What's a Good Object to Do? - PsyBC

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8 Neil J. Skolnick ⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯ In terms of the object-relations theory of the personality, the disabilities from which the patient suffers represent the effects of unsatisfactory and unsatisfying object relationships experienced in early life and perpetuated in an exaggerated form in inner reality; and, if this view is correct, the actual relationship existing between the patient and the analyst as persons must be regarded as in itself constituting a therapeutic factor of prime importance. The existence of such a personal relationship in outer reality not only serves the function of providing a means of correcting the distorted relationships which prevail in inner reality and influence the reactions of the patient to outer objects, but provides the patient with an opportunity, denied to him in childhood, to undergo a process of emotional development in the setting of an actual relationship with a reliable and beneficent parental figure [p. 377]. With this statement, remarkable for its time, Fairbairn catapulted the primary influence of analysis out of the arena of dispassionate drive interpretations and placed it squarely in the space created by the coming together of two vital, continuously interacting persons— the therapeutic dyad. Fairbairn’s revolutionary idea was that the therapeutic relationship offers the provision of a good object (or, more correctly, a good object relationship). But what is a good object to do What does a good object look like in the analytic setting Where are the lines between the provision of analytic goodness and the provision of exciting, taunting or seductive false promises How might a good object alter the therapeutic frame, including where, when, and how the boundaries are drawn or redrawn Does the goodness of an analyst relate to his or her authenticity Or the spontaneity of the analyst Or the behavior of the analyst Relational analysts struggle with these and similar questions today (Hoffman, 1998), when many of the rules of the analytic process have been thrown open for reconsideration. In what follows I attempt to describe a sampling of characteristic actions of a good object contextualized by the therapeutic relationship. The list is not exhaustive, by any means, and it is not intended to be used formulaically. Fairbairn (1958), for one, was reluctant to spell out specific technical recommendations; he feared a slide to the rigid and mechanical, which, he bemoaned, might serve more to allay the
What’s a Good Object to Do 9 ⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯ clinician’s anxieties or take care of the therapist’s needs than to help the patient. I consider three categories of activity provided by the analyst/good object. The first, which I have coined Dynamic Identification, is derived from Fairbairn’s most seminal postulate, that of dynamic structure. I discuss here the mechanisms, not of identification with the analyst, but of the internalization of a new object relationship provided by a relational analyst. The second category is also rooted in Fairbairn’s theory. His theory of motivation obtained its bedrock in the basic nature (Mitchell, 1988) of man to establish and maintain loving connections. For Fairbairn, loving relationships, from birth, required a mutual reciprocation. It was not news that a parent needs to love a child. What was news, and has often been ignored, is that a child, from birth, spontaneously offers its love to others. Fairbairn stressed the crucial need that the child’s love be accepted and cherished. The acceptance of love provides the thematic glue for the second category of good object activity I describe. Finally, in the third category, the analytic provision of empathy is discussed as it relates to Klein’s (1935) conceptualization of positions in development. The psychological organizations of the paranoid/ schizoid position are qualitatively different than the organizations of the depressive positions. Likewise, the two positions generate markedly different self and other experiential modes. I delineate the nature of the empathic response required by a good object when a therapist is interacting with a patient functioning in the paranoid/schizoid experiential mode and its distinction from empathy necessitated when a patient is operating in a depressive organizational mode. Dynamic Identification By Dynamic Identification I am referring to a construct I have derived from Fairbairn’s (1952) overarching principle of dynamic structure. Briefly, Fairbairn pronounced that psychic structure and psychic energy were equivalent. “Both structure divorced from energy and energy divorced from structure are meaningless concepts” (p. 149). In an Einsteinian moment he eliminated Freud’s (1923) distinction between dynamic id energy and an inert ego fueled by the drives. Paralleling the precepts of Einstein’s relativity theory, egos represent dynamic,
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