What's a Good Object to Do? - PsyBC

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24 Neil J. Skolnick ⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯ Now it must seem that our relationship is permanently damaged and that hopes for it ever being reestablished, futile.” I made no interpretive ties to her mother, no identification of internal conflicts. My actions were more in the realm of empathic holding of unbearable affects. I would like to say she immediately responded, settled down, and returned to a higher level of psychic organization. Truth be told, she flew out of the room in an exasperated rage. She returned the following day, ready for business as usual, with no mention of the previous day’s events. Tossing aside my attempts to bring up the previous session and dismissing it as silly, she proceeded, calmly as always. This cycle of disruption followed by nonchalant calm began to occur with increasing rapidity, and there were fewer and fewer calm sessions. Finally, after many months of this cycling, during one outburst she exploded into tears and wanted to know how I could stay so calm. In fact, she hated my calm. My calm, we discovered, felt to her like a sadistic attack, highlighting by distinction, the disruption of her explosions. Ultimately, she felt mortified in the face of my calm. We continued to understand that her hateful experiences of me were fueled by intense, powerful envy. During her tumultuous paranoid/schizoid states, her envy and hate blinded her to other aspects of my character, past or present. She rebuked my calm, empathic holding with scathing, envious attacks. Her responses rendered her tragically unable to absorb, by dynamic identification or any other means, a more adaptive containing process. Gradually, over a long time and through my empathic attunement to her states of futility and hopelessness, she could tolerate and internalize my calm offerings of holding. The process of dynamically identifying with a good (in this case surviving) object was jump-started as she returned to her previously rather high level of depressive position integration. Despite her disapproval of my lame “60s” type of responsiveness, she could also regain her equanimity toward me. This more evenly regulated perception of me led to fewer stormy eruptions and increasing expressions of gratitude, which I heartily accepted. It also led to a greater understanding of her original outburst following her mother’s death as an attempt to hold on to her internalizations of her mother (who was prone to vitriolic outbursts), which the patient required to prevent further disintegration of her self-experience. While the meaning was, of course, important, of more
What’s a Good Object to Do 25 ⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯ significance was the strengthening of her ability to regain access to a more integrated appreciation of self and other, a strengthening she gained in interaction with a new, good object. Summary and Conclusion I have described and illustrated the use of the analyst as a good object in the mutagenic arena of the good-object relationship. I have discussed its use from a pluralistic consideration of concepts taken from different relational theories. Drawing mostly from Fairbairn, Winnicott, and Klein, as well as my own clinical experience, I described categories of good “objectness.” These included the process of dynamic identification, the acceptance of a patient’s offering of love, and the use of empathy in a Kleinian framework. Obviously, additional ways of being a good object await either description or discovery. Certainly, the events of the months following the September 11 disaster and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have challenged us in ways never before experienced in our lives or profession. We have come to each other with stories, events, and experiences from both sides of the couch. One response of therapists in the immediate aftermath of the September 11 attack has struck me as almost universal. Therapists have spoken of their need to bend whatever have been the usual limits of their therapeutic frame. Whether it was to cry openly with a patient, give political opinions, or reveal personal experiences, analysts report having surrendered their usual objective, professional role. We have been and will continue for some time to be the traumatized treating the traumatized, especially at anniversaries of traumatic events or during dreaded occurrences of future events. In response we have approached our patients with a universal desire to connect in mutual, loving ways. We need our patients just as they needed us. We have not feigned a hold on professional authority when it comes to reestablishing equilibrium following a major confrontation with traumatic, unprecedented horror and chaos. We have been forced to a place none of us have previously been, unfortunately a place that promises to continue indefinitely. I strongly believe that our willingness to be with our patients in this flexible fashion is yet another manifestation of the analyst as good object. Recently a 24-year-old
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