1
FREUDâS âOBJECTSâ
Plurality and complexity in the internal world and in the analystâs working self
In a touching and well-researched book written in 1989, Lynn Gamwell, Director of Binghamton University Art Museum in New York State, examined Freudâs notable collection of antique art. She observed that Freud began to surround himself with antique objects of great value (primarily little sculptures) after his fatherâs death, in the 1890s, which were also the years of his greatest scientific and professional isolation.
Freud created for himself, in that period, âan attentive audience of objects, which included an Egyptian scribe, a Greek goddess of wisdom, and a Chinese sageâ (Gamwell, 1989, p. 21). âThese hundreds of human and animal figures all faced him like a huge audienceâŚ. He wrote thousands of manuscript pages facing Imhotep, the Egyptian architect who, in late antiquity, was revered as a healerâŚ. Several accounts reveal that Freud treated these figures as his companionsâ (p. 27).
But these figures were not only the surrogate colleagues that at that time he did not yet have. Even after the success of psychoanalysis, continuing theoretical and group conflicts deeply grieved him; oppressed by these diatribes, âthe beleaguered founder of psychoanalysis always returned to his desk and to his dependable, silent audience, which represented for him the wisdom of the agesâ (p. 28).
This was a world made up of external and internal objects, then, a source of comfort and of inspiration at the same time, in an illusional, intermediate area of potential creativity. At the end of his life, after a long illness, Freud decided to die in his studio, among his little objects, âhis ancestors of choice, his most faithful colleagues, and the embodiments of his excavated truths of psychoanalysisâ (p. 29).
Today we are less alone.
In my colleaguesâ offices in other cities and countries, which I like to visit in order to be able to imagine them at work in my personal evocative thoughts during sessions, I have often seen at least a photo of Freud, sometimes of Klein, a few of Winnicott, and in some cases personal portraits of the analyst and his supervisors. Almost never â and appropriately so â have I seen images of family members, the patientâs obvious rivals behind the scenes, out of respect for the patientâs temporary centrality, and with full liberty for him to fantasize.
I must say that only very rarely have I discovered in offices the characteristics of the indecipherable and Spartan neutrality that were recommended until a few decades ago as a guarantee of the âblank screen.â Todayâs analysts â in their exterior settings as well â seem to have in part renounced the pretext of an ideal undetectability of the analystâs self in the professional relationship. If anything, judging by the distinctive language of their office furnishings, they appear inclined to officially admit to their existence as individuals, in addition to their identities as those who merely fulfill a function. Nevertheless, they certainly retain their good sense and good taste in limiting themselves to a perceptible but usually sober personalization of the environment, avoiding a narcissistic invasion of the working field with the exhibition of their private iconography.
The true presences in that room, then, are those that count and that make a difference; the patients do not see them, even though for years they live with them without knowing it, because they are in the mind and heart of the analyst.
An âex-officioâ presence is a priori taken for granted, and that is precisely that of Sigmund Freud, whom everyone knows and of whom patients cultivate an absolutely subjective image.
And he is âtheirâ Freud, almost never the analystâs.
They ignore, then, those who may be the analystâs other relevant teachers, the more loved authors, the colleagues with whom external and internal dialogues are developed, and the cultural community in which the analyst actively co-participates.
Today we are less alone, as I mentioned, and our collegial exchanges are so alive and frequent that, like Freud, we are not in need of interlocutors in effigie concreta in such a quantity (on the contrary, I think of the various pointed comments that we would hear today about a psychoanalytic office furnished like that of Berggasse 19).
A century of psychoanalysis confronts us, instead, with the difficult richness of a complexity of theoretical models and poses a problem of abundance: that of hosting in our scientificâprofessional imagination the plurality of the foundational scientific presences in addition to the daily ones â a plurality antagonistic to that coveted uniqueness and unity that narcissism tends to strongly defend as the preferred dimension.
What still impedes us from recognizing and appreciating at least a little of that complexity and plurality is, at times, a transference problem (Klauber, 1981; Rangell, 1982; Eisold, 1994; Smith, 2003; Reeder, 2002; Spurling, 2003; Ambrosiano, 2005; Bolognini, 2005a, 2005b; Foresti & Rossi Monti, 2006), or one of multi-object cohabitation in confronting inspirational figures that are at times experienced not so much as parental or familial equivalents in an evolved sense (and thus with their characteristics and limitations not overly idealized), but as the archaic âtotal parent,â unique and preoedipal â a parent who must not be âbetrayed,â putting him in a broader familial context, and then growing and differentiating oneself from him, but to whom or with whom one completely identifies, rather than only partially so.
In his very original work, âOn Psychoanalytic Figures as Transference Objects,â Laurence Spurling (2003) supports the utility, for every analyst, of an examination of his own internal relationship with the author to whom he refers. He notes: âThe value of an investigation of oneâs relationship to a psychoanalytic figure is that it is an excellent medium for revealing oneâs transference, as the figure in question is not a real person but only exists through his/her writingsâ (p. 31).
Spurling quite honestly analyzes his transference in relating to Winnicott, annotating the theoretical and affective changes that, with time, have developed in him in regard to this figure and his thought.
Freud, Ferenczi, or Klein, or Winnicott, Bion, Kohut, or Lacan â it isnât important who: the transferential copy that at times can come on the scene, at a level not so evolved, in the unconscious area of the analystsâ internal world or that of psychoanalytic societies, is basically always the same. It risks leading to a restricted hypersimplification of the internal field and, correspondingly, of the professionalâ institutional one.
Two preliminary specifications: the first is that many subsequent observations will be read in free reference as much to the analystâs internal world as to the offshoots and reciprocal repercussions between the internal world and the institutional world, which do not coincide but are not independent of each other either.
The second: the discussion that I will develop is not in favor of a generic theoreticalâclinical eclecticism, but â I repeat â it is in favor of the recognition of plurality and complexity of our contemporary horizons, which are in continual, compelling evolution, and of their utilizability in interchanges among colleagues and in the privacy of daily theoreticalâclinical reflection.
Continuing my panoramic shot of the âlanguage of objectsâ in the workplaces and offices of my colleagues â that is, in the institutions and society headquarters of the three psychoanalytic continents â I am struck by how the official iconography hung on the walls suggests, for the most part, two series of portraits: that of international Grand Masters, who make official the historical developments and diffusion of psychoanalytic research; and that of the more homespun and reassuring local predecessors (usually a portrait gallery of presidents), who serve as a link between the ideal and the family history, as well as a shock absorber of the tension between the dilemma of plurality and the guarantee of identity and of institutional continuity.
The fact that such portraits may be exhibited with the greatest frequency in the centers of psychoanalytic societies with the longest traditions does not surprise us, of course â that is, in those centers where time and the progressive institutional working through have permitted a calming and sufficiently serene recomposition of that specific family history, consensually accepted by subsequent generations â even though there is likely to have been a considerable degree of conflict in the first generation after the founding fathers.
Transferential oneness
It is completely natural for every analyst that there may be a theoretical choice adopted, and that one author more than others may satisfy the demands of a complex scientific vision of an individual or of a group, characterizing its scientific identity. It is also realistic that, beyond choices of final allegiance, the analyst undergoing a formative evolution may choose an author as a single beacon who signals the way to navigators, necessitating a temporary, natural simplification of the theoretical field in order to construct the foundations of his own nascent theoreticalâtechnical subjectivity.
But I am concerned here with a gray area, a âshadow zoneâ that can be hidden behind certain excessive simplifications of the theoretical field, which is due to an excess of the analystâs transference to the parental or narcissistic equivalent represented by the inspirational object and which can constitute an obstacle to a collegial intersubjective exchange.
The symptom of this shadow zone is precisely the incapacity for an interchange with the ânon-self,â which is unconsciously feared as dangerous and too disturbing.
This shadow zone does not at all coincide with the strong and authentic core identification that in many cases can be well constructed, using a theoretical setup based on a single inspirational figure, with a simple internal identity and, in fact, an authentic one (i.e., well individuated and separate from the relevant internal object); but it is distinguished by its symptomatology of narrow-mindedness toward an externality that may not be immediately corroborating.
It is the task of the sufficiently mature analyst to keep himself vigilant, reflective, and self-analytic in the face of a possible tendency toward an idealizing archaic transference to a specific hyperpossessive object (of the kind: âYou will not have any other god apart from me!â), a transference that functions as a protective element with respect to the disturbing experience of plurality among the family figures.
Plurality, in fact, sounds offensive to our originary narcissism â which, deep down, intimately, would demand an exclusive and privileged union, both internal and external, with a unique parental or narcissistically confirming equivalent.
My first analytic patient comes to mind: a young engineer, the second son of four brothers, who could not tolerate that, on his favorite soccer team â the âInterâ soccer team of Milan â someone other than his favorite player, Karl Heinz Rummenigge, might actually have scored a goal. This player was the symbol of an idealized and perfect narcissism and of an invincible âGermanâ technology that obviously represented the projection of his ideal self.
This patient had no peace due to the fact that, in his field of work (building engineering), there was no single, masterful person to whom he could refer, someone who was good with every technical problem. True, there was a certain Mr. Leonhardt, whom the patient continually quoted to me, and who seemed to combine within himself the height of the profession (in addition to which, through the assonance of his name, he evoked the absolute and universal genius of Leonardo da Vinci).
But, tragically, this protective figure â though dominant â was not enough in the face of more complex and diverse eventualities. For example, having been charged with designing his townâs sidewalks, my patient noted with dismay that on this task, the immense Leonhardt had written nothing; so he would have to go to the extreme length of asking for advice from another engineer, Mr. Semenzato, an unknown colleague for the past few years. Semenzato was a few years older than my patient and had previously arranged the same sort of project in a nearby town, so he was someone who might be able to tell him something useful about it.
This prospect of consulting him seemed quite offensive and narcissistically unacceptable to my patient: to move from Leonhardt to ⌠this Semenzato?!? Unthinkable! âWhy?â my patient cried out in his session, âWhy in the field of building engineering isnât there someone unique and absolute who corresponds to a Dante Alighieri, unquestionably considered by everyone âthe supreme poetâ?â
It is unnecessary to point out that, at the time, I was older than he by a few years, and that I came dangerously close to being the equal of this provincial Semenzato, the professional âolder brotherâ who interfered in an annoying manner with the unique and symmetrical relationship with the patientâs narcissistic ideal.
It must also be pointed out in my patientâs defense, as a mitigating factor, that true complexity and plurality do not constitute agreeable reality; they require work and a much greater interior space with respect to the elementary functions of an âeither/orâ type.
In a paper dedicated to this formative background (âLa Famiglia Interna dellâAnalistaâ [The analystâs internal family]; Bolognini, 2005a), I pointed out the opportunity to enlarge the familial field of the professional self to a broadened structure including the equivalents of grandparents, uncles and aunts, cousins, and analytic siblin...
