Sacred Psychoanalysis - etheses Repository - University of ...

8. A total sense of self, including split off parts ‘as Freud suggests throughout his writings,
the distressing memories of our objects’ (Rizzuto 1979: 80), invokes defence
mechanisms of repression and denial. ‘Their unwelcome “presence” barring our wishes
reawakens original feelings...Objects do not come back to our memory by themselves.
We remember them preconsciously - or consciously, when we feel them as a presence’
(Rizzuto 1979: 81).
9. There can be a maturing process within the self where one's objects contribute ‘to the
texture of psychic existence ... using our full range of emotions from love to hatred ... to
make our objects do what we want in that marvellous metaphorical “place” called the
“space to play”... and permit us great emotional freedom. We can now love or hate our
objects, play or fight with them, laugh or cry with them, but only in fantasy … being
who we are and who we want to be’ (Rizzuto 1979: 81f.).
10. Rizzuto warns of the danger of conceptual confusion about the nature of objects.
‘Guided by their language, psychoanalysts too have often made object representations
into entities of the mind, capable of exerting actions on their own’ (Rizzuto 1979: 83).
Psychoanalysts need to avoid abstract epistemological theorizing and focus on ‘a fully
mature memorial activity that permits us to be truly historical beings in the context of
our past experiences with our significant objects’ (Rizzuto 1979: 83f.).
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