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ABSTRACT
It is well known that Heinz Kohut’s papers on narcissism brought forth a re-evaluation of a patient’s healthy self-regard. Indeed, those pivotal essays open up a novel perspective and, with it, clinical possibility by ceasing to cast a patient’s narcissistic concern in a purely pejorative light—as more primitive or less adaptive mode of being—to seeing it as an approvable sign of psychic health. Less well known, however, is Kohut’s corollary insight, notably that an emotional climate, what he calls the deeply ingrained value system of the Occident, is responsible, in large part, for the wholesale devaluation of narcissism. My focus in this paper is with this less well known but equally important insight, and my aim is to properly understand Kohut’s observation that an allegiance to this deeply ingrained value system may have a deleterious impact on clinical practice. I close by suggesting that we let Kohut caution us that smuggling in altruistic moral presuppositions can be a hindrance to clinical work, and that we pause before we follow the trend in contemporary psychoanalysis that encourages us to take an ethical turn.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 In step with Martine Prange, I view Ecce Homo as “part of a group of four autobiographical-philosophical writings written in 1888. The others are: The Case of Wagner (1888), Twilight of the Idols (1889) and Nietzsche contra Wagner (1889)” (2021: 266n1). In addition to these four works, I will also draw some interpretive fuel from the Preface to On the Genealogy of Morality (1887) where Nietzsche speaks candidly about the deeply personal origins of that work.
2 By attending exclusively to the “suffering other,” it follows that the ethical turn comes after that other more famous turn in psychoanalytic theory, the so-called “Relational” one (Corpt, Citation2016).
3 Christianity, for example, maintains that the ethical person is one who sacrifices themselves for the good of others. This principle is evident in the parable of the Good Samaritan.
4 Utilitarianism, for example, holds that ethical actions are those that promote the greatest happiness for the greatest number (the good of the majority).
5 Kant, in formulating the categorical imperative, particularly the third version, suggests that we should take the other’s ends as our own.
6 The social “utopia” would hold that the welfare of my neighbor or a stranger possesses the highest value.
7 Orange Citation2016 helpfully addresses this issue in the chapter “Is Ethics Masochism? Or Infinite Ethical Responsibility and Finite Human Capacity”
8 For a psycho-biographical account of Nietzsche see the work of Miller (Citation1990) or that of Arnold and Atwood (Citation2000).
9 The second mode—self-recrimination and self-blame—are what W.R.D. Fairbairn will come to identity as the moral defense. “If it be asked” Fairbairn writes: “how it comes about that conditional badness is preferred to unconditional badness, the cogency of the answer may best be appreciated if the answer is framed in religious terms; for such terms provide the best representation for the adult mind of the situation as it presents itself to the child. Framed in such terms the answer is that it is better to be a sinner in a world ruled by God than to live in a world ruled by the Devil. A sinner in a world ruled by God may be bad; but there is always a certain sense of security to be derived from the fact that the world around is good—‘God in His heaven—All’s right with the world!’; and in any case there is always some hope for redemption. In a world ruled by the Devil the individual may escape the badness of being a sinner; but he is bad because of the world around him is bad. Further, he can have no sense of security and no hope of redemption. The only prospect is death and destruction.” This, in broad outline, is what Fairbairn conceptualizes as the moral defense, which at once preserves the required connection to the caretaker (that precious “outer security”) and, at the same time, preserves the child’s own sense efficacy. The moral defense functions in this way: if the child is to blame for the fact that care and love are withheld, then there is something that can be done to rectify their abhorrent situation: they have the capacity to be good, they simply choose not to be. From the midst of this terror and fear, this helplessness and powerlessness, comes a sense of very tenuous, internally insecure, but probably lifesaving, efficacy.
10 Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals, trans. Walter Kaufmann and R.J. Hollingdale, in On the Genealogy of Morals and Ecce Homo, trans. Walter Kaufmann and R.J. Hollingdale, ed. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Vintage, 1989), Preface, §3; henceforth GM, followed by essay number (or “P” for “Preface”) and section number: GM P 3.
11 Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Vintage, 1989), section Preface, henceforth BGE, followed by section number (or “P” for “Preface”).
12 Friedrich Nietzsche, “The Problem of Socrates” in Twilight of the Idols, or How to Philosophize with a Hammer, in The Anti-Christ, Ecce Homo, Twilight of the Idols, and Other Writings, trans. Judith Norman, §2 (TI “Socrates” 2).
13 Sophocles (Citation1982, p. 358). Nietzsche discusses “the terrible wisdom of Silenus” in BT 3 and 4. The thought reappears in Twilight of the Idols where Nietzsche writes: “We cannot help having been born: but we can make up for this mistake (because sometimes it is a mistake)” (“Skirmishes” 36).
14 See Shedler (Citation2022).
15 Friedrich Nietzsche, “Why I Am So Clever,” in Ecce Homo, §2; henceforth EH “Clever” followed by section number.
16 “During my Basel period,” Nietzsche discloses, “my whole spiritual diet, including the way I divided up my day, was a completely senseless abuse of extraordinary resources, without any new supply to cover this consumption in any way, without even any thought about consumption and replenishment. Any refined self-concern … was lacking” (EH “Clever” 2).
17 A careful reader will notice that this move, the will to self-tormenting or the moral defense, requires some sort of metaphysical presupposition or support, most notably about agency and most particularly about deeds and their doers (GM I 13).
18 Indeed, Goodman and Severson describe the ethical turn as “a turn toward the one who [is] suffering” (Goodman & Severson, Citation2016, p. 2, italics added).
19 Stephens helpfully situates Rankine’s Just Us thus: “The title puns on the word justice, performing a deft side step, a rearrangement or retranscription that encourages ‘us’ to think about what justice means. Just Us is organized around a central experiment and conceit. Rankine, as a Black woman, decides to gear herself up to have real conversations about white privilege with white male strangers in places of transit, at airports” (Stephens, Citation2022, pp. 342–343).
20 For their comments on earlier versions of this paper I am grateful to Peter Maduro, Donna Orange, John Riker, and an anonymous referee for this journal.
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Allison Merrick
Allison Merrick, PhD, RP, is a Psychoanalyst and Associate Professor of Philosophy at California State University, San Marcos. As a researcher, Merrick is interested in how moral values shape self-understanding, particularly how those values can empower and enliven or constrain and deaden us. Dr. Merrick is the author of the forthcoming book Nietzsche on the Methods and Aims of Philosophy: The Seal of Liberation and the co-editor of Nietzsche and Politicized Identities.