Understanding Mental Objects

Meir Perlow

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2003
• Print ISBN: 9780415121781
• eBook ISBN: 9781134807345
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

The ways in which an individual (the subject) relates to and perceives other people (his or her 'objects') has always been a preoccupation of psychoanalysis and in recent years a plethora of concepts has grown up in the literature. In this ground-breaking study, Meir Perlow sets out to clarify the changing meanings of the different concepts from context to context, discussing in depth the theoretical issues underlying them.

The book begins with an historical survey of how mental objects have been understood in the various 'schools' of psychoanalysis as they have developed. These include Freud and his associates, the object-relations approaches of Klein, Fairbairn and Bion, orientations derived from ego psychology such as those of Schafer and Kernberg, and the self orientation of Winnicott and Kohut. In Part Two the author discusses the conceptual and clinical issues involved in the major differences between the concepts. Finally, in Part Three he delineates three basic meanings of the concepts of mental objects as they have emerged in the literature and shows how they are related to ongoing issues in contemporary psychoanalysis.

This long overdue clarification of a complex area, with its wide ranging and imaginative grasp of the different theories about objects, will be an invaluable reference for all psychoanalysts and psychologists.

PART ONE
Historical survey

The historical survey will deal with three main groups of psychoanalytic theoreticians, roughly reflecting the main lines of historical development of concepts of mental objects in the psychoanalytic literature. The first group established the basis for most of the concepts which later developed—Freud, and his close associates, Ferenczi and Abraham.

Following this group came Melanie Klein, whose development of the concept of internal objects made that concept a central one in psychoanalytic theory. Closely influenced by Melanie Klein was Fairbairn, who made use of Klein’s concept of internal objects, but who developed a theory of motivation so different from that of Klein that his concept of internal objects came to have very different meanings from those of Klein. Grouped with the Kleinians are two other theoreticians, one of whom gave Klein’s concepts an interesting twist without officially changing them (Bion), and another, more recent, writer who has attempted a combination of Kleinian and other concepts (Grotstein).

The third group comprises theoreticians working out of an ego psychology orientation. These theoreticians may be seen as furthering the development of ego psychological concepts of mental objects, both in response to the challenges of Klein’s and Fairbairn’s concepts (Jacobson, Kernberg, Stierlin) and in response to the growing interest in concepts that reflect the influences of early childhood experience on development (Spitz, the representational theorists—Novey, Beres, Sandler and also Schafer—and a section on the concept of object constancy). (I have included a short survey of some of Bychowski’s work at the beginning of the ego psychology group, not so much because he was an ego psychology orientated theoretician, but because of a specific connection of his concepts to the development of the ego psychology concepts.)

The historical survey ends with a chapter on the specific concepts of two theoreticians who have developed theoretical frameworks and concepts of mental objects which extend beyond the strict framework here presented—Winnicott’s concept of transitional objects and Kohut’s concept of self-object. As will be seen, these two concepts differ in essence from all the other concepts of mental objects surveyed here.

1
Freud and his associates

Freud

In this chapter I will trace the development of Freud’s major ideas regarding the mental structures related to objects, that group of concepts which have been termed here ‘mental objects’. Freud himself did not write about the mental representations of objects (as that concept has been defined in this study, see the Introduction), although some of the ideas he discussed and developed provided the basis for the later development of that concept. Especially difficult in regard to Freud’s writings, from the perspective from which we are now viewing them, was his use of the term ‘object’ without explicitly distinguishing between the real people who were the ‘objects’ of an individual’s love and so on, and that individual’s mental images of those people.

While Freud began his theoretical writings with a rather simplistic conception of the percept as a distinct ‘idea’, leaving as its impression a ‘mnemonic trace’ which corresponded directly to the realistic percept,¹ his ideas regarding the mental processes and structures related to objects gained greatly in complexity. In this chapter I will describe four stages of this development:

1. the idea that the early childhood ‘picture’ (i.e., mental image) of the parent continues to exert an influence on later choice of an object;
2. the role of mental images in the libidinal economy, and especially in phantasy and the process of ‘introversion’;
3. the idea that an object may be ‘set up in the ego’ (introjected), which led to a view of its having an active function in the mental apparatus; and
4. the concept of the superego.

These ideas present a line of thought in which there is an increasing emphasis on the role played by object-related structures: beginning with the ongoing effects of a ‘static’ mental image, to the active functions of introjected objects to which Freud attributed such feelings as anxiety, guilt and shame. When Freud presented the concept of the superego (1923b), he brought together a number of the aspects of the earlier ideas. In this chapter I will present the stages of development of this line of thought in Freud’s writings, which served as the basis for later views (especially of Melanie Klein) of a mind ‘populated’ by objects, and which has played such an important role in later psychoanalytic theory.

Freud’s theory of memory

Before entering into that line of thought which will be described in this chapter, note must be taken of some of Freud’s basic ideas on memory and perception, that constitute the basis of the processes which will be described later. Freud’s early conception of perception and memory draws on the psychology of J.F.Herbart,² which was popular at the time. According to this theory, ‘mind’ is considered to consist of basic discrete units of thought—ideas (Vorstellung),³ each possessed of a force. This force determines the relative clarity or intensity of the idea to which it is attached, and whether that idea will succeed in passing the threshold, or limen, of consciousness. In addition, ideas may be opposed to one another, leading to the mutual diminution of their respective intensities—Herbart developed mathematical formulae to compute these interactions—and to the inhibition of the weaker by the stronger. Another important concept in Herbart’s psychology was that of apperception. According to Herbart, for an idea to attain consciousness, for it to be apperceived, it had to be assimilated to a totality of conscious ideas—the ‘apperceiving mass’.⁴

Freud’s conception of memory and perception was similar to that of Herbart. Freud too used the term Vorstellung⁵ as the basic discrete unit of thought to which psychic energy was attached.⁶ His early childhood seduction theory of pathogenesis emphasized the memory trace of a single traumatic event as a pathogenic factor. The event itself was preserved as an ‘idea’, and it was considered to become⁷ invested with psychic energy in the form of affect.⁸ With the introduction of his theory of drives in 1905 (1905d),⁹ Freud substituted the concept of ‘instinctual’ energy for his earlier concept of affect as the basic psychic energy. Ideas and energies were considered throughout Freud’s work as separate entities—ideas could be invested and disinvested with energy (cathected and decathected), and both could undergo various vicissitudes (especially repression) either separately or together. Freud’s theory of the drives constituted a powerful theory of motivation, one which greatly changed his whole theory of mind, but he did continue to use the basic concepts of ideas and energies as the basic units as he had previously. In addition, he continued to view the memory traces of images of objects connected with pleasurable experiences as having an ongoing influence, serving as models of pleasurable experience to which the individual would continue to be attracted at later times (and conversely in cases of unpleasure). Thus the images of objects were considered to play an important role in the mental economy. The first explicit and distinct application of this view may be seen in relation to Freud’s ideas about the influence of mental images from childhood on later object choice, to which we will now turn.

Mental images of objects and object choice

With the introduction of his theory of the sexual instincts, Freud distinguished between the aim of the instinct and its object: ‘Let us call the person from whom the sexual attraction proceeds the sexual object and the act towards which the instinct tends the sexual aim’ (1905d:135–6). This definition was later reaffirmed in his 1915 study on the instincts: ‘The object of the instinct is the thing in regard to which or through which the instinct is able to achieve its aim’ (Freud 1915c:122). While these definitions of the concept of object refer only to the object of the drive, and may seem to refer to the actual object and not to the mental image of that object, Freud’s use of the concept of object quickly expanded to include many other aspects in addition to the drive aspect,¹⁰ and also was used by him to refer to the mental images of objects.¹¹

One of the ideas introduced in the original version of Freud’s (1905d) ‘Three essays on sexuality’¹² was related to the mental image of the object (rather than to the actual object)—a short section titled ‘The after-effects of infantile object-choice’. There Freud introduced the idea that the mental image (which Freud called the ‘picture’) of the parents, as it was preserved in the mind of the individual from childhood into adulthood, exerts an influence on his later choice of a love-object—’A man, especially, looks for someone who can represent his picture of his mother, as it has dominated his mind from his earliest childhood’ (Freud 1905d:228). As an example of this influence Freud mentioned the love of a young person for an older partner of the opposite sex.

In later writings Freud repeated and further developed this idea. In the first two of his ‘Contributions to the psychology of love’ (Freud 1910h, 1912d), he repeatedly emphasized the role of the unconscious aspects of the mental images of the parents (especially the mother) in determining later object choice. These mental images were considered to function both in directing the adult towards certain choices (1910h) and in directing him away from certain choices (1912d).

These later elaborations constitute a much more complex view of the functions of the enduring mental images. These are no longer simply an early ‘picture’ of the mother, a more or less accurate representation of external reality, but rather a complex structure in which drives and phantasies have added to, and distorted, the realistic basis. As such, it is composed of both conscious and unconscious components. Specifically, Freud discussed the influence of the child’s Oedipal wishes towards the mother and aggressive wishes against the father, in the development of the unconscious component of the child’s mental image of the mother. This view of the mental image as a complex structure is of great importance as a step in the development of Freud’s views regarding the functions of mental images of objects. Of course, Freud’s notions at this point are still limited to a specific function of the object image—that of choosing, in a positive or a negative manner, an object—and do not extend to other aspects of the object beyond the sexual (and aggressive) aspects. As such, it does not, of course, constitute a general theory of mental representation as will later develop in the psychoanalytic literature. It does constitute an important development beyond the simple trace theory of memory which we discussed above.

Phantasy and introversion

A crucial step in the development of Freud’s ideas regarding the functions of object images was related to the development of his thinking on the subject of phantasy. After exploring phenomena such as dreams (1900a), parapraxes (1901b) and humour (1905c), Freud turned to explore phantasies. In contrast to the subjects mentioned above, phantasy was very closely related for Freud to the central question which interested him—the development of neurosis. After the presentation of his theory of libido and its role in the development of neurosis (1905d), Freud turned to the concept of phantasy to account for the connection between libido and its frustration on the one hand, and neurotic symptoms on the other (Freud 1908a, 1910j). He further developed a general view of mental functioning according to which phantasy constituted an alternative to the engagement of reality, an area of mental life still under the sway of the pleasure principle, which guided the functioning of the drives, and was not yet controlled by the reality principle (Freud 1911b, 1916x). In the context of his theory of pathogenesis he came to consider phantasy as constituting an intermediate stage between the frustration of discharge of libido and the outbreak of neurotic symptoms, and adopted Jung’s term ‘introversion’ for this process:

the portion of libido which is capable of becoming conscious and is directed towards reality is diminished, and the portion which is directed away from reality and is unconscious, and which, though it may still feed the subject’s phantasies, nevertheless belongs to the unconscious, is proportionately increased. The libido (whether wholly or in part) has entered on a regressive course and has revived the subject’s infantile imagos.

(Freud 1912b:102)

Thus, via these concepts of phantasy and introversion, Freud’s views regarding object images (which he frequently called ‘imagos’) and their functions gained greatly in complexity. Infantile images of objects were considered to play an important role both in the temporary satisfaction of wishes in phantasy, and in the process of the production of neurotic symptoms. These phantasies were considered to have persisted from childhood on, eventually serving as a template for neurotic symptoms in the case of the intensification of libido due to frustration. This contrasting of satisfaction and discharge in reality on the one hand, and in phantasy on the other, was an important step in Freud’s theorizing, one which would be further developed in the concept of the superego.

Closely related, both historically and conceptually, to the concept of introversion, was the theory of the withdrawal of libido from the external world in psychoses (Freud 1911c). Freud (1914c) noted that this process differed from that of introversion in neurosis ¹³—in the case of introversion the libido recathects infantile images of the object in phantasy, while in the withdrawal in psychosis even object images are abandoned and the libido withdraws to a cathexis of the ego—or, as Hartmann (1950) would later clarify, of the self. Thus the regression in psychosis is considered deeper than in neurosis, and object-related phantasy is abandoned in favour of a regression to narcissism. These two notions regarding the regression of libido (to infantile images of objects, in the case of neurotic introversion, and to the ego, in the case of psychosis) were closely related to the further concepts developed by Freud. The next step in the development of this line of thought will be the idea that the ego may be conceived of as containing within itself relationships with its different parts.

Ego ideal and introjection

The idea of the existence of internal relationships between ‘parts’ of the ego developed with the introduction of two important concepts—the ego ideal and introjection.

Freud introduced the concept of the ego ideal in his paper ‘On narcissism’ (1914c:93– 7). There he discussed two different entities: an ego ideal, possessing ‘every perfection that is of value’ (ibid.: 94); and a critical agency that measures the ego in light of that ideal. Freud was not consistent in maintaining this distinction, sometimes combining these two into one agency (for example, 1921c:109–10).

Regarding the critical agency, two points are of interest: its origin in ‘the admonitions of others’ (Freud 1914c:94) and its clinical expression by the paranoiac in the delusions of being watched and criticized (ibid.: 95). A short while afterwards, Freud (1917e)¹⁴ was able to extend the concept of the critical agency to another area of pathology—the (often delusional) self-criticisms of the melancholic. Regarding these, Freud discerned that they were not all applicable to the patient himself; rather, they seemed to apply to the patient’s love-object, the loss of whom had triggered the melancholic process. To account for this discrepancy Freud suggested that the patient was identifying with the love-object and criticizing it via himself.¹⁵ He formulated this condition as ‘a cleavage between the critical activity of the ego and the ego as altered by identification’ (Freud 1917e: 249). This formulation suggests, in a much more explicit and direct manner than in the ‘Narcissism’ paper, that self-criticism may be conceived as an intrapsychic relationship between two parts of the ego, one attacking (criticizing) the other.

Freud originally referred to the process whereby the melancholic identified with his lost love-object, thereby ‘setting it up’ within his ego, as ‘narcissistic identification’ (1917e:249–51; 1916x:227–8). He distinguished between narcissistic and hysterical identifications, on a basis similar to that used in his distinction between narcissism and introversion (as described above): narcissistic identification was considered to involve the withdrawal of object cathexis, including the cathexis of object images in phantasy, and a regression to the narcissistic cathexis of the ego. In contrast, cathexis of object images in phantasy was considered to continue in the case of hysterical identification. Freud soon abandoned the term ‘narcissistic identification’ and began referring to this process as ‘introjection’ (1921c). This term had originally been introduced by Ferenczi (1909), and the history of Ferenczi’s use of it and his contacts with Freud regarding it are presented below in the chapter on Ferenczi.

Freud did not strictly distinguish between the terms ‘introjection’ and ‘identification’, and used both to refer to the intrapsychic process whereby the object is considered to be ‘set up in the ego’, as in melancholia.¹⁶ By 1921 Freud was ready to apply this idea not only to melancholia, but also to the functioning of the ego ideal in psychoses: ‘the ego… enters into the relation of an object to the ego-ideal…all the interplay between the external object and the ego as a whole…may possibly be repeated upon this new scene of action within the ego’ (1921c:130).

Here Freud was already giving expression to the idea that would have such influence on later psychoanalytic thought—that interpersonal relationships (relationships with the external object) are transposed to the intrapsychic realm, leading to intrapsychic relationships between the different ‘parts’ of the ego.¹⁷ This idea will be further elaborated in connection with Freud’s theory of the superego, to which we shall now turn.

The concept of the superego

Freud’s theory of the superego provides us with his most complex formulations regarding mental structures considered to be related to objects. It is beyond the scope of this study to review Freud’s theory of the superego in its entirety.¹⁸ In this section I will note those aspects of the superego concept that served as a basis for the later development of concepts of mental objects. Four such points are relevant:

1. the formation of the superego (introjection);
2. drives versus reality as the origin of the superego’s severity;
3. later development of the superego; and
4. the superego as an ‘internal object’.

1. THE FORMATION OF THE SUPEREG...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Understanding Mental Objects
• The New Library of Psychoanalysis
• Also in This Series
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Preface
• Introduction
• Part One: Historical Survey
• Part Two: Major Theoretical Issues
• Part Three: A Conceptual Analysis
• Notes
• Bibliography