In this podcast lecture, I will discuss some (but definitely not all) of the concepts that make up the much broader field of Lacanian psychoanalysis.
I've struggled to prepare for these lectures. I've struggled a lot. I've spent many years working to understand Lacan's ideas and his ideas' effects on psychoanalysis.
I encountered Lacan when I was a doctoral student. He was a massive challenge, most people found him too difficult, but I stuck with it. And I've been at it for years now. For me, Lacan is not new and novel. Thinking as a Lacanian has become natural and normal for me.
So, what I'm going to try to do in this podcast lecture is remember that for most of you, Lacan is someone you don't know anything or don't know much about. You're in that new and novel phase that I was in back when I first encountered Lacan as a graduate student.
I hope that I'll be able to talk about these concepts in a way that will (1) get you more interested in them and (2) help you get started if you decide to explore this stuff more. It's going to be hard, but I'll try my best.
Let's get started.
Iterative work...
To start with, I want to draw your attention to some of the ways Lacan's work is similar to Freud's work.
One of the ways that Lacan and Freud are similar is that they both produced many content.
Both Freud and Lacan's ideas change over time; their work is iterative...
And they were both clinical theorists.
This is a fact --the fact that they were clinicians– is important because for both Freud and Lacan, the work they were doing in the clinic, the work they did with patients, with analysands, was the thing that drove the theoretical work they produced and refined over time.
Phases & Moments
Lacan's work can be divided into phases. One of the ways that many (not all) people who study Lacan break up his work is into an early stage that focuses on the imaginary, a middle stage that focuses on the symbolic, and a late period that is focused on the real, within those phases, there are moments.
During these phases, Lacan would publish papers, give talks, and conduct a seminar (which we can think of as a class or series of lectures). A specific paper, talk, or a series of lectures in his seminar, would be a moment within one of these more extensive phases.
The First Two Phases & The Big Ideas within Those Phases
The Imaginary Period: Work from the early phase focuses on how human beings, particularly infants who don't yet talk, form an unconscious and an ego and how they start to "make sense" of what is happening inside and outside of their bodies.
One of the ways that I think about this period is that it is interested in forming a coherent identity.
The Symbolic Period: In this work's middle or symbolic phase, Lacan focuses on how language (as a symbolic system) and communication/miscommunication affect the human subject. In this phase, Lacan shows how people use language, or a system of signification, to produce what we could call thoughts or complex ways of understanding or "making sense" of their experiences. This phase would interest people who want to understand how thinking about, talking about, or writing about what we have experienced helps us to "process" those experiences. Or, to put it differently, how talking can help to do things like
De-escalate situations
Attempt to work through complex trauma
Or, if you're someone who is into neuroscience stuff, how talking about what has happened to you effects the way the brain is "weird." (i.e., the impact of speech on the body)
I tend to think of this period of Lacan's thought as helping to explain how we learn, internalize, and then make use of different systems like
Language (how to express one's self and understand how others express themselves)
Laws/rules (written laws/rules... "No Trespassing!")
Social/behavioral norms (i.e., unwritten rules of society, culture, or family)
This is the phase where people have a pretty well-formed identity, and now they want to make sure that identity behaves in the correct way.
Anyone really interested in getting all A's is someone with a very symbolic concern.
Both the Imaginary & Symbolic Periods: Both of these periods tend to focus on how people create meaning, or how they make sense of things that happen inside of our bodies and outside of our bodies, and how these experiences impact or effect our bodies.
Sometimes we can see people combining imaginary identity stuff with symbolic stuff to create what Lacanians often call a semblant (sometimes a semblance). Semblants are powerful creations we use to orient ourselves, to help us determine who we are and where we are going.
Some examples of semblance would be
Being married
Being a mother/father (by giving birth or by adoption)
Being a member of a profession. (Some more than others... Police, Doctor, Social Worker, Priest... those would be semblants. Working at Walmart or a call center when you're in high school or undergrad, not so much a semblant.)
A lot of psychotherapy and psychoanalysis could be seen as working in or through the imaginary and symbolic, or as working with the meaningful semblants to help a patient re-orient themself and get back to a place where they are
Stable
Where they can think and talk about what has happened to them, about their thoughts and emotions, about their traumas, etc.
Where they can "love and work" with less difficulty.
One of the ways I've come to think about working with or through the imaginary and the symbolic is that it is using sessions to take things that are currently not thinkable and not discussable (if you can't think something, you can't talk about it) and, usually slowly, transforming these unthinkable and unsayable things into things that can be thought and then discussed.
A very general example: A person comes in to talk about a current problem, they are a workaholic, and this is harming their family. They tell you about this, and you ask questions, get them to associate (explore what ideas and concepts come to mind when they think about their work). The person starts to talk about how their parents worked so much and left them alone, how they got scared, and how they felt with their fear by doing homework or cleaning the house, or some other form of work. And interpret what you hear them saying by pointing out that they have successfully used work to not feel scared.
The patient then says, "I never thought of it like that, but yeah."
Then you might ask, "Are you possibly using work to avoid feeling something now?"
And then you and the patient discuss this thing that has been lurking in an unrealized, unthought, (repressed?) way and turned it into something that can be thought about and talked about!
If one can do this, I think it can (and usually does) have a curative or therapeutic effect on the patient.
Welcome to the fourth in a series of podcast lectures, which will focus on the work of Donald Winnicott. This lecture follows lectures on the work of Melanie Klein and Ronald Fairbairn, and I'll be referring back to concepts I talked about in those prior lectures. So, while it is not essential to have listened to those prior lectures, I think this lecture will make more sense (the maximal amount os sense) if you have.
Having said that: I want to make something clear right away. I really like Winnicott. He is my favorite in-Lacanian psychoanalyst.
Here are a few of the many reasons I think Winnicott, and his work, is so cool.
He is funny: The footnote about a revolver in a paper on technique.
The story about "inner cows"
He says wonderfully beautiful poetic things.
"For my patients, who have paid to teach me."
"It is a joy to be hidden and a disaster not to be found."
He was not afraid to be an emotional man.
He was sad for what I think are the right reasons.
He would speak in ways that were understandable.
Hopefully, this has piqued your interest in the work of this wonderful thinker. Let's get started...
Winnicott was a pediatrician
Winnicott was a pediatrician before he became a psychoanalyst. So he knew a lot about how parents (in particular mothers and infants interacted). Some things Winnicott noticed:
When a baby is born it is 100% dependent on the mother to survive.
Even though the mother and infant are separate bodies, for a time they are still linked by a powerful mental and emotional bond that is not like any other bond.
He believed that if this bond was supported by others (fathers, other family members, society, etc.) the result would be the development of a healthy person.
By making her breast (or bottle) available at the right moment, the mother (or mother substitute) enables the infant to believe that she (or he) has ‘created their own world out of their own need’. The baby then experiences an ‘illusion’:Winnicott discusses what he calls environmental failure at various stages of the child’s (emotional) development. At the earliest stage of infancy, when the child is in a state of ‘absolute dependence’ on the mother, such failure can have very serious effects on later development.Winnicott recognised that ‘the ordinary devoted mother’ was not perfect and would, therefore, inevitably make mistakes in the care of her infant. What she would then do, however, was to make repairs and readjustments in her interaction with the infant.He describes the situation of ‘not good-enough mothering’ as one in which the mother (consciously or unconsciously) is unable to respond adequately to her infant’s spontaneous behaviour (true self), but tends to impose her own wishes and desires (e.g. for an ‘ideal’ child). This may lead the infant to an adaptation on the basis of ‘compliance’ (false self) and later, in adulthood, to the loss of a sense of personal autonomy and integrity.However, a degree of false self co-exists with the true self in everybody. Like all defences, a sense of falseness canbe protective of the true self, but it may also become pathologically powerful’ and, at times of stress, lead to breakdown and the need for psychotherapeutic help.The true self is perhaps Winnicott’s most complex idea. He describes it as a necessarily hidden, private and secret part of the personality. It is connected ‘in the person’ with ‘aliveness’ and it is that ‘which gives the feeling of real’.
Fairbairn is one of the more difficult-to-understand thinkers we will be tackling in this class. His work is not easy to read, and I'd even say it is impossible to read if you don't already have a good grasp of Freudian concepts. This is because (I think) so much of what Fairbairn is doing is trying to show what he thinks Freud got wrong.
As I prepared for this it became apparent to me that I could talk for several weeks about Fairbairn, but I don't have weeks, so I'm going to do my best to distill Fairbairn's robust thinking into something that might be useful to you.
Freud v. Fairbairn
Both Freud and Fairbairn believe the fundamental source of human motivation originates in the unconscious. However, there are two main areas where Fairbairn's ideas are based on Freud's ideas and radically different from Freud's.
Libido (investments of love) – Fairbairn sees it as relationship-seeking rather than drive satisfying.
The Ego (structure) – Fairbairn sees it as a structure that forms...
Review: Freud's structural model
Freud saw the structure of the human mind divided up in the following way.
The id (Fairbairn says this does not exist)
The ego
The super ego
Fairbairn's structural model
In my opinion, your text does not do a great job explaining this, so here is my attempt to share with you how I understand Fairbairn's structural stuff.
For Fairbairn our ego is who and what we are, and how healthy or unhealthy our ego (who and what we are) ends up being is totally contingent on relationships with other people.
Central ego(identity) – This is more like Kohut's "self," the who and what we are in the world we share with other people.
Then there is the unconscious part, which has two sub-parts. These are "split off from" which is the term Fairbarin uses instead of repressed. I don't really understand why...
One of Fairbairn’s major theoretical developments [that differed from Freud] was his delineation of a psychological model of the mind, departing from Freud’s biological theory, in which the central assumption was that the libido is fundamentally pleasure-seeking. Fairbairn asserted instead that what is primary in us all is our search for relationships, and that this is more urgent than the desire to gratify [drives or] instincts. [...] the driving force in the human psyche is not in fact the pleasure principle, but a fundamental need to relate to and connect with other objects, i.e. other people. ()1940 saw the completion of Fairbairn’s first paper on this subject, ‘Schizoid Factors in the Personality’, and was the beginning of an immensely innovative and creative period. It was this paper – in which Fairbairn coined the term ‘schizoid’ – that would later inspire Klein to alter her ‘paranoid position’ to ‘paranoid-schizoid position’, and that would similarly have a considerable impact on Donald Winnicott’s thinking about schizoid states. This paper also marked the beginning of Fairbairn’s pioneering thinking about borderline states, and their origins in the ‘splitting’ process, a defence against the pain of being rejected by insufficiently attentive parents. [In the paper, Fairbairn] described the child splitting off the emotionally responsive side of his or her parents from the unresponsive side, thereby creating ‘good’ and ‘bad’ objects, and often also splitting the ego into ‘good’ and ‘bad’, a process often leading to borderline states. ()
⌬ Lecture №12 | Melanie Klein [OPTIONAL!]
Episode 12
Sunday, January 2, 2022 • Duration 43:51
Hello,
This is the second in a series of podcast lectures on Object Relations Theories. This podcast lecture, and the several that will come after it, will focus on one specific object relations thinker. I hope that this will result in several short podcast lectures that add to what your text had to say about each of these thinkers.
I also want these podcast lectures to help those of you who might want to use one of the object relations thinkers in the case study paper that you will be writing for this class.
However, I ask that you keep in mind that these podcast lectures are extremely brief summaries of some extensive theory that was developed over many years. So, if something in these lectures gets your attention, I hope you'll then go and do further reading of the thinker's work.
This specific podcast lecture will focus on the work of Melanie Klein, who is the person who I would say is...
The thinker who really establishes object relations as a new branch of psychoanalytic thought and practice.
And I would also go so far as to say that Melanie Klein is the "mother of psychoanalysis."
Review:
For today's review, I want to remind you about something we have covered before in other podcast lectures. I want to remind you of it because it is such an important concept for how object relations theories think about human relationships.
The concept is Transference.
After talking about transference, I want to introduce a new but related idea: Phantasy.
You will recall in the previous podcast lecture; I talked about how the relationships we have with our parents or whoever our primary caretakers are, for better or for worse, form the blueprint we use to develop all other subsequent relationships.
I hope this will remind you of what I said about transference even earlier in the semester. Transference is when we transfer in what? The power differential that existed between ourselves and our parents, or early primary caretakers, into current relationships.
In her work with children, Klein noticed that their play and the toys they used carried important symbolic meaning for them, and that this could be analysed much in the same way as dreams could be analysed in adults. Unlike the psychoanalytically- informed approach to the education and socialisation of children that was [practiced by other analysts working with children], Klein [...] offered her young patients something far closer to adult psychoanalysis. She saw them at set times, just like in adult analysis, and she became more and focused on their fears and anxieties as expressed in their play, and on the defences they used against them. [...] Anchoring her theoretical ideas so firmly in her clinical experience [with children and adults], Klein's work demonstrated that her psychoanalytic technique of understanding and interpreting anxieties, especially fear linked with aggressive impulses, could free up the patient and enable further exploration of their inner worlds.
⌬ Lecture №11 | Object Relations Theories: An Overview
Episode 11
Friday, December 17, 2021 • Duration 32:47
Hello!
This is the first of two podcast lectures that will cover Object Relations Theories. You, my astute listener, will notice that I said object relations theories --plural. I did not say theory --singular. This is important! Your text pointed out.
Object relations theory is the term that has come to describe the work of a group of psychodynamic thinkers, both in England and the United States. Although almost always written in the singular, object relations theory is not actually a theory, because it refers to the work of many writers who did not necessarily identify themselves as part of any given school ad who often argued and disagreed quite passionately with one another.
A note on the text
I'm just going to come right out and say this: I think this chapter is not so good because it tried to include too much content. I don't know about you, but for me, the result is feeling like I just rode a roller coaster of theory, where concepts and ideas went whipping past me faster than I could process them.
If that's how you feel, I hope that this podcast lecture will help to add to what you read and contextualize it a bit more. I hope that you'll feel like you've got a better grasp of these ideas at the end.
Review
Some of the theories we have already covered use the term object relations.
Ego psychology uses it as an ego function.
Self-psychology talks about self-objects, which is a version of object relations.
Freud talked about drive objects, which would be the object that our drive desires and will pursue no matter what.
So, object relations should not be a totally new term. However, object relations theories represent an entire body of thought that takes object relations and makes it the primary focus of psychotherapeutic work.
Overview of similarity:
Before we get into some specific thinkers, I want to talk about some of the main ideas that I think you'll see in all object relations theories. (You might find these ideas expressed differently from one thinker's work to the next, but I think what the ideas represent is more similar than different.)
⌬ Lecture №10 | The Relational Turn
Episode 10
Wednesday, September 8, 2021 • Duration 44:12
I want to start with a bit of a disclaimer.
There are some psychoanalytic theories I know a lot about and some I know less about. Relational theory is definitely in the latter group. It is a theory that I've only dabbled in but I have not spent nearly as much time with as I have in interpersonal theory, self-psychology, object relations, classical Freudian, or Lacanian schools of thought.
Additionally, relational psychoanalysis is a very new theory. It is probably the youngest theory we will be studying in this class.
Be that as it may, I've spent some time exploring relational psychoanalysis, and I'm going to do my best to share what I've learned. I hope this will be a good supplement to the content in what you all read for class this week.
What is relational psychoanalysis?
It is a school of psychoanalytic thought that was largely created in the United States in the 1980s and focused on integrating the interpersonal style of Harry Stack Sullivan (and to a lesser extent Sandor Ferenczi) with the theory of Object Relations focus on the roles of real and imagined relationships with others on individual psychological functioning. Clinicians who subscribe to relational theory would say that personality emerges from the matrix of early formative relationships with parents and other figures.
The theoretical ancestors of the relational theory are
The work of Ferenczi.
The interpersonal theory of Sullivan
British Object Relations theories, in particular, the theories of Winnicott.
The Self Psychology of Kohut
Is it more of a style than a theory?
I tend to think that it is more of a style, or perhaps a framework, which pulls from several theories, rather than a theory. A style of what, exactly?
A style of what I'd call psychoanalytic psychotherapy or which places the relationship a the core of the psychotherapeutic work. (i.e., The therapeutic work is done through the relationship between the patient/clinician or analyst/analysand.)
Relational Psychoanalysis is the term that has evolved in recent years to describe an approach to clinical work that attracts many practitioners in different parts of the world. Although not a hard and fast set of concepts and practices, one core feature is the notion that psychic structure–at the very least, those aspects of psychic structure that are accessible to psychotherapeutic intervention–derive from the individual’s relations with other people. This, of course, is intended as an alternative to the classical view that innately organized drives and their developmental vicissitudes are, at root, the basis of psychic structure. ()
⌬ Lecture №9 | Attachment
Episode 9
Thursday, September 2, 2021 • Duration 48:03
Review
Ego psychology – Made mainly in America, has the goal of making the individual's ego stronger more flexible. This means increasing what is called ego functioning and become less defensive. This theory relies on the economic model, which postulates that there is a finite and limited amount of energy in our psychological system and that all the things we are doing take energy. Defending ourselves takes energy, and therefore the less energy going into defense can be freed up and put into more productive things and stuff.
Self psychology – Also made here in America, by a dude named Heinz Kohut, who believed that the self is something deeper and more fundamental than our ego. Kohut believed the self is a co-created thing, made by an individual in partnership with the people and institutions in the individual's environment. Kohut also believed our self is never done being formed, that it forms throughout our entire life cycle. Relationships are important in this theory, in particular relationships with people who make us who we are. If we are able to get enough of what we need from those around us we turn out more OK. If we don't get what we need from those around us we turn out more not OK.
Now with that review out of the way we are going to jump across the Atlantic Ocean and look at a theory called attachment theory, which started out over in Great Britain. But first some transition music...
History
Attachment – Let's start by getting into the different attachment styles as three thinkers articulated them over time.
First, we have John Bowlby, who theorized something called a secure base, which is necessary for a person to develop a secure attachment.
An important thing to realize about secure attachment is that it is not the absence of difficult or problematic emotions! (e.g., Anxiety, sadness, being jealous, frustrated, etc.) Rather, it is a person being able to experience, acknowledge, and then process those emotions in ways that are generally not very destructive.
Next, we have Many Ainsworth, who was Bowlby's research assistant, who articulated something called .
The Strange Situation Procedure is divided into eight episodes, lasting for three minutes each. In the first episode, the infant and his or her caregiver enter into a pleasant laboratory setting, with many toys. After one minute, a person unknown to the infant enters the room and slowly tries to make acquaintance. The caregiver leaves the child with the stranger for three minutes; and then returns. The caregiver departs for a second time, leaving the child alone for three minutes; it is then the stranger who enters, and offers to comfort the infant. Finally, the caregiver returns, and is instructed to pick up the child. As the episodes increase the stress of the infant by increments, the observer can watch the infant's movement between behavioural systems: the interplay of exploration and attachment behaviour, in the presence and in the absence of the parent.
⌬ Lecture №8 | Self Psychology
Episode 8
Sunday, August 22, 2021 • Duration 59:02
In this lecture, Neil talks about the psychoanalytic theory of Self Psychology, which was developed by Heinz Kohut.
⌬ Lecture №7 | Ego Psychology
Episode 7
Saturday, August 21, 2021 • Duration 52:30
No review today, for two reasons.
First reason - because everything that we’ve covered before now, at this point you know it. And if you don’t know by now, then you’re probably just not gonna know it.
The second reason - all of the podcast lectures before this one or one unit, the first unit, the foundational unit.
Today’s podcast lecture, which is going to be over **ego psychology**, is the first in a series of lectures that will be the second unit of the class.
Along with ego psychology, some of the other theories that we will cover in this unit are - Self-psychology (Kohut) - Attachment theory (Bowlby, Ainsworth, & Main) - Object relations (Klein, Winnicott, Fairburn, Bion) - Intersubjective / Relational
Historical Context Before moving into the main part of this podcast lecture, I want to say something about the context, the cultural milieu, that surrounded the formation of ego psychology’s a theoretical offshoot of Freudian psychoanalysis.
Freud developed the theory of psychoanalysis in Europe, mainly during the Victorian era when there was a rigid system of rather oppressive social structures. There were three important norms of Freud’s day:
1. The exclusion of women from institutions, and from meaningful forms of economic and social power. 2. Very near-total repression of sexuality generally, and of non-heteronormative sexuality in particular. 3. Anti-Semitism and other forms of legally and socially sanctioned racism.
In addition to this Freud witnessed lots of big historical events, many of them tragic. I’m going to run through a few (though certainly not all) of them...
1. The industrial revolution, 2. The sinking of the Titanic, 3. WW I, (gas, machine guns, planes, subs) 4. The 1918 global flu pandemic, 5. The rise of the Nazis, 6. WW II.
All of this gave Freud what you might call, a **rather negative attitude** when it came to how people treat themselves, other people —others who are different in particular, and the environment we all share.
⌬ Lecture №6 | Transference, the Ego, & the Stories We Tell to Make Stuff "Makse Sense"
Episode 6
Saturday, August 7, 2021 • Duration 27:02
Intro: In this Podcast lecture, I do a more extensive review of the concepts of transference & the ego. After that, I try to explain how both of these are stories that we tell, filled with errors, and how it is impossible to have no errors in these stories. I also try to explain how the process of psychotherapy might be one way to help people come to realize the errors in their stories and then make different choices. Review:
Transference - A story we tell ourselves about someone else (the other / the Other)
The ego - An air traffic controller, a story we tell ourselves, an act we put on, a part we play.
The Story is Wrong, and that's OK: People will believe that the story they tell themselves is true, accurate, that it is who they are, but it is not! Rather that is true is the stuff that does not make sense that is under that story.
Examples of things that don't make sense but are true anyway.
Instagram example
(Ironically) I hope this all made sense.
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He also believed that this bond could not last, that at a certain point the mother and baby would need to separate more. (The baby needed to stop depending on the mother's capacities and start the process of developing its own capacities --such as soothing, eating, talking, etc.) Winnicott knew this would be difficult for both mother and baby, and, again believed the mother and baby needed to be supported throughout this separation process.
In many ways, Winnicott (and Klein who supervised Winnicott) brought the figure of the mother into psychoanalysis, which had been very preoccupied with the figure of the father. (See the Oedipus complex.)
Next we will do an overview and summary a few of Winnicott's concepts of:
The infant's fantasy of omnipotence experienced as if it were real
The good-enough mother (i.e., the good-enough parent, or good-enough clinician, teacher, friend, etc.))
Fantasy of omnipotence
The infant needed to experience this fantasy as real so that it could feel safe, secure, and not be flooded with adrenalin and cortisol as it developed. However, after a certain point this fantasy needed to be left behind.
Failure & the good-enough mother
The not good-enough mother (or social worker) can't tolerate negative spontaneous behaviors
Moving away from parent/child relationships for a moment – This still happens a lot in many clinical relationships! The effect is the patient creates a "character" they play to please the clinician. (The same way a child plays the part of the sort of child they think their parent wants them to be.)
True self & False self
Capacities
Concern & Guilt - The child can experience emotions like hate, act them out, and then feel bad (guilty) and try to repair what damages have been done by the hate.
To be alone - We have to be able to be together before we can be alone.
Creativity - The capacity to create enough of what we need and want within the constraints of our lives. One of the ways that Winnicott saw a capacity for creativity is in the creation of transitional objects.
The ‘Transitional Object’
A security blanket or other special object that a kid and use.
Winnicott saw analysts and therapists as transitional objects, and that meant patients would make the analyst or therapist into what they needed them to be (i.e., transference).
If all went well, eventually the patient would not need the analyst or therapist, and they could abandon them as a transitional object.
Libidinal ego (or internal cheerleader) – An internalized phantasy of a nice, caring, responsive, respectful, naturing, parent... which effectively convinces the person that they can safely try things, and even if they don't work out things won't be a disaster.
Anti-libidinal ego (or internal saboteur) – An internalized phantasy abusive parental sort of thing. The internalized critic, which is constantly telling someone they messed up, they are going to be rejected, or hurt, or some other bad thing.
It seems to me, in Fairbairn's model either the libidinal or anti-libidinal ego is dominant. The dominant structure is determined by the sort of relational experiences a person has as an infant, child, and adolescent. Generally speaking...
If the person has more good than bad the libidinal ego will be more dominant. The person will have higher levels of self-esteem, more confidence, all that good stuff.
If the person has had more bad than good the anti-libidinal ego will be more dominant, and the person will be more defensive, emotionally unstable, and all that bad stuff.
Hopefully, this makes that a little more clear to you because I need to move on to the next topic where Fairbairn was different than Freud.
Instincts are tied to pleasure, we do what our instincts do, and we feel good. This helps keep a body alive. Human beings and animals have instincts in common.
However, people, unlike animals, are not satisfied with pleasure alone. Human beings have a drive, a force that compels them to get something that they don't need but enjoy. Persuing our drives brings satisfaction.
In effect, Fairbairn is saying people need relationships. The sorts of relationships we need change over time, but we always need relationships with other people to help us live good lives. A life without relationships would be horrible.
Fairbairn saw that people always try to connect with other people and form meaningful relationships with family members, mentors, friends, romantic partners, etc.
When this works, people tend to be good at regulating their emotions and have less difficulty with life overall.
However, when it does not work, people have a very hard time
Additionally, Fairbairn noticed a sort of person he called schizoid.
These were people who had lived through the tragedy of trying to connect to others.
This involved investing libido (love) into the relationship.
When the relationship does not work out, that investment is gone.
Schizoid people then develop a rich internal (i.e., fantasy) life and invest their libido into that. This is because the idea of investing in relationships and having them not work out again is too much for the schizoid person to bear.
This has implications for working with individuals who have what we nowadays call "borderline tendencies" (i.e., PBD). Fairbarin noticed that these individuals had been hurt by relational failures (e.g., abuse, neglect).
They have a powerful desire to be in relationships. This desire tends to have the idealize people at first.
However, like all people, they brought the damage from prior relationships into their current relationships.
When an idealized person fails to live up to the ideal, the person with borderline tendencies sees this as a threat, as "This person is about to hurt me!" so they get incredibly defensive.
This leads to a self-fulfilling prophecy—the desire not to get hurt results in relationship failure...
Another way we could think about transference is by calling it an effect of a phantasy (spelled with a ph as opposed to with an f). A phantasy is another term used by Melanie Klein, who we will talk about in a moment, to signify a powerful unconscious assumption about the world (meaning the social world) and how we fit into the world. Even though it is called a phantasy, it is important to note that that does not mean it is wrong. Phantasies are usually the result of experiences.
Klein
First, I want to talk about something amazing that Klein did: She was one of the first people to use what we call "play therapy" nowadays, and in so doing she expanded psychoanalysis into a therapeutic modality that could be used with children.
However, Klein did not only work with kids. She did a lot of work with kids, but she also worked with adults.
One of the many things that makes Klein's work so interesting is the way that it focused on two very common emotions that people struggle with:
Anxiety and
Depression.
In both instances, Klein's work grows out of Freud's insight on repressed desires. I want to start by exploring Klein's insights on anxiety.
In effect, Klein was able to see in children's play and adults' dreams, free associations, slips, etc., a desire to be aggressive. This desire was powerful. However, it was frequently repressed (i.e., it became unconscious). When this desire was repressed, one of the effects was that people were anxious that they might one day lose "control" or "lose their temper," and the repressed aggression would erupt.
What is significant about this is the idea that while we can be anxious about external things or scared that something bad will happen to us because of things in the external world. (Example: I'm worried my flight could get canceled because of the weather.) We can also become anxious due to our inner desire to be aggressive (e.g., dominating, controlling, winning, being the best, etc.)
The Paranoid-Schizoid Position
This idea eventually turned into the concept of the paranoid-schizoid position, which suggests that people have a tendency to see themself and others as sort of broken up into different parts.
There is the "good part" of ourselves or others.
Then there is the "bad part" of ourselves and others.
Klein's theory suggests that when people sense the aggressive or "bad" part of themselves or others coming to the surface, they get scared or anxious. What are they afraid of? They are scared of what they might do if they do what their id (or their "inner child," what Winnicott will call the "true self") wants to do.
Or, to put it very succinctly, people are scared they might lose control of themselves and have to see, acknowledge, and then experience the part of them that is aggressive and destructive.
Eventually, after Klein became familiar with the work of Fairbairn who we will cover in the next podcast lecture, Klein started to use the term splitting to describe the specific defense used by people who operate with the paranoid-schizoid position.
Splitting is where people make one thing (one object) all bad
to preserve the goodness of another thing (another object) all good
There are three things I want to point out about the paranoid-schizoid position.
First, in this position people will frequently justify their feelings of hate and aggression via a phantasy (ph) that the object (person or group of people) they direct their hatred and aggression (hostility) towards by seeing as a "bad object".
Second, I want you to remember that people in this position want to be "all good" all the time. This leads to the paranoid-schizoid position is that when people are in it they are scared of (i.e., anxious about) becoming "bad" by
Saying or doing the wrong thing
Making the wrong choice
Making mistakes in general
They are worried that "something bad will happen" if they don't do what they need to do, or what they are expected to do, and then that will be the beginning of the end for them...
And this results in them being in a sort of "fight, flight, freeze" way of relating to the world on a fairly regular basis, which is, of cours...
The term object refers to other people in the world. It is used to differentiate other people from the person who experiences or who is subjected to these other people. For example: In an infant-child relationship, from the infant's perspective, the mother is the object, and the infant is the subject. The infant is subjected to the mother. This is reversed if we look at things from the mother's perspective.
Object relations theories tend to focus on the process of a person coming to experience themselves as separate from other people but connected to them through relationships.
Not all objects nor all relationships are equal. Some objects and some relationships are more important than other objects.
Object relations theory focuses on relationships between people being more crucial to personality development and formation than interpsychic forces, such as drives.
Another way to say this would be that we learn how to be who and what we are through being in relationships with other people. The most important others will be our primary caretakers. For better or worse, this early relationship with our caretakers provides the sort of "baseline" or "blueprint" to which other relationships will be compared. Some thinkers, such as Peter Fonagy, have called these relational blueprints "internal working models" or IWMs for short.
People create and then continually revise an inner map of how they relate to other people and how others relate to them. This could be as simple as "I don't get along well with so and so." This map is created out of memories, fantasy (and phantasy).
My take on Object Relations Theories
I think object relations theories get right because relationships are important. Our significant relationships have a massive effect on who we are and what we become over time.
If our relationships are good, if they are not abusive or traumatic, it is far more likely that we will turn out better than if these relationships are abusive and significantly traumaize us. (The Adverse Childhood Experience | ACEs scores matter!)
What I'm more skeptical about is this:
The idea that a therapist or analyst (with who you will spend not that much time) can correct for damage done.
I think it is a theory that might overplay being satisfying to patients, and if the practitioner is not careful, underplay the value of optimal frustration.
That's in for this podcast lecture:
In the following lecture, I'll discuss specific theorists who produced what we recognize as object relations theories.
According to the relationalists, the psychoanalysis that comes before the relational turn is focused on the drive (or the drives), and the effects of the drive on how we live, work, and love. Desires and urges cannot be separated from the relational contexts in which they arise. This does not mean that motivation is determined by the environment (as in behaviorism), but that motivation is determined by the systemic interaction of a person and her environment.
I would say that this earlier style of psychoanalysis was and is concerned with relationships, but it uses relationships that a person has to understand the ways that the drive and jouissance are playing out in a person's life.
The relational psychoanalysts tend to look more at relationships for their own sake, they examine relationships as what matters. Relational psychoanalysts and psychotherapists tend to stress the importance of
Using their own feelings (countertransference) to understand what is unfolding between them and the patient
Being authentic and spontaneous
They strive to create a feeling of connection with someone who cares as opposed to a more transferential relationship that can be used to uncover unconscious desires via interpretation
There are two sub-types of insecure attachment – Avoidant-dismissing and anxious-preoccupied.
Ainsworth is also an important thinker for attachment theory because she created something called the Strange situation experiment.
This experiment is done when kids are between 9-18 months old.
Ainsworth also studied attachment in Uganda and other places and helped us to see that attachment is not something that is only a culturally produced phenomena in western cultures (e.g., European / North American).
Mary Main (who is still alive and I think working) articulated the idea of disorganized attachment.
She also helped create the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI), which I've linked to on the course Moodle page.
Some people (I'm one of them) think that disorganized attachment is a better way to think about what we call BPD today.
Styles
There are four different attachment styles you should know. Let's review them:
Secure – autonomous (Bowlby)
Avoidant – dismissing (Ainsworth)
Anxious – preoccupied (Ainsworth)
Disorganized – unresolved (Main)
Additional Points
Some key points that I want you all to know because are not covered in your readings.
Attachment theory says that a person's attachment can (and probably will) change throughout the course of their life.
This means that it is possible to move from an insecure attachment style to a secure style of attachment. However, it usually happens the other way around.
It is not difficult (i.e., it is easy) to take someone from a secure attachment and make them insecure.
Trauma leads to insecurity. When we think about trauma, it helps to think of it along with two variables. Trauma can be intense, abrupt and sudden, and short in duration. (Think of getting hit by lightning.) Or it can be low intensity but drawn out over time. (Think of middle school.) In some rare cases, it can be both high intensity and drawn out over time... More on that in a second.
Another way we can think about trauma is to compare it to a physical injury. Let's talk about emotional bones and long-drawn-out physical issues.
When someone is traumatized, they can heal, but they will always have some scar tissue. They will also always be prone to reinjury of the traumatized area of their lives.
In short, Freud’s experiences made him a bit of a **pessimist** when it came to humanity.
Having said all that let me bounce back to one of the historical items I mentioned: the rise of the Nazis and WW II.
1. Most of the people who were psychoanalysts were Jewish, smart women, and people who advocated for sexual tolerance (e.g., sex-positive), people the Nazis did not care for. 2. When the Nazis did come to power psychoanalysis was one of the first things they tried to get rid of. (They burned lots of Freud’s books.) 3. Many psychoanalysts were rounded up and killed in concentration camps. 4. But some escaped to Britain, Freud was k Enid those, and others made it to the United States.
I’ll talk about what happened to the analysts who took up residence in the UK when I do a podcast on **Object Relations**. Today I’m going to get I think the analyst’s who found themselves here in the **United States**.
##The American Context of Ego Psychology Unlike Europe, which was getting old and curmudgeonly as its global influence faded, America was in its late adolescence or early adulthood. It was young, attractive, and just getting more powerful.
One of the things that characterized the American zeitgeist from the 1920s to the early 1960s was a strong belief and emotional investment in a very “positive attitude.” I’d go so far as to say that this is something that has continued into the present day.
So, let’s take a critical look at this positive attitude, and some of what it suggests.
1. If you work hard you’ll get somewhat. 2. If you are successful you must have worked hard, or been smart, or had some kind of valuable skill that you were able to sell to those who wanted or needed it. 3. If you’re having a hard time it’s because you’re lazy, not because you can’t make it! 4. There is no value in “feeling sorry for yourself” (call the way-balance, do you want some cheese with that wine, are you going to cry about it?) 5. If you think positive things if you have a positive attitude then good things will happen to you. 6. It is the individual’s personal responsibility to care for their body, their finances, their professional development, their attitude, etc. 7. If things are bad it’s because you have made errors in how you live.
Some people have called this the “pull yourself up by the bootstraps” mentality that made America great.
What this positive attitude overlooks is, something that MLK said...
It’s all right to tell a man to lift himself by his own bootstraps, but it is cruel jest to say to a bootless man that he ought to lift himself by his own bootstraps.
Or to paraphrase MLK’s idea: Before we value people being able to lift themselves up by their bootstraps, **we should realize that there are people who don’t have not been allowed to own boots**.
I want this out because ego psychology is a theory that tries to increase a person's capacity to lift themselves up by their bootstraps, it values helping people get better at “fitting in” to their society by getting better at controlling themselves. And while there is value in that, it is important to remedy that society has not, and even now does not, allow everyone the same opportunities to “fit in.”
Ok, I’ll get off my soap box now, play some transition music, and then talk to you about ego Psychology’s center am tenants.
Functions As the name would suggest, ego psychology puts _the ego_ in the foreground, and the rest of psychoanalytic theory in the blurry background.
The aim of ego psychology is to work with patients to **increase the overall functioning of the patient’s ego, to make the patient’s ego stronger, more flexible, and more powerful**.
Those who are drawn to ego psychology tend to believe that the ego has a job to do, which is **balance** everything in a way that allows for someone to “keep a grip” on themselves. To keep a good strong grip on the steering wheel of the personality.
(Example: In some old movies someone will start to freak out and another character will grab them and say, “Get a grip!” or “Get ahold of yourself!”)
When the ego “had a grip,” when it is doing it’s job in a good enough way people behave themselves, they are logical, consistent, and doing things that are more socially acceptable.
In short: when the ego is strong and flexible people are able to stay in control of the way they are expressing their thoughts and their emotions.
(Note: I did not say control of their thoughts and emotions! We don’t control those, we can control how we display them to the outside world.)
To help the ego get strong, to help it keep a firm grip on control.
Incidentally, when someone “has a grip” on themselves, they are
1. Behaving themselves (appreciate behavior) 2. Working, or going to school (being productive)
In effect, they are playing their part within a social system, within a society. Within a capitalist society, this means producing and consuming l.
Defenses To help the ego keep a person functioning (to keep them “productive members of society”) the ego tries to keep some unsettling, destabilizing, or anxiety-producing experiences away from your consciousness.
Now, when I say experiences I mean literally your ego avoids stuff that freaks you out. For example, I don’t like roller coasters so when people ask if I’d like to go someplace with roller coasters I say...
