Agnomenosis 2:

On the obsession with being titled 

Ghiath el-Marzouk

Titles distinguish the mediocre, embarrass the superior,
and are disgraced by the inferior.

George Bernard Shaw

As discussed in Part 1 of this research, there exist at least two distinguishable kinds of internal correlation between those psychical structures which act as direct preconditions or ‘mechanisms’ for the normal furtherance of the state of heterosexual love, or that of emotional life, in general. Thus, the antithetical interdependence between egoism and altruism, where the former psychical structure is ‘libidinally’ consummated by narcissism, would find itself sharply neutralized in the (assiduous) presence of the consignificant interdependence between altruistic egoism and sexual overvaluation, whatever the ‘primary indications’ of such normal furtherance. From a biological perspective, moreover, the sexual overvaluation being talked about is, fundamentally, nothing more than an anatomical extension of what may be called ‘psychical overvaluation’ by analogy. As such, the (desiring) subject would resort to the cathexis (or investment) of this ‘psychical overvaluation’ in the object of desire, in the first place, and would therefore harbour a propensity for eclipsing the ‘effulgence’ of his or her sensual sentimentalization in the genital organs so as to transcend their sensual limits in a more sentimental manner –an ordained transcendence whose ‘mentalization’ would be idealized as a nonsensual threshold for the psychical overvaluation, and whose ‘sexualization’ would be materialized as a sensual threshold for the sexual overvaluation, given the aforesaid anatomical extension.[1] What is more, the same sexual overvaluation seeks to penetrate into the subject’s (desiring) mind and to create a mental state in which he or she is intellectually infatuated by the object’s (desired) perfection of whatever sort, thus resulting in the debilitation of the former’s judgemental powers, and subsequently in the enhancement of his or her credulous submissiveness to those of the latter. Let me now recite the stanza from Goethe’s love poem, which was quoted at the end of Part 1, should the ‘mental state’ in question become crystallized even further (see el-Marzouk, 2016a; 2016b):

     Wie sie sich an mich verschwendet,
     Bin ich mir ein wertes Ich;
     Haette sie sich weggewendet,
     Augenblicks verloer ich mich. 

     (Does she expend her being on me,
     Myself grows to myself of cost;
     Turns she away, then instantly
     I to my very self am lost)

Hence, it is this credulous submissiveness, in particular, which generates in the object of desire the delusional feeling of ‘immense grandeur’, as mentioned there, and which ultimately becomes the most significant source of abiding authority or even authoritarianism with more domineering efficacity –something like the dupable docility of the hypnotized towards the hypnotist so far as the unconscious fixation of libidinal energy is concerned. Considering every possible import of the first two lines in the above-cited stanza, the psychical magnification of the desired object’s egoism, which is engendered synchronously by the endowed absorption of the desiring subject’s (altruistic) egoism, may, in effect, represent a rather superlative aspiration for self-gratification which would, in turn, culminate in self-assertion and would appeal to human nature as something universally indubitable and indisputable, regardless of its very transcendental corroboration by the highly aesthetic vehemence of poeticization. Whether or not it disappears from the conscious or unconscious sight or even insight, one telling implication of the last two lines in the stanza, an implication whose mere association guarantees the maintenance of ideational counterpoise, may well surround the entire mental state under consideration with extreme peril and terror, given the dreadful lurking of those uncontrollable and insurmountable ‘nemeses’ such as organic disease or even sudden death, to say nothing of those controllable and surmountable ‘mimeses’ such as willful disloyalty or forcible abandonment.

Even if the human mind’s intrinsic qualities attempt to outshine these potentially portentous ‘nemeses’ and ‘mimeses’ with quite optimistic auras, they will affect neither the expression of the sexual overvaluation in question nor the altruistic transformation which may emanate from it at any moment in time. This is because the articulation of such an expression, and the ensuing delusional feeling of grandeur that is generated by the credulous submissiveness just mentioned, may well be  comparable with the fantastic disposition to ‘megalomania’ which can be observed in very serious psychopathological cases such as paranoia and schizophrenia (the latter being formerly known as ‘dementia praecox’). In these very serious cases, which manifest themselves as derivative forms of functional psychosis, the libidinal energy that is to be actively orientated towards the object of desire is simply lacking (or, rather, available but psychically impaired), thereby leading to a passive or reflexive reorientation of the libidinal energy itself towards the ego of the (desiring) subject. According to Freud, it is this resultant introversion of the libidinal energy which would account for the forfeited sense of reality in the fragmented psychologies of the paranoiac and the schizophrenic rather than in the ‘unfragmented’ psychology of the ascetic anchorite in the sense intended by Jung (see Freud, 1914:73).

It follows from the above that the abnormal disposition to megalomania with which the subject is fantastically infatuated in diverse cases of functional psychosis, in general, is in fact a pathogenic disposition which has its biological roots in the mechanism underlying the process of ‘urethral erotism’ as regards psychical-character formation and the variations it undergoes during libidinal and ego development. Such a mechanism dictates, among other things, that the persistent need to micturate can only be biologically satisfied when the other equally persistent need to ejaculate is simultaneously procrastinated or even dispensed with, and vice versa. Besides, this endogenous polarity between micturition and ejaculation has, in turn, its mythological roots in the exogenous antithesis between water and fire, the two elements which, together with the other three elements (i.e. air, earth, and ether), were idealized, and therefore deified, when they were ‘unknown’ to the human mind in olden times. Hence, the psychoanalytic comparison seeks to seriously unearth the implications of such ‘exogenous antithesis’ so as to illustrate that the dominating ‘water’ of urine would quench the ‘fire’ of semen at the one extreme, and that the predominating ‘fire’ of semen would obstruct the ‘water’ of urine at the other extreme.[2] 

Accordingly, the abnormally fantastic disposition to megalomania, with which the expression of sexual overvaluation is analogous in every way, is exemplified, among other dispositions, by one of the two types of object-choice (viz. the anaclitic type), which seems to be most typical of the masculine subject, in particular, even though its differentiation from the other type of object-choice (viz. the narcissistic type), is neither sharply marked nor universally underpinned. What appears to be universally emphasized, however, is that the (desiring) subject, during infancy, is originally faced with at least two objects of desire, the nurtured subject himself or herself and the nurturing woman (i.e. the biological mother or her substitute) –an all-embracing emphasis which inescapably presupposes the existence of a primary narcissism manifesting itself predominantly in his or her object-choice. On the face of it, the consummated object-choice of the anaclitic type is, once again, more characteristic of the masculine subject than it is of the feminine one, thereby displaying emphatically the demarcated enthrallment by the expression of sexual overvaluation which emanates from his (primary) narcissism, and subsequently conforms with the transmission of this narcissistic libido to the object of desire (see Freud, 1914:81f.).

In the more severe cases of ‘functional psychosis’ such as schizophrenia, on the other hand, the intended clinical structure will not be exclusively identified with the specific symptom that is brought about by the forcible nonorientation of libidinal energy towards the object (or objects) of desire. Nor will this clinical structure be defined with the consequential passive (or reflexive) orientation of the selfsame libidinal energy as a given quantum of narcissistic libido towards the (desiring) subject’s own ego (see above). On the contrary, a considerable part of this quantum is determined by other phenomena which would reflect the inevitable propensity of the narcissistic libido in question for the attainment of an object (or objects) of desire once again: and such a propensity would, in turn, mirror the subject’s perseverant, albeit despondent, endeavour to achieve mental recuperation, thereby intimating a similar proclivity in the less severe cases of ‘transference neurosis’ such as obsessional neurosis and hysteria. Yet the essential difference, so far as these other phenomena are concerned, does indeed point to the fact that in schizophrenia, in particular, the latent narcissistic libido does not really catch hold of the (reattained) object of desire as an integrated, ideational being (as is the case with object-presentation), but only adheres to the peripheral apparition which belongs to it as a disintegrated, symbolic entity (as is the case with word-presentation). It is, therefore, this Freudian dichotomy between word-presentation and object-presentation which seems to conceptually approximate de Saussure’s dichotomy between signifiant ‘signifier’ and signifié ‘signified’, respectively, notwithstanding the further injection of the Saussurian dichotomy with certain psychical significances within the Lacanian formulation (see, also, el-Marzouk, 2009c; 2009d).

Given the import of the clinical structure of schizophrenia (or ‘dementia praecox’), the structure whose ‘overlibidinized egoism’ cannot but captivate the schizophrenic’s imagination with the symbolic or emblematic superficiality of the external world, the purport of the clinical structure of what may now be called ‘agnomenosis’ (i.e. the excessive obsession with titles) will certainly illuminate the implicit psychical convergence between these two clinical structures in even the most ‘altruistic’ exertion of personality. Just as the schizophrenic, in his or her abortive attempt to regain the vanishing object(s) of desire, finds himself or herself intensely contented with mere word-presentation instead of object-presentation, so too the agnomenotic, in his or her bootless endeavour to ‘retrieve’ the disappearing sense(s) of identity, finds himself or herself inflatedly enraptured with the purely haphazard acquisition of an auxiliary agnomen, a quite mongrelized title (or appellation) which is in fact nothing else than an empiricist byproduct of fossilized social convention. And like the schizophrenic who is completely overwhelmed by the predominance of what relates to word-presentation over what relates to object-presentation under the ‘affective’ distortion of the inherent boundary between reality and delusion, the agnomenotic is also entirely subjugated by the enchantment of what has to do with the acquired bastardized agnomen rather than what has to do with the proper sense of identity under the same ‘affective’ distortion. From this viewpoint, the entire subjugation of the agnomenotic as such is seemingly attributable to the instantaneously attractive, and thence enervative, power of the enchantment in question, in spite of its constant circumscription with chimerical auras.

But the explicit psychical divergence between the two clinical structures, on the other hand, will also shed light on the mechanisms which underlie the internal distribution of libidinal energy in either clinical structure, even though such energy is still characterized by a narcissistic nature. In schizophrenia, specifically, the determinants of the process by which the quantum of libido is dissociated from object-presentation, and is thus accumulated in the ego (to become a quantum of narcissistic libido –see above), appear to resemble the determinants of the process whereby the magnitude of repression operates belatedly as a defensive manoeuvre for libidinal cathexis (or investment) at a later stage. This resemblance is further substantiated insofar as the effusion of narcissistic libido is obstructed (or dammed up), and as long as the emergent impulses or their disguised derivatives are kept at a distance from consciousness, a ‘proviso’ whose modification entails the occurrence of object-presentation in the unconscious and the reoccurrence of word-presentation in the preconscious. As a result, the libidinal recathexis (or reinvestment)  in word-presentation does not, in itself, yield to the act of repression, and thus the indirect ‘retrieval’ of the object of desire via its ‘indigenized verbalization’ represents the first effort to recuperate (see Freud, 1915b:146f.; 1915c:208f.). In agnomenosis, however, no such psychical or mental barrier would impede the effusion of narcissistic libido, since it has already been cathected (or, rather, hypercathected) in agnomen-representation, provided that the object of desire, being the subject himself or herself, is constantly being infused with narcissistic supplies to be further puffed up, especially those narcissistic supplies which are bestowed upon him or her by ‘inferior’ agencies. Although the agnomenotic reaches exactly the same megalomaniacal level that is reached by the functional psychotic, in general, and although the libidinal cathexis (or even hypercathexis) in agnomen-representation does not submit to the act of repression (as in the case of schizophrenia), the direct possession of the object of desire via its ‘hybridized verbalization’ is by no means an indication of the first (or any other) effort to recuperate.

It also follows that the utter subordination of the agnomenotic by the enchantment of what has to do with agnomen-representation, which is similar to the total inundation of the schizophrenic by the predominance of what relates to word-presentation, would no doubt impose on the hybridized agnomen (or the indigenized word, for that matter) a fetishistic characteristic in view of the very expression of sexual overvaluation referred to above, given its analogousness with the abnormal disposition to megalomania and the subject’s fantastic infatuation with it in the diverse cases of ‘functional psychosis’, in general. This is well ascribable to the psychopathological observation that, in fetishism and the import of ‘sexual perversion’ it usually implies, the object of desire is not selectively represented in his or her real human form, but rather is obligatorily substituted by an ‘iconic intruder’ that belongs to him or her in one form or another. This iconic intruder may stand for some ‘animate’ fragment of the selfsame object of desire (the ‘foot’, for example), an abnormally-infatuated-with fragment which is apparently inappropriate for the normal attainment of sexual satisfaction. The iconic intruder may also stand for some ‘inanimate’ embodiment of the same object of desire (the ‘shoe’, for instance), an abnormally-fascinated-with embodiment that does bear an assignable signification of what is known in literary theory as ‘prosopopoeia’, so far as the aberrant perception of sexuality is concerned.[3] In either exemplification, moreover, the substitution is reminiscent of how the latent narcissistic libido, within the psychical structure of schizophrenia (or agnomenosis, by extension), adheres only to the superficial appearance of word-presentation (or agnomen-representation, by extension, too).

Thus, in the usual psychological sense of the term ‘fetishism’ as a form of sexual perversion (or aberration), the iconic intruder which has acted as an obligatory substitute for the object of desire (the ‘foot’ or the ‘shoe’ in the above two examples) becomes an obsessively adored fetish in the mentality of the sexual pervert (the ‘modern’ fetishist), who thinks that his desired idol is entirely epitomized in its corporeal ‘existence’. By comparison, in precisely the anthropological sense of the same term, the corresponding iconic intruder which is manifested by an animate or inanimate embodiment (an animal or a thing, for instance) also becomes a hauntingly worshiped fetish in the imagination of the primitive savage (the ‘ancient’ fetishist), who believes that his fancied god is utterly incarnated in its physical ‘reality’. As it is true that some fetishistic ‘inclinations’ still persist in the normal progression of heterosexual love (or emotional life, in general), it is equally true that such ‘inclinations’ would point to nonpathogenic cases such as the unavailability of the object of desire in his or her ‘absence’, or the preventability of the sexual satisfaction with the same object of desire in his or her ‘presence’. Yet the situation can only exhibit its pathogenic structure when the fetish (or the yearning for it) is no longer associated with the object of desire as a necessary condition, and thus the resultant dissociation would indicate the more aberrant purport of the reversed transformation (or metamorphosis) of the fetish itself back into the object of desire himself or herself (see Freud, 1905a:65f.).

From this standpoint, the new destructive role of the fetish as a transformed (or metamorphosed) iconic intruder, which is in fact a recollective reflection of a rather submerged phase of libidinal (and ego) development during infancy, may be emphasized to further reemphasize the implicit psychopathological congruence between the fetishist and the agnomenotic, to say nothing of the fundamental division (or ‘fissure’) of the former’s ego between masculine sexuality and feminine sexuality (see, also, el-Marzouk, 2009a; 2009b). Just as the fetishist (or the primitive savage, for that matter) regards the chosen fetish as being endowed with sexual significance (or supernatural significance, in the case of the latter), whose presence guarantees the maintenance of excitement and self-satisfaction, so too the agnomenotic looks at the ‘acquired agnomen’ as being furnished with psychosocial importance whose appearance ensures the continuity of enticement and self-gratification. And like the fetishist (or the primitive savage) who is blindly convinced that the absence of the erotic power (or magical power) of the chosen fetish means the absence of both physical and mental capability (or ‘potency’), the agnomenotic is aimlessly persuaded that the disappearance of the normative (or ‘legitimate’) force of the ‘acquired agnomen’ signifies the disappearance of both psychical identity and social status. But the explicit psychopathological incongruence, on the other hand, seems to touch on the type of object-choice in either: whereas the fetishist’s ‘failed love’ entails that the expression of sexual overvaluation functions actively in the anaclitic type (that is, from the subject to the object), the agnomenotic’s ‘successful love’ dictates that the same expression of sexual overvaluation operates passively (or ‘reflexively’) in the narcissistic type (that is, from the subject to the subject himself or herself).

Clearly, therefore, with the identification of agnomenosis as a psychopathological structure that emerges from overlibidinized (or ‘overaggressified’) egoism, in the first place, the two principal characteristics of the structure can now be highlighted so as to suggest a possible terminology for the acquired agnomen in its hybridized (or mongrelized) verbalization: firstly, the megalomania that is indicative of ‘functional psychoses’, in general, such as schizophrenia and paranoia; and secondly, the obsessiveness which is symptomatic of ‘fetishism’ as a form of sexual perversion, above all. Let us, for this reason, identify the acquired agnomen with a specific sort of signifier that bears the two principal characteristics in question (call it henceforth the ‘manic-obsessive signifier’), and let us, for the same reason, differentiate it from all sorts of signifiers which have thus far been put forward within the Lacanian formulation (see, also, el-Marzouk, 2009c; 2009d). More specifically, the conception of this ‘manic-obsessive signifier’ is even quite distinct from the conception of what Lacan terms, the ‘master signifier’, despite their at-first-sight similitude in the merciless predominance of their (phallic) signification over the subject’s entire being and thinking alike, a predominance which appears to account for the ensuing recurrence of his or her defensive endeavours to prop up (or ‘back up’) the ego, first and foremost. This differentiation between the ‘master signifier’ and the ‘manic-obsessive signifier’ may be further clarified, from a terminological perspective, as follows:

At the one extreme, the ascendancy of the master signifier is, first of all, the upshot of what may be termed, ‘automatic symbolization’, a process whereby the signifier is excessively used by the subject himself or herself, in various contexts, to the extent that it is proactively depleted of its literal meaning (the usual ‘signified’), and is thence retroactively repleted with its antonymous counterpart in the unconscious (as in the excessive use of the word honest which contains within itself every possible nuance of ‘dishonesty’, for example). Originally derived from the dialectical relationship between the master and the slave in Hegel’s sense, the master signifier would seem to be an orientational (or instructional) element in the endless signifying chain, an element which underpins ‘existential totalization’ in the sense that the signifier in question represents the subject willy-nilly for all other signifiers (see Lacan, 1966a:99; 1966b:259; 1972-3:33f.). At the other extreme, the supremacy of the manic-obsessive signifier, as such, is the outcome of what may be called, ‘heteromatic symbolization’, a procedure by which the signifier is repetitively employed by an agency (or agencies) other than the subject for the subject himself or herself to the degree that it becomes more significant than his or her genuine ‘proper name’ (the usual representative of the sense of identity) by being replenished with further nuances of meaning (or signification) in spite of its conspicuous redundancy in whatever context (as in the repetitive employment of the agnomens Sir, Professor, Doctor, and all other equally aggrandizing, but at bottom worthless, agnomens, for instance) (see al-Hakeem, 1938:146f.). Initially imparted by superior agencies and thereafter implemented by inferior and/or superior ‘equivalents’, the manic-obsessive signifier  tends to undergo a series of psychically inflationary transformations, where each transformation would impose one such further nuance of meaning (or signification) depending on the level of libidinized (or ‘aggressified’) egoism which the agnomenotic basically typifies.

From this essential differentiation between the master signifier and the manic-obsessive signifier, it now becomes evident that the latter signifier as an ‘acquired agnomen’ stands in sharp contrast with the (less significant) ‘proper name’ which, within the Lacanian formulation, does not seem to change (or alter) its meaning at any moment of articulation, as will be seen in further detail in Part 3. Thus, in every hybridized or mongrelized or even bastardized sense of such an acquired agnomen, the essential differentiation would bring to light at least three generalized categories of ‘agnomenosis’ as a clinical structure, that is, ‘agnomenosis of professionalism’, ‘agnomenosis of factionalism’, and ‘agnomenosis of authoritarianism’. Again, these three generalized categories will, in turn, be discussed and exemplified with reference to factual observations, both in the so-called ‘developed society’ and the so-called ‘underdeveloped society’.

[End of Part 2, to be continued]

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