The chief deficiency of Freud's explanation of internal conflict, both from the point of view of individual therapy and radical social change, is that it would seem to foreclose the possibility of a person becoming integrated and whole, largely resolving her internal conflict. Of course, to paraphrase Richard Dawkins (who said, "The universe does not owe us meaning"), the universe does not owe us the resolution of our internal conflicts. We have no reason to assume that such resolution is possible. In fact, one could look to many different facts to confirm its futility--namely, the rather poor outcomes we see from research into theraperutic methods of all stripes, in the form of unresolved neuroses and relapses into disordered mental life.

At the same time, we have no reason to conclude that resolution of internal conflict is not possible, either. And by this I do not mean that we can achieve a point where no internal conflict ever occurs, but rather we can achieve a level of mental health where internal conflict, whenever it arises, can--for the most part--be worked through, integrated, and channeled toward a joyful life and a just society.

Moreover, I would argue that we have little choice but to strive tirelessly to find such a form of resolution--if we hope to avert the worst possible outcomes of present trends (such as WMD proliferation and global climate change). In our historical moment, we have a new moral imperative (even greater than we have always had) to figure out how to live joyfully, sustainably, and equitably among all the other creatures with whom we share this dear, fragile planet.

Absent from Freud's account of the origins of internal conflict is any reference to our inherently conflictory existential situation. Or, I should say, that conflict is only implicit in his formulation of the id and the ego. In Our Tragic Flaw (pp. 59-62), I develop the concept of the paradox of existence. This paradox consists of two equally true but conflictory descriptions of our relation to the world around us:

1. (the more common, or secular, understanding) that we are alone in a vast and threatening universe and must fend for ourselves to survive;
2. (the more religious or spiritual understanding) that we are part of a larger whole with which we are densely interconnected, and which supports us in innumerable ways.

As a scientific matter, both of these descriptions are absolutely factual. Psychologically, we continually experience both: for example, when we cry out into the wilderness in hunger, and then we are supplied a warm breast and mother's scent and touch and soothing intonations.

Perhaps the id, the seat of narcissism, represents descriptor (1). But the ego and super-ego fail to represent descriptor (2) in any kind of adequate way. Implicitly, we can see the struggle of the child to balance her aloneness and her interconnectedness through both the ego and super-ego, but neither of these structures acknowledges a factual reality of (2). In short, Freud--like the rest of us in the scientific age--has over-represented (1) and under-represented (2). This, in a nutshell, is my critique of Freud's theory of the origins of internal conflict.

The ultimate origins of internal conflict find form in the antithesis of autonomy and interconnectedness, which is simply an objective fact about our existential situation. In this sense, maturity may be seen (through an endless reiteration of merging and individuation) as synthesis--not by making the two extremes disappear, but by finding a dynamic equilibrium that is continually adjusted and refined as circumstances evolve.

The age of reason, and the scientific revolution to which it has given rise, has had the peculiar effect of blinding modern humankind from the real dynamics of our existential situation. The resulting massive and fraught imbalance threatens to destroy humankind as a whole (if not life itself), just as it has systematically left generations of women and men psychically bereft. If we can restore a proper, truer perspective then synthesis again becomes possible. And then, perhaps, our future as individuals and as a species will acquire a lightness of being for which all of us now yearn.