Reading “On the Universal Tendency to Debasement in the Sphere of Love”
Tonight I turned to Sigmund Freud’s 1912 essay “On the Universal Tendency to Debasement in the Sphere of Love.” I turned to it after a conversation wherein I suddenly realized something that I had been saying for a really long time concerning my tendency to turn away or to find displeasure in loving women (and, conversely, to find excitement, love, and desire, toward “cruel” women). I find in Freud’s classic text again only further confirmation of this psychical complex.
There is within most men — and, by the time you reach the second part of the essay you realize that it is almost universal and complicit in the rise of civilization itself — a tendency toward psychical impotence, where by “impotence” we mean both genital but also something much broader such as an inhibition in the ability to think (despite relatively sharp intellectual abilities) or the inability to produce adequate work output, and so on. Put simply, when the situation is a good one, when the environment is conducive to an effective response, the response, in effect, does not arise as intended. I have found at least two examples of this from my own life. First, there is the matter of sleeping. When it is quiet and dark in a room, I cannot sleep. Sleeping only occurs when there is some obstacle or barrier separating me from the possible sleep, something which, produces just enough of a desire in me to quiet the intrusion so that I may finally obtain the intended result. Second, there is the matter of writing. When I am alone and without disruptions in a library, I cannot write. I must situate myself within a cafe where disruptions are minimal but noticeable enough to produce in me a desire to overcome them and to return to the work-time that I have lost.
In both cases, there is an increase in intensity and desire. Desire is found precisely in the moment when the subject is not purely connected to his object choice. This produces a bit of a paradox, which Freud described in the following way: “[t]his singular disturbance affects men of strongly libidinous natures, …” In other words, the libido is relatively high and active, yet, nonetheless, impotency or inhibitions exist somewhere deep within the psychical processes of the man. It is only when they exist out in reality — through a television or a noisy cafe — that they can be surmounted.
Freud claims that “before and after [these men] show themselves to be intact and capable of performing the act, and a strong psychical inclination to carry it out.” There is, nonetheless, a disturbance. But then it becomes obvious that among these individuals it only occurs when the individual is in some relation with particular individuals, or, put different, in relation with particular ‘types’ of objects. The failure only arises in one type and not in another type. Thus, in my example above, I do not experience the problem when the television is on — and, moreover, I do not experience the problem when I have ‘something to complain about.’ Freud is showing how the individual divides his world into what the Kleinians sometimes call “good” and “bad” objects. There are “good” objects that produce the failure and there are “bad” objects which do not produce the failure.
Yet, these objects are split in some way from consciousness. It often occurs without the subject’s knowledge, and, when it does occur with his knowledge, it nonetheless does not change. He begins by stating that at the base of the unconscious is an incestuous fixation on “mother or sister,” or, in other words, on a primary object choice. When this fixation has not been adequately surmounted it continues to play a part in the later object choices of the adult. Perhaps, then, the fixation has not been relieved, because of a distressing impression that was left upon him by the “female sexual object.” In other words, the current inhibition has its origins in the development history of the subject and unconscious urges which have not been surmounted.
The failure occurs when “two currents” are not united into one, have failed to combine. These two currents are the “affectionate” and the “sensual” currents. The affectionate current of libido is the oldest and it is from that current that the sensual current shall later flow, yet, it flows, precisely as a consequence of a prohibition with the primary object choice. The affectionate current is therefore closer to the incestuous maternal situation, it is the space of love, in some sense, because it is the space where harmony and care occur via the primary object choice. In the earliest years of childhood the child is preserved by the mother and senses this as an affectionate bond. Here, in those earliest moments, there are moments of erotic charge nonetheless, and thus, we can see that the erotic was already there waiting.
At around puberty — lets call it the Oedipal moment — the affectionate flows into the erotic and becomes channeled toward a sexual object choice. The repressed maternal or primary object choice remains but is denied, substituted by the new sexual object choice. Freud writes that “it never fails, apparently, to follow the earlier paths and to cathect the objects of the primary infantile choice with quotas of libido that are now far stronger.” So, after puberty, the affectionate and erotic currents are directed with much more intensity toward objects which resemble the primary object choice. This is how I read this moment in Freud’s text. The ‘charge’ has increased, for some reason, and the intensity and focus has also increased.
Why has the charge increased? It has most likely increased precisely because the primary object has been denied and yet unconsciously still desired. Desire is therefore on the side of the ‘charge’ which continues, yet it only exists, structurally, when the denial or incest taboo has been accepted. When the barrier against incest has been installed a substitute formation occurs, there must be found an adequate replacement which bears some trace of the primary choice. Freud wrote that “these new objects will still be chosen on the model (imago) of the infantile ones, but in the course of time they will attract themselves the affection that was tied to the earlier ones.”
Thus, time — and it is interesting that the element of time is brought in here as achieving this effect — will usually make object relations more affectionate, in other words, there will be a turn toward the unconscious object choice. No wonder the popular Freudian claim is that men turn their partners into their mothers, or, as Emma Goldman claimed, that marriage turns lovers into relatives. Freud highlights this process by turning to biblical scripture: “A man shall leave his father and his mother — according to the biblical command — and shall cleave unto his wife; affection and sensuality are then united.” This united is rather a substitution, or, rather, a transformation of the underlying affectionate and erotic charges into more sensual ones which are highly charged and focused upon the new object choice: “[t]he greatest intensity of sensual passion will bring with it the highest psychical valuation of the object — this being the normal over-valuation of the sexual object on the part of a man.”
Ultimately, then, we return to the same structural model of the oedipal complex. A successful oedipalization is when the substitution happens effectively, though its success is first of all a mark of a “successful failure” since the child ultimately fails to continue along the affectionate and erotic incestuous circuit. Thus, this is not teleological any more than it is a claim for ‘normal developmental processes.’ But Freud outlines two pathways by which this process shall fail: frustration in reality or attraction.
First, if there is a “frustration in reality.” When, during these early and formative moments, the maternal object — the primary object — does not for some reason elevate itself to some value worth retaining. In other words, if, from the beginning, the primary object is not of some value to the child then there cannot be a substitution. Freud puts this rather simply: “[t]here is after all no point in embarking upon an object-choice if no choice is to be allowed at all or if there is no prospect of being able to choose anything suitable.” Second, if there is an “attraction,” which, for me, is a vague term. This, I think, implies that the child is unable, for some reason, to substitute or give up the attraction to the primary object. In both cases there is a failure in substitution, whether on the part of the subject, whose attachment, from his direction, is too strong, or from the primary object choice who, from her direction, does not appear to the child as attractive. Thus, it is about the relative attraction to the primary object or the relative attractiveness of the primary object.
When the subject separates his sensual and affectionate currents — that is, when the sensual does not form a substitute and hence reallocating of the affectionate current — then there is an inhibition. Inhibition is therefore often the result of a failure of prohibition. It is here that we finally get to Freud’s famous passage that “where they love they do not desire and where they desire they cannot love.” This is the cause of a neurosis, which is, in so many ways, universal and a part of every love relationship. The subject seeks out debased objects that do not require love as a means of separation from the primary object choice and yet his repressed desire for the object choice is sustained (e.g., “where they desire they cannot love”). More often, the subject seeks out affectionate objects who express love but cannot find arousal in them (e.g., “where they love they do not desire”). Whereas in Freud’s time he noticed a prevalence of the latter — where they love they do not desire — would it not be the case that today there is a prevalence of the former, ‘where they desire they cannot love?’
The overvaluation of the repressed primary object implies the undervaluation of the substitute object. What we find is the following summary, expressed by Freud: “We have reduced psychical impotence to the failure of the affectionate and the sensual currents in love to combine, and this developmental inhibition has in turn been explained as being due to the influences of strong childhood fixations and of later frustration in reality through the intervention of the barrier against incest.” I take this to imply that the two failures mentioned earlier proceed through the incest prohibition — the “No!” — and intrude rather than combine into a new substituted object choice. They thus come out as lingering perversions, transgressions against the “No.”
Finally, Freud extrapolates from this some really bold and interesting claims:
An obstacle is required in order to heighten libido; and where natural resistances to satisfaction have not been sufficient men have at all times erected conventional ones so as to be able to enjoy love. This is true both of individuals and of nations. In times in which there were no difficulties standing in the way of sexual satisfaction, such as perhaps during the decline of the ancient civilizations, love became worthless and life empty, and strong reaction-formations were required to restore indispensable affective values. In this connection it may be claimed that the ascetic current in Christianity created psychical values for love which pagan antiquity was never able to confer on it. This current assumed its greatest importance with the ascetic monks, whose lives were almost entirely occupied with the struggle against libidinal temptation.
Even civilizations have had to find ‘something to complain about’ in order to sustain their desire. Yet, if there is going to be any advancement in the sphere of love, claims Freud, we must accept and recognize the unconscious fixations on the primary incestuous object choice. This is what Freud means when he claims that to be “really free and happy in love” we must “come to terms with the idea of incest with [our] mother or sister.” And, finally, to be really free and happy in love, we must also, while recognizing our unconscious fixation, accept the idea that we cannot have it — and this is what I believe Freud meant when he wrote that “anyone who is to be really free and happy in love must have surmounted his respect for women.”
