Pornography: Men Possessing Women, by: Andrea ... - Feminish

(“that aspect with which he can cope”) in psychology or in highculture or among his peers does not, apparently, indicate a povertyof behavior. Becker himself, of course, does not show a poverty ofbehavior in reducing persons to objects because that is normal,neutral, and not reductive. “O ne’s whole life, ” Becker claims, “is aneducation in broadening his range of behavior to objects. ”4 So, too,Christopher Lasch characterizes the contemporary run of patientsseen by psychologists as shallow because of their inadequateresponse to objects:These patients, though often ingratiating, tend to cultivate aprotective shallowness in emotional relations. They lack thecapacity to mourn, because the intensity of their rage againstlost love objects, in particular against their parents, preventstheir reliving happy experiences or treasuring them in memory.5Lasch himself, of course, is not shallow in regarding loved persons,in particular one’s parents, as “love objects. ” T he mourning of a lostobject does not seem to Lasch either shallow or futile.T he first object in a male’s personal history and in culturalimportance is the mother. It is in properly internalizing her as anobject that the male learns everything from heterosexuality toheterosexuality (homosexuality being generally regarded as a failureto learn), including: how to be a separate human being, that is, howto separate from the first object; how to possess suitable objects thatare appropriate substitutes for the first object; and what to expectfrom an object by way of care and devotion, including being keptclean, fed, groomed, smiled at, and humored. According to Mahler,Pine, and Bergman, who use the standard vocabulary: “T heestablishment of affective (emotional) object constancy dependsupon the gradual internalization of a constant, positively cathected,inner image of the m other. ”6 T he inability “to use the mother as areal external object as a basis for developing a stable sense ofseparateness from, and relatedness to, the world of reality” 7 maywell be responsible for psychosis (autism and schizophrenia) inchildren. Even when the first object does her duty and by divinegrace manages to get the infant positively cathected to an inner