The Lacanian ego is not situated in an objective psychological reality: it is positioned relative to other subjective phenomena, based on the subjective phenomenon of language that shapes and conveys it. “Diagnosing” Dreiser’s characters as having weak egos, Lacan would say, labels them rather than analyzes them. To Lacan, we all have weak egos in a certain sense: every one of us has an ego defined against our own early narcissistic tendencies. We locate ourselves at the end of a series of alienations from these. Using Lacan’s ideas, we can better understand the individual peculiarities of Dreiser’s invented egos and release their interpretation to embrace the ambiguity of Dreiser’s vision of the individual’s predicament in society.16
Because Lacan conveys his ideas in a dense, difficult prose style that is meant to evoke the complexities of his subject, a brief summary might help at this point.17 For Lacan, the ego comes into being during the mirror stage, named for the process by which the infant comes to distinguish its own image in the mirror.18 In the early stages of development, the child perceives no boundary between itself and its mother. Seeing itself makes the child simultaneously aware that it is not its mother; the ideal, seamless unity is lost and the child’s individual ego comes into being. The ego thus emerges from denial, the loss of unity with the mother. Desire to recover this unity forms the basis for the unconscious (the desire of the Other). Preventing the desired union is the presence of the father, which has a name: the word “no.” This first “no” signals the simultaneous birth of language along with denial of desire. The word ‘‘no” takes its place as the first law, the first restriction from the outside. This drama of loss, Lacan’s version of Freud’s Oedipal conflict, takes place in what he calls the Symbolic realm, which offers a means of conveying the activity of the Imaginary, where desire (and the unconscious) originate.
Language mediates, then, but it is itself the product of desire; its coming into being is tied to the unconscious. The expression of want (language) is identified with the wanting thing. Part of the
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subjective foundation of identity formation, language is therefore to Lacan a highly subjective construction. The unconscious is thus identified inextricably with and through language, leading to Lacan’s most famous, oft-repeated insight, that the unconscious is structured like a language.19
So the self is borne of the fundamentally subjective frustration of want; language is tied inextricably and self-referentially to that formation and its expression. Lacan renders the child’s identification with the father (following alienation from the mother) in the linguistic terms that govern his work: one signifier (identification with the father) replaces another (the desire for the mother), inserting itself in its space on the signifying chain.20
The unconscious is structured like a language; it speaks in signifiers. But like language, it is murky, not always speaking straightforwardly or consistently. When one signifier substitutes for another, Lacan calls this a metaphor. Symptoms are studied as metaphors and are detected by the close study of the structure of the signifying chain.21 In this examination of the structure of the chain, Lacan is especially attentive to repetition, for through repetition the analyst can study linguistic patterns and variations. Repetition compulsion (which, says Freud, lies beyond the pleasure principle, as part of the death instinct) is very important in Lacan’s linguistic model: he needs the slight differences from one iteration to another to identify the discourse of the unconscious. This emphasis on form (the structure of the chain, not necessarily the content of the signifier [that is, the signified]) has as its goal the location of contradiction and loss, “the truth of the subject.” With this truth comes “the peace that follows the recognition of an unconscious tendency.”22
This peace domesticates aggressivity, Lacan’s loose reinterpretation of Freud’s death drive, a destructive force powered by the energy of the ego’s want. Aggressivity, which Lacan represents with images of the fragmented body, provides the force behind repetition compulsion.23 When the symbolic (linguistic) realm cannot contain it, it expresses itself in the concrete realm of the Real in the form of symptoms. These can be directed towards the self or (because of the potential for displacement of one signifier by another) at others as well. Thus, a crime can be viewed as an irruption of aggressivity (from the imaginary realm), an expression of the energy of want in an act against another. This model, more flexible than Freud’s death drive, will allow for a reconsideration of acts such as Hurstwood’s theft and Clyde’s murder, where self-destructive urges are displaced along the signifying chain.24
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Lacan leaves us with a portrait of an untrustworthy, complicated ego that is anything but weak. It is torn, divided, and confused, trying to recover a unity it will never know again. Ungrounded in any objective reality, fraught with unresolvable contradictions, it is the product of alienation, always questing after an-Other that it can never know.
Given the self-absorption of Dreiser’s characters, Lacan’s focus on narcissism at the root of ego formation requires a look at the Freudian concept that precedes it. In ‘‘On Narcissism: An Introduction,” Freud describes “two fundamental characteristics: megalomania and diversion of … interest from the external world — from people and things.”25 Like Lacan, Freud postulates a primary narcissism in everyone as part of childhood development (88). In an adult, however, the condition exists when “the libido that has been withdrawn from the external world has been directed to the ego” (75).
Of Dreiser’s creations, the autobiographical Eugene Witla of The “Genius” is one of the most prominent narcissists (a designation he shares with Frank Cowperwood, the self-absorbed hero of The Trilogy of Desire). Eugene’s ego-energy is directed inward, toward himself; his passion is not love, for he is consistently self-centered in his affairs. His maternal superego fixation suggests an unresolved problem, while his repeated affairs (a telling repetition compulsion) represent a continuing attempt at fulfillment of a need that is sometimes emotional, and also — when he breaks down — physical. At the end of the book, we see Eugene as a committed parent and a born-again artist. But Freud says that child care, though selfless in its way, is a transparent attempt to recapture childhood narcissism (91). If being in love is the highest state of object-libido (76), Eugene’s loves certainly bear examination. So do Clyde’s, and Carrie’s, and Hurstwood’s.
Eugene’s love is anything but selfless. His passion for Suzanne is more of a personal triumph, getting her to love him after he has inwardly shrugged off his qualms and surrendered to his sexual desire for her. He never thinks about their future except as a rose-tinted fantasy, nor does he consider the feelings of anyone else involved. His past treatment of Ruby and Angela displays a similar dearth of consideration. Clyde Griffiths’s love for Sondra likewise lacks any sort of sacrificial mentality: he would never give up the chance to rise in social standing for the chance to be with her because her status is what attracts him in the first place. His feelings for Roberta are more complicated, but they originate in a similar narcissistic desire for sexual gratification. Likewise, Hurstwood is sufficiently self-absorbed to kidnap Carrie. As for
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Carrie, her libidinal energy is primarily directed not at people, but rather at money, which is described through her eyes in loving terms throughout Sister Carrie.26 She looks back to her former poverty, but never to her former lovers.
Offering an insight into the artistic representation of narcissism, Freud says that
[G]reat criminals and humorists, as they are represented in literature, compel our interest by the narcissistic consistency with which they manage to keep away from their ego anything that would diminish it. (89)
This is a way of saying that criminals fascinate us because they lack a superego that would stop them from doing the things they do. Freud here pictures a criminal in control, unencumbered by socially motivated distress. This profile fits Eugene, though his action is technically antisocial rather than illegal. Eugene feels throughout The “Genius” that he is special, that he should not be bound by social convention. A textbook example of a narcissist, he is in perpetual revolt against the “censoring agency” of the ego-ideal (as Freud first called the superego [96]). But Freud’s portrait hardly describes Hurstwood or Clyde, who are both tortured wrongdoers. Consequently, let us qualify our observation to say that these two characters may have narcissistic tendencies, but are not full-blown narcissists by virtue of the significant force of their consciences. Ironically, Dreiser’s criminals have a more developed sense of conscience than he gives to his fictional representation of himself.
To Freud, love counteracts narcissism. A person who loves (in psychoanalytic terms, one who makes another the object of one’s own libidinal energy) forfeits part of his narcissism, and is therefore humbled. To restore the balance of ego-energy, a lover needs to be loved in return. Dreiser’s characters consistently direct their libidinal energy away from people, with the result that it can only be satisfied from within. Consider Carrie, who loves money, which can never love her back. Perhaps this is why she sits rocking at the novel’s end, needing to make a commitment to art — or maybe to people. Hurstwood loves Carrie (though possessively), but Carrie cannot or will not return it. Carrie’s commitment to money means that Hurstwood’s need cannot be satisfied — which has to figure in his decline. Eugene loves only beauty, which is fleeting in its human form, but which cannot return his love in its more permanent incarnations. So he bounces from love object to love object. Clyde loves status, which he does not have, and which can never reciprocate his passion. His unfulfilled need contributes to his insecurity and indecision.