The underlying purpose of Freud’s theory of sexuality is to account for neuroses, “which can be derived only from disturbances of sexual life” (1905b, 216). In “My Views on the Part Played by Sexuality in the Aetiology of the Neuroses” (1906) Freud summarizes his position. Although he says he had earlier attributed to sexual factors “no more significance than any other emotional source of feeling” (1906, 272), he eventually arrives at a different decision: “The unique significance of sexual experiences in the aetiology of the psychoneuroses seemed to be established beyond a doubt; and this fact [in midsentence an opinion becomes a “fact”] remains to this day one of the cornerstones of my theory [of neurosis]” (1906, 273; italics added). These experiences lie in “the remote past” of the developmental continuum (274). Freud mentions one further constraint: for childhood sexual experiences to be pathogenic, they must have been conflictful (have been repressed), the reason being that some individuals who experience sexual irregularities in childhood do not become neurotic (276-77). This qualification can be regarded as a pivotal one. If the essential etiological factor is the presence of conflict, as distinct from what kind of situation is involved, then it may turn out that conflicts relating to sexuality are by no means unique in the sense of constituting the sole class of crippling influences. From the perspective of a person-oriented theory of object relations, in contrast, conflicts with important others may or may not include sexual elements, but if the others are important persons, such as parents, the potential for serious conflict must necessarily be of a high order whether or not sexual factors are present.
What is plain to see is the mixed nature of Freud’s legacy. Try as he will, his theory of sexual motivation (as distinct from his theory of sexual development) never manages to divorce sexual impulses from objects more than momentarily, and analytically—in the root sense of the word (from analyein, to “break up”). It therefore becomes reasonable to say that in addition to a drive-oriented motivational theory he bequeaths elements of a person-oriented theory of object relations, especially if one thinks about the relative weight of object-relational factors in the oedipus complex. The same point holds true a fortiori with regard to the transference, which is nothing if not a replication of variants of earlier object relations. Also worth mentioning here, if only in passing, is the object-relational orientation of the mental processes known as incorporation, introjection, and identification, particularly where Freud talks about the internalization of aspects of an object relation, as in the case of the development of superego functions, and the introjection of an object in the instance of mourning. While it is true that Freud conceptualizes the “introjection of the object into the ego” as “a substitute for a libid-inal object-tie” (1921, 108), one has only to replace “libidinal” by “emotional” for such a passage to be harmonious with a person-oriented perspective.
CONTRIBUTIONS TO OBJECT RELATIONS THEORY
The task of identifying various contributions, other than Freud’s, to the development of a person-oriented position in psychoanalysis begins with Melanie Klein. She may be thought of as an amphibian, a creature who swims in the great sea of Freudian instinct theory but travels as well on the solid land of object relations. She accepts libido theory without reservation. She does more than merely accept the idea of a death instinct. She embraces it, thinking of it as innate in infants and as giving rise to fears of annihilation and persecutory anxiety (1952a, 198). Her views of the importance of human sexuality parallel Freud’s and often take the form of comparably extreme statements, such as her claim that behind every [!] type of play activity of children “lies a process of discharge of masturbatory phantasies” (1932, 31). Grosskurth, writing in connection with the case of Richard, quotes E. R. Geleerd as remarking, “Klein’s random way of interpreting does not reflect the material [of the Richard case] but, rather, her preconceived theoretical assumptions regarding childhood development” (1986, 270). Grosskurth then quotes from her own interview with Richard:
The only toys I can remember were the battleships. I mentioned to you this morning that I remember going on about the fact that we were going to bomb the Germans, and seize Berlin, and so on and so on and then Brest. Melanie seized on b-r-e-a-s-t, which of course was very much her angle. She would often talk about the “big Mummy genital” and the “big Daddy genital,” or the “good Mummy genital” or the “bad Daddy genital” . . . a strong interest in genitalia. (273)
In Klein’s defense it is only fair to say that her preoccupation with aggression balances her interest in sexuality. As Dr. David Slight, another of her analysands, put it, “Freud made sex respectable, and Klein made aggression respectable” (Grosskurth 1986, 189).
In contrast to her reliance on instinct theory, on the other hand, Klein’s work has been celebrated for its conceptualization of a personal world of internalized objects, “a world of figures formed on the pattern of the persons we first loved and hated in life, who also represent aspects of ourselves” (Riviere 1955, 346). In its early stages, this is a terrifying world: “The idea of an infant of from six to twelve months trying to destroy its mother by every method at the disposal of its sadistic tendencies—with its teeth, nails and excreta and with the whole of its body, transformed in imagination into all kinds of dangerous weapons—presents a horrifying, not to say unbelievable, picture to our minds” (Klein 1932, 187). Before they become whole ones, the objects of this world are “part objects” by virtue of the process of splitting: “The good breast—external and internal—becomes the prototype of all helpful and gratifying objects, the bad breast the prototype of all external and internal persecutory objects” (1952a, 200). Worth noting is the frequency with which Klein broadens sexuality and aggression into experience-near terms like “love” and “guilt”: “Synthesis between feelings of love and destructive impulses towards one and the same object—the breast—give rise to depressive anxiety, guilt, and the urge to make reparation to the injured love object, the good breast” (1952a, 203). The objects of this inner world follow law-like mental processes, among them, introjection, projection, and projective-identification. Most important for its implications for a person-oriented theory of object relations, Klein envisions a world of internalized objects in which sexual aims and sexual objects are not, as in Freud, isolated from each other: “There is no instinctual urge, no anxiety situation, no mental process which does not involve objects, external or internal; in other words, object-relations are at the centre of emotional life” (1952b, 53).
Because of the extent to which he repudiated instinct theory in favor of an object-relations orientation, Fairbairn’s role was even more pivotal than Klein’s. Fairbairn did away with the death instinct, and with the id. He states the relevant positions succincdy in his synopsis (1963): “There is no death instinct; and aggression is a reaction to frustration or deprivation” (224). “Since libido is a function of the ego and aggression is a reaction to frustration or deprivation, there is no such thing as an ‘id’” (224). He almost, but not quite, did away with libido as well, his most revolutionary statement in this regard being, “The ego, and therefore libido, is fundamentally object-seeking” (224). Fairbairn launched what looked like a frontal, all-out attack on libido theory in his 1941 paper, where he devoted an early section of the paper to “the inherent limitations of the libido theory,” arguing that the time has come for classic libido theory to be transformed into a theory of object relations, that “the great limitation of the present libido theory as an explanatory system resides in the fact that it confers the status of libidinal attitudes upon various manifestations which turn out to be merely techniques for regulating the object-relationships of the ego” and that “the ultimate goal of libido is the objert” (1952, 31; italics Fairbairn’s). Although Fairbairn did not fully and officially liberate himself from the concept of libido, he may be said to have done so in a virtual way. One sees this change, for example, in the case he mentions of a female patient so desperate for attention and affection from her father, a detached and unapproachable man, that the