What's a Good Object to Do? - PsyBC

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16 Neil J. Skolnick ⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯ relationship. I was made to feel the horror of being the subject of her mother’s attacks, the surprise and shock of receiving abject hatred from a previously safe and loving mother. So our minds met on a paranoid/schizoid plane, and we both experienced these strange dangerous feelings of self and other. We had some awareness of each other’s struggle with powerful drive experiences, particularly sadism, as well as fear of being suddenly shamed and humiliated. From this place, I told the patient that it appeared she was more inflamed by my being upset than by my having not told her about the new chair. She concurred and went on to tell me that her most terrifying experiences as a child had been when her mother appeared confused and anxious. These times typically preceded physical abuse. We began to understand that my anxiety had aroused a similar fear of abuse and her sadistic attacks were an effort to ward off my impending attack. One might also say that her attacks represented an internalized self and object identification with her mother. Over the course of the next series of sessions, gradually achieving a more related calm, we continued to be able to explore and resolve the episode. We had both been through hell, worked our way over hot coals, and come through grounded on the other side—my regaining, and she achieving, an experience of reintegration of our selves and each other. Had I disavowed my sadistic pleasure, fear, or guilt, as well as my working through the shame and humiliation, I do not believe progress would have been made. Being a good object is not easy. Sometimes, Chicken Little is right. I should add here that I was also concerned that our recovery might have been only cosmetic, both of us staging a recovery by clinging to convenient historical myths and narratives to escape the tumult of our disruption. As with much of our work, we therapists are rarely given direct confirmation of our success. Indeed, many treatments appear to shift endlessly through disruptions, repairs, reparations, deaths, and any of the infinite possibilities of nuanced and shifting object connections. I have become increasingly more comfortable surrounded by uncertainty. While Bion (1967) instructed us to greet each session without memory or desire, I prefer to recall a wise elderly supervisor’s instruction to “trust the process.” Indeed, with Marianna, the ultimate proof came with the gradual, forward-and-back, and forward-again improvements in her sustaining integration in relationships with me and others, all leading to a satisfying marriage
What’s a Good Object to Do 17 ⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯ and children. Perhaps trusting the process 6 is another route to being a good object. I need to add that a similar process is advisable when patients reveal idealizing, loving, or intense sexual feelings toward us. Whether or not we immediately dissuade these patients of their idealized myths about us is not to me the crucial issue. We need to climb into the heavens with our patients’ positive feelings, just as we dove into the mud of their negative feelings. We need to find those places in us, and rework our own struggles with grandiosity, or perfection, or need for adoration. Consciously or unconsciously, we communicate this process to our patients and allow them, without fearing great shame, humiliation, or destruction, to identify with a similar process of disillusionment. A patient of mine has a father who has been, and continues to be, overly sexually stimulating with her. She, in turn, has been excruciatingly embarrassed by her sexual impulses since childhood, experiencing painful humiliation at the mere mention of anything sexual. A very attractive woman, she receives no pleasure from sex and shies away from all contact with men. She is unable to achieve orgasm. In the transference, she developed powerful sexual desires for me, which she gradually began to describe. In response, I began to feel pleasurably sexually aroused by her. Quite frankly, after a period of initial anxiety, I loved it. To my dismay and despite years of trumpeting ethical prohibitions and responsible professional probity, our mutual sexual seduction felt exciting, flattering, frightening, and embarrassing. I experienced enormous guilt about my pleasurable sexual arousal and was unspeakably afraid of lapsing into the inappropriate, of losing control. So, now what’s a good object to do Of course, my psychoanalytic superego struggled. Should I interpret the feelings while at the same time getting myself back into analysis for experiencing the dreaded countertransference Should I make reference to the original oedipal triangle in her family, in which her sexual feelings for her seductive father left her ashamed and in fear of reprisals from her envious mother, a dynamic that continued into the present Should I guide her toward relinquishing her strong attractions, ⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯ 6 Trust of process can provide a possible locus of integration between psychoanalysis and Buddhism. See Engler (2003) and Magid (2003) for more on this issue.
Page 1 and 2: Psychoanalytic Dialogues, 16(1):1-2
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Page 29 and 30: 30 Jay Frankel ⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯
Page 37 and 38: Psychoanalytic Dialogues, 16(1):39-
Page 39 and 40: Reply to Commentary 41 ⎯⎯⎯⎯
Page 41: Reply to Commentary 43 ⎯⎯⎯⎯

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