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KNOWLEDGE
REACTOR
EXTRA-EGO: THE MISSING PSYCHIC DIMENSION IN EGO-CENTERED SOCIETIES
Sigmund Freud’s classical tripartite model—Id, Ego, and Superego—has been the foundation of psychoanalytic thought for over a century (Freud, 1923/1961). The Id represents unconscious and instinctual drives, seeking immediate gratification without regard for reality or morality. The Ego functions as a mediator between the Id, the Superego, and external reality, balancing instinctual desires with rational and socially acceptable behavior. The Superego embodies internalized moral values and societal norms, often imposing guilt and restrictions on the Ego’s decisions. However, emerging conceptual and clinical frameworks suggest the necessity of an additional dimension: the Extra-Ego. This fourth psychic instance transcends traditional empirical and rational approaches, extending into metaphysical, spiritual, and transcendent domains (Corbett, 2015).
We contend that the psychic and social suppression of the Extra-Ego is a key factor in the development of psychopathology in Ego-centered and narcissistic societies (Lasch, 1991; Han, 2015). Contemporary cultures, which prioritize hyper-individualism, material success, and rational self-interest, tend to repress this dimension of human experience, leading to psychological and existential suffering. More specifically, it is the very act of castrating or denying this vast part of the personality that generates pathology, particularly in consumerist, economic, and materialist societies built upon the morality of productivity and consumption (Fromm, 1947; Debord, 1967; Piron, 2020). These social structures seem to annihilate the Extra-Ego, rendering it invisible, denied, and dissociated from the rest of the personality (Ehrenberg, 1998).
By reintegrating the Extra-Ego into psychological discourse and therapeutic practice, we could offer a transformative perspective on mental health. To explore this hypothesis, this work first defines the Extra-Ego as a missing dimension of the psyche, before examining its role in the development of psychopathology. Understanding the Extra-Ego requires, in our view, a transdisciplinary synthesis, drawing from neuroscience, psychology, anthropology, and theology, among other disciplines, to illuminate its complexity.
ALIENATION: THE IMPOSSIBLE ELABORATION
Despite the potential omnipresence of (economic) alienation in contemporary cyber-capitalist societies, the concept is still repressed within the disciplines of psychology, psychiatry, and psychopathological theorizing. Two interpretations could shed light on this massive political and ideological repression, potentially harmful to the mental health of populations. The first would start from the assumption that Western propaganda, culture, and politics have been working tirelessly for decades to obliterate Marxist ideas associated with the red peril (communism), academic stigmatization, and intellectual obsolescence. The ideology of progress, innovation, and the well-being of Western societies has contributed to the minimization of history and critique. Thus, intellectuals and clinicians have themselves succumbed, consciously or unconsciously, to this ideology.
ALL SOLDIERS OF PSYCHOLOGICAL WARFARE?
The questions posed by Albert Einstein to Sigmund Freud in 1933 remain pertinent nearly a century later: "How is it possible for the masses to be inflamed (...) to the point of frenzy and self-sacrifice? (...) Is there a way to direct the psychological development of men so that they become more resistant to the psychoses of hatred and annihilation?" (Einstein, Freud, 1933, p. 67). However, the contemporary context of neoliberal and cybercapitalist warfare is radically different from the military wars referenced by Einstein and Freud. Alliez and Lazzarato (2016) view liberalism as a "philosophy of total war" and consider capital as "ontologically anti-democratic." They propose a continuity and interdependence between the economy and war that gives rise to the "capitalocene," which generates the "anthropocene."
THE WEST: AN AUTOIMMUNE DISEASE?
"Non-self objects" (Poenaru, 2023) could be defined as representations and affects (constituting highly conflicted and unnamable non-self drives) induced by the codes of consumer society and the economic dictatorship to which we are all subjected to varying degrees. In psychoanalysis, the concept of "object" primarily refers to that toward which a drive is directed to achieve satisfaction. This term does not necessarily refer to a physical object but rather anything that can satisfy a drive, whether a person, a body part, an idea, or even a symbol (Laplanche, Pontalis, 1997). Thus, the object is what captures libidinal (or drive) energy and helps alleviate the tension created by the drive.
Non-self objects can be seen as entities or representations toward which drives are directed but that do not originate from the authentic self or the individual as such but rather from the cognitive overload operating in an addictive register to create an artificial self. They function as projections from the outside that the individual forcibly integrates in increasing numbers (due to the prevailing logic of accumulation) without being able to appropriate them or make them their own. As external projections, these objects could be seen as equivalents of paranoid entities because they are perceived as potential threats to the integrity of the self. Are we not on the fringe between projection (to rid oneself of intolerable objects) and the reality of a hostile, persecutory, and invasive context?
SCOPIC
COLONIALISM
We assert that in the context of scopic colonialism, the global dissemination of media and technology, viewed as colonial tools and weapons, yields narratives and ideologies that perpetuate colonialism across both mental and biological domains. This phenomenon no longer exclusively concerns territories and populations categorized as inferior and in need of assimilation into a process of civilization. Everyone is rendered inferior in the face of the unrepresentable and unpredictable advancement of artificial intelligence and corporate powers. We could even propose the concept of "reverse colonialism." For it is highly likely that, with the invasion of digital culture, we are witnessing a reversal of colonialism: it is the populations of the wealthiest countries who are currently exposed to the scopic colonialism we are describing.
ECONOMIC UNCONSCIOUS
The economic unconscious (EU), as we theorize it, is a multidisciplinary and multilayered notion (metaphysical, tangible, and provisional, necessarily corrected by the evolution of research). It is inseparable from the multitude of operative concepts derived from the theoretical statements we will examine and the relationships they maintain. We posit that the EU is composed of a series of operations, mechanisms, processes, and dynamics across psychic, somatic, political, social, economic, and cultural registers that, by definition, elude the consciousness of individuals and collectives while expressing themselves within the neuro-cognitive-behavioral and ecosystemic complex. It lies at the intersection of individual and group unconsciousness and is the product of multiple private, collective, and environmental defensive maneuvers. These maneuvers may appear conscious, manifest, and voluntary, while being mobilized (as cognitive sciences and psychoanalysis teach us) primarily by latent contents and mechanisms. From this perspective, the EU is thus an interactive, functional, systemic, and co-constructed microscopic and macroscopic universe. It obeys processual laws determined simultaneously by human nature and its adaptability to an environment increasingly dictated by economic laws (established and demonstrated by capitalist sciences based on statistical predictions and profit-seeking research).
SCHIZO_
POETRY
ŒDIPUS COMPLEX
Œdipus, oh Œdipus, where’s your complex now?
The kings are gone, the boardroom’s the plow.
No patricide here, just mergers and acquisitions,
your father’s a logo, a brand with ambitions.
No mother to marry, just algorithms to please,
your love is a spreadsheet, your rage a quarterly freeze.
Freud, oh Freud, you missed the mark,
the modern psyche’s a capitalist spark.
The id’s a subscription, the ego’s a brand,
the superego’s a CEO with a firm hand.
No childhood trauma, just a lifetime of debt,
your dreams are rebranded, your fears are reset.
The oracle’s gone, replaced by a bot,
predicting your future, your worth, your lot.
No Sphinx to outwit, just a chatbot to charm,
your riddles are passwords, your answers alarm.
So here we stand, in a world so absurd,
where the only fathers are the ones we’ve deferred.
Freud, you were wrong, but who could have guessed?
The Œdipus complex? It’s been corporate-possessed.
Liviu Poenaru
VIDEO
ECONOMIC
THERAPIST
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