40
someone who displayed unusual or even criminal sexual behaviour . The pervert , in Freud , connects Victorian ideas on sexuality to mental illness , and he used the term ‘ paraphrenia ’ to describe this connection . Specifically , in terms of narcissism , Freud used the phrase ‘ narcissistic libido ’ 8 to describe ‘ mental illness characterised by the withdrawal of libido from the outside world and its direction on to the ego ’. 9 In other words , the state of loving is directed towards oneself and it is this direction of love that causes neurosis or psychosis in patients . Freud offered four types of narcissistic choice in his paper ‘ On Narcissism ’:
1 . What he himself is 2 . What he himself was 3 . What he himself would like to be 4 . Someone who was once part of himself 10
Narcissism in this schema is omnipresent , it encompasses past , present and future and reveals the inherent loneliness of the narcissist who , in their isolation , cannot grasp onto love . A notable absence is found here – what about female narcissism ? Freud believed that women predominantly loved themselves . Yet they suffer ‘ penis envy ’ ( the narcissistic wound ) where their lack or emptiness is exhibited by not having that ‘ superior ’ piece of equipment . 11
Contemporary theory tackles this kind of Freudian discourse and I will now turn to the work of French linguist , philosopher and psychoanalyst , Julia Kristeva , who reworked Freud from a feminist standpoint . Kristeva devised a theory of language based on Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalysis . She called the bodily , pleasurable and sensual aspects of communication the ‘ semiotic ’ and the more rational and logical aspect the ‘ symbolic ’. The semiotic is many things but what it is not is a kind of standardisation that inhibits fantasy and damages psychic space . It floods the unconscious mind with ‘ jouissance ’ – that lifeblood of the psyche which erases subject / object relations . The subject can explore , adventurously , the affect established by sensing ( or non-sensing ) objects to deconstruct unity and engender the fragmentation inherent in the Lacanian body-in-pieces . 12 The external world is therefore part of the person and the isolation .
French feminist theory ( which found ultimate expression during the May 1968 student uprising ), proceeded the confessional poetry of Plath and Sexton . These poets ’ oeuvres are seen , by many feminists , as a reaction against patriarchy which denied women a voice – particularly when the topic is ‘ taboo ’. Poems such as Plath ’ s ‘ Daddy ’ and ‘ Lady Lazarus ’ and
8
Ibid .
9
Ibid .
10
Ibid .
11
Ibid .
12
Laplanche , The Language of Psycho Analysis . See entry on the Mirror Stage , 243-254 .