Self and Other

Object Relations in Psychoanalysis and Literature

Robert Rogers

• Publisher: NYU Press
• Year: 1991
• ISBN:
  9780814776681
• Topic: Psychologie
• Subtopic: Histoire et théorie en psychologie

In Self and Other, Robert Rogers presents a powerful argument for the adoption of a theory of object relations, combining the best features of traditional psychoanalytic theory with contemporary views on attachment behavior and intersubjectivity. Rogers discusses theory in relation both to actual psychoanalytic case histories and imagined selves found in literature, and provides a critical rereading of the case histories of Freud, Winnicott, Lichtenstein, Sechehaye, and Bettelheim.

At once scientific and humanistic, Self and Other engagingly draws from theoretical, clinical, and literary traditions. It will appeal to psychoanalysts as well as to literary scholars interested in the application of psychoanalysis to literature.

I
MODELING INTERPERSONAL RELATIONS

1.
DRIVE VERSUS PERSON: TWO ORIENTATIONS

One’s choice of terms always has consequences. So does one’s selection of explanatory frameworks. An instance from one of Winnicotfs case histories illustrates the distance between an orthodox, drive-oriented perspective on object relations and one that assumes that interpersonal relationships may reflect forms of attraction not necessarily fueled by sexual urges. A little girl called Gabrielle, only two years and ten months old, goes immediately to the toy box at the beginning of her sixth therapeutic consultation with Winnicott: “She put the two big soft animals together and said: They are together and are fond of each other’” (1977, 77). Winnicott responds in this instance with a sexual interpretation, one highly characteristic of his former mentor and supervisor, Melanie Klein: “And they are making babies.” Gabrielle, who has already glossed her own play in a very different way (’They are . . . fond of each other”), remarks, “No, they are making friends.” Would Winnicott’s customary, person-oriented mode of interpretation have been more accurate, and functional, at this point than the sexually oriented one? Many contemporary analysts might think so.

When it comes to selecting explanatory frameworks in the field of object relations theory, there is God’s plenty to choose from. To whose work do we turn for guidance? Even if we go first to the theory of object relations explicit and implicit in Freud, we cannot fail to be aware that the ensuing history of the development of object relations theory constitutes a complex and often conflicting response to his work in this area. Can we rely on the innovations of Melanie Klein, who still has many followers? Or can we perhaps find better guidance in the work of Fair-bairn, or Winnicott, or Guntrip, or Sullivan, or Bowlby, or Kohut? Practitioners of various kinds frequendy associate themselves with the object relations theory of a particular individual, Winnicott and Kohut being popular choices these days. Alternatively, many choose to be eclectic, often without thinking about it, by adopting a casual mixture of views: some Freud, for instance, with a helping of Klein, a dollop of Winnicott, and a lacing of Kohut. More commendable than passive eclecticism, surely, are deliberate attempts on the part of theoreticians to effect syntheses of earlier views, such as Kernberg’s attempted integration of “object-relations theory with psychoanalytic instinct theory and a contemporary ego psychological approach” (1976, 131). The problem in this case is that the proposed synthesis may prove to be unworkable because of incompatibilities inherent in the explanatory frameworks.

Virtually all current psychoanalytic schools of thought agree substantially on the fundamental importance of object relations, yet no consensus about these matters exists at present according to Greenberg and Mitchell (1983). To be more precise, they say that “underlying the apparent diversity of contemporary psychoanalytic theory there is a convergence of basic concerns” (2). It would be still more exact to speak not of “a convergence” but, in the plural, of convergences, or groups, of basic concern. Thus, for convenience, one may designate two major groups of object relations theory as drive oriented and person oriented. It may then be asked, should we select a person-oriented theory like those of Sullivan and Fairbairn, or a drive-oriented one like those of Freud and Melanie Klein? Or can we live with both, in a state of enlightened complementarity analogous to living with both wave and corpuscle theories of the behavior of light, as Greenberg and Mitchell imply is possible—and perhaps even desirable insofar as it may give rise to a “creative dialogue” between the two (408; cf. Mitchell, 1988)? Collateral questions then unfold. Is it possible to invest heavily in a person-oriented theory while retaining some interest in drive theory, as Winnicott appears to do? And if we totally reject drive theory, as Bowlby does, how satisfactory is attachment theory, which he considers to be a theory of object relations (1969, 17)? Does the strength of its empirical basis compensate for an orientation to outer reality that slights the inferable existence, volatility, and complexity of intrapsychic constellations of internalized objects, and that in rejecting libido theory neglects to account in any detail for sexual behavior?

The essential problem for the psychoanalyst, as Schafer sees it, is the problem of “finding the right balance” (1983, 293). He refers specifically to how much emphasis should be placed on the “inner world” and the “outer world.” “How much do you talk about real interactions and how much do you talk about the analysand’s fantasizing, particularly the unconscious infantile aspects of what is fantasized?” (292). One can think of other “balancing acts” that need to be considered as well, such as the possible “correct balance” between a self-oriented theory of object relations, such as Stern’s (1985), which not only regards an emergent selfhood as being present in neonates from virtually the beginning of life outside the womb but also privileges self over other in modeling object-relational interactions, and, in contrast, an other-oriented theory such as that of Lacan, for whom autonomy is unthinkable because “man’s desire is the desire of the Other” (1977, 158). Another balancing act would have to deal with the possible equilibrium between models of object relations relying on the concept of a coherent, specialized, centered ego, as in ego psychology, as distinguished from models depending on a decentered conception of self, or “subject,” one dispersed in language and culture, like Lacan’s—or, to take a less extreme and very different instance, the comparatively decentered, systemic conceptualization of behavioral control envisioned by Peterfreund (1971), who rejects the concept of ego in its structural sense.

All terms remain suspect. This chapter, which does not aspire to be a “balanced,” neutral account, or a systematic survey, endeavors to compare the two broad orientations in object relations theory already referred to as drive oriented and person oriented. Other writers employ different sets of terms to make a comparable distinction. Greenberg and Mitchell use “drive/structure model” and “relational/structure model” (20), phrasings that seem to me not only awkward but seriously problematic because of the way they imply a commitment to Freud’s structural theory, a difficulty Mitchell finesses later (1988, viii) by treating object relations as part of a “relational theory” that excludes drive theory and ego psychology. Eagle provides another instance of inconsistent terminology when he writes dichotomously of “Freudian instinct theory” as against “a psychology of object relations” (1984, 19)—as though there were no overlap. In one sense, of course, there is no middle ground here. Yet we need to make room, as Eagle does in his discussions, for elements of object-relational theory in Freud, a situation I try to account for by speaking of the “drive-oriented” object relations theory of Freud and some of his followers without excluding the possibility of the presence of traces of drive theory in the positions of figures who are fundamentally person-oriented, like Winnicott. A clearer, more precise sense of what the terms “drive-oriented” and “person-oriented” are meant to convey will unfold as discussion proceeds. Meanwhile these two categories are intended to provide a set of coordinates in terms of which to argue the claim that contemporary psychoanalysis needs to adopt a person-oriented theory of object relations, more unreservedly than it already has, in order to be free of the defects of Freud’s drive-oriented emphasis and to be responsive to empirical findings and clinical evidence concerning the formative role of interpersonal relationships in human development.

FREUD’S MIXED LEGACY

The origins of many of the intractable difficulties of Freud’s early theorizing can be located in the formulations of Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (1905b). One of the most momentous of these derives from Freud’s insistence on isolating “the sexual aim” from “the sexual object” (1905b, 135-36). He argues that abnormal sexuality shows that “the sexual instinct and the sexual object are merely soldered together” (148). He urges us to “loosen the bond” in our minds because “it seems probable that the sexual instinct is in the first instance independent of its object,” and shortly thereafter he stresses that under a great many circumstances “the nature and importance of the sexual object recedes into the background” (149). This emphasis allows Freud to valorize sexuality at the expense of object relations, such as when he remarks that children behave “as though their dependence on the people looking after them were in the nature of sexual love,” adding, “Anxiety in children is originally nothing other than an expression of the fact that they are feeling the loss of the person they love” (224). Freud’s language also performs the maneuver of constituting all objects as sexual objects, by definition, with the paradoxical result that while sexuality can be discussed more or less independently from objects, objects themselves can never be divorced from sexuality, a position that soon hardens into doctrine. Further instances of Freud’s perspective can be found in the following statements, some of them from late in his career. After claiming that “sexual life does not begin only at puberty, but starts . . . soon after birth” (1940, 152), Freud goes on to characterize the child’s tie to his mother as an erotic one: “A child’s first erotic object is the mother’s breast that nourishes it; love has its origin in attachment to the satisfied need for nourishment” (1940, 188). He adds, in the language of seduction theory, “By her care of the child’s body she becomes its first seducer” (188). Thus it is that Freud comes to regard all initial object relations as incestuous in their essential character, all subsequent relations as tainted by the lingering psychological influence of the earliest ones (1905b, 225-28), and he even goes so far as to think of “an excess of parental affection” (223) as potentially harmful.

Freud’s conceptualization of sexual behavior as instinctive does not, in itself, constitute a problem within the scope of the issues being considered here, though it should be noted that in place of speaking of “the sexual instinct,” as Freud does, I shall try to speak instead of “sexual behavior” in order to remain closer to the actualities of human experience and to avoid the common tendency in psychoanalysis to reify abstractions (as in the case of such nominative phrases as “the unconscious,” “the ego,” “the libido,” and so on). Neither does Freud’s construction of a general theory of the development of human sexuality from particular bodily zones and events and experiences and stages into the more complex design of adult sexuality constitute a stumbling block, though judgment may be reserved with regard to specific features of this developmental theory. Nature does not make jumps, as an ancient proverb reminds us, so adult sexuality cannot be supposed to blossom overnight out of nowhere. What do constitute major problems with Freud’s early theories are, first, his assumption that sexual experience, including fantasy, serves as a privileged arena of psychological conflict; and, second, his metapsychological suppositions known collectively as libido theory. I address the latter problem first.

An endless source of confusion in psychoanalysis results from the common practice of casually using “libidinal” as a synonym for “sexual.” Doing so effectively blurs two levels of discourse, the high level of abstraction belonging to libido theory and the clinical, everyday level of immediate observation and experience. Freud himself obscures the difference at the outset of Three Essays by equating the term libido, Latin for “pleasure,” with “sexual instinct” (1905b, 135). Later he calls it “the energy of the sexual instinct” (163). He thinks of this sexual energy as a psychic, or “mental” energy, a “force” (177). Freud’s inclination to describe the action of the libido in the naively concrete language of hydraulic flow has been a target of widespread criticism. Freud depicts “the libido” as flowing through “channels” that are like “inter-communicating pipes” (15In); these “mental forces” can be dammed up, and “diverted” (178), and of course “repressed”; in some cases “the libido behaves like a stream whose main bed has become blocked. It proceeds to fill up collateral channels which may hitherto have been empty” (170). Elsewhere Freud describes libido in highly abstract ways: “We have defined the concept of libido as a quantitatively variable force which could serve as a measure of processes and transformations occurring in the field of sexual excitation” (217) and as “a measure of the demand made upon the mind for work” (168). Freud explicitly distinguishes “libidinal and other forms of psychical energy” from the energy made available by metabolic processes (217), lest there be any question on that score. But the more one reads, the more difficult it becomes to decide just exacdy what Freud did have in mind by the concept of libido—quite apart from the problem of whether or not this concept can be found to correspond to anything in the real world, a problem to be addressed late in this chapter in idle context of considering various published critiques of libido theory. In any case, it becomes understandable that even those discriminating and indefatigable lexicographers, Laplanche and Pontalis, lamely concede that “the concept of libido itself has never been clearly defined” (1973, 239).

Although related ideas of Freud involving such distinctions as those between the sexual instincts and the ego instincts, and the distinction between ego-libido and object-libido, will be passed over for the time being, it will be useful to dwell for a moment on the comparison Freud makes between the sexual instinct and what he refers to as “the herd instinct” (1923, 257). Freud doubts the innateness of any social instinct, but he believes that even if it were innate it could probably “be traced back to what were originally libidinal object-cathexes” (258). He claims that the social instincts belong to a class of aim-inhibited sexual impulses. “To this class belong in particular the affectionate relations between parents and children, which were originally fully sexual, feelings of friendship, and the emotional ties in marriage which had their origin in sexual attraction” (258). These assumptions on his part stand in stark contrast to those of person-oriented object relations theory in general and to attachment theory in particular, as later discussion will emphasize.

The underlying purpose of Freud’s theory of sexuality is to account for neuroses, “which can be derived only from disturbances of sexual life” (1905b, 216). In “My Views on the Part Played by Sexuality in the Aetiology of the Neuroses” (1906) Freud summarizes his position. Although he says he had earlier attributed to sexual factors “no more significance than any other emotional source of feeling” (1906, 272), he eventually arrives at a different decision: “The unique significance of sexual experiences in the aetiology of the psychoneuroses seemed to be established beyond a doubt; and this fact [in midsentence an opinion becomes a “fact”] remains to this day one of the cornerstones of my theory [of neurosis]” (1906, 273; italics added). These experiences lie in “the remote past” of the developmental continuum (274). Freud mentions one further constraint: for childhood sexual experiences to be pathogenic, they must have been conflictful (have been repressed), the reason being that some individuals who experience sexual irregularities in childhood do not become neurotic (276-77). This qualification can be regarded as a pivotal one. If the essential etiological factor is the presence of conflict, as distinct from what kind of situation is involved, then it may turn out that conflicts relating to sexuality are by no means unique in the sense of constituting the sole class of crippling influences. From the perspective of a person-oriented theory of object relations, in contrast, conflicts with important others may or may not include sexual elements, but if the others are important persons, such as parents, the potential for serious conflict must necessarily be of a high order whether or not sexual factors are present.

What is plain to see is the mixed nature of Freud’s legacy. Try as he will, his theory of sexual motivation (as distinct from his theory of sexual development) never manages to divorce sexual impulses from objects more than momentarily, and analytically—in the root sense of the word (from analyein, to “break up”). It therefore becomes reasonable to say that in addition to a drive-oriented motivational theory he bequeaths elements of a person-oriented theory of object relations, especially if one thinks about the relative weight of object-relational factors in the oedipus complex. The same point holds true a fortiori with regard to the transference, which is nothing if not a replication of variants of earlier object relations. Also worth mentioning here, if only in passing, is the object-relational orientation of the mental processes known as incorporation, introjection, and identification, particularly where Freud talks about the internalization of aspects of an object relation, as in the case of the development of superego functions, and the introjection of an object in the instance of mourning. While it is true that Freud conceptualizes the “introjection of the object into the ego” as “a substitute for a libid-inal object-tie” (1921, 108), one has only to replace “libidinal” by “emotional” for such a passage to be harmonious with a person-oriented perspective.

CONTRIBUTIONS TO OBJECT RELATIONS THEORY

The task of identifying various contributions, other than Freud’s, to the development of a person-oriented position in psychoanalysis begins with Melanie Klein. She may be thought of as an amphibian, a creature who swims in the great sea of Freudian instinct theory but travels as well on the solid land of object relations. She accepts libido theory without reservation. She does more than merely accept the idea of a death instinct. She embraces it, thinking of it as innate in infants and as giving rise to fears of annihilation and persecutory anxiety (1952a, 198). Her views of the importance of human sexuality parallel Freud’s and often take the form of comparably extreme statements, such as her claim that behind every [!] type of play activity of children “lies a process of discharge of masturbatory phantasies” (1932, 31). Grosskurth, writing in connection with the case of Richard, quotes E. R. Geleerd as remarking, “Klein’s random way of interpreting does not reflect the material [of the Richard case] but, rather, her preconceived theoretical assumptions regarding childhood development” (1986, 270). Grosskurth then quotes from her own interview with Richard:

The only toys I can remember were the battleships. I mentioned to you this morning that I remember going on about the fact that we were going to bomb the Germans, and seize Berlin, and so on and so on and then Brest. Melanie seized on b-r-e-a-s-t, which of course was very much her angle. She would often talk about the “big Mummy genital” and the “big Daddy genital,” or the “good Mummy genital” or the “bad Daddy genital” . . . a strong interest in genitalia. (273)

In Klein’s defense it is only fair to say that her preoccupation with aggression balances her interest in sexuality. As Dr. David Slight, another of her analysands, put it, “Freud made sex respectable, and Klein made aggression respectable” (Grosskurth 1986, 189).

In contrast to her reliance on instinct theory, on the other hand, Klein’s work has been celebrated for its conceptualization of a personal world of internalized objects, “a world of figures formed on the pattern of the persons we first loved and hated in life, who also represent aspects of ourselves” (Riviere 1955, 346). In its early stages, this is a terrifying world: “The idea of an infant of from six to twelve months trying to destroy its mother by every method at the disposal of its sadistic tendencies—with its teeth, nails and excreta and with the whole of its body, transformed in imagination into all kinds of dangerous weapons—presents a horrifying, not to say unbelievable, picture to our minds” (Klein 1932, 187). Before they become whole ones, the objects of this world are “part objects” by virtue of the process of splitting: “The good breast—external and internal—becomes the prototype of all helpful and gratifying objects, the bad breast the prototype of all external and internal persecutory objects” (1952a, 200). Worth noting is the frequency with which Klein broadens sexuality and aggression into experience-near terms like “love” and “guilt”: “Synthesis between feelings of love and destructive impulses towards one and the same object—the breast—give rise to depressive anxiety, guilt, and the urge to make reparation to the injured love object, the good breast” (1952a, 203). The objects of this inner world follow law-like mental processes, among them, introjection, projection, and projective-identification. Most important for its implications for a person-oriented theory of object relations, Klein envisions a world of internalized objects in which sexual aims and sexual objects are not, as in Freud, isolated from each other: “There is no instinctual urge, no anxiety situation, no mental process which does not involve objects, external or internal; in other words, object-relations are at the centre of emotional life” (1952b, 53).

Because of the extent to which he repudiated instinct theory in favor of an object-relations orientation, Fairbairn’s role was even more pivotal than Klein’s. Fairbairn did away with the death instinct, and with the id. He states the relevant positions succincdy in his synopsis (1963): “There is no death instinct; and aggression is a reaction to frustration or deprivation” (224). “Since libido is a function of the ego and aggression is a reactio...