OBJECT RELATIONS
In psychosynthesis we hold a conceptual framework that postulates a `transpersonal’ phenomenon we call the ‘transpersonal self, sometimes referred to as ‘the self. ‘
This self is the dynamic storehouse for all we can be and makes itself known in experiences of love, compassion, joy, peace and service. In the process of manifestation what becomes clear is how it is infused with the notion of purpose, meaning and value. The experience of ‘self is made known to us by our centre of being, our T. This ‘I-ness’, this aspect of self, has ‘awareness’ and `will’; by the process of ‘will’ we can identify and dis-identify with the contents in our field of awareness, the more we can Tdentify and dis-Tdentify, the more choice and freedom we have in our lives. We can experience ourselves, the other and our environment in a more authentic way. It is not surprising that once we start to experience this freedom we become involved with deeper and deeper levels of purpose, meaning and values — T becomes my ‘Self.
This sense of T, of being in the world, is impacted on from birth and probably in the pre-natal phase too.
During early infancy we have many experiences. Depending on the quality of the experiences we have during this period and how we manage the outcome, will be how much or how little of our true authentic nature is available in relationship with ourselves and the other.
Object Relations is a way for us to understand the experiences of the infant as it manages being in the world and the developmental challenges in the first year of life and early childhood.
This paper will look at the fundamental processes of Object Relations and the impacts on ego development and self-esteem. How the therapy space re-creates the early environment and will show through transference and counter-transference processes how the client can re-own, re-find their deeper sense of self through an authentic relationship with the therapist.
Object Relations is essentially about relationship with ourselves and the other. It is relationship with parts of ourselves. The infant is initially a whole being. Differentiation happens in relationship to the environment and that early environment is with Mother.
Mother is the prototype for relationships. Donald Winnicott (1960) calls this prototype relationship the “maternal care system.”
How does the infant manage the journey from un-conscious wholeness to conscious wholeness? Through becoming un-whole, which is an unavoidable experience of being. To come into manifestation, to come to ‘be’, one has to form in a psychological sense, one needs to be able to ‘think’. The first horror of un-wholeness is the experience of non-being, described by Firman & Gila (1997) as “the primal wound.”
This first split, the core split, is the vanguard of a continual series of splits through infancy and into childhood. The psychological demand is to be able to differentiate between self and other, the world of relationship with objects, the objects inside the infant and the objects outside.
Melanie Klein (1934) put forward the notion of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ objects, the reality of the child’s experiences and sensations. The infant cannot at this stage hold both; it uses primitive defences such as splitting, introjection and projective identification.
The infant has to deal with hunger, the breast provides relief but the infant drains the breast, makes it ‘bad’, and, paradoxically, wants to put into the breast the hunger, the `bad’ feelings from inside itself. Again, we can see the dilemma of the infant, how to manage the conflicting needs and unpleasant experiences that happen inside. As therapists when we sit in the space with our clients we can experience them wanting to put something into us, the split off unowned feelings. The small child has unbearable feelings that get ‘projected’ outside.
This is the nature of the transference and our counter-transference. The client reenacts their early object-relation experiences in the therapy room.
The relationship with objects, inside and outside, needs to be given meaning through transformation. Mother is the first transformational object (Winnicott, 1960). She transforms ‘needs’ within the infant: feeding, holding, changing and sleeping. Mother provides through her relationship with the infant a ‘continuity of being’.
Christopher Bollas (1987) proposes that the prototype ‘transformational object’ is a ‘process’, the “process of the alteration of self experience.” In adult life the search for a `transformational object’ continues. Note the prevalence for alcoholism, drug addiction, gambling or junk food. We seek these objects to transform something inside. Religion, advertising and war can all be seen as transformational objects. In the therapy space the client seeks transformation, the therapist becomes the transformational object.
Winnicott (1958) concludes from his observations that an early split in relationship with Mother is the true and false self split, how the infant manages the anxiety of not being fully met by Mother, there is no true ‘mirroring’. In this instance, mother’s unconscious needs and traumas are shaping the infant, the emerging self of the infant isn’t mirrored empathically but becomes a container for Mother’s own neurosis. The infant has no choice but to comply with the ‘impingement’ on his true authentic being and the result is a ‘false self formation. The true self remains hidden, broken or unestablished, but never extinguished.
As we start to look at object relations, we can see that it is concerning relationship inside and outside. A challenge to the Freudian view of the libidinal drive theory, a `drive’ that is instinct seeking discharge, the individual seeking gratification of internal pressures.
Fairbairn (1954) saw in his schizoid patients the failure of Mother to express to the infant the experience of “being loved for himself’ and argues that it is not the instinctual `drives’ of Freudian thought that seek satisfaction but the infant’s experience of being valued and enjoyed as a unique individual that is important. Failures in early object relating can lead to a compensatory inner world of relationships with structural splitting within the unitary ego. For Fairbaim the origin of psychopathology lies in the extent to which the pristine self is split.
In psycho synthesis we can offer authentic relationship in the therapy room and start to wonder with our clients about these splits, ‘false’ and ‘true’ self parts, through the use of the sub-personality model we can engage with the split off of un-owned aspects of the psyche. As we teach our clients to think psychologically they can develop freedom within the relationship with us to identify these parts, discover the need and release the energy through catharsis.
Within the relationship with the therapist the client will re-create early object relations in the here and now. What is split off and un-owned makes itself felt in the relationship. When I sit with a client and feel waves of intense anxiety I wonder about it to myself and may name it aloud, daring to speak it. Where did it come from? What is my client calling for? What is in the un-conscious between us? I muse to myself these questions and ‘self sooth’ myself, I will need to think about what is happening in the space, to think psychologically. When I self reflect in a session I’m thinking about the transference, what is being re-created ‘here and now’ with me? Why? There may not be
an answer; as my own needs and anxieties may be stirred I may have to let go and surrender to the process.
Why do I sit with this client and feel so angry? Their inner world becomes replayed here and now. Are they attached to a strong victim sub-personality? Has the unowned persecutor, the angry vengeful one, been put in to me? Depending on the intensity of the transference I will select a response. What form can this take? What relationship does the client have with their own anger? What is the historical story around anger and the expression of it?
All within the space is available for ‘informing’ the relationship, all objects inside and outside can be examined, commented on or not, all is grist for the mill. Harry Guntrip (1961) puts forward the notion of “regressive flight”, an attempt to go back to the intrauterine condition. In this situation the flight is from all object relations. Guntrip proposes that the core anxiety for the schizoid client is the terror of loss of self. He further describes the schizoid state (1968) as “love grown hungry,” the intense unbearable ‘need’ within the infant. The depressive anxiety is love grown angry, the frustration of this position is our need isn’t met, anger will force the other to give us what we need but the anxiety is that we will drive them away in the process.
When I sit with the client and look at what happens in the space through Guntrip’s lens, I think about ‘needs’, has this person been loved for who they most essentially are? Has the ‘need’ been split off? What is available in the relationship? Both poles are about unmet needs. In psychosynthesis we hold the context of ti-focal vision’, that the person is a soul bound to the limitation of ‘being’ human. When this core essence of who we are is not met, mirrored back to as accepted, loved, nurtured, we split off parts, we respond with the ‘false self formation. The ‘will’ becomes frozen and we cannot act.
Within the ‘authentic’ relationship between therapist and client, we are creating a space for something else to happen, for something to re-form. The space becomes one of hope. Invariably the client’s ‘self knows what needs to come through into consciousness, the ‘symptom’ is a call, it’s not about `pathologising’ the symptoms away, it’s about allowing the symptom, wondering with our clients about the nature, the relationship to the symptom. The client is un-conscious to these processes, they will respond as they have in the past. In the transference what was ‘there and then’ becomes ‘here and now’, something from the client’s history with primary carers is being transferred into this space. We need the client to arrive at a place of insight, a place where they can self-reflect on their experience within the room. The therapist has to wonder and be mindful of his own
experience; why do I have this experience with this client? What is being put into me? The therapist has to know himself, will the unresolved split off aspects of the therapist, collude with the client’s symptom and both take flight from an authentic relationship?
We have to allow the client into us, to stir us up, to think about what is happening. That may mean dropping into the deep unconscious to seek out the symbolic form, the field of pre-verbal terrors. Winnicott (1962) describes the “primitive agonies” of going to pieces, falling forever, having no relation to the body, having no orientation in the world and complete isolation with no means of communication.
How can we bear these places? We can take courage from Virgil’s words to Dante in the dark wood before the descent into hell: “the way out is the way in …”. The words are taken from Dante’s Divine Comedy, a profound journey of redemption, a complete psychosynthetic journey. I often think about Dante when I sit in the space with my clients. What guide will I be?
Guntrip (1968) further develops the “regressive movement” to a symbolic return to the womb, a place of no responsibility or even consciousness; the concept is one of a “regressed ego”, the person retreats because they have never felt safe enough to emerge into relationship.
How, as psychosynthesis practitioners, can we facilitate a space of safety so the self can emerge and redeem the relationship with objects? Our way is to establish authentic relationship, which is difficult because authentic right relations, a relationship described by Assagioli (1963) as a relationship where the other becomes a ‘thou’ not an it, not an object but an equal. “I — thou” (Bauber, 1984)? Authentic right relations isn’t nice relations, which is a prevalent split in my experience of the right relations, personal development weekends at the Institute of Psychosynthesis. Right relations, for me, are very early object relation dilemmas, where the false self formation becomes ‘nice relations’. What is repressed and denied is the boiling vengeful one. What we crave most, authentic relationship, is what we fear most, as what is authentic isn’t always ‘nice’.
As I sit with my client and think about Object Relations, the emerging relationship between my client and myself, I listen to the symptoms, what was this client’s world of objects like? What has been denied inside and outside to enable the ‘self to survive?
How to be with the client in an authentic way may mean letting go of the `mindset’ of being ‘authentic’, paradoxically for this client in this relationship that may be the way in. We may need to do nothing at all, just allow the process to be, the narrative to unwind, the unconscious of the client is picking all this up. It can be about a shift in ourselves,
when we can acknowledge and `sooth’ that part of ourselves that is being stirred up in the relationship, we consciously don’t react in the way the client expects. Something different is happening in the space, it becomes a place of re-birth, of re-forming, a place for the creation of conscious self-awareness.
John Bowlby (1969) asks us to think of Object Relations in terms of primary attachment figures who constitute a secure base, the theory develops into one of attachment ranging from secure to less secure to insecure avoidant. Behaviour constellated around the relationship between mother and child becomes the focus. The child’s internal world of objects is directly a result of the quality of this relationship. As human beings he argues we are contact seeking, our being is dependant on the quality of our relationships. His theory is similar to many object relation theorists in that the infant is a relationship seeking being.
When I think about Bowlby’s work and how I can use it to inform my own work with clients, I think about boundaries, the container, the ability to experience the secure base of the therapy space, how I can be flexible to the needs of my client, it’s about `consistency of relationship’.
I want to introduce a clinical piece of work and define the work using the conceptual framework of Object Relations. Client X’s first 6 months of life were about being constantly passed around relatives and friends. Mother had a breakdown soon after birth and was taken to an institution where she stayed for several years. At 6 months old, Client X was taken in by his mother’s sister and her husband. The emotional atmosphere was one of hostility and =acceptance of my client. His stepfather would beat out of him “my negative feelings”, i.e. crying, complaining, protesting. Several siblings were born, the first 4 died, and my client felt enormous guilt encouraged in this position by Mother’s comments about how “grateful he should be”. One sibling eventually survived and became the golden child, the worshipped one, my client became the un-owned one, denied in every sense. He was sexually abused by a neighbour at 9 years old and kept it a secret. He left home at 16, came out as gay and entered into a string of sado-masochistic gay relationships, where the only way he could feel loved was to be beaten by his partner. My client became a male nurse and slipped into drug addiction, which eventually resulted in a severe psychotic breakdown with my client becoming sectioned at a psychiatric institution; he describes the psychosis as “being in hell”.
The overwhelming absence for my client is lack of maternal care (Winnicott, 1960). There was no “continuity of being”, mirrored back to my client in his first 6
months of life. During this period of absolute dependency `self-formation’ was broken. Privation and psychosis result as in a sense of brokenness running through all subjectivity, which Winnicott termed “privation”. The psychosis is a result of non-differentiation between self and environment. There was an absence and a non-adequate representation of a transformational object (Bollas, 1978). The search for the transformational object vis-a-vis the failure of such an object leads to the sado-masochistic acting out where beating becomes the ‘object of change’. I can change my internal world and “feel loved if I’m beaten.”
The psychosis eventually broke through during the search for the transformational object, which is what the drug addiction had been, a search for change, for something to lead him out. The theme of the psychosis was suffering, this suffering had been successfully split off and repressed only to break through again at the end, what was ‘then’ became ‘now’, what was ‘inside’ became ‘outside’. Michael Balint (1968) describes my client’s dead inner world as the basic fault that something is missing ‘inside’. There is a failure of fit between the child and the ‘response of Mother’ as there was a complete absence of appropriate holding, handling and object presenting (Winnicott, 1960). There was no protection from the primitive agonies with the accompanying annihilation. There could be no undefended openness, a place of unintegration needed for true self formation, the spontaneous experience of ‘being’ to develop a ‘coherence and continuity’. A false self formation proceeded having the features of coping and compliance. When the false self fails and the psychosis is revealed there is no sense of wholeness or continuity of being. The Oedipal issues which arise from the triangular relationships with mother and father, which are about identity, need and power, were unresolved: indeed ‘power’, ‘need’ and ‘control’ became regular visitors to our relationship.
The transference within the therapeutic relationship was intense to say the least. I would sit with this client and feel controlled to an unbearable degree. He was able to put into me intense feelings of anger. I found myself wanting to attack him in different ways. In my own history I had experienced my parents’ issues of ‘power and control’ being met only if I split off pieces of my behaviour and merged with what they wanted. And in this relationship with my client I felt the same. It was no surprise that I wanted to ‘attack’ him, the transformational object for him was immense physical and emotional suffering. Only at the bottom of this experience could he feel loved. All my client’s feelings and responses seemed to be split off, the space would seem icy cold, the unbearable need for love and acceptance repressed as an internal ‘needy object’ which was bad. The other
main feature in my counter-transference was anxiety, my client was able to project into me a deep existential dread. I believe this to be the threat of non-being (Finnan & Gila, 1997) which was the feature of my client’s psychosis, immense emotional suffering in hell.
The client would often take the position of having no inner authority, he would give voice to his victim sub-personality and would often make himself helpless and ask me what he should do. As his anger was so ‘split off’ the persecutory pole in me would rise very sharply. The work was incredibly challenging and only now 1 year later can I see more clearly into the relationship. I tried to make the space one of safety and trust, boundaries were important and he would often push for more time at the end of the session. I tried to offer a space for empathy and authenticity, a place where something different could happen. To a degree I was able to provide all those things, a place where he could be seen and heard and met. However, this client was seen at my place of work, and I could only see him for a limited number of sessions. After leaving the clinic he had a relapse into his drug addiction, still hoping that the drugs would be the transformational object, that somehow the object will transform the self. He is drug-free now, and has applied for community counselling at the clinic where I work.
Object Relations has enabled me to gain insight into very early relationships and how they impact on the infant. The conceptual framework gives me freedom to think psychologically, what is happening in the relationship with this client? What is the nature of the transference? What has been split off and dis-owned? What is my client relating to? What has the client managed to put into me? What unresolved issues of mine need to be healed in this relationship? What does the client want to re-create here? Who is my client most essentially? We can wonder about all these questions, remembering Virgil’s words, “the way out is the way in.”
In Object Relations what is inside becomes outside, what was there and then becomes here and now.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Assagioli, Roberto (1965) Psychosynthesis, Harper Collins.
Balint, Michael (1968) The Basic Fault, Tavistock.
Bauber, Martin, (1984) I-Thou, T & T Clark.
Bollas, Christopher (1987) The Shadow of the Object, Free Association Books. Bowlby, John (1969) Attachment and Loss, Basic Books.
Fairbairn, W. R. D. (1954) An Object Relatoins Theory of the Personality, Basic Books. Firman, John & Gila, Ann (1997) The Primal Wound, New York Press.
Guntrip, Harry (1961) Personality Structure and Human Interaction, International Universities Press.
Klein, Melanie (1934) A Contribution to the Psychogenesis of manic-depressive states, Hogarth Press.
