VOLUME 2. Novelty, Excitement, and Growth

Part 3. Theory of the Self

X. SELF, EGO, ID and PERSONALITY

1: Plan of the Following Chapters

In what has preceded we have discussed some problems of the fundamental perception of reality, of human animal nature and maturation, of language and the formation of personality and society. In all of these, we have tried to show the self performing its function of creative adjustment, often in situations of emergency and enforced resignation where the new created whole is “neurotic” and does not seem to be a work of creative adjustment at all). Indeed, we have chosen to discuss mainly those problems and situations—e.g., the idea of the external world, or the infantile, or the anti-social—the misunderstanding of which tends to obscure the true nature of the self, as we consider it.

Let us now make a new beginning and develop more systematically our notion of the self and its neurotic inhibition. First, drawing on material of the introductory chapter, “The Structure of Growth” (which we suggest be re-read at this point), we consider the self as the function of contacting the actual transient present; we ask what its properties and activity are; and we discuss the three chief partial systems, ego, id, and personality, that in special circumstances seem to be the self. Next, in a critique of various psychological theories, we try to show why our notion has been overlooked and why other incomplete or erroneous views have seemed plausible. Then, deploying the activity of the self as a temporal process, we discuss the stages of fore-contact, contacting, final contact, and post-contact; and this is an account of the nature of creative-adjustment growth. Finally, after first clarifying and trying to make coherent the customary Freudian analysis of repression and the genesis of neurosis, we explain the various neurotic configurations as various inhibitions of the process of contacting the present.

2: Self is the System of Present Contacts and the Agent of Growth

We have seen that in any biological or socio-psychological investigation, the concrete subject-matter is always an organism/environment field. There is function of any animal that is definable except as a function of such a field.²⁵ Organic physiology, thoughts and emotions, objects and persons, are abstractions that are meaningful only when referred back to interactions of the field.

The field as a whole tends to complete itself, to reach the simplest equilibrium possible for that level of field. But since the conditions are always changing, the partial equilibrium achieved is always novel; it must be grown to. An organism preserves itself only by growing. Self-preserving and growing are polar, for it is only what preserves itself that can grow by assimilation, and it is only what continually assimilates novelty that can preserve itself and not degenerate. So the materials and energy of growth are: the conservative attempt of the organism to remain as it has been, the novel environment, the destruction of previous partial equilibria, and the assimilation of something new.

Contacting is, in general, the growing of the organism. By contacting we mean food-getting and eating, loving and making love, aggressing, conflicting, communicating, perceiving, learning, locomotion, technique, and in general every function that must be primarily considered as occurring at the boundary in an organism/environment field.

The complex system of contacts necessary for adjustment in the difficult field, we call “self.” Self may be regarded as at the boundary of the organism, but the boundary is not itself isolated from the environment; it contacts the environment; it belongs to both, environment and organism. Contact is touch touching something. The self is not to be thought of as a fixed institution; it exists wherever and whenever there is in fact a boundary interaction. To paraphrase Aristotle, “When the thumb is pinched, the self exists in the painful thumb.”

(Thus, supposing that, concentrating on one’s face, one feels that the face is a mask, and then wonders what one’s “real” face is. But this question is absurd, for one’s real face is a response to some present situation: if there is danger, one’s real face is fright; if there is something interesting, it is an interested face, etc. The real face underlying a face felt as a mask would be the response to a situation kept in unawareness; and it is this actuality, of the keeping something in unawareness, that is expressed by the mask: for the mask is then the real face.²⁶ So the advice “Be Yourself” that is often given by therapists, is somewhat absurd; what is meant is “contact the actuality,” for the self is only that contact.)

Self, the system of contacts, always integrates perceptive-proprioceptive functions, motor-muscular functions, and organic needs. It is aware and orients, aggresses and manipulates, and feels emotionally the appropriateness of environment and organism. There is no good perception without involving muscularity and organic need; a perceived figure is not bright and sharp unless one is interested in it and focusses on it and scans it. Likewise there is no grace or skill of movement without interest and proprioception of the muscles and perception of the environment. And organic excitation expresses itself, becomes meaningful, precisely by imparting rhythm and motion to percepts, as is obvious in music. To put this another way: it is the sensory organ that perceives, it is the muscle that moves, it is the vegetative organ that suffers an excess or deficit; but it is the organism-as-a-whole in contact with the environment that is aware, manipulates, feels.

This integration is not otiose; it is creative adjustment. In contact situations the self is the power that forms the gestalt in the field; or better, the self is the figure/background process in contact situations. The sense of this formative process, the dynamic relation of ground and figure, is excitement: excitement is the feeling of the forming of the figure-background in contact-situations, as the unfinished situation tends to its completion. Conversely, since self exists not as a fixed institution but especially as adjusting to more intense and difficult problems, when these situations are quiescent or approach equilibrium, the self is diminished. So it is in sleep or in any growth as it approaches assimilation. In food-getting, the hunger, imagination, motion, selection, and eating are full of self; the swallowing, digestion, and assimilation occur with less or no self. Or so in the contact by proximity of charged surfaces, as in love: the desire, approach, touching, and total release of energies are full of self, the subsequent flowing occurs with diminished self. So again in conflicts: the destruction and annihilation are full of self, the identification and alienation occur with diminished self. In brief, where there is most conflict, contact, and figure/background, there is most self; where there is “confluence” (flowing together), isolation, or equilibrium, there is diminished self.

Self exists where there are the shifting boundaries of contact. The areas of contact may be restricted, as in the neuroses, but wherever there is a boundary and contact occurs, it is, in so far, creative self.

3: Self as Actualization of the Potential

The present is a passage out of the past toward the future, and these are the stages of an act of self as it contacts the actuality. (It is likely that the metaphysical experience of time is primarily a reading off of the functioning of self.) What is important to notice is that the actuality contacted is not an unchanging “objective” state of affairs that is appropriated, but a potentiality that in contact becomes actual.

The past is what is unchanging and essentially unchangeable.²⁷ In concentrating awareness on the actual situation, this pastness of the situation is given as the state of the organism and the environment; but at once, at the very instant of concentration, the unchanging given is dissolving into many possibilities and is seen to be a potentiality. As concentration proceeds, these possibilities are reformed into a new figure emerging from the ground of the potentiality: the self experiences itself as identifying with some of the possibilities and alienating others. The future, the coming, is the directedness of this process out of the many possibilities toward a new single figure.

(We must point out that there is a contactful experience of an “unchanging” objective state, of an “object.” This is the experience of concentrated observation of something, in which one takes up an attitude of confronting and scanning the thing, but refraining from intervening or adjusting it in any way. Obviously the ability to assume this attitude with lively eros is what makes a great naturalist, like Darwin, who used to look for hours, fascinated, at the flower.)

The inhibition of self, in neurosis, is said to be an inability to conceive of the situation as changing or otherwise; neurosis is a fixation on the unchanging past. This is true, but the function of self is more than the accepting of the possibilities; it is also their identification and alienation, the creative coming to a new figure; it is to differentiate between “obsolete responses” and the unique new behavior called for.

We can see here again how the usual advice, “Be Yourself,” is misleading, for the self can be felt only as a potentiality; anything more definite must emerge in actual behavior. The anxiety roused by this advice is fear of the void and confusion of so indefinite a role; the neurotic feels he is then worthless in comparison with some conceited concept of his ego; and underlying is the dread of the repressed behavior that might emerge from the void.

4: Properties of Self

Self is spontaneous, middle in mode (as the ground of action and passion), and engaged with its situation (as I, You, and It). Let us consider these properties in turn, though they involve one another.

Spontaneity is the feeling of acting the organism/environment that is going on, being not merely its artisan nor its artifact, but growing in it. Spontaneity is not directive nor self-directive, nor is it being carried along though essentially disengaged, but it is a discovering-and-inventing as one goes along, engaged and accepting.

The spontaneous is both active and passive, both willing and done to; or better, it is middle in mode, a creative impartiality; a disinterest not in the sense of being not excited or not creative, for spontaneity is eminently these, but as the unity prior (and posterior) to activity and passivity, containing both.²⁸ (It is curious that this feeling of impartiality or disinterest, testified to by creative persons, is analytically interpreted precisely as loss of self, rather than as the proper feeling of self, but we shall shortly attempt to show how this comes about.) The extremes of spontaneity are on the one hand deliberateness and on the other relaxation.²⁹

Of the chief classes of contact-functions, feelings are most often considered the underlying self or “soul”; this is because feelings are always spontaneous and middle; one can neither will nor be compelled to feel something. Muscular movement is often predominantly active, and perception is sometimes predominantly passive. But of course both motion and perception may be spontaneous and middle—as in animated dancing or in esthetic perception; and deliberateness itself can be spontaneous, e.g., the uncanny deliberateness of inspired heroic action; and so can relaxation, as when basking in the sun or in the favor of a beloved.

By “engaged with the situation,” we mean that there is no sense of oneself or of other things other than one’s experience of the situation. The feeling is immediate, concrete, and present and integrally involves perception, muscularity, and excitation. Let us contrast two attitudes: when our perceptions and proprioceptions give us orientation in the field, this orientation may be abstractly regarded, and so felt, as indicating a locomotion and then arriving at a goal where we shall be satisfied, nr it may he concretely felt as being on the way and in a sense having arrived and now getting one’s bearings. In contact with a task, again, the plan is lit up with fragmentary flashes of the finished product, and contrariwise the finished product is not what is abstractly thought but what clarifies itself in the planning and the working up of the material. Further, there are no mere means and ends; with regard to every part of the process there is a well-rounded but on-going satisfaction: getting one’s bearing is itself a manipulation and a fore-feeling. If this were not so, nothing could ever be done spontaneously, for one would spontaneously break off and pursue what does excite feeling. To give a. dramatic example (after Gide), the warrior engaged in a death-struggle passionately feels and takes pleasure in the fight.

Finally, spontaneously engaged in a present concern and accepting it as it develops, the self is not aware of itself abstractly, but is aware of itself as contacting something. Its “I” is polar with a “You” and an “It.” The It is the sense of the materials, urges, and background; the You is the directedness of interest; the I is taking the steps and making the progressive identifications and alienations.

5. Ego, Id, and Personality as Aspects of Self

The activity we have been discussing—actualizing the potential— and the properties—spontaneity, middle mode, etc.—belong to self engaged in a kind of generalized present; but of course there is no such moment (though to persons of strong feeling and subtle skill moments of intense creativity are not infrequent, if the persons also have luck.) For the most part the self creates special structures for special purposes, by bracketing-off or fixing certain of its powers while it freely exercises the rest; so we have mentioned numerous neurotic structures, have just previously alluded to the structure in natural observations, and so forth. The subject-matter of a formal psychology would be the exhaustive classification, description, and analysis of the possible structures of the self. (This is the subject- matter of Phenomenology.)

For our purposes, let us briefly discuss three such structures of the self, the Ego, the Id, and the Personality, because, for various reasons of the run of patients and the methods of therapy, these separate partial structures have been taken, in theories of abnormal psychology, for the whole function of the self.

As aspects of the self in a simple spontaneous act, Id, Ego, and Personality are the major stages of creative adjustment: the Id is the given background dissolving into its possibilities, including organic excitations and past unfinished situations becoming aware, and the environment vaguely perceived, and the inchoate feelings connecting organism and environment. The Ego is the progressive identification with and alienation of the possibilities, the limiting and heightening of the on-going contact, including motor behavior, aggressing, orientation, and manipulation. The Personality is the created figure that the self becomes and assimilates to the organism, uniting it with the results of previous growth. Obviously all this is just the figure/background process itself, and in such a simple case there is no need to dignify the stages with special names.

6: The Ego

A more common healthy experience, however, is the following: One is relaxed, there are many possible concerns, all accepted and all fairly vague—the self is a “weak gestalt.” Then an interest assumes dominance and the forces spontaneously mobilize themselves, certain images brighten and motor responses are initiated. At this point, most often, there are also required certain deliberate exclusions and choices (as well as the spontaneous dominances where possible rival concerns subsided of themselves). It is necessary to pay attention as well as to be attentive, to budget one’s time and resources, to mobilize means not in themselves interesting, and so forth. That is, deliberate limitations are imposed in the total functioning of the self, and the identification and alienation proceed according to these limits. Nevertheless, of course, during this intervening period of deliberate concentration the spontaneity is pervasive, in the background and in the creative act of deliberateness and in the mounting excitement in the foreground. And finally, at the climax of excitement, the deliberateness is relaxed and the satisfaction is again spontaneous. In this common experience, what is the self-awareness of the ego, the system of identifications? It is deliberate, active in mode, sensorically alert and motorically aggressive, and conscious of itself as isolated from its situation.

Healthy deliberateness is aware restricting of certain interests, perceptions, and motions in order to concentrate with a simpler unity elsewhere. Perception and proprioception are restricted by “not noticing,” e.g., the attention may be motorically averted, or if an organic excitation is inhibited, the percept loses brightness. Motor impulses may be checked by rival motor impulses. Excitations may be inhibited by isolating them, not giving them objects to sharpen and arouse them, nor muscular initiative to gather impetus. (Meantime, of course, the chosen interest is developing and gathering excitement.)

Now these mechanisms necessarily produce a sense of being “active,” of doing the experiencing, for the self is identified with the lively chosen interest, and seems from this center to be an extrinsic agent in the field. The approach in the environment is felt as an active aggression rather than as a growing into, for here again the reality is not met according to its spontaneous brightness bur is selected or excluded according to the interest identified with. One has the sense of making the situation. Means are selected purely as means, according to previous knowledge of similar situations: one then has the sense of using and mastering rather than of discovering-and-inventing. The senses are on the alert, on the lookout for, rather than “finding” or “responding.”

There is a high degree of abstraction from the perceptive-motoric-affective unity and from the total field. (Abstraction, as we have said, is a fixing of certain parts in order that other parrs may move and be foreground.) Plan, means, and goal are separated from one another. These abstractions cohere in a tighter, simpler unity.

Finally, an important abstraction that is felt as real in the situation of deliberateness is the ego itself: for organic need is restricted to the goal, perception is controlled, and the environment is not contacted as the pole of one’s existence but is held at a distance as “external world,” to which oneself is an extrinsic agent. What is felt as close is the unity of goal, orientation, means, control, etc., and this is precisely the actor itself, the ego. Now all theorizing, and especially introspecting, is deliberate, restrictive, and abstractive; so in theorizing about the self, especially from introspections, it is the Ego that looms as the central structure of the self. One is aware of oneself in a certain isolation, not always in contact with something else. The exertion of will and the exercise of one’s technique impress by their apparent energy. Besides there is the following important neurotic factor: acts of deliberateness continually recur in quieting unfinished situations, so that this habit of the self impresses itself on the memory as the pervasive feeling of self, whereas spontaneous contacts tend to finish the situation and be forgotten. However it may be, the fact is that in the orthodox psychoanalytic theories of consciousness, it is the ego and not the self that is made central (as we shall discuss at length in the next chapter).

That is, in a paradisal world of spontaneous identifications and alienations without deliberate restriction, the ego would be merely a stage of the function of the self. And if only behavior is observed, the ego still does not loom, even when there is much deliberateness. But in any introspective theory it necessarily looms large; and where the subject is neurotic, nothing else exists in consciousness but the deliberate ego.

7: The Id

To the orthodox Freudian theorist, however, the conscious deliveries of the neurotic patient count for very little; his deliberate efforts are seen to be lacking in energy. Instead, the theorist goes to the opposite and finds that the important, energetic part of the “mental” apparatus is the Id; but the Id is mainly “unconscious”; introspection tells us nothing about it; it is observable in behavior, including verbal behavior, to which only a rudimentary consciousness attaches. This notion of the properties of the Id is, of course, a consequence of the method of therapy: the relaxed patient and

the free-association, and the meanings created by the concentration not of the patient but of the therapist. (Ch. 7, 4 ff.)

But let us consider, rather, the structure of the self in common aware relaxation. The situation is that, in order to rest, the self suspends sensory readiness and loosens the muscles from the middle tone. The Id then appears as passive, scattered and irrational; its contents are hallucinatory and the body looms large.

The sense of passivity comes from the act of accepting without engagement. Desirous of resting, the self is not going to rally and act out the impulse; motor initiation is completely inhibited. One after another momentary signals assume dominance and lapse, for they are not further contacted. To the small center of introspective activity, these possibilities seem to be “impressions”; they are given and done to one.

The images that occur tend to be hallucinatory, real objects and whole dramatic incidents contacted with a minimum of expenditure of effort, e.g., hypnagogic images or fantasies of masturbation. Their energy comes from unfinished situations of such a kind as to be satisfied by the agitation of the contact-boundary itself (Ch. 3, 7). For if the organic unfinished situations are urgent, then rest is impossible: the attempt to enforce it results in insomnia, restlessness, etc.; but if they are feeble (relative to the day’s fatigue), they can be more or less gratified by hallucination. The passive sexuality of masturbation combines these passive fantasies with an active self-aggression that quiets the need for motoric response.

The self seems scattered, and it is indeed disintegrating and vanishing into mere potentiality, for it exists, is actualized, by contacting. Since both sensory orientation and motor manipulation are inhibited, nothing makes any “sense” and the contents seem mysterious. To contrast ego, self, and id: the deliberate ego has the tight abstract unity of aiming at a goal and excluding distractions; spontaneity has the flexible concrete unity of growing, of engagement and accepting the distractions as possible attractions; and relaxation is disintegrating, unified only by the looming sense of the body.

The body looms large because, sense and motion suspended, the proprioceptions usurp the field. These have been deliberately suppressed; now released, they flood into awareness. If they do not provide an urgent center of concentration, one falls asleep.

8: The Personality

The personality as a structure of the self is again largely discovered-and-invented in the analytic procedure itself, especially when the method is the interpretation and correction of the interpersonal relations. The Personality is the system of attitudes assumed in interpersonal relations; is the assumption of what one is, serving as the ground on which one could explain one's behavior, if the explanation were asked for. When the interpersonal behavior is neurotic, the personality consists of a number of mistaken concepts of oneself, introjects, ego-ideals, masks, etc. But when the therapy is concluded (and the same holds for any method of therapy), the Personality is a kind of framework of attitudes, understood by oneself, that can be used for every kind of interpersonal behavior. In the nature of the case, this is the ultimate achievement of a psychoanalytic interview; and the result is that the “free” structure thus achieved is taken by the theorists to be the self. But the Personality is essentially a verbal replica of the self; it is that which answers a question or a self-question. It is characteristic of the interpersonal theorists that they have little to say of organic functioning, sexuality, obscure fantasy, or again of the technical working up of physical materials, for all these are not primarily matter for explanation.

What is the self-awareness of the Personality, as we have spoken of the self-awareness of the Ego and the Id? It is autonomous, responsible, and self-known through and through as playing a definite role in the actual situation.

Autonomy must not be confused with spontaneity. It is free choosing, and has always a sense of primary disengagement followed by commitment. The freedom is given by the fact that the ground of the activity has already been achieved: one commits oneself according to what one is, that is, has become. But the middle mode of spontaneity does not have the luxury of this freedom, nor the feeling of security that comes from knowing what and where one is and being able to engage or not; one is engaged and carried along, not in spite of oneself, but beyond oneself. Autonomy is less extrinsically active than deliberateness and of course less extrinsically passive than relaxation—for it is one’s own situation that one engages in according to one’s role; one is not working on nor worked on by something other; therefore, free personality is thought to be spontaneous and middle in mode. But in spontaneous behavior, everything is novel and progressively made one’s own; in autonomy the behavior is one’s own because in principle it has already been achieved and assimilated. The “actual situation’’ is really not novel, but a mirror image of the Personality—thus it is known to be one’s own and one is secure.

The Personality is “transparent,” it is known through and through, because it is the system of what has been recognized (in therapy, it is the structure of all the “aha” insights). The Self is not at all transparent in this sense—though it is aware and can orient itself—for its consciousness of self is in terms of the other in the actual situation.

Likewise, Personality is responsible and can hold itself responsible in a sense that the creative self is not responsible. For responsibility is the filling out of a contract; a contract is made according to what one is, and responsibility is the further consistency of behavior in this framework. But pure creativity cannot contract in this sense; its consistency comes to be as it goes along. Thus Personality is the responsible structure of the self. To give what is not so much an analogy as an example: a poet, recognizing the kind of situation and the kind of attitude of communication required, may contract to write a sonnet, and he responsibly fills out this metric form; but he creates the imagery, the emotional rhythm, the meaning as he more and more closely contacts the speech.