Thomas McGrath: Invoking the Communal Ego

Dale Jacobson considers the relationship of class and status to the limitations on the health and function of the ego. He argues that the lack of community as a consequence of capitalism places the ego in a defensive mode, and its impact on the dominant poetry under capitalism is an esthetic of increasing isolation and solipsism. The mainstream poetry under these conditions confuses the isolation of the ego with individual identity, and the poetry presents the ego as threatened by political forces larger than the individual, even as the ego depends on society for its existence and definition. Jacobson invokes Freud, Jung, and Marcuse to show how the ego is not a fixed entity but socially malleable and so capable of shifts in perception, both of itself and of society. He ultimately argues that the ego needs to recognize its social connections in order to free itself, as envisioned in McGrath’s work.