Michel De M’uzan and Origins of Identity

Abstract

Michel de M’Uzan describes a way to think about identity in which two distinct sources of our sense of identity must be considered. His innovation is the concept of the vital-identital, which he suggests is equally foundational with the sense of identity derived from the early human environment. The term endogenous identity is used to unify under one heading the ideas that de M’Uzan employs to build his concept of vital-identital. The author summarizes de M’Uzan’s earlier work, elaborates on his more recent ideas, and illustrates the use of de M’Uzan’s ideas with a cultural and a clinical example.

• Michel de M’Uzan
• identity
• French psychoanalysis
• psychosomatics
• psychic energy
• perversion
• neurosis
• depersonalization
• auto-conservation
• vital-identital
• permanent disquiet
• Freud
• drive theory

Notes

All quotations from de M’Uzan in this paper have been translated by me.

I have used some of de M’Uzan’s ideas in an audiovisual project about David Bowie and the strangeness of identity. The presentation focuses on Bowie’s creativity in his last works as he confronted his terminal illness. This presentation is available via the following link: https://sway.com/d4JnuQuHmfCjorrf?ref=Link.