The Drama of the Gifted Child (The Search for the True Self)

The compulsion to repeat is, in fact, more or less powerful
even outside analysis. It is, for example, well-known
that partner choice is closely related to the primary object's
character. In analysis, however, this tendency is particularly
strong—above all because the staging here includes
the analyst, and the patient feels that a solution can be
found. A detour by way of secondary transference figures
is nevertheless often unavoidable, since fear of object-loss
becomes intolerable as soon as ambivalent feelings develop.
It is still necessary to separate the "mother as environment"
from the "mother as object." The patient has learned very
early in life that he must not show any dissatisfaction or
disappointment with the object, since this would lead to
the beloved father or mother withdrawing himself and his
love. In the analysis a stage must certainly be reached, when
even this risk can be endured and survived. Before that
time, however, there is a long period when the analyst is
needed as a companion, while early experiences with the
primary objects which hitherto were inaccessible to memory,
are rediscovered in a trial run with secondary transference
figures.
The newly won capacity to accept his feelings frees the
way for the patient's long-repressed needs and wishes,
which nevertheless cannot yet be satisfied without selfpunishment,
or even cannot in reality be satisfied at all,
since they are related to past situations. The latter is clearly
seen in the example of the urgent and not to be postponed
wish for a child, which, as I have tried to describe, expresses
among other things the wish to have a mother constantly
available.
All the same, there are needs that can and should be satisfied
in the present and that regularly come up in the
analyses of narcissistically disturbed individuals. Among
these is every human being's central need to express him-
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