Forbidden issues and prohibitions, from a psychoanalytic
perspective.
Psychoanalysis has, since its inception, been a discipline concerned
with overcoming the ill effects of certain social taboos. Freud conjured
up a vision of people struggling with impulses and wishes that had
become forbidden largely because of social conventions or taboos against
sexual impulses) Mitchell & Black, 1996, p.54). His understanding of
the underlying causes of the emotional disturbances of his hysterical
patients was that they were suffering from the effects of repressing
desires, due to these taboos (Bohm, 2018, xix).
In his early work, Freud explored social taboos through the lens of the
seduction theory. This theory claims that forbidden content, which is
repressed, relates to actual experiences. This view considers repressed
memories as memories that cannot be accessed by the conscious mind due
to their traumatizing nature. In abandoning the theory of seduction in
favor of the theory of Oedipal desire, Freud transferred the
responsibility for the forbidden content to females, who were then
viewed as transgressing social norms. Consequently, the repressed
content, which was forbidden from reaching awareness, was not perceived
as reality but rather as deriving from forbidden Oedipal fantasies.
Winnicott, several decades after Freud, made a connection between
parental and social prohibitions and psychopathology in his presentation
of the theory of the false self. The etiology of the false self develops
in the early mother–infant relationship, and the mother’s contribution
is crucial. A True Self begins to have life, through the strength given
to the infant’s weak ego by the mother’s implementation of the infant’s
omnipotent expressions (Winnicott, 1960, p. 145). Whereas a True Self
feels real, the existence of a False Self results in feelings of
unreality or a sense of futility (ibid., p. 148). In Winnicott’s view,
psychopathologies are often the result of social boundaries and
intrapsychic inhibitions that restrict the expression of an individual’s
true self. Winnicott viewed the false self as a structure that develops
to defend the true self, even—or especially—at the healthy end
(Abram, 1997, p. 304).
In Winnicott’s language, compliance is always associated with dimensions
of life dominated by the false-self and is connected with despair rather
than hope. Compliance brings immediate rewards and adults only too
easily mistake compliance for growth (Winnicott, 1962, p. 102). However,
Winnicott argues that there is a true and a false self within each
person and that the balance between them is what contributes to the
development of a healthy self: “…each person has a polite or
socialized self, and also a personal private self that is not available
except in intimacy. This is what is commonly found, and we could call it
normal. If you look around, you can see that in health this splitting of
the self is an achievement of personal growth; in illness the split is a
matter of a schism in the mind…” (Winnicott, 1986, p. 66). Thus,
Winnicott argues that internal prohibitions arise when a person cannot
express his spontaneous, authentic gestures, needs, and desires in his
interpersonal relationships, beginning with the initial relationship
with his mother. It is in this situation that a false self emerges,
responding to the desires and needs of others while preventing the
expression of one’s individual and authentic needs.