“like a book / On a bookmark,” I, too, have to get going. And when Crow’s activity scars his mother’s face forever, I, as reader, may be said to have momentarily internalized Crow-hero’s behavior according to the model of the Introjecting Reader (Holland 1968). Presumably an elaborate matching takes place during the reading process in which, hypothetically, a perceived or imagined aspect of Hughes’s real mother becomes internalized by Hughes, then eventually projected onto Crow’s Mama, an attribution that I as reader subsequently introject, match with internalizations of my own, and then respond to—or not, as the case may be—cognitively and affectively, at both conscious and unconscious levels.
CONCEPTUALIZING SELFHOOD
The nature of selfhood is at least as problematic as its location. While the word self does not accumulate much resonance in Freud’s works, the latent importance of the term can easily be seen reflected in such concepts as the ego (a specialized aspect of self), the superego (the internalized other as part of self-structure), narcissism (self-love), guilt (self-reproach), and self-observation in dreams (Freud’s dream censor). The rise of ego psychology and identity theory, and the reactivation of the theory of narcissism in self psychology, may be regarded in some respects as precursors of the development of self theory. Self theory as represented by (but not confined to) Peterfreund (1971), Rosenblatt and Thickstun (1977), Stern (1985), Basch (1988), and Lichtenberg (1989) should probably be regarded as far from fully developed. Even so, and even granting the difficulty of defining selfhood, viable models of self—and the relation of self to other—are now available.
Freud worked with at least three models of selfhood: the layered, or topographical, model (conscious, preconscious, unconscious), a developmental model (oral, anal, phallic, oedipal, etc.), and the structural model (id, ego, superego). Various post-Freudian models of self, in the order of increasing capacity to reflect complexity, treat the self as a container of forces (libido, aggression), a container of representations (e.g., memories, wishes, fantasies), a structure of representations (id, ego, superego; internalized others), and a system of systems (including such systemic functions as were hitherto attributed to the Freudian ego).
Aspects of these ways of modeling self may be glimpsed in the following selection of observations and definitions. Hartmann makes a point of distinguishing ego from self (1964, 127). Jacobson follows Hartmann in using “selP’ to refer to the whole person (including the individual, his body, body parts, psychic organization). She remarks, “The self. . . points to the person as a subject in distinction from the surrounding world of objects” (1964, 6). Greenberg and Mitchell observe that for Hartmann the self is an object as distinct from the subject of experience (1983, 299) and that for Mahler the self is “less a functional unit than a critical developmental achievement” (300). Winnicott postulates the existence of a spectrum of selfhood integrity. He represents this spectrum in the form of dichotomous selves: the spontaneous True Self and the compliant False Self (1960, 140-52). Erikson’s (1950) identity theory, drawing heavily on Freud’s structural and epigenetic models, presents us with a picture of the self functioning to provide continuity through change. Lichtenstein, who postulates that identity maintenance “has priority over any other principle determining human behavior” (1961, 189), offers a transformational model of self as “the sum total of all transformations which are possible functions of an early-formed invariant correlation of the various basic elements of the mental apparatus” (1977, 241). For Bettelheim (1967, 56) self “is not an isolated entity. It is a totality of inner processes that develops slowly.” Searles (1966) discusses identity as a perceptual organ. In this connection he tells about a schizophrenic patient who repetitively knits “eyes,” which are “saucer-like structures with an aperture in the center” (26). When Searles asks if these “eyes” signify “Fs”, the patient confirms his intuition and makes a drawing of the world as she perceives it: “three large mountain peaks in the center, the head of an Indian prince on the left and a submarine on the right.” In essence, says Searles, “she conveyed to me how crazy is the worldview of one who has no reliable T with which to see” (27).
George S. Klein, in conceptualizing self, speaks of beginning “with the assumption of a single apparatus of control which exhibits a variety of dynamic tendencies, the focus of which is either an integration experienced in terms of a sense of continuity, coherence, and integrity, or its impairment, as cleavages or dissonance. I call this central apparatus the ‘self’” (1976, 8). Klein views self as effecting control, sustaining identity (a person-oriented element), and resolving conflict. Eagle goes so far as to claim that “without expressly stating it, Klein (1976) essentially reformulates psychoanalytic theory as a psychology of self” (1984, 87). As for Kohut, he writes confiisingly of the self as a content (“a content of the mental apparatus”), as a structure of the mind rather than an agency (a structure “cathected with instinctual energy”), and as a location (a psychic location) of self representations (1971, xv). Later he stresses the need for what he regards as complementary approaches: “a psychology in which the self is seen as the center of the psychological universe, and a psychology in which the self is seen as a content of a mental apparatus” (1977, xv). Astonishingly, the author of self psychology eventually confesses, “My investigation contains hundreds of pages dealing with the psychol ogy of the self—yet it never assigns an inflexible meaning to the term self, it never explains how the essence of the self should be defined” (310). A less biased observer might contend that Kohut simply fails to treat the topic with reasonable consistency.
Schafer, who emphasizes the wholeness and integrity of individuals as agents who must learn to take responsibility for their actions, including their thoughts and feelings, has proved to be one of the most incisive critics of ego psychology, identity theory, and self psychology in his efforts to avoid semantic confusion resulting from models involving split selves, anthropomorphism, reification, and various related errors he encounters in psychoanalytic writing. Schafer criticizes Kohufs conceptualization of self as suffering from an attempt “to mix a phenomenological, experiential, representational concept with the traditional structural energic metapsychological entities [such as narcissism]” (1976, 116). Schafer even attacks the term “selP itself because of the multiplicity of meanings attributed to it. Worse, the nominative phrase, “the self,” tends to reify the concept of self: “Like the thingness and agency attributed to identity, ‘the self’ concretizes or substantializes a term whose referents are primarily subjective or experiential and whose force is primarily adverbial and adjectival” (117). Moreover, he adds, “in some of its usages, such as ‘self actualization,’ ‘the’ self is set up not only as the existential referent of behavior but as, all at once, the motor, the fuel, the driver, and the end point of the journey of existence” (117). Elsewhere Schafer remarks, with commendable clarity, “Self and identity are not things with boundaries, contents, locations, sizes, forces, and degrees of brittleness” (1973, 51). He mentions that individuals’ representations of themselves vary enormously in scope, time, origin, and objectivity: “Many are maintained unconsciously (for example, self as phallus and self as turd), and many remain forever uncoordinated, if not contradictory” (52). Schafer distrusts the term self because of its protean meanings: it can signify “my body, my personality, my actions, my competence, my continuity, my needs, my agency, and my subjective space. Self is thus a diffuse, multipurpose word” (53). When Schafer addresses the concept of self-control he asks, “But just what does self-control refer to? Does it refer to a self that controls, and if so what is the nature of that self? Does it refer to a self that is to be controlled, and if so what is its nature and how does it stand in relation to the exerciser of control . . .?” (1978, 78). As far as Schafer is concerned, ‘to say that the self controls the self is to commit a category mistake in that controlling anything is one of the constitutive features, or one of the referents, of what we mean by self. We would not say that a thermostat controls a thermostat. . . . When someone is admonished, ‘Control yourself,’ a logical mistake is being committed” (79).
As it happens, there are models of selfhood that render moot such issues as the multiplicity of function attributed to self and the problem of the location
