Discussion with Dr. Auerbach

Discussion with Dr. Auerbach

Damon,

When Freud says that an object is the most variable part of a drive, he means that that the other three components of the drive—source, aim, and impetus (or pressure)—are more or less fixed by biology, but that substantial environmental interaction (i.e., learning) shapes (behavioral language chosen here explicitly to indicate that there are surprising convergences between Freud’s theories and Skinner's) the nature of the object chosen.  So, if the drive is hunger, this drive arises from the digestive system (its source), is satisfied only by eating (its aim), and is more or less intense on the basis of multiple factors, both biological and psychological (its impetus or pressure), but it can be satisfied by a wide range of foods, including things that are delicacies in some cultures but arouse disgust or revulsion in others.  Now it can easily be argued that aims, the activities through which drives are satisfied, are more variable than Freud considered, so there are all kinds of ways in which we might consume food, but there are still many, many more things that are food (the object of hunger) than there ways of eating (the aim of hunger).  This particular relationship—that objects of drives are more variable than are drive aims—of course holds true for sex and sexuality, the main, ahem, object of Freud’s curiosity.  Specifically, there are more ways than, please pardon the use of a gastronomic trope, vanilla to engage in sex and sexuality, but there are many more potential objects of our sexual interests than there are sexual practices to engage in with said objects.

Although it was one of Freud’s great arguments to point out that the objects of our libidos are complex and are deeply determined by our childhood histories, such that, to quote the Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, “The finding of an object is in fact a refinding of it,” a major weakness of his position was the failure to recognize that, for a whole host of reasons, humans are programmed to seek specifically human objects, even if the specific features of those human objects are constructed from early attachment experiences.  That is, in trying to account for why some people have what was then called perverse sexuality (i.e., sexuality focused on something other than a consenting adult human), he developed a theory that had a hard time explaining why it is that the vast majority of humans seek other consenting adult humans.  Also, as the term “object” suggests, a significant weakness of his view was that it had difficulty in explaining that what humans also desire is someone to love us back—in other words, not just an object but another philosophical subject, with her or his own agency and desire.  The various object relations theories in psychoanalysis (e.g., those of Fairbairn, Sullivan, Winnicott, Balint, Bowlby, and even Lacan) were and are attempts at correcting this problem.  Nevertheless, one fascinating aspect of Freud’s theory is that it holds that all adult sexualities, even normative heterosexuality, are in fact constructed, the result of conflict and compromise, and from an an intrapsychic point of view—as opposed to how that sexual expression is received in the world around—no one sexuality, including normative heterosexuality, is superior to any other sexuality.  More concretely, both a heterosexual object choice and homosexual object choice, in Freud’s view, involve compromises based on childhood conflicts.  Accordingly, for all of his many retrograde ideas, Freud’s position with regard to same-sex sexual orientations, even though filled with biases that would nowadays be considered unacceptable, is way in advance of that of anyone else writing about these issues in the early 20th century.  As for his ideas on women, well, not so much.

As for object constancy, that is a crucial issue in object relations theory.  By object constancy, I mean something like an ability to maintain a constant or stable tie to someone I love even in that person’s absence or even when that relationship is undergoing conflict.  The notion therefore derives from Piaget’s object permanence, but here what is at stake is not whether a tree in the forest is really still there if I cease to look at it but whether I still feel that my significant other (Harry Stack Sullivan’s term, by the way) still loves me even if she is away visiting family this week or even if we have just had an argument.  And crucial in my development of object constancy is whether I had secure attachment in childhood, in turn the result of having had parents who were not only constant or consistent but also emotionally responsive and sensitive.

As for Freud’s theory of depression, the simplified account is that depression is anger turned inward on the self.  The actual model is much more subtle than that.  In “Mourning and Melancholia,” Freud proposed that anger is turned inward because that is a psychologically safer option than feeling that anger toward an ambivalently loved object for fear of loss of that object.  In other words, it may be safer to for me to hate myself than to be angry toward a loved one if I fear that said loved one will reject or abandon or even criticize or disapprove of me, a fear that I would definitely have if I were raised under conditions of insecure attachment, in which was actually unsafe for me to feel anger toward caregivers.  The conscious experience, per this model, is therefore largely about self-criticism and guilt, and the idea that one fears being rejected or abandoned or criticized by loved ones is a long time in coming.  Sidney Blatt’s great innovation in the theory of depression was therefore to differentiate self-critical depressives, who in the main fit the model that Freud proposes (please believe me when I say I know all about these issues), from dependent depressives, for whom direct experiences of abandonment and loss are primary.  He published this distinction about a decade before Aaron Beck proposed the autonomy-sociotropy distinction in depression.

One of Freud’s theories that definitely belongs in the dustbin of history is the idea that the mind is an energy transformation or hydraulic system, but remember that, when he created this energy model, he was relying on the most up-to-date science available.

As for your colleague and his theory about unmet dependency needs, all I can say is that if the only tool you have is hammer, everything looks like a nail.  

John

ReL Freud (1905), in Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality,

Hi John

Interesting thoughts. I recall that Freud mentions the waters of the war parting, or similar phrase, so I had thought the essay must have been written after WWI. It seemed a particularly Moses like metaphor

You say Freud thought the object the most variable component of the drive. By variable, do you mean weakest. There is a footnote in there that previous epochs emphasize the drive, while modern cultures (for Freud) emphasize the object in the formation of the drive.  We externalize the source of our motives.

Finding an oject that unites the tender and the sensual currents of the libido seems still a modern dating dilemma. A libidinous individualo may have much animal attraction, but the excesses of libido, including the agressive component, can be noxious in day to day interactions.

I'll take a look at Blatt's questionnaire. Personally, I would wonder whether "consistent" objects are important. Objects contaminated by aggression and abuse, or which are distant and fantasy based, or the most discordant. And has anyone addressed when objects collided? What happens with  introjections of both of your spouse and their obnoxious parent. Do they stay on oppositves corner of the unconscious.

I was taught by one psychologist a long time ago that unmet dependency needs lead to anger. That was his mantra, and he was lucky enough to get every single client on the campus who had that particular dynamic at the root of their problems. His idea was a hydraulic system of human behavior. The object leaves or dies, the person becomes angry at the desertion. There is a breech in a closed system of emotion. Anger spouts, and then, because irrational, becomes internalized in the form of negative self regard. Its an interesing engineering way to think of depression though I doubt it would pass modern scrutiny for most.

Damon,

A thought in return.  Freud (1905), in Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, considered an object to be the most variable component of a drive, the other three components being the source, the aim, and the impetus or pressure, and he was concerned to explain how difficult it is for a person to find an object that unites the tender and sensual currents of the libido, what in modern terms would be called attachment and sexuality.  Increasingly, therefore, the psychoanalytic tradition has focused on human objects—and on why some objects are more important than others.  That is why Freud’s (1917) great paper on depression, “Mourning and Melancholia," is also about object loss.  My research, with Sidney Blatt, on the Object Relations Inventory (ORI), is precisely about this question—about how we come to understand and invest in the significant others in our lives, as well as about which object representations are more differentiated than others.  Here are some references that speak to the matter:

Auerbach, J. S., & Diamond, D. (2017).  Mental representation in the thought of Sidney J. Blatt: Developmental processes. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 65, 509-523.

Auerbach, J. S. (2017).  The contributions of Sidney J. Blatt:  A personal and intellectual biography.  Research in Psychotherapy: Psychopathology, Process and Outcome, 20, 3-11.

Huprich, S. K., Auerbach, J. S., Porcerelli, J. H., & Bupp, L. L. (2016). Sidney Blatt’s Object Relations Inventory: Contributions and future directions. Journal of Personality Assessment, 98, 30-43.

But far more important than these articles are any pieces written by John Bowlby when it comes to understanding which losses matter the most.

Best,

John