Dom:

<I wonder what love would be for a truly autonomous self, or a
not-even-illusorily-autonomous self.>

Alison:

<I don't believe there is any such thing. But if there were, I
don't think it would be capable of love.>

Andy:

<Puts me in mind of the lyrics to a recent Eliott Smith song,
'Can't Make a Sound' (Figure 8 album) --

"Why should you want any other when you're a world within a
world.">

Dom (again):

<When I get caught by love, the symptoms are shaking and
vomiting, an urgent dispossession and rawness, but not - for
me - the sensation of a blunt instrument bludgeoning through
an ice sculpture...>

    Interesting turn to this discussion, i.e., toward the
autonomous personality (yes, there really is one--in some folks'
books at least), especially given the Sadean/sadomasochistic angle,
since that very aspect of the autonomous-personality structure has,
I gather, a long history of debate among (American) psychologists,
psychiatrists, and psychoanalysts (my own informant on the subject
happens to be a Freudian analyst).

One reason why people with this personality type have acquired a
reputation for masochism among shrinks is the tendency in their
field(s) toward victim-blaming (particularly, but not exclusively,
with female patients of male practitioners). To whit: the autonomous
person(ality) is thought to "bring out" an otherwise latent sadism
in certain other personality types, specifically those considered
"inadequate" for a variety of reasons and/or those types associated
with marked narcissistic features. Masochism in this context is
then diagnostically applied to the (paradoxically) autonomous
victim of sadism as a sort of psychical back-formation, in effect.

According to my informant, this quasi-sadomasochistic behavior most
often associated with romantic relationships, can arise in any dyad
where there's a power differential (such as parent/child, teacher/
student, or boss/employee).

The triggering event (or so goes the story line of this provocative-
victim scenario) is frequently the discovery by the non-autonomous
person(ality) of what is taken to be indifference in the autonomous
one, and precisely where the opposite (investment) would be more
typical and therefore what's to be expected. (Lack of jealousy is
the classic romantic-dyad example, obviously.) And this apparent
indifference, or weaker emotional investment relative to the other
in a dyadic relationship defined as "closed" (exclusive or unique),
says my informant, is actually a manifestation of an even more
radical alterity peculiar to the autonomous personality: a weak
(if not wholly absent) drive to identify with, merge into, or
possess/be possessed by an other. But this is not to say (Alison)
that such a person(ality) is incapable of love, although s/he may
love no more wisely than anyone else and may, more commonly, run
into difficulty with those who are threatened by such a muted
merger response in a lover--and precisely to the extent that they
themselves are subject to identificatory drives--"difficulty" that
sometimes extends to extreme cruelty toward the "autonomous" one,
who seems to have an unfair advantage in the relationship, an
emotional edge or upper hand over the other.

Not all theorists and practitioners mean the same thing by an
"autonomous personality," though, and my informant's take on the
type is different from David Shapiro's, for example. (Shapiro has
written about the autonomous type as typically a male loner with a
markedly rigid personality.) And then there's the social psychology/
philosophy of the late Cornelius Castoriadis, which also goes by
the name of "autonomy" and in which a societal personality type is
theorized as autonomous in a more "self-sufficient" sense than is
usually meant (and more positively, too, for the individual and the
"social personality" alike, in Castoriadis's view).

Well, an interesting thread, this one--so thanks to all three of
you--

Candice




%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%