Guntrip’s anecdote concerning Fairbairn’s question to the litde girl implies the presence of a sexual factor when Guntrip remarks (presumably paraphrasing Fairbairn) that the girl’s response reflects “the intensity of the libidinal tie to the bad object” (1975, 146). Is this just another instance of “libidinal” being used loosely as a synonym for “emotional,” or are such ties erotic? Attachment theory assumes they are not erotic, the need for attachment itself being the primary instinct in operation. What, then, may be said concerning the relation of attachment behavior to sexual behavior, especially when Bowlby expressly declares attachment theory to be an alternative to libido theory (1969, 17)? The answer is that while Bowlby jettisons the theory of psychical energy, and while he tends to exclude sexual behavior from the areas of his attention, he does not in fact deny the existence or even the importance of sexual behavior. He treats sexual behavior (1969, 230-34) as a separate system of activity that has “close linkages” to attachment behavior. These otherwise separate systems of behavior may “impinge” upon and “overlap” each other, the examples he gives of sharing behavioral components being adult clinging and kissing. Presumably only King Solomon could separate erotic factors from attachment factors in lovers’ kisses—or in their sexual intercourse, for that matter. For Freud, even thumb sucking is an erotic activity. But Fairbairn believes babies suck their thumbs because there is no breast to suck, so that thumb sucking “represents a technique for dealing with an unsatisfactory object-relationship” (1952, 33). And for Winnicott also, thumb sucking, a transitional phenomenon, clearly pertains as much to other as to self (1971). What matters in this connection is not to locate particular instances of unmixed instinctive behavior but to recognize the high degree of ambiguity often prevailing in human action with respect to the kind, and proportion, of instincts involved. Granting the presence of that ambiguity makes it understandable that what has usually been interpreted as sexual behavior under the aegis of Freud may in fact have been primarily or essentially motivated by attachment needs, a proposition that will be illustrated at length in the reading of Freud’s cases in chapter 3.
A factor to consider in the task of positioning attachment theory in a broader theory of object relations concerns the common practice of using the term “attachment” in a literal and very circumscribed manner, often with a sharp distinction between “attachment” and “attachment behavior”(Bowlby, 1982, 371; 1988, 28). Used in this way, the child’s answer to Fairbairn, “I want my own Mummy,” denotes a fairly literal tie, or emotional bond, to what is by definition the child’s primary attachment figure. Although Bowlby generally limits his discussion of attachment behavior to such instances in early childhood, he recognizes that “attachment behaviour does not disappear with childhood but persists throughout life” (1969, 350). He also clearly links transference activity to attachment behavior (1969, 17; 1973, 206, 271). A particularly good instance of Bowlby’s use of “presence” and “absence” in a non-literal way occurs when he writes, “A mother can be physically present but “emotionally’absent. What this means, of course, is that although present in body, a mother may be unresponsive to her child’s desire for mothering” (1973, 23). The point being led up to is this: if attachment theory is to be part of a broader theory of object relations instead of being confined for the most part to developmental psychology, then the concept of attachment must be deliteralized and broadened in a way that recognizes its endless permutations. Freud remarks that “the finding of an object is in fact a refolding of if (1905b, 222). By the same token, one can say that subsequent attachments to some extent replicate earlier ones. All major attachments in adult life constitute versions, or permutations, of earlier attachments, which is tantamount to saying that adult interpersonal relationships reflect the object-relational history of the individuals concerned. Such, at least, will be the position adopted in the pages to come, which will treat all object relations as involving the element, or process, of attachment—even conflicted ones. Normally, of course, the term “attachment,” when unmodified by such words as “anxious,” has only positive connotations—unlike “object relations,” an affectively neutral phrase. Thus expanded, the concept of attachment behavior—roughly the equivalent of Fairbairn’s “object-seeking”—functions as the motivational foundation of the entire spectrum of object-relational behavior, including mentational activity such as fantasy. Even masochistic behavior makes a kind of sense within this explanatory framework. It becomes a compromised form of attachment behavior—the perpetuation, or recreation, of the modality of an important earlier relationship—rather than a perverse search for unpleasure, sexual or otherwise.
WHERE, IN REALITY, ARE SELF AND OTHER?
One of the issues that persists in psychoanalysis has to do with the comparative reality of what goes on inside and outside of the domain of mental processing. Where, in this connection, can self and other be said to be located? In defiance of common sense, object relations theory situates others both outside, in “real” space, and inside, in the equally real yet imaginary space of the mind, in the form of residues, or internalizations, of outside others. In similar defiance of common sense, aspects of the self may seem to reside within but may unconsciously be projected onto outside others, or invested, by identification, in some outside per son, such as a religious or political leader (Freud 1921). And, to complicate the situation, what was once outside, the other, may, after internali-zation, be temporarily relocated in outside others (transference), such as one’s analyst. Yet as Schafer reminds us, there are no mental places (1976, 158). A solution to the problem of avoiding the dangers of the convenient fiction of “mental places” is to locate representations of self and other systemically, as stored information, that is, as conceptual and behavioral programs: “All long-term relationships—including mother-and-child, husband-and-wife, and patient-and-analyst relationships—can be profitably studied as feedback-regulated, information-processing systems”(Peterfreund 1971, 159).
Then where does reality come in? Are real events involving real, outside others more real, or more important psychologically, than the undeniably real (really occurring) inner events involving the imagined others of fantasy? This issue has been troublesome for psychoanalysis. Bowlby, in the course of criticizing Klein’s position that anxiety derives from the operation of the death instinct, argues that this position has led to clinical practice that tends to ignore “a person’s real experiences, past or present,” and to treat him “almost as though he were a closed system little influenced by his environment” (1973, 173). Bowlby himself has gone to the opposite extreme of virtually ignoring fantasy activity in the process of favoring conventionally observable behavior, a practice suiting his methodology but disenfranchising denizens of the inner world of memory and desire. Stern addresses the issue of fantasy versus reality