Transcription
Hello and welcome to psychodynamic psychology. My name is Alina. I'm a German psychoanalyst in training, and I would have considered myself a pretty big nerd of psychodynamics, but apparently not as big a nerd as Salman Akhtar. He wrote this beautiful book, A Comprehensive Dictionary of Psychoanalysis, which contains over 1800 terms and concepts across different schools, different disciplines. This is the work of a lifetime.
But you know, Salman Akhtar, he didn't only write this book; he wrote about, I think, 50, a hundred other books. So this man is insane. I was kind of browsing through, and the first three concepts that caught my eye is something that I would like to introduce you to today. I want to walk you through how I would approach understanding those three random concepts I took out of this masterpiece, which, by the way, I will link below and walk you through how I did the reading. Anything interesting I learned beyond the definitions of Akhtar. And yeah, so it's, it's kind of a behind-the-scenes of how I study, how I explore different concepts. And I thought, why not just take you along?
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OK, first concept I want to introduce you to today is Screen Hunger by Otto Fenichel. Akhtar defines it as the following: "Screen Hunger," term introduced by Otto Fenichel, 1927, for the desperate, urgent, and repetitive quest of certain individuals for new experiences. These experiences not only offer instinctual gratification but also help to deny inner misery and aloneness. And yet, they somehow leave the individual unfulfilled. Old anxieties and morose self-doubts persist beyond the transient titillation of novelty.
So first of all, when I heard the term "screen hunger," of course, the first thing that came to mind for me was "screen memory," a concept by Sigmund Freud. And I think here it's helpful that I am a native German speaker because the term "screen memory," the translation is a bit unfortunate, especially now in the age of digital and technology, because the word-for-word translation of Freud's original term, which is "Deckerinnerung," would be "cover memory." So, you know, we're not talking like, you know, Otto Fenichel, 1927. He was not, you know, he was not in the World Wide Web thinking about screens. But it was meant as a sort of cover. Sigmund Freud talked about cover memories, which, very generally speaking, is a memory that covers another memory. I don't know if any of you know this experience, but I certainly know that I have some childhood memories that feel a bit random, where I'm, you know, I ask myself, why do I remember that specifically? And Freud would say that, you know, this is nothing but a cover memory, a screen memory, where there's actually something else that I did not want to remember. And therefore, I chose this kind of seemingly random memory that is somehow connected to this other memory. But yeah, I've forgotten how, which is the repression that is at work and relieved my ego from the tension of whatever this other memory caused.
Akhtar cites his paper from 1927, so I looked up which one it is, and it is "The Economic Function of Screen Memories." It's only three to four pages. I think you can find it online if you wanted to or got my hands on it. My best understanding of what Fenichel tries to convey in this paper and with this concept is that he wants to understand the process of how a screen memory is made because he says that a screen memory basically shows the completed process of repression. A screen memory is the compromise between not forgetting something and forgetting it at the same time, because you remember something, but what you remember is only loosely connected with the thing that you actually wanted to remember but also forget at the same time. So it's kind of, you know, this perfect combination between repression, i.e., forgetting, and memory, remembering it.
So he writes, "First of all, the ego searches its store of memories for images to present to consciousness until it finds a suitable one." As I note here, he's talking about a moment of struggle where, in this case, probably a child is in some sort of inner conflict. Like, like there's something that is disturbing. There's something that, that the child's ego needs to get rid of. Either, you know, if we're talking about typical Freud stuff, that would be a hostile impulse, a sexual impulse. And so he says the ego, you know, searches in its memories for something that could be put on top of this.
Fenichel has the example that there is a boy who is very close friends with his brother, but he also, you know, has some hostile impulses towards his brother. Maybe, you know, every now and then the parents favor him, or there's something that he's better at than him. So, you know, even though he loves his brother very much, there's some, you know, there's some hostility there. And in the moment when one of those hostile impulses would arrive, the ego of this little boy would search for another memory, for another image that he could present his consciousness as something to be remembered instead of this, like, "Right now, I really hate my brother."
"So if anything continues, even the new perceptions made during the time of the struggle are also scanned by the ego to see whether they are suitable as substitute images." So a screen for a screen memory, there would be a memory from the past that would just be covered up. But in this case, you know, if there's no suitable memory from the past, the ego starts searching. This is the hunger that Fenichel describes. The ego becomes hungry for this new experience, for a new screen, for a new cover that can put on top of this uncomfortable memory of, or this uncomfortable experience of being angry at your brother. "The ego has a free valence for screen experiences and is economically eased when it finds them. In both cases, a recent experience reminds the subject of a repressed one, and by virtue of that, takes its place."
So this is what Fenichel describes. There is an experience that we want to forget, we want to repress. And if there's no memory in the past that we can use as a screen memory, we seek out screen experiences. You know, this is the screen hunger. And Fenichel says that in his cases where he observed this happening, there was the the patient reported that at some point there was a moment in in the past where they thought, "Oh, I must not forget this. I need to remember this memory forever." And maybe some of you know those kind of situations as well. And he said that this was an indication that their ego was hungry for a screen, for a screen experience that could serve as a screen memory in order to repress something that they didn't want to, to come into awareness. And as I said, he used this example of the boy that repressed hostility towards the brother, or at least that's Fenichel's understanding.
So what this patient remembered was a scene in which he was sawing wood with his brother. In a way, he was remembering, you know, "I am sawing wood, not my brother. I'm, I'm sawing wood. I'm not sawing my brother." To repress hostility. So we can imagine that in the moment when we go back in time and we would see those two boys sawing this wood together, and one of the boys had a hostile impulse in a way that, you know, he would really like to be sawing his brother right now because he's pissed at him. What we would see is a little boy that is struggling with this hostility. And his ego is looking for a way of how to deal with this hostility in this moment. Repression has not occurred yet. At this very moment, his ego is still, you know, looking for an experience, for a screen memory that he can put on top of this experience of really being angry with his brother. And then he finds the situation where, you know, there's some hostility that is associated with this because they're sawing wood. It has to do with some sort of aggression. But, you know, it's, it's a pleasant memory in which he loves his brother. He loves, you know, doing woodworking together, and it's so much fun. And then he uses that memory to cover up the hostile impulse.
The next concept I found by just browsing through this dictionary is by an author I had never heard of before. And I also never heard of this concept. So, uh, let me introduce you to it. It's called the Eternal Dilettante. Akhtar writes, "This is a character type described by Kata Levy in 1949, whose main feature is failure to consolidate a vocational identity. The individual dabbles in multiple and often contradictory professional interests. He enthusiastically takes up career tracks only to drop them as a requirement for a deeper commitment becomes necessary. The result is that the person ends up knowing a little bit of this and a little bit of that while lacking in depth knowledge of any field. He feels like a misfit. The etiology of this confusion is manifold and involves: 1. Poor role models in early life and lack of direction from parents, especially the father. 2. Inability to synthesize contradictory self-representations and therefore the syndrome of identity diffusion. 3. A desperate object hunger that precludes closing doors on any vocational interest that comes one's way and 4. Blockage of aggression which makes such letting go difficult. As a result, the individual drifts from one line of work to another, forlorn and empty. He yearns for identity, but can find it nowhere." In Søren Kierkegaard's words, "Condemned is the man to whom all options are open."
Again, this is a concept from 1949, and it's still, it has still value and maybe it's applicable for modern day. I mean, I, I let he be the judge, but I thought that was very interesting. Again, I went back to the original source and read Kata Levi's paper on this idea. The original paper is called "The Eternal Dilettante: A Contribution to Female Sexuality." So it was originally focused on females, but Levi wrote herself that this can be applied to men and women alike. It was published in 1948, I thought, in a collection from Ishon. I can link that below in case you're interested. Although, like, I don't know if I really would recommend reading this paper, to be honest. A lot of what she writes about just feels very outdated. It feels very conservative. Very much, you know, 1948/1949. Yeah. It's not, it's not a pleasant read because, you know, you stumble over quite a quite a few things that don't feel very accurate and don't feel very helpful for women and men of today's age.
But what I did find interesting, Kata Levi defines the eternal dilettante as someone who tries out a lot of career paths, a lot of vocations, but basically remains a hobbyist in all of them because they cannot tie themselves down. This is the core issue that she describes. There is someone who just cannot tie themselves down, and she kind of splits this a little bit into two aspects. And like, those are the two elements that I find very interesting and that I would like to introduce to you today.
One is the inability to bear tension, which would mean to actually become something. If we want to succeed in a given field, we need to bear a lot of frustration to become something. I mean, I can say for myself, becoming a psychoanalyst, it's, it's very time-consuming. It's very hard. You have to go through so much training. You have to do so many hours. You have to study so much. It's hard work. Levy says that someone who would be an eternal dilettante, they're very interested in being something, like, "Oh, I'm going to be a writer. I'm going to be a YouTuber. I'm going to be a psychoanalyst." But they struggle to become something because actually becoming something, the process of becoming something means bearing a lot of tension, doing a lot of things that are not pleasant, that take a lot of time, that are very frustrating. And this is something that someone who cannot tie themselves down would struggle with.
So the other thing that she describes besides the inability to bear tensions is the fear of missing out. At least that's what I got from her. She says they cannot tie themselves down because they are afraid that they're going to miss something. Because, you know, they also want to go to this event, and they also want to become that, and they also want to explore this passion and this hobby. And maybe that would be fun as well. In the process of trying all these things out, they still have the fantasy that, you know, all their wishes could become reality. So there is a fantasized wish fulfillment. And in Levy's understanding, fear of missing out means, "I cannot tolerate the idea of renouncing a wish. I want to have all my wishes and I want to have them fulfilled. And I want to have my cake and eat it too, and say no." And missing out would mean, or it would be experienced as submission. Someone who doesn't have this problem experiences this, you know, missing out and saying no to things because there's other something else that you want to focus on and become. They experience this as, you know, probably commitment and, you know, a sacrifice that they're willing to make because there's something meaningful at the end of it.
Anyway, even though I can't recommend her paper because it's just very old and it doesn't read that well, still, it's an interesting idea that I enjoyed playing with.
The last concept I want to share with you that I discovered in this book. Well, you know, you've probably heard of it. I heard of it before. It is called narcissism of minor differences. But what I didn't know was that this was originally a concept from Sigmund Freud. I thought that was some, you know, modern invention. I thought that came from, I don't know, sociology or anthropology or I don't know where it might have come from. But I didn't think that that was originally psychoanalysis. So anyways, here is the definition from Salman Akhtar: "Narcissism of minor differences," phrase originated by Sigmund Freud to describe the fact that often trivial differences between people who are otherwise alike form the basis of hostility between them. A close look at the ethnic conflicts in Sri Lanka and the erstwhile Yugoslavia, for instance, testifies to the validity of this idea. Very interesting.
So I looked up the reference that Akhtar gave, and he says that it's originally from Sigmund Freud's paper, "The Taboo of Virginity." In this paper, which is also very hard to read, it is very much from 1918, not modern at all. Sigmund Freud, in his traditional fashion, is, yeah, very much a man of his time. Yeah. This is not a paper I recommend reading to learn something new necessarily, because it doesn't read very well from a modern perspective. But the way I understood this paper, and especially the concept of, you know, narcissism of minor differences, is that Freud assumes to every relationship there belongs a certain need of belonging, of love, of closeness, unity, and to every relationship there belongs a certain need for separation, hostility, anger, and the like. He studied, I think it's an anthropologist, his name is Crawley, who said that there is a taboo of personal isolation, which means that, you know, you need to be part of a group. It is very difficult to completely extract yourself from society, to move to the mountains, live in a little hut, be completely self-sufficient. That's very hard. I mean, almost no one does that. So there is a taboo of personal isolation, which means that, you know, we need to belong to a group and we need to be part of something that is a unity. And then the way I understand it, Freud asks himself, well, where is the hostility? What happens with hostility? And he says, or at least he says that it's tempting to understand it in such a way that the way that hostility is expressed is not within the group where, you know, there's a taboo of personal isolation. We need to be part of this unity, but that this hostility is expressed between groups. So if we look at a homogeneous society, which is experienced as homogeneous from the outside, we find little subgroups that have only minor differences. But those minor differences are important because they allow for expression of hostility that would otherwise have no place to go, because there is this taboo of personal isolation and this need to belong.
So yeah, I think I still have some studying to do on this front. I have not fully understood it entirely, I think. And also, I was kind of curious because in his paper, "The Taboo of Virginity," Sigmund Freud used this concept "narcissism of minor differences" in quotation marks. So I don't know if he had referenced this before or if he took over this concept from someone else. So I'm not entirely sure if this really originated with Sigmund Freud, because I found it a bit weird that he used quotation marks in this with his concept. But yeah, in case any of you out there know something about this that I don't, please feel free to put it in the comments below. I'd be curious to learn more about this.
And yeah, I mean, potentially this was not useful at all to you, and that's totally fine. But maybe you also like those nerdy kind of explorations. Yeah. Anyways, thank you for your time. Thank you for your attention. I'm very much looking forward to seeing you next time.