Alimentary Uroboros

Neumann’s name for the earliest, pre-sexual stratum of the uroboric state, in which the infantile psyche’s relation to the world is dominated by metabolic symbolism rather than genital symbolism. “In the uroboric phase, when ego consciousness has not yet been differentiated into a separate system, centroversion is still identified with the functioning of the body as a whole and with the unity of its organs. The metabolic symbolism of mutual exchange between body and world is paramount. The object of hunger, the food to be ‘taken in,’ is the world itself” (Neumann 2019, par. 111).

The alimentary uroboros is pre-sexual in the precise sense that its libidinal economy precedes the differentiation of a sexed body over against other sexed bodies: the world is not other, and so it cannot yet be wanted sexually, only ingested. Neumann reads the biological record as psychologically transparent here — citing Briffault’s observation that “the sex instinct is frequently accompanied by biting, and sometimes the partner is actually devoured” — and concludes that the archetype of the Terrible Mother is prefigured in “the ‘eating’ of the male spermatozoon by the fertilized ovum” (par. 120). What looks like instinct is the visible edge of an archetypal pattern.

The concept is load-bearing for Neumann’s developmental scheme because it distinguishes two distinct modes of containment: the alimentary uroboros (undifferentiated incorporation) and the later genital/sexual uroboros (differentiated but still pre-egoic). The ego’s self-formation repeats both levels before it can stand free. In the archetypal reading of addiction and eating disorder the alimentary uroboros is the substrate that is being regressed to when “taking in” becomes the whole of relation to the world.

Relationships

• uroboros
• neumann-great-mother
• centroversion
• ego-as-last-born

Primary sources

• neumann-origins-history-consciousness (Neumann 1949)