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Failures in the Transformational Object
Author(s) -
Gottlieb Sue
Publication year - 1992
Publication title -
british journal of psychotherapy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.442
H-Index - 17
eISSN - 1752-0118
pISSN - 0265-9883
DOI - 10.1111/j.1752-0118.1992.tb01188.x
Subject(s) - transformational leadership , psychology , id, ego and super ego , object (grammar) , psychoanalysis , object relations theory , psychoanalytic theory , social psychology , cognitive psychology , artificial intelligence , computer science
SUMMARY. This paper describes the hating, demanding, helpless behaviour of a borderline patient, which may be ascribed to the kind of early developmental failures in the primary‘transformational object’which leave the ego too impoverished to contain psychotic anxieties. The resultant‘deficit transference’is distinguished from a‘conflict transference’. It is suggested that when the failing transformational object is sought within the transference, the patient is unable to internalise a good object. The possibility is explored that an autistic style of objectrelating may defend against anxieties about disintegration, and be a way of holding together the un‐integrated ego.