After giving us a general introduction to the virtual object in a childhood development context, Deleuze goes on to relate the concept to psychoanalytic theory much more specifically. He starts by describing how the real/virtual distinction is parallel to the distinction Freud makes between the self-preservative and sexual instincts. Then he goes on to relate the virtual object to Melanie Klein's partial objects, and Lacan's object a. At this point I've read a bit about each of these ideas, and while they are really still above my pay grade, even a rudimentary understanding of them can help illuminate what Deleuze means by the virtual object. So let's take these references in order.
I don't know when Freud first started distinguishing between instincts for self-preservation and sexual instincts. It probably doesn't matter though since it's clear that his theory evolved very substantially. In fact, he gives a synopsis of this evolution in Beyond the Pleasure Principle that I found very interesting:
Here then is an opportunity for looking back over the slow development of our libido theory. In the first instance the analysis of the transference neuroses forced upon our notice the opposition between the 'sexual instincts', which are directed towards an object, and certain other instincts, with which we were very insufficiently acquainted and which we described provisionally as the 'ego-instincts'. A foremost place among these was necessarily given to the instincts serving the self-preservation of the individual. It was impossible to say what other distinctions were to be drawn among them. No knowledge would have been more valuable as a foundation for true psychological science than an approximate grasp of the common characteristics and possible distinctive features of the instincts. But in no region of psychology were we groping more in the dark. Everyone assumed the existence of as many instincts or 'basic instincts' as he chose, and juggled with them like the ancient Greek natural philosophers with their four elements earth, air, fire and water. Psycho-analysis, which could not escape making some assumption about the instincts, kept at first to the popular division of instincts typified in the phrase 'hunger and love'. At least there was nothing arbitrary in this; and by quite a distance. The concept of 'sexuality', and at the same time of the sexual instinct, had, it is true, to be extended so as to cover many things which could not be classed under the reproductive function; and this caused no little hubbub in an austere, respectable or merely hypocritical world.
The next step was taken when psycho-analysis felt its way closer towards the psychological ego, which it had first come toknow only as a repressive, censoring agency, capable of erecting protective structures and reactive formations. Critical and far-seeing minds had, it is true, long since objected to the concept of libido being restricted to the energy of the sexual instincts directed towards an object. But they failed to explain how they had arrived at their better knowledge or to derive from it anything of which analysis could make use. Advancing more cautiously, psycho-analysis observed the regularity with which libido is withdrawn from the object and directed on to the ego (the process of introversion); and, by studying the libidinal development of children in its earliest phases, came to the conclusion that the ego is the true and original reservoir of libido, and that it is only from that reservoir that libido is extended on to objects. The ego now found its position among sexual objects and was at once given the foremost place among them. Libido which was in this way lodged in the ego was described as 'narcissistic'. This narcissistic libido was of course also a manifestation of the force of the sexual instinct in the analytical sense of those words, and it had necessarily to be identified with the 'self-preservative instincts' whose existence had been recognized from the first. Thus the original opposition between the ego-instincts and the sexual instincts proved to be inadequate. A portion of the ego-instincts was seen to be libidinal; sexual instincts -- probably alongside others -- operated in the ego. Nevertheless we are justified in saying that the old formula which lays it down that psychoneuroses are based on a conflict between ego-instincts and sexual instincts contains nothing that we need reject today. It is merely that the distinction between the two kinds of instinct, which was originally regarded as in some sort of way qualitative must now be characterized differently namely as being topographical. And in particular it is still true that the transference neuroses, the essential subject of psycho-analytic study, are the result of a conflict between the ego and the libidinal cathexis of objects.
I highlighted some of the stuff there that's particularly relevant to our discussion. First off, for Freud, what made an instinct "sexual" was that it had an object. Like, say, a breast. Later on, Freud decided that the first object of our sexual desire was actually our self, experienced as an object. Calling this "Narcissism" was a stroke of genius, since we are precisely falling in love with the reflection of something we find in the world that we don't know to be ourself, just as in the myth. This radically changed how he thought of the ego-instincts related to self-preservation. These are now not defined as lacking an object (other than the rather vague one of keeping oneself around) but have a very precise object, namely the projection of our self onto some part of the world and its reflection back to us. This is why he concludes that the distinction between the two types of instinct is no longer qualitative (since they both have an object they are both of the same type) but topographical. Presumably Freud meant to convey a higher and a lower mind, a tip of an iceberg and a part underwater, with the ego being the part of the bigger erotic (libidinal, sexual) self visible in the world. Deleuze actually changes this term to "topological", which makes a lot more sense to me. The distinction really seems to be more about an inside and an outside, about an inside that's been discovered outside, making the ego into a sort of surface level of the mind, or a screen on which we see ourselves projected.
Deleuze takes most these same ideas and organizes them in a new way since his question is slightly different. Despite all the talk of childhood development Freud actually seems to almost take the ego, or at least the normal form of unity and identification that the ego should take on if it's not neurotic, for granted. He doesn't really seem to discuss how this narcissistic ego could form itself, and skips directly to it recognizing itself or identifying itself in an object. The form of the ego and the form of the object both presume a prior concept of identity that allows for their identification. Since Deleuze is trying to not take for granted any concept of prior identity as a starting point, his question becomes roughly, "how does the ego know that it's seeing itself in the object if there's neither unified ego nor unified object to begin with"? It's in trying to answer this that he brings in real objects, virtual objects, and their interaction.
The differenciation between self-preservative and sexual drives must be related to this duality between two correlative series. The self-preservative drives are, after all, inseparable from the constitution of the reality principle, from the foundation of active synthesis and the active global ego, and from the relations with the real object perceived as satisfying or menacing. The sexual drives are no less inseparable from the constitution of virtual centres, or the extension of passive syntheses and the passive egos which correspond to them: in pre-genital sexuality, actions are always observations or contemplations, but it is always the virtual which is contemplated or observed.
Following Freud, Deleuze sees both types of drives as pursing an object (ie. they are "objectal"). The difference is in what type of object they seek. Freud imagined our sexual drives pursuing ordinary objects like tits and ass and antenna. What he initially saw as the self-preservative drives were the ones he later discovered covertly pursuing a strange projected object which turned out to be our ego.
For Deleuze, this order is almost reversed. The sexual drives pursue strange virtual objects which correspond to what each of the passive local egos has a passion for repeating (as we saw this is really just what they are, and what brings them pleasure). Because these objects arise locally, so to speak, they don't initially reflect us as a totality, but just part of (what is a yet to be defined) us, which is why next time we'll talk about Klein and her partial objects. A full "extended passive ego" -- essentially, our selves as a subject, Freud and Kant's starting point -- still has to be synthesized as a contemplation-contraction of these virtual objects. We'll see later that the contemplation involved in this synthesis is still passive, but it's built on memory, rather than the habit of the first passive synthesis.
By contrast, in Deleuze's scheme, the self-preservative drives are the ones that aim at what we would call ordinary real objects like apples and water. These drives seek objects capable of (temporarily) satisfying the biological realities that are needed to hold all the passive local egos together as a single overall unit capable of coherent action. The objects are constructed as wholes (instead of parts) and motivate the action of a whole active ego (whereas with the sexual drives, we are thinking with our 'parts' so to speak).
The fact that these two types of drives are distinct doesn't mean that either can exist on its own. The only way to answer our initial question of how the full ego got constructed is to notice how the two objects reciprocally presuppose one another. Each sexual drive finds its virtual object -- its reflection of itself -- contained in some aspect or part of the real object. In fact, the real object is nothing but whatever contains enough of these virtual objects to satisfy the various sexual drives well enough that they cohere together and preserve themselves (reproduce through time). These sexual drives though just started off as a motley collection of different parts and not an integrated whole. This whole is only brought together through the passive contemplation of the virtual objects that compose the real.
The fact that the two series cannot exist without each other indicates not only that they are complementary, but that by virtue of their dissimilarity and their difference in kind they borrow from and feed into one another. We see both that the virtuals are deducted from the series of reals and that they are incorporated in the series of reals.
This explanation is still too tentative and abstract. We'll discuss aspects of this same structure again as we go through Klein and Lacan, and then return to see if we can manage to sum it all up more concretely. For now, I think the key takeaways are that the real is associated with an active and total whole composed of unknown parts, the virtual is associated with parts in the context of a whole which has not yet been defined, and the two sets of objects only stand up by drawing on one another.
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