Excerpt fromChapter 3: The Dynamic Relationships Between the Pathological Ego Structures

This chapter focuses on Fairbairn's four pathological self and object structures, with an emphasis on understanding patient productions during the clinical interview. When working with patients suffering from severe splits in their ego structures, it is critical to know which subego or internalized object is dominant. The discussion begins with a description of each ego structure and then the relationship of each to its object partner. This is followed by an examination of the four fundamental relational patterns of transference that can emerge between patient and therapist, along with techniques that can be used to soften the patient's rigid adherence to her inner structures. The chapter continues with a lengthy discussion of the reemergence of dissociated material from the antilibidinal ego, and with therapeutic strategies that foster its integration into the central ego. Finally, the negative therapeutic reaction is examined in terms of Fairbairn's inner structures.

The four internal ego structures are not composed of hundreds of separate actual interpersonal events that are sequentially dissociated and held in the unconscious. Rather, they are complex views of the object over time that are melded together and modified by the child's fantasies and fears that were appropriate to the age at which the dissociation took place:

"It is important however to keep in mind that these constellations do not represent a simple internalization of an actual experience with an external person. They are multilayered representations built up at different levels of development over the years as the growing person takes in the experience of relationships as modified by his own fantasies and by the limited ability to understand that which was present during the particular stage of development at the time of each experience."

Thus each of the four structures is complex; each is a limited sub-personality with a distinct view of the world as well as the ability to plan and make decisions, and each can become the dominant ego directing the patient's life.

The Antilibidinal Ego

Although my effort here is to focus on the antilibidinal ego, it is impossible to speak of one structure without referring to the others, as seen in chapter 2. It may seem difficult at first for the clinician to differentiate the antilibidinal ego from the rejecting object. However, they are vastly different and play distinct roles in the interior world, as well as in the transference relationship. The fundamental difference between these two structures is that the rejecting object attacks, demeans, and humiliates the antilibidinal ego from a position of power, and its rejection can be absolute. The antilibidinal ego is the self of the developing child that relates exclusively to the rejecting object, and its response to these attacks are self-hate, shame, and sarcasm toward those in power, which often manifests later in life as a self-righteous condemnation of those who have failed in their assigned role (as parent, leader, or authority). In some cases, this amounts to "whining" and chronic complaining about the failures of their objects, whereas in other patients it can take the form of an interpersonal revenge-based "crusade" against the specific objects or a displaced group of objects, one that takes on the emotionality of a religious war. I turn now to an example from Fairbairn's 1954 paper on hysteria, cited previously (Celani 2001), that clearly demonstrates that Fairbairn saw patients with exactly the same type of relationship between the antilibidinal ego and the rejecting object as we see in our patients today. The exceptional aspect about this passage is that the patient is actually thought to be the analyst Harry Guntrip, whom, as noted, Fairbairn treated in analysis:

"In his inner world he was constantly engaged in an argument with his mother over his right to possess a penis and to use it as he wished -- a right which, in the light of his mother's reactions (to which reference has already been made), he felt that she denied to him. This imagined argument with his mother assumed the essential form of an attempt on his part to convert her to a "belief in penises," in place of the hatred of penises which he attributed to her (not without reason). More specifically, he sought to persuade her to accept his own penis, and to give him permission to use it: for, in his bondage to her, he felt that he did not dare to use his penis without her permission -- except in secret masturbation, about which he felt extremely guilty. (Fairbairn 1954:34)"

This is a classic example of a relationship characterized by "whining" and complaining between the child's antilibidinal ego and the rejecting aspect of the maternal object. Here the antilibidinal ego is engaged in a lobbying effort to reform the position taken by the all-powerful and implacable rejecting object. Once the relationship between the antilibidinal ego and the rejecting object is internalized, neither structure is able to assimilate information from the external world that might modify its position. I have noted earlier that Fairbairn did not see the hostile and antagonistic relationship between the antilibidinal ego and the rejecting object. He mistook the relationship between the antilibidinal ego and the rejecting object as a cooperative one, in which the antilibidinal ego does the bidding of the rejecting object, yet this example from his own work illustrates just the opposite. Here the patient's antilibidinal ego is pleading and lobbying for permission and understanding of his legitimate needs from his insensitive parental object. The flaws in Fairbairn's original understanding of the dynamics between the internal structures blinded him to the therapeutic possibilities of working to counteract the self-defeating and rigid relationship between these structures.

Odgen (1990) has also written of the antagonism between the antilibidinal ego and the rejecting object. He noted that the struggle between theses structures is never won, as they fight each other to an eternal "draw":

"The suborganization identified with the object is under constant pressure from the self component of the relationship to be transformed into a good object. Such a transformation is strenuously resisted by the object component, because this type of massive shift in identity would be experienced as an annihilation of an aspect of the ego. The internal object relationship is vigorously defended from two directions: The self-component is unwilling to risk annihilation resulting from absence of object relatedness and instead strives to change the bad object into a good one; at the same time, the object component fends off annihilation that would result from being transformed into a new entity (the good object)"

Ironically, Odgen is a Kleinian and Winicottian, and yet he is one of the few writers in the field who has described the struggle between these antagonistic components in Fairbairn's structural model. The powerful, yet often pathetic and neglectful, parental object, who has been internalized as the rejecting object, maintains its enormous status in the inner world because the child's infantile antilibidinal ego needs the rejecting object to become a good object and act as the catalyst for its development. This is a task in which the rejecting object steadfastly refuses to participate. The child's antilibidinal ego's total dependence on the rejecting object keeps it forever responding to this antagonistic inner structure, which never loses its potency. In some patients, the antilibidinal ego gives up trying to reform the bad object and switches to a strategy of exposing the bad object parent to the public. Like the snake and the mongoose, these two structures simply cannot leave each other alone.

One of the most striking characteristics of the antilibidinal ego is its self-righteous desire for revenge and its demand for reparation for the hurts it has suffered. I am not exaggerating when I say that some borderline individuals have spent most of their lives demanding, in various impotent and self-defeating ways, that their original parental objects are somehow "charged" with violations of the parent--child contract. Ogden (1990), who colorfully describes the antilibidinal ego as the "wronged and spoiling self," emphasizes the actions of the antilibidinal ego in the inner world; however, when this subego becomes the dominant ego, it often attempts to expose the parental object's badness in the external world as well: "The second category of bond to a bad internal object is the tie of the wronged and spoiling self to the unloving, rejecting object. This often takes the form of a crusade to expose the unfairness of, coldness of, or other forms of wrongdoing on the part of the internal object" (156).

The antilibidinal ego has a sense of purpose and direction, and consequently its antagonistic relationship to the internalized rejecting object is easily projected onto objects in external reality. As we will see, the intensity of the relationship between the part-self and part-object structure causes the antilibidinal ego to feel that it is engaged in a self-righteous mission, which forecloses the intrusion of external objects into this meaningful and intensely emotional internal world. Kopp (1978), an existential psychologist whom I have previously quoted (Celani 2005), illustrates this aspect of the antilibidinal ego:

"Imagining themselves to be the heroes or heroines of as yet uncompleted fairy tales, such people simply cannot (will not) believe that the villains who have disappointed them will go unpunished, or that they themselves will remain blameless yet uncompensated victims. Surely there must be someone who will avenge them, and take good care of them, someone who will right the family wrongs and reward the good children."

Perfectly captured here is the tone of one of the most common attitudes of the antilibidinal ego. It waits for an opportunity for revenge and validation at the hands of a higher authority -- a demand that is never answered. Mainstream psychoanalysis has also looked at the issue of revenge, as Beattie (2005) notes:

"Revenge and vengeful fantasies may occur in many forms and on many levels, both conscious and unconscious, and may be expressed as readily through masochistic reaction formation as through overtly sadistic behavior. They have deep roots in early conflicts, traumas and humiliations at the hands of parents, siblings and others. They need not, however, imply a primitive mode of object relatedness, for the vengeful person may demonstrate both a capacity for delay and self-control, an empathic attunement to the victim's feelings and motivations. (513)"

The desire for revenge is one of the most common aspects of the antilibidinal ego, and, as mentioned, it gives purpose and meaning to this functional part-self. Indeed, the antilibidinal ego can overpower the central ego precisely because it has a strongly held mission and well-developed strategies, whereas, in comparison, the lost and depleted central ego has had too few interactions with the idealized aspect of the parent to give it direction or purpose.

I have dealt with borderline individuals whose antilibidinal ego structures became so powerful that the patient left treatment in favor of a hoped-for victory over the displaced rejecting object. Case 3.1 demonstrates the power of external objects to provoke transference reactions that externalize the patient's internal relational patterns. I was not able to stop this particular patient from terminating treatment because his antilibidinal ego had an attachment to, and fascination with, a new version of his original rejecting object. This attachment, operating through the emotions of hate and revenge, became a greater force than the attachment between his central ego and me as an ideal object. In this example, the upsurge in antilibidinal acting out occurred because of a change in management in the assembly plant where the patient, Mr. Hayes, was employed.

***

Case 3.1

Mr. Hayes was raised by a stern and critical father who often commented to visitors and relatives that his son would never amount to anything. As a young man, Mr. Hayes's insecurity prevented him from obtaining appropriate employment, and he drifted from one menial job to another. Ultimately, he found a job at an electronics assembly plant that was more appropriate than prior jobs. He became exceedingly dependent on his supervisor and was hypersensitive to criticism of his work. If he was criticized, he would go into an antilibidinal-ego state dominated by feelings of being deeply wounded and would retaliate by passively resisting instructions. After one year of therapy, he had made good progress in terms of starting his own part-time business and reducing his passive-aggressive behaviors at the job. It appeared that his dependent hostility toward the displaced bad objects was in good control. At this juncture, the plant was sold and a new management team took over and began an aggressive program of enforcing trivial work rules. His new supervisor repeatedly cited him for minor infractions, and Mr. Hayes called on the union to defend his positions, which they did. His antilibidinal ego rejoiced at the support from the union, and all his historical relational grievances were projected onto the "all-bad" management. He began plotting endless revenge scenarios and filed complaint after complaint with the union regarding management's abuse of him. He spent hours dissecting the established work manual and began calling various supervisors in the middle of the night regarding details of the work rules. I attempted to reduce this spiral of acting out via interpretations regarding the similarities between his original bad object and the unfair management, but these were ignored. As Mr. Hayes became increasingly caught up in this clash with his new bad objects, treatment became less and less important to him and he eventually left.

***

Mr. Hayes's antilibidinal ego was motivated by hate and the desire to vanquish his frustrating objects. His investment in doing so was amplified by the support from the union to which he belonged, and it appeared that he was willing to destroy himself, if necessary, in order to inflict injury on the hated objects. I noted earlier that Fairbairn (1944:117) recognized that the dependent, abused child was reluctant to give up his hate toward the bad objects. The rage stored in the antilibidinal ego toward the bad objects, and the individuals absolute dedication to destroying them at any cost, makes dealing with this form of acting out very difficult.

Occasionally, an antilibidinal-dominated patient will try to induce the therapist to take up his cause and actively participate in the effort to defeat the external rejecting objects. The therapist will feel the intense hostility (and the possibility that the patient will split him into a rejecting object) if he or she does not actively participate in the patient's revenge scenario (more on this in chapter 4). The only answer at these tense junctures is to reiterate the methodology and parameters of therapy and face the consequences of the patient's anger.

The material contained in the antilibidinal ego is generally the therapist's major ally in the interior world, as it holds the dissociated memories (though symbolized and exaggerated) of actual events in the individual's developmental history. Material from the patient's antilibidinal ego is on display during the initial sessions, although, paradoxically, the patient is actually engaged in a libidinal-ego--exciting-object relationship with the therapist. In other words, the material that the patient relates to the therapist about his maltreatment by others is from the antilibidinal ego, but it is relayed through the patient's libidinal ego because the patient is hoping for support, sympathy, love, and compensation from the exciting object, the therapist. The real antilibidinal pain, rage, and humiliating memories are still dissociated because they remain too intolerable to accept, although, with luck, small bits will emerge as the narrative develops. The patient's recounting of antilibidinal-based material acts as the entrée into the patient's interior world, and it is best for the therapist to give the patient as much time as necessary to delineate all the various aspects of the relationship of his antilibidinal self with the frustrating/exciting object. By simply listening attentively, the patient will experience the therapist's attention as supportive of the patient's personal reality and worldview. This will further stimulate the libidinal ego's hope that love and compensation are just around the corner. Keep in mind, however, that the libidinal ego is infantile, naïve, and unrealistic, and seeks compensation for all the hurts it has experienced from a higher power, which appears to be embodied in the "savior" therapist. Conversely, other patients may start out dominated by pure libidinal ego material and present an unrealistic -- often near-delusional -- view of the goodness of their objects, which also requires patience on the part of the therapist.

Remarkable is that the antilibidinal ego is known to writers outside the closed world of psychoanalytic theory, as evidenced by Katherine Ann Porter in her essay "The Necessary Enemy" (1948), which I cite in a previous volume (Celani 2005). Even though she knew nothing about psychoanalysis and suffered from many characterological problems herself, Porter (1948) was able to identify most of the important facets of this structure: that it contains hostility toward ostensibly loved objects, that it remains in the unconscious most of the time, and, when it does become conscious, it causes the individual great distress:

"She is a frank, charming, fresh-hearted young woman who married for love. She and her husband are one of those gay, good looking young pairs who ornament the modern scene rather more in profusion perhaps than ever before in our history. They intend in all good faith to spend their lives together, to have children and to do well by them and each other -- to be happy, in fact, which for them is the whole point of their marriage. . . . But after three years of marriage this very contemporary young woman finds herself facing the oldest and ugliest dilemma of marriage. She is dismayed, horrified, full of guilt and foreboding because she is finding out little by little that she is capable of hating her husband, whom she loves faithfully. She can hate him at times as fiercely and mysteriously, indeed in terribly much the same way, as often she hated her parents, her brothers and sisters, whom she loves, when she was a child. Even then it had seemed to her a kind of black treacherousness in her, her private wickedness that, just the same, gave her her own private life. That was one thing her parents never knew about her, never seemed to suspect. For it was never given a name."

Porter recognized that the origin of this structure is in childhood and that the experience of hating an object can be transferred from one intimate relationship to the next. She also understood that most individuals try to hide from or otherwise deny the existence of this structure and that it paradoxically contains a self-affirming kernel of truth. The antilibidinal ego, in other words, knows the truth about past angry and rejecting relational events within the family, and these mostly hidden perceptions provide the individual with an authentic perspective. Unfortunately, these truths are encountered in frightening, highly symbolized, and disruptive ways that tend to make them less credible to the individual. The task of the therapist is to help the patient accept the perceptions of this structure and not allow them to slip the memory back into the unconscious. In short, it must be integrated into the central ego, thus reducing the potency of the hateful attachment between the antilibidinal ego and the rejecting object.

The Internalized Rejecting Object

The internalized rejecting object is a dynamic structure that is a condensation of the actual rejecting aspects of the parental object along with the child's fantasies and fears. The patient's internalized rejecting object poses a more difficult problem for the therapist, and this structure is generally not an ally. As noted earlier, a very strong hostile attachment exists between the antilibidinal ego and its associated rejecting object. This attachment comes from the characterological patient's desperate need for objects of any type in the inner world to counteract inner emptiness. This hate-filled, acrimonious attachment is also a consequence of the lack of good-object alternatives in the child's developmental history. There simply were no other objects to which the child could become attached. The patient's identification with attitudes and behaviors identical to those of the rejecting object -- that is, when they enact the role of the rejecting object with an "other" in the external world -- is the source of the often heard observation that the patient has become a clone of the once vilified parental objects.

When relating to the therapist from the position of the rejecting object, the patient can, and will, demean, ignore, and attack the therapist with furious intensity. Patients can do this because their identification with this part of the object allows them to assume (as their parental objects once did) that there are no consequences attached to their behavior. The prototype for this relational configuration is the child in relationship to a parent who is uninhibited about being aggressive toward, or neglecting, his or her child. The rejecting object can attack in an absolute, apodictic style, defining the child as bad, deficient, or unworthy. The patient, who identifies with the internalized rejecting object, will act the same way toward the therapist.

To simplify a great deal, the opinion of the rejecting object regarding the "qualities" of his child is the single greatest source of psychopathology. The "opinion" of the parent is conveyed to the child not only verbally, but through neglect, indifference, labeling, and, in extreme cases, through actual physical or sexual assaults. To reverse the sequence, the child would not have a hurt, rejected, angry antilibidinal ego if he was originally able to block out, ignore, or somehow rebuff the rejecting object, a task that is simply impossible. It is the emotional intensity and overwhelming importance of early relational events that create the antilibidinal ego's powerful defensive responses, which coalesce into an emotionally reactive and hypersensitive part of the personality. The relationship between the humiliated and enraged antilibidinal ego and the attacking accusations of the rejecting object is the very relational "meat" of the inner world. Once this relationship is internalized, the patient can (and will on those occasions when the opportunity arises) play out the role of the rejecting object in the therapy dyad. When the patient adopts the role of the rejecting object, the therapist will be pressured into the role once occupied by the patient's antilibidinal ego.

The internalized rejecting object does present the therapist with a small opportunity to lessen its negative influence via the simple expedient of personifying the structure as an alien and ego-distonic artifact from the patient's history. The effect of this technique is small, simply because the patient cannot expel a bad object from the inner world without replacing it with a strong central ego attachment to the ideal object therapist. Nonetheless, this technique does help to foster the patient's differentiation from his internal objects. The therapist must first openly acknowledge the individual's destructiveness toward himself and others, and the patient must be able to tolerate this assessment, which is a therapeutic achievement in itself. Next the therapist must connect the patient's identification with the rejecting object to the patient's developmental history. For example, the patient, cited previously, who covertly attacked many of his father's prized possessions was publicly disowned by his father repeatedly. As noted, he was forced to do excessively difficult or demeaning tasks while the other children in the family were indulged. This patient's father also played sadistic tricks on him while he was struggling to do these tasks. Not surprisingly, this patient was unmerciful in his self-criticism and projected much hostility onto others, as when he identified with his rejecting object and found a vulnerable target. Every time the patient identified with the rejecting object and discharged hostility toward external objects, I would exclaim, "It's wonderful to have old George [the patient's deceased father] around." This technique does not deny the patient's hostility, but it connects the immediate events with the patient's internal objects and past history. One result of this technique is to teach the individual to have compassion for himself. It demonstrates to the patient that he has a reason for his anger and hostility, that it is not his personal "badness" but rather an unconscious identification with the internalized rejecting object from which he could not flee. Over time, this technique of personifying the rejecting object can allow a more complex and compassionate view of the patient's self to emerge. This technique also allows the therapist to talk about an internal object that is being singled out, not as an inherent part of the patient's self but rather as a toxic and unwelcome part of the self.

The Libidinal Ego

The libidinal ego, in contrast to the antilibidinal ego, is the part-self that creates the most obvious havoc in the lives of many patients, particularly borderlines. The libidinal ego develops in relation to one of Fairbairn's most potent concepts, the "exciting object," which consists of memories (and fantasies) of the parent based on the few times when she actually indulged the child or extravagantly promised to love the child if only the child would behave in some prescribed manner. This subego believes that it will be the recipient of unlimited love and appreciation from the exciting object, and this compensatory fantasy keeps it stubbornly attached to the object. The libidinal ego is an important defensive structure because it contains the hope and promise of love that keeps borderline individuals and others with severe character disorders from collapsing into abandonment depressions. Almost any disappointment (stored in the split-off antilibidinal ego) can be forgotten and instantaneously replaced by a maddeningly naïve hope that the disastrous parent will finally come through with the love he seems to promise. When caught in the thrall of this ego state, the borderline individual will behave as if the parent had always been a benevolent, loving object. The unrealistic hope and trust in the exciting part of the bad object then leads the person to make decisions that have absolutely no relation to reality and invariably are detrimental to the individual's own best interests. These include wanting to visit the parents while ignoring all the pain of the past or purchasing expensive gifts for the parental objects who have abandoned or abused the patient in the past. The characterological patient's expectations of love appear absolutely absurd to the therapist, who has all the information from the patient's (mostly dissociated) antilibidinal ego at his disposal. As an example of how far from reality the libidinal ego can lead a patient, here I describe my work with a middle-aged client raised in England by a rejecting tyrannical father and a depressed, servile mother. The patient began to receive frequent harassing and bizarre phone calls in the middle of the night. During these calls, the caller would not speak but would breathe audibly into the phone, and then hang up after the patient asked who was calling. Her father (who continued to live in England) had always favored her brothers, and now that he was in his late seventies he never bothered to call or write her at all. My patient's libidinal ego was derepressed by these phone calls, and she reported that she thought the calls were from her father. Her deprived libidinal ego transformed the reality of middle-of-the-night phone harassment into "check-up" calls from her exciting-object father, who her libidinal ego assumed was displaying a distorted sense of concern for her. This desperate, central ego deficient patient behaved irrationally because the storehouse of information lodged in her antilibidinal ego, which would protect a normal integrated individual from unrealistic hopes, was split off and unavailable while she was dominated by her libidinal ego.

It is almost impossible to describe the potency of the libidinal ego when it takes over the borderline patient's functioning. There is almost nothing the therapist can do to dissuade borderline or other characterological patients from carrying out their naïve and self-destructive plans during the first months, or even years, of therapy. The more the therapist reminds the patient of past (now split-off) disappointments that came from the very same parent (or new displaced object), the more rigid and defensive the patient becomes. When the libidinal ego takes over the personality, the therapist is faced with the raw power of unmet childhood needs that demand gratification, and the desperate dependency on the illusory exciting object that has been created out of sheer necessity. When any given patient is dominated by the libidinal ego and is actively in the process of acting out the fantasy that the exciting object will actually be gratifying, the therapist is placed in one of the most taxing and frustrating positions in all of psychotherapy. The therapist, who has an investment in the patient's differentiation from the bad objects, must sit quietly while the patient goes on a self-destructive binge, in pursuit of the exciting object that is sure to abuse or disappoint the patient once again. The allure of the exciting object is so powerful, especially with the truly deprived, that the therapist cannot even begin to warn the patient from acting out her fantasies. It is futile and unproductive to confront the patient with information that will be forcibly dissociated, as the patient can be in a nearly delusional state during the pursuit of the chimera of the exciting object. The therapist's only tactic is to contain his own mounting frustration and wait for the inevitable shift to the antilibidinal ego when the frustrating side of the bad object once again fails the patient. This power of the libidinal ego is well illustrated by the case of Janet, whom I have described previously (Celani 1993).

***

Case 3.2

Janet was in the custody of the state and came for therapy at eighteen years of age. She reported a life of severe abandonment and abuse. She had been expelled from her home by her mother, who had reported her to the police for drug use, and was consequently living in a "supervised" apartment. In truth, social services provided little supervision, and Janet, along with three other youths from similar backgrounds who lived in the same building, acted out in terms of random sexuality, drug and alcohol abuse, and shoplifting. Exploration of her history revealed physical abuse and extreme forms of control exercised by her mother. For instance, after Janet was expelled from her home, her mother required that she return on holidays so that the family's relatives would not know that she had been forced out. In order to ensure that her daughter would appear at these gatherings, her mother would hold her valued possessions as hostages. At different times, Janet returned home only to find her prized dress cut into thin strips and hung on the shrubbery or the destroyed remnants of the furniture from her room displayed on the front lawn. The therapist was astonished at the treatment she had received at the hands of her sadistic mother and unknowingly overly supported her antilibidinal ego's position before her central ego had developed enough strength to separate from her needed object. The therapist's validation and overt support of Janet's struggle against her bad object resulted in an abandonment panic, a consequence of premature awareness by her central ego of her mother's extreme hostility. This awareness challenged her continuing attachment to her mother and triggered an unwelcome split from her antilibidinal ego into her libidinal-ego view of her mother as a way of rescuing the relationship with her still needed object. Janet came for her sixth session, dressed uncharacteristically in conservative clothing, and announced that she was moving back home. The therapist reminded her of her past (antilibidinal) views of her mother as an abusive, paranoid near-demon, but Janet dismissed these memories off-hand. She reported that she was angry at her mother last week and now felt that "blood was thicker than water." The inexperienced therapist became increasingly agitated and insisted on reminding her of her past statements about her mother and strongly suggested that she remain separate from her mother, to the point of getting into a heated debate. Janet left the session early, enraged at the therapist for contradicting her libidinal-ego view of her mother.

***

Case 3.2 demonstrates the power of the libidinal ego to motivate the patient, and the inability of an incompletely internalized therapist to have an impact on libidinally motivated behavior. An experienced therapist would not have overly supported antilibidinal perceptions so early in the treatment process, which inadvertently promised Janet that the therapist would immediately and completely fill the enormous emotional gap left by the abandoning object. At some point, outside the consulting room, her central ego caught a glimpse of the "badness" of her object, which was still intolerable to her consciousness. The therapist had not been internalized as an alternative object, so the patient faced an abandonment panic that caused her to defensively split back into her libidinal ego's view of her mother. I have learned to tolerate, and actually embrace, my patients' libidinal ego's fantasies of the exciting object because this structure acts as an "emergency net" that keeps the borderline patient from emotional collapse, particularly during the first months, or even years, of therapy.

The Exciting Object

Much has already been said about the exciting object, an internal structure that originally derived its power from the deprived child's long-term lack of emotional support by the object. The developing child is informed by a thousand events that his or her mother is the one object in the world that is supposed to love and cherish her child. The deprived child experiences the object as an exciting object because of the pressure from its pressing developmental needs that have been unmet and ignored. As time passes for the child of a rejecting object mother, the necessity for the hope of love in the future grows exponentially larger. It is this self-generated promise of future support and love that ultimately sustains many emotionally abandoned children, since the ratio of emotional support to frustration is overwhelmingly skewed toward rejection in their developmental histories. In the past, some readers of Fairbairn have assumed that "exciting objects" were parents who over-stimulated their children, a completely errant understanding of the model. The "excitement" inherent in the exciting object comes from the hope that the enormous reservoir of extreme need in the child (and later in the adult) will be met by love and support from the object. In adulthood, it is not rejection that is devastating to the borderline individual but the loss of hope—the loss of the exciting aspect of the bad object, as described powerfully by Armstrong-Perlman (1991), who observed patients who had suffered psychological collapse and required in-patient treatment: "The loss of the relationship, or rather the hope of a relationship, cannot be borne. . . . The need is compulsive and the fantasy of loss is experienced as potentially catastrophic, either leading to the disintegration of the self, or a fear of a reclusive emptiness to which any state of connectedness, no matter how infused with suffering is preferable" (345).

Thus the exciting aspect of the bad object is the most difficult of all the inner structures for the therapist to come to terms with. It is obviously counterproductive to insist that the patient give up hope in her exciting object, as this will only plunge the patient into an abandonment crisis. I often begin a discussion of this subject with patients by pointing out their history of rejection followed by occasional gratification from their parents and linking this to their relationship with new, displaced objects. However, as mentioned, the only way patients can finally let go of the fantasy that their exciting object contains love is for them to develop a powerful central ego--ideal object relationship with the therapist or analyst that allows for a gradual integration of the exciting/rejecting object back into the realm of the central ego, a process discussed in chapter 4.

The therapist must understand and respect the power of, and need for, fantasy regarding the exciting object and use a delicate touch when dealing with this sensitive and essential inner structure. Knowledge of the structures and how they operate is the therapist's greatest ally when working with characterological patients. Most borderline patients, for instance, are extremely predictable and easier to work with once the therapist knows the content and strength of these structures. However, a blunt and uninformed approach, as illustrated in Janet's case, can turn any one of the structures into a potent enemy.

...

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Introduction	p. 1
Fairbairn's Intellectual Development and a Review of His Early Papers	p. 15
Fairbairn's Structural Model and His Radical Approach to Psychoanalytic Treatment	p. 51
The Dynamic Relationships Between the Pathological Ego Structures	p. 85
A Fairbairnian Approach to the Therapeutic Relationship	p. 117
Working with the Borderline Patient and the Battered Woman	p. 153
A Structural Analysis of Obsessional and Histrionic Disorders	p. 185
The Legacy of Fairbairn's Contribution to Psychoanalysis	p. 207
References	p. 215
Index	p. 221
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.

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Fairbairn's Object Relations Theory in the Clinical Setting

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