On narcissism - part II. The Clinical Play of Illusions (Mitchell)

“If you are vain it is vain to sign your pictures and vain not to sign them. If you are not vain it is not vain to sign them and not vain not to sign them.” (Fairfield Porter)

A Delicate Balance: The Clinical Play of Illusion

Models attempting to illuminate the meaning and function of narcissistic phenomena  necessarily imply a clinical posture by the analyst which best facilitates their resolution; therefore, theories of narcissism tend to appear complete with a recommended technical approach. Narcissism viewed as defense suggests an active, interpretive stance; narcissism viewed as an aborted form of infantile mental life suggests a warmly receptive stance. I have argued that narcissistic illusions are usefully understood neither solely as a defensive solution to an internal psychic threat, nor solely as a pure efflorescence of infantile mental life, but most fundamentally as a form of interaction, of participation with others. From this perspective, grandiosity and idealization sometimes serve defensive purposes and sometimes represent unfulfilled developmental needs; but when they recur in stereotyped form in the analytic situation, their central function is to serve as a gambit, an invitation to a particular form of interaction. What is most important clinically is, as Schwartz (1978, p. 8) has put it, "the 'petition' in the repetition."

Viewing narcissistic illusions as invitations casts the analyst's response in a different sort of perspective. The analysand requires some participation from the analyst to complete the old object tie, to connect with the analyst in a consciously or unconsciously desired fashion. If grandiosity is involved, some expression of admiration or appreciation may be requested, or at least attentive noninterference; if idealization is involved, some expression of pleasure at being adored may be requested, or at least acknowledgment of the analysand's devotion. Often participation in a mutually admiring relationship is requested-both the analyst and the analysand are to be considered truly distinguished, and alike in some unusual fashion. Responding to such an invitation in a way that is analytically constructive is tricky, and difficult to capture in a simple formula. What is most crucial frequently is not the words, but the tone in which they are spoken. The most useful response entails a subtle dialectic between joining the analysand in the narcissistic integration and simultaneously questioning the nature and purpose of that integration, both a playful participation in the analysand's illusions and a puzzled curiosity about how .and why they came to be so serious, the sine qua non of the analysand's sense of security and involvement with others.

It is easiest to define the sort of analytic posture I have in mind by locating it between the kinds of recommended positions which have accompanied the major theoretical traditions.

In the classical tradition, narcissistic illusions are ferreted out and exposed to "objective" scrutiny. Such an aggressively interpretive approach (a la Kernberg) misses the need of the analysand to establish the narcissistic integration and runs the risk of discouraging the gambit and driving the transference underground. Grandiosity and idealization are efforts to reach the object through familiar, preferred modes of connection and intimacy. In Kernberg's discussion ofthese issues, for example, narcissistic configurations are understood as defenses against anxieties generated by oral aggression in early object relations, rather than as expressions of these object relations as entrenched familial patterns throughout childhood.

Kernberg speaks of the manner in which the "pathological grandiose self is utilized in the transference precisely to avoid the emergence of the dissociated, repressed or projected aspects of self and object representations of primitive object relations" (1984, p. 197). He does not consider the possibility that the emergence of the grandiose self within the transference is an effort to re-create actual familial object relations, to re-create early object ties. To interpret grandiosity and idealization simply as defenses risks encouraging resistances to the expression and establishment of these often conflictual and anxiety-filled, yet crucial transferential configurations. It promotes a compliance with what is likely to be experienced as the analyst's insistence on less narcissistic, more "real" perceptions and relations.

In the developmental-arrest tradition, drawing on the metaphor of the analysand as baby, narcissistic illusions in the adult patient are equated with the spontaneous exuberance of childhood, and necessarily encouraged. Such a receptive, unquestioning approach (like that of Winnicott and Kohut) misses the role of the narcissistic integrations in perpetuating old object ties, and runs the risk of consolidating them. Atwood and Stolorow, drawing on the self-psychology tradition, regard these narcissistic illusions as the product of the patient's effort "to establish in the analytic transference the requisite facilitating intersubjective context that had been absent or insufficient during the formative years and that now permitted the arrested developmental process to resume" (1984, p. 83). Here narcissistic illusions are reflected, encouraged (as a device for remobilizing a stalled developmental process), and presumed to dissolve of their own accord in the face of reality and the analyst's empathic understanding of the patient's naturally arising disappointments. Yet the analyst's failure to appreciate illusions as vehicles for preserving entrenched familial patterns is likely to be experienced by the analys·and as the analyst's own investment in and encouragement of compulsive narcissistic illusions.

Because they regard narcissistic transferences solely as self-regulation, either in terms of defenses or - in terms of the re-creation of infantile states, both prior traditions minimize the interactive complexity of the analyst's response. Both regard the transference as not fundamentally involved in interaction with the person of the analyst, so that the analyst can respond to its features from a somewhat detached position, either by challenging or by universally accepting. No attention is paid to the implications of the analyst's response for the analysand's sense of who the analyst is, what the analyst likes, needs, values, and what sort of relatedness is possible between them. A more purely interactive view regards the narcissistic transferences as strategies of engagement, efforts to connect with the person of the analyst according to paradigms of relatedness derived from the past. Such an approach places great importance on the implications of the analyst's response to the analysand's sense of who the analyst is and what can happen between them.

Why can the analyst not simply remain "neutral," neither demanding change nor encouraging perpetuation, but merely silent or descriptively interpretive? If one is invited to a dance, one either attends in some fashion or does not attend in some fashion. Remaining silent and refusing to respond constitute powerful responses and are experienced by the analysand as responses. It is striking in this regard that both Kohut and Kernberg consider their own approach to be neutral, and that of the other to be a departure from neutrality. In my view, each is right about the other, but misses the extent to which his own posture is a form of participation and is inevitably experienced in that way by the analysand. (See Black, 1987, for a discussion of the transferential implications of all technical stances.) As the popular saying goes, "You pay your money and you take your choice."

The most constructive form of analytic participation derives from the discovery of a path between the contrasting dangers of complicity and challenge, a path that reflects a willingness to play, an acceptance of the importance of the narcissistic integration as a special and favored mode of relation, yet also a questioning of why this must be the only way. This posture is similar to the kind of ideal parental response to the child's illusions described in the previous chapter. The parent is receptive to the child's illusions about himself and the parent, but maintains a light touch, conveying a sense of pleasure without the pressure of necessity. The analyst's response to the analysand's transferential gambits should reflect that same openness to playful participation. An ability to play together, including a participation in each other's illusions, is a crucial dimension not only of adult-child relations, but of adult-adult relations as well.

It is not possible to adopt such an analytic posture with any patient at the start and hold it all the way through the analysis. The analyst becomes embroiled in the illusions of each patient, as they manifest themselves in the transferential pushes and pulls. They inevitably arouse conflictual feelings in the analyst about his own narcissistic illusions, and he finds himself sometimes getting too much pleasure out of the patient's attributions, sometimes feeling the need to stop them, sometimes alternatively indulging them and subtly attacking them. The analytic stance I am describing is not a self-conscious posturing, but the result of continually working through narcissistic conflicts in the countertransference to allow for a true spirit of curiosity in the analyst's inquiry into the meaning of the analysand's illusions. Where did the analysand learn this particular pattern of relatedness? What was riding on these illusory notions within the analysand's early significant relations with others? What were its pleasures? Its costs? The latter question is particularly important.

Analysands who integrate relations with others around grandiose claims tend to believe passionately that this is the best sort of relationship to have. They seek out admirers and discard as uninteresting those who are not admirers. (Analysands who harbor secret grandiose claims believe just as passionately that being the object of devoted admiration is the acme of interpersonal satisfaction, but fear they will never be successful in attaining this goal.) The analytic inquiry into these phenomena opens up important questions. How did this asymmetrical form of relatedness become so highly treasured? One frequently discovers that it was the vehicle for the closest bonds within the family, or for shared familial fantasies about how closer bonds might be achieved. Does the analysand assume that the passion of parental investment in overvaluing him is the most intense sort of connection he can hope for with others? The analysand is generally unaware of what is lost in such asymmetry, that relationships structured around others' admiration of and devotion to him preclude his excitement about and enjoyment of them, his opportunity to take pleasure in them not simply as reflectors of his own glory, but as different, interesting, and admirable in their own right.

It is vital that the analytic inquiry into grandiose illusions and relationships, and what the analysand believes, notices, and does not notice about them, avoid a moralistic tone. Relationships structured around grandiosity are problematic because they truncate the analysand's experience, not because they are unfair or unseemly. The focus should be on what is gained and what is missing in these relationships, and the analysand's limited awareness of both. The analyst's capacity to explore these issues constructively with the analysand is contingent upon an appreciation of this central point. The danger is that the analyst secretly or unconsciously believes that entitlement and grandiose claims are in fact a precious and preferred way of life. This leads either to a more or less subtly conveyed insistence that the patient renounce his claims, motivated by the analyst's envy ("if I can't have this, you certainly can't"), or to a vicarious enjoyment in allowing the analysand an envied and forbidden pleasure denied to himself ("I'm too 'mature' to indulge myself in this precious entitlement, but I can grant it to you").

The analyst's overidentification with the analysand's grandiose claims represents a failure to appreciate how much these claims undermine and sour the analysand's involvements with other people and isolate him in a confusing and often paranoid fashion. The analysand may come to feel more and more that only his analyst is really "sensitive" to him. An additional danger in working with this sort of transference is that the analyst's own conflictual longings to idealize may come to play a role in his admiration of the analysand. This can lead to the analyst's own investment in the analysand's grandiosity and difficulty in allowing him to move past this integration, or to anxiety in the face of the analysand's grandiosity and interference with the unfolding of this narcissistic integration.

Analysands who integrate relations around idealizing others also tend to believe passionately that this is the best sort of relationship to have. Life is seen as extremely complicated and perilous. The easiest and safest strategy for living is to find someone who seems to be secure and successful, who has all the answers, and to apprentice oneself to that person. For the price of considerable devotion, the idealized object will take the disciple under his wing, protecting him, leading him, guiding him along the path they have already cut through the obstacles of life. Analysands who integrate relationships on this basis are convinced that such an idealized bond is a very precious, very special tie. Sullivan would ask of patients idealizing the analyst, "Can they afford it?" It is precisely the cost of idealization which the analysand does not notice.

Feuerbach, the nineteenth-century German philosopher, argued that religion is, by its nature, a form of human self-alienation, that the characteristics and powers attributed to "God" in any religion are inevitably a reflection of human resources which the inhabitants of that culture are frightened to own. God becomes a screen on which are projected dissociated aspects of the self.

Although this is a highly oversimplified account of religion, idealization in human relations does often reflect such a masochistic, projective process. Because of disturbed earlier relationships, there is a terror of individuation and self-development. The analysand fears that finding his own path means isolation, a fear often originating in the context of relationships with parents who demand adoration and deference as the price of involvement. For such an analysand, the only way to ensure human contact is to find someone to go first, to remain always in someone's shadow. The presumption is that all others are as brittle and demanding of deference as the parents, as frightened of the analysand's self-development. They fear that to emerge from the shadow of the parent or the analyst is. to lose the parent or analyst. Such an analysand generally fails to appreciate how much mental effort he expends in propping up others, convincing himself that the other is always more advanced along whatever line he himself is pursuing. Despite recurring inevitable disappointments, the analysand does not grasp that life is too idiosyncratic for anyone else's solutions to be a helpful shortcut to reaching his own.

Idealization frequently functions as part of a self-perpetuating cycle, generating the anxiety it then serves to assuage. The idealizing analysand often makes the analyst's interpretations into aphorisms, highly prized possessions which are granted a significance far beyond their actual substance or utility. Rather than working at or digesting the interpretation, the analysand keeps it at a distance, a gift from the idealized analyst, and evokes it at points of anxiety. Preserving the link between the ideas and the analyst protects their magic function in times of doubt or confusion. It also prevents the analysand from transforming the ideas and making them his own. So the lack of self-esteem and confidence in one's own thinking is perpetually undermined by the idealization, which then creates a setting in which the magic from the idealized analyst serves as balm.

As with the analysis of grandiose illusions, the inquiry into idealizing illusions also must avoid a moralistic tone. The problem with idealization is not that it is "childish" (as Freud noted) but that, as an exclusive mode of relation, it strongly limits possibilities. Analysands who compulsively integrate relationships on an idealizing basis remain perpetual disciples and can never fully allow themselves to experience their own strengths and resources. Further, they often secretly harbor the suspicion that the object of their idealization is flawed and brittle, that a close look at the analyst's full humanity would ruin them both. A hazard in the analytic exploration of these issues is that the analyst may overidentify with the analysand's idealizing longings, secretly or unconsciously believing that being under the wing of (or sexually surrendering to) a bigger, more powerful figure is a preferred way of life. This may lead either to a subtly conveyed insistence that the analysand renounce his claims, because of the analyst's envy, or to a vicarious enjoyment in allowing the analysand a forbidden pleasure denied to himself. An additional danger is the analyst's possible overenjoyment of being the object of idealization, so that he has trouble releasing the analysand from the narcissistic integration (or his fear that he will enjoy being the object of idealization so much that he cannot allow the analysand this experience).

Analysands manifesting narcissistic transferences generally need to be joined in their self-admiration or idealization in order to feel involved, to feel that something important is happening. The analyst cannot feign this participation. It makes a huge difference to the analysand whether the analyst is genuinely admiring or is patronizing him, whether he is enjoying or is merely tolerating' the analysand's admiration. Analysands suffering from rigid narcissistic patterns of integration tend to be extremely sensitive to the genuineness of the analyst's attitude toward them and toward himself. What is called for is not a forced assumption of some prescribed "analytic" demeanor, either "neutral" or "empathic," but a willingness to meet and engage the analysand on his own terms. The analyst has to be able to gradually broaden the repertoire of connections between himself and the analysand, to treat the narcissistic integration as an elective form of play to be enjoyed, rather than as a somber necessity.

The problem with transferential illusions is precisely that they are not playful (in the sense of Loewald and Winnicott). They have to be transformed from a desperate prerequisite for connection and security into an enrichment of other forms of engagement. What is called for is an active shift in relatedness on the part of the analyst. This takes time and pacing. The issue of timing is highly complex and determinable only within the complexities of each individual case. Bromberg (1983) has described a shifting "empathy-anxiety balance" as the context within which treatment takes place, and argues that for narcissistic patients the beginning of treatment must be weighted heavily on the side of empathy.

“For certain of these individuals more than others, analytic success depends upon being able to participate in an initial period of undefinable length, in which the analysis partially protects them from stark reality which they cannot integrate, while performing its broader function of mediating their transition to a more mature and differentiated level of self and object representation.” (p. 378)

These analysands are apt to be extremely sensitive to the manner in which the analyst reacts to their illusions and gambits. The analytic posture I am describing conveys a willingness to participate as well as a curiosity about the constrictive limits which this form of participation allows. To return to the metaphor of the dance invitation, I do not propose going to the dance and complaining about the music, but enjoying the dance as offered, together with questioning the singularity of the style. How did it come about that the analysand learned no other steps? Why does the analysand believe that this is the only desirable dance there is? Most analysands need to feel that their own dance style is appreciated in order to be open to expanding their repertoire.

One of the great, generally unacknowledged truths about analytic technique is that it is developed on a trial-and-error basis, personally designed in the interaction with each individual analysand. With some analysands, one can question illusions right from the start; with others, this is not possible. There is no way to know beforehand. One tests out different approaches: puzzlement, teasing, probing, intellectual challenge, raised eyebrow (literally and figuratively), until one finds which among the analyst's many voices and positions enables that particular analysand to feel both joined and nudged toward deeper understanding.

Because clinical work with narcissistic illusions is so tailored and subtle, I shall in the remainder of this chapter discuss extended fragments from analyses illustrating the three major kinds of" narcissistic illusions: grandiosity, mutual admiration (what Kohut terms "twinship"), and idealization. The purpose is to illustrate the manner in which self-organizations centering on narcissistic illusions concerning self or others have crucial functions in maintaining the analysand's relational matrix, by preserving characteristic patterns of interpersonal integrations and fantasied object ties. The fragments are in no way meant to represent comprehensive case histories. Many dimensions of the work are omitted, to highlight the various aspects I wish to examine. The clinical challenge in each case is how to engage the analysand in immersion in and emergence from narcissistic integrations.

The Company, C'est Moi

John, a man in his early fifties, sought treatment as part of a broader campaign of self-perfection. He was a filmmaker who had turned his passion for adventure and his considerable talent into a successful film company, the management of which had come to dominate his life. The company was nearly always in a state of chaos, which was both a reflection and a direct consequence of his own approach to living. John's willingness to take risks, combined with a considerable business acumen, had enabled him to create the basis for a higWy successful operation. Yet his ambitions at any particular time constantly exceeded his resources. His new ventures and overextensions kept the organization on the brink of disaster, and it was often only through his persuasive charm that he was able to keep the company going. Further, none of the individuals he employed in the ever-expanding business were competent to do their job. He invariably hired young, inexperienced people who tended to be creative, idealistic, and devoted to him as a wise benefactor. The threat of calamitous employee mistakes required his continual supervision over all aspects of the company. Despite a series of dazzling successes, he lived in a state of perpetual apprehension and recurrent panic, because a new disaster inevitably seemed to appear just as he had sidestepped the last one. John entered treatment because of extended bouts of depression and anxiety; in part he was looking for help in perfecting his organizational and managerial skills so he would be able to oversee his business operations with greater composure.

The company was his entire life. Still, as we gradually came to understand, the company was really his vehicle for a greater vision and ambition. His view of the business world and of life in general embodied a recurrent dichotomy between stability, organization, and conformity on the one hand and artistic expressiveness, fluidity, and adventure on the other. As John began to give voice to his larger ambitions, he revealed a deep faith in his own ability to achieve a perfect balance between these two poles; the creation of such a balance in his company would result in a radically novel approach to business in general, in which expressiveness and organization would complement each other. This would encourage a larger revolution in business practices, and a more general cultural advance. As we explored these hopes, John would place himself among the great political and cultural figures of contemporary and past societies. He saw himself as a heroic, beleaguered Atlas in a world of incompetents. During business crises, he recalled, he often had repetitive fantasies of himself as Henry Kissinger, negotiating dramatic truces among warring parties, as well as dreams of being in plunging airplanes, grabbing the controls and executing heroic escapes.

John had considerable difficulty in his personal relations, maintaining them only with men and women who regarded him as a guru of one sort or another. He was enormously generous with money and advice, and took great pleasure in helping others along. Although he was available in the moment, his friends all "understood" that his availability could not be anticipated. He was extremely busy, constantly coming and going, and would turn up in their lives in dramatic and compelling fashion, only to disappear again shortly thereafter. He dated rarely, and seemed unbothered by the absence of sexuality in his life. Sex was too complicated and entangling, and his schedule was too unpredictable to plan ahead. His most prolonged relationship had been with a much younger woman whom he regarded as beautiful, full of potential, and fundamentally mishandled by her parents. He took her on as a project, luring her from the control of her overprotective parents and fashioning her, Pygmalion-like, according to his own vision. The relationship collapsed when she turned out to be quite troubled, as well as a recalcitrant student; her increasingly insistent and desperate demands on his time began interfering with his sense of freedom and adventure.

The transference was organized along similar lines. John would talk on and on about his business problems, the enervating lack of dependability of his employees, and the brilliance of his efforts to keep things afloat. He would gather advice from various sources, including self-help books, and regarded the analyst as the ultimate self-help resource and reference. He conveyed a sense of fascination with the contents of his own mind, which he would put on display, arranging and rearranging them for the analyst's appreciation.

Occasional feelings of loneliness would be expressed and quickly avoided by a return to his business worries and dramatic rescues. John and I came to understand that he feared he was unable to sustain any sort of personal relationship, particularly intimate involvement with a woman. He felt he was wonderful on first meeting, but in the long run would have trouble maintaining a level of charm and excitement sufficient to keep a woman interested. He was drawn to women who seemed accomplished and desirable, yet with whom he felt somehow flawed and inadequate. He felt safer in the company of younger, adoring women of high potential, yet he was afraid of their need for him. It became clear that although he felt tormented and enervated by the pressures and worries of his life, he feared that any slackening of the pace would result in emptiness and boredom. Life outside the fast lane would become unbearably tedious and humdrum, and he would lose all his appeal to others. John felt deeply flawed as a person, hovering always on the brink of depression; yet he thought his company was infinitely perfectible and operated as a kind of surrogate self, which he would continue to expand and perfect. "The company doesn't get depressed or scared. I can always keep changing its public face, and keep changing the parts. When some people fall down, I can just replace them." We uncovered his belief that once his company was flawless and stable, he would be able to emerge as a person in his own right.

John's grandiosity served important defensive functions, the most central of which was its counterdepressive effect. Underneath the glitter, John's sense of living in the world of other people was extremely grim. He saw others as leading desolate lives, as slaves to conventionality, as desperately longing for someone to provide life and excitement for them. He saw himself as able to have a vitalizing, reparative impact on others - but only for a short time. Unable to sustain his counterdepressive efforts, his own depression would emerge and he would be revealed as empty, having nothing to offer, bitterly disappointing to others. The grandiose illusions operated as a powerful defense against this sense of bleakness and personal deficiency.

They also served important functions in the expression and control of aggression. John saw other people as generally worthless and unable to provide him with anything useful or interesting. He felt enraged at their mistakes, almost personally betrayed, as if they were simply demonstrating over and over how little he could count on them. Attributing elevated status to himself expressed his deep contempt for others; it also removed him from the threat of being in a position where he expected anything from anyone. Being uniquely competent and self-sufficient, he did not need to expose himself to vulnerability and rage, or to what he experienced as constant disappointment and betrayal.

Although the grandiose illusions had come to serve secondary defensive functions, their content derived from the structure of relationships within his family, particularly the manner in which he had come to embody his mother's hopes and ambitions. The maternal grandparents had been extremely industrious working-class people, immigrants of Mediterranean extraction, with great aspirations for social advancement. They had worked their way from rather humble conditions into a position which was, for a while, fairly affluent - although eventually a combination of bad business decisions and bad luck once again kept them from attaining the social standing they longed for. John's mother was the younger of two children. Her brother had become a highly successful and renowned lawyer, who occupied an almost mythical status within the family. Although financially well off (which pleased hisparents greatly), the brother had chosen to devote himself largely to social causes and public-service projects. He was very much an individualist, had extensive and interesting hobbies, and traveled frequently to exotic places. His wife was a flamboyant and seemingly fascinating person, and their marriage was regarded by most family members as ideal.

John's mother adored her elder brother. Although she too was quite intelligent, much less had been expected of her by their parents, who were mostly concerned that she be taken care of materially. She had attended college briefly, then left to marry John's father, a steady but seemingly dull accountant whom her parents regarded as a "great catch." She worried a great deal about financial stability, at least partially in reaction to her parents' shifting fortunes and the diminished opportunities offered women at that time; her choice of a husband seems to have been dominated by that consideration. John, the firstborn, was followed by three sisters. The mother became very involved with John and one of his sisters, the brightest and most artistic of the children. The other two girls, quieter and more obviously troubled, receded into the background, where dwelt the father.

John's mother placed strong emphasis on nonconventionality and excitement. She saw her husband as hopelessly dull and compared him unfavorably to her brother, who was her model for the good life. She saw John as the heir apparent, not to his father's throne, but to his uncle's. John became his mother's companion in adventure, accompanied his aunt and uncle on their vacations, and developed a wide range of hobbies and exotic tastes, which drew him further into the orbit of his mother and her brother. John's mother gave him lessons in social skills and manners, worked with him to polish his diction and elocution, and even pressured him into cosmetic surgery to "improve" his appearance.

John's father came from an impoverished, Irish-immigrant background. His father had made a meager living. An elder brother led a religious, marginal existence, never managing to leave home or establish any sort of independent existence. A younger sister became a political radical and bohemian. The father was the steadiest of the family and supported the others both financially and emotionally. Having worked at menial jobs to put himself through school, he treasured his hard earned status as a professional. In the face of his wife's appropriation of their son, John's father silently and somewhat bitterly retreated. He developed an alliance with the two daughters who were abandoned in disappointment by the mother. The marriage was quite stormy at intervals, and the children were encouraged to take sides. John felt he was often forced to play the judge of his parents' competing claims. Because of their difficulties in reconciling their own differences, the two of them seemed to grant a precocious, Solomon-like wisdom to their son. The marriage eventually broke apart in an atmosphere of mutual hostility and distrust.

Throughout his childhood John felt different from his peers, whom he regarded as conventional and conformist, yet not good enough to be accepted by the most desirable and popular, in comparison to whom he felt dull and humdrum. His sense of himself had consolidated around his mother's image of him, modeled on her own glittering vision of her brother. He took on positive significance for her only as a reflection of his uncle's brilliance, and his model in all relationships was the one between his uncle and mother, between an all-knowing, infinitely exciting guru and a worshipful disciple. On the other hand, his childhood had been suffused with the continual sense that he had failed his mother, that he never would live up to her ambitions for him, and that her preoccupation with refinement of his behavior and appearance reflected deep disappointment in him. In her sense of herself as compromised an damaged, she seemed to look to him as a vehicle of redemption and justification - which he, of course, could never manage. Success necessitated an escalation of demands, to keep alive the dynamic tension and her hope for a cure of her own depression (through him). The sense of failure also was connected to a secret identification with his father as mediocre and discarded.

The central technical problem in the analysis was the analyst's position vis-a-vis John's grandiosity. On the one hand, systematic interpretation of the defensive functions of the grandiosity, by itself, would probably have driven him out of treatment. His need to display himself and his talents was intense, and the transference was organized around these exhibitionistic needs. In John's view, the analyst was like the mother, needing and enjoying his display, and, in his humble efforts to analyze him, helping him to perfect himself. The analyst's genuine admiration of John's talents and pleasure in him was probably a prerequisite for the analysis to proceed. Merely to interpret the defensive aspects of his grandiosity would have been to miss the importance to him of integrating relationships on that basis, the only basis on which he believed he could connect with others. Failure to engage with him in this way would either have made the treatment uninteresting to him or necessitated a submissive, defeated withdrawal (modeled after the father).

On the other hand, allowing John's grandiose claims to stand at face value would not have provided any traction for analytic change. John had a deep conviction that others, including the analyst, led dull and empty lives and that they needed to feed on his vitality. One had the sense that his self-displays could have lasted for years, perhaps decades, that they were not so much opening up something new in him, but perpetuating something old. The analyst's unchallenging participation in this integration could only be experienced as a corroboration of John's belief that this is all that can happen between people: one displays and teaches; the other admires and absorbs.

What seemed most useful was a playful participation in and appreciation of John's grandiose claims, combined with an inquiry into their origins and functions. The analyst's gradually developing ability to enjoy him without needing to take so seriously the demands he placed upon himself, seemed to make it possible for John to begin to laugh at himself, an enormously important positive prognostic sign. Sympathizing with his despair at a business failure, while noting that what was at stake apparently was not just the business venture itself but his role in the evolutionary development of the species, proved useful, as did comparisons between his relation to his company and Louis XIV's relation to the state. We explored his expectations of instant and total rapture in the response of others to him, both within and outside the transference; the selectivity of what he attended to in other people and their response to him; and the alacrity with which he assumed the other to be disinterested and disappointed in him. Particularly startling to him was the analyst's pointing to how little satisfaction he actually expected and obtained in his relations with others. He had a deep conviction that winning appreciation of himself as guru was the ultimate in human affairs. He gradually came to see how much he was missing, and how embittered and angry he was about that lack.

The broader context of the work was an inquiry into the origins and functions of his grandiose claims and ambitions: how they came to be so crucial, how they functioned to preserve his tie to his mother, and his deep fear that to abandon these illusions as compulsive necessities would be to lose forever any possibility of his being important and exciting to anyone. The increasingly collaborative inquiry and jointly constructed interpretations, combined with a lighter, nonaddictive participation in his narcissistic illusions, transformed the analytic relationship into a different sort of integration, making it possible for John to operate increasingly outside his formerly characteristic narcissistic patterns. He learned to enjoy rather than be tormented by his prodigious talents, and to use his ambitions as goals and guidelines rather than as prerequisites to feeling good about himself.

Joined at the Hip

Lucy was a painter in her late twenties who had been in treatment on and off with different therapists for more than ten years. Although she felt vaguely "supported" by these prior therapies in her struggle against depression, she was uninvolved in a deep way in any of them. She had a sense ofherself as being very different from other people, and had been unable to connect with her previous therapists. She had been in treatment with her current (female) analyst for eight months, and this time things were quite different. She felt very involved and had an intense sense of importance about what was taking place. The analyst also felt involved in the treatment; in fact, she felt considerable anxiety about what she experienced as overly intense countertransference feelings, which led her to seek consultation on the case.

Lucy was the eldest of five children. Her mother was a strikingly uneven woman, very strong and talented in some respects, yet enormously self-absorbed. The mother had been an adored only child and had a very close relationship with her own mother, who had come to live with the family when Lucy was quite young. The presence of the grandmother had created a breach between the parents, who became increasingly estranged. This apparently was not especially disturbing to Lucy's mother, whose most intense bond seemed to be with her mother. All three generations of women in the family were quite artistic in one way or another, and each was also odd and quirky in her own particular fashion; this was not only tolerated by all, but almost cultivated. The father increasingly removed himself from the family, eventually becoming an alcoholic. He had seemed most fond of Lucy and there was a real bond between them, although it was hard for Lucy to understand the basis for his favoring of her. Their interactions often had an ambiguously sexual quality, even though ritualized and formal.

After her husband's death and the departure of her children, Lucy's mother moved with her own mother into a small cabin in the woods. It was as if extraneous elements had been discarded and a perfect union once again established. Mother and grandmother would sometimes lie in different directions on the same sofa, like two kittens in the sun. The mother would languish about, dabbling in painting and poetry, surrounded by photographs of herself as a young girl, and lost in reverie.

Lucy had been a shy, dreamy, talented, and fearful child who spent a lot of time at home. She ended up marrying her high school boyfriend, a very outgoing young man who was totally devoted to her. They regarded each other as perfect complements: he dealt with the outside world in ways that she could not and arranged the material basis for their existence; she provided the emotional softness and richness he lacked and adorned their life with her rich imagination. She would paint at home, barely leaving the apartment for weeks on end, like a princess in a tower; he would return every evening to fill her in on life in the outside world and to share her exotic realms of fantasy. Her paintings were beautifully executed, but unfashionably representational studies of subjects with highly personal meanings. They seemed to be from another time, and analytic inquiry revealed associations between Lucy's paintings and her mother's dreamy reveries of her own younger days. To the analyst it seemed as if Lucy had become a character in her mother's fantasy life.

Lucy decided almost immediately on meeting her current analyst that the two of them were very much alike, and that conviction had come to dominate much of their work together. Having a very astute eye for detail, Lucy noticed myriad similarities in their tastes, values, and sensibilities. She became convinced that there was a strong, almost spiritual commonality between them. The analyst's interpretive statements frequently evoked a gasp of recognition in her, followed by an amazed "How did you know that?" She felt she had become a very special patient for the analyst because of their kindred spirits, and she searched diligently for clues indicating that this was in fact the case.

Lucy became intensely curious about the details of the analyst's personal life. During her hours of solitude she would weave into fantasies of marvelous companionship those facets that she was able to glean. It became imperative to Lucy that the analyst experience their relationship in similar terms. She "had decided, for example, that a particular color was the analyst's favorite; it became hers as well and took on significance as a symbol of their special bond. When the analyst wore that color, Lucy would be enormously pleased and comfortable; when the analyst wore a different color, Lucy would feel anxious and betrayed, as if the analyst were deliberately interfering in her well-being, disappointing her in an almost cruel way.

The analyst did regard Lucy as a special patient. She too sensed considerable similarity between them, regarding Lucy as, in some ways, a "preanalyzed" version of herself. On the one hand, this was gratifying. She admired Lucy, was flattered by the latter's appreciation of her, and felt a maternal pleasure in helping someone with whom she identified so strongly. On the other hand, she felt increasingly oppressed and trapped by the intensity of the transference and countertransference. She knew that some of the sense of similarity was contrived by Lucy, and that she was not quite as remarkably intuitive as Lucy wanted to think of her as being. Further, it was difficult to know how to respond to Lucy's curiosity, detective work, and confabulations. She knew supplying more details was not called for; yet the pressure Lucy felt to have her confirm their special bond seemed intense. She feared disappointing her, to the point of becoming self-conscious about deciding the color ofher clothes on the morning of a session with Lucy. Would she wear the special color and confirm their pact, or wear something different and betray it? She felt increasingly that her hands were tied. The sense of special connection in the transference seemed "precious" for Lucy, both extremely important and especially brittle and delicate.

Early in the analysis Lucy reported dreams in which the analyst appeared - technicolor dreams, with a bright, panoramic quality about them.

“I am walking along the beach with you and my sisters - you and I are walking together - I take off my clothes· and go into the water - you remain on the shore – l am frolicking with the fish - I catch a gorgeous blue fish and throw it to you. You catch it deftly. It all seems exquisite and wonderful.”

This dream reflects something of the quality of perfect attunement that Lucy, and frequently the analyst, experienced in the transference-countertransference integration at the start of the treatment.

Lucy's experience of herself in relation to other people and to the analyst centered around an illusion of sameness. The only meaningful contact between herself and someone else was contingent upon the symbiotic fantasy that they were identical in some fundamental way, that their psychic content was almost interchangeable. Lucy's life was organized around a search for such relatedness; once she found something akin to it, she clung desperately.

As the analyst's first vacation approached, a second transferential configuration emerged, both in dreams and in fantasies. Lucy began portraying the analyst as "spare," someone who lives a lonely existence, empty of pleasure or joy. The month-long break in the treatment over the vacation proved very difficult for Lucy; she became anxious and regressed, feeling abandoned and somehow helpless. Upon the analyst's return, she reported the following dream.

“You were on vacation - the plan was that I was to follow. I wasn't exactly invited, but I knew you would want me to be there. I arrived at your vacation house. I was very excited. Then I discovered that you were in some kind of trouble, hurt somehow. I could hear or sense you screaming and crying. Then I realized that it was I who was hurt, not you. Then I realized that I was in an isolated place - I couldn't find you - there was no one around - no help. There was a shift in scene to a hospital. You were explaining to me in a very cool way that there was nothing you could do for me. It was a medical problem. You were a doctor in a white coat. You wanted the best for me, but removed yourself from my treatment.”

It is clear from the material about the analyst's vacation and the dream following it that illusions of sameness served as a defense, warding off feelings of depression, emptiness, damage, and rejection. Lucy feared the alternative to the special bond of sameness to be a desolate lack of contact, in which she and the other would be face to face with their own pain and inability to reach each other. In that sense, the illusion of sameness was a narcissistic, counter-depressive defense to be interpreted.

We might also regard the illusion of sameness as an expression of a longing for symbiotic union which the mother, in her adhesive tie to her own mother, probably was unable to provide. The mother's eagerness to return to her own fusion with her mother made separating seem a precarious business, creating conflicts around the rapprochement crisis and leaving Lucy with a dread of differences and a longing for "oneness" (Silverman, Lachmann, and Milich, 1982). In that sense, the illusion of sameness appeared in the treatment through what Kohut (1971) terms a "twinship" transference, representing a missing developmental experience re-created in the treatment situation, an experience to be encouraged and slowly outgrown.

Both these dimensions of the narcissistic transference are important; as with John's grandiose claims, however, Lucy's illusion of sameness is fully grasped only in the context of the interactive fabric of her early relations with others. This was a family in which there seemed to be very little real involvement with others. Each of the family members was a strong and developed presence, and it was as if each granted to the others the right of self-absorption. Within this armada of ships passing in the night, Lucy seems to have been hungry for contact. The person most involved with her was her father - although the contact was episodic, puzzling, ambiguous, expressed more through rituals than intimacy.

The most intense involvement within the family was that between mother and grandmother, and it was a fusion from which Lucy and everyone else was excluded. This relationship became the model for the ultimate form of human contact. Mutual absorption, an identity of values and attributes, the exclusion of others-these became the hallmarks of true intimacy. It was this form of relatedness which Lucy sought in the analytic relationship. When it was not possible to infer its presence, she remained uninvolved; when it was possible, she became intensely absorbed.

What can we say of the analyst's handling of this material? Should the defensive dimensions of this transference have been interpreted aggressively from the beginning? Did gratification in the countertransference lead to the creation of a counter-therapeutic folie-a-deux? Or was the patient's experience of gratification with respect to the illusion of sameness an indication of potential for progress, a developmental growing edge, not to be interfered with in any way?

Lucy's illusion of sameness, consolidated in this transference-countertransference integration, was both essential for treatment to be joined and a retardant to growth that needed to be challenged in some fashion. Based on Lucy's earlier treatment history, it seems reasonable to conclude that the analyst's matching countertransference responses and her willingness to participate in and enjoy the patient's illusions were fortuitous. They made possible a deeper therapeutic engagement than would otherwise have been possible, one that would have been precluded also by early interpretation of the defensive functions of this configuration. Yet, since the illusion of sameness represented not simply potential new growth but also a re-creation of old object ties, allowing this narcissistic configuration to remain unchallenged threatened to become counterproductive.

The analyst began exploring the patient's early relationships as prototypes for the pursuit of identity with others. Simultaneously, she began raising questions about why the patient regarded this form of connection, which (after the patient had introduced the phrase) they referred to as being "joined at the hip," as the ultimate in human relations. She pointed out to Lucy how hard she worked to force an identity when differences might be interesting in their own right. At first, this line of inquiry was strongly resisted; Lucy felt as if the analyst were taking away from her something very precious, and her dreams of exhilarating activities in pure, rarefied mountain air would suddenly change to scenes of muddy, dried-up river basins. This shift was understood as reflecting the patient's fear that the only alternative to shared identity was the desolation she had experienced as a child, a loneliness that she feared was being re-created in the analyst's withdrawal.

Patient and analyst began to work collaboratively on appreciating how contrived many of the illusions of sameness were, based on what they came to call talismanic contact, expressed through rituals and magical signs. One by-product of this work was Lucy's reporting for the first time that she had secret areas of her experience withheld from both her analyst and her husband, the natural counterpart to the forced identity which had seemed to be the price of meaningful connection. Another by-product of this phase of the treatment was an increase in Lucy's freedom to pursue some of her own independent ambitions and activities.

Thus, the analyst's participation in, yet inquiry into, the narcissistic illusions of sameness generated in Lucy a growing awareness of her conflicts over relating through forced identity, and began to transform the analytic relationship into a form of connection more complex in structure and richer in possibilities.

From Good to Pseudoideal

In her discussion of various experiences and fantasies grouped under the developmental organization she terms the paranoid-schizoid position, Melanie Klein speaks variously of "good" objects, "ideal" objects, and "pseudoideal" objects. Although these concepts are not defined and distinguished from one another with much precision, they are all products of splitting, which Klein sees as the central defense mechanism of the earliest months of life, and can be arranged on a continuum of severity. Through splitting the infant keeps separate his good (pleasurable, loving) experiences with others from his bad (painful, hateful) experiences, in order to protect his libidinal relationships from the destructive impact of his aggression. Thus, the good object is a composite of all good experiences with others. The ideal object is the good object elaborated through fantasy, goodness granted magical powers to protect the child and ward off dangers.

But what if the child's experiences with others are nearly all painful and unpleasant-if, in the distribution of experiences, there is no material from which to construct a good or ideal object? Voltaire suggested that if God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him. Similarly, Klein argues that the child cannot survive without some sense of connection to a loved and loving other, and that if the child does not experience the basis for such a relationship, he will imagine it. Thus, the pseudoideal object is not elaborated out of the child's experience, but is created whole cloth.

The distinctions among good, ideal, and pseudoideal objects provide a useful framework for thinking about different kinds of idealization within the transference. Some idealization is based on actual experience with the analyst-interpretations that have been helpful, for example. The illusory element in this sort of idealization is not in the creation of the good qualities or experiences, but in the care taken to prevent recognition and integration of other not-so-good qualities or experiences, such as interpretations that do not help much, or interpretations that feel hurtful. The patient experiences only the dimensions of the relationship with the analyst which he deems acceptable.

Other idealizing transferences are based on actual experiences with the analyst, but are elaborated in more or less fantastic ways. Here some good experience, some actual help, serves as the core around which are woven imaginative attributions of the range and depth of the analyst's powers, the idyllic richness of his personal life, the constancy and purity of his motives, and so on.

A third kind of pseudoidealizing transference is created whole cloth. Here what the analyst says or does seems to matter very little. The analyst's goodness and power are assumed and insisted upon, with scraps of evidence strung together to create the impression of a plausible image. On the pseudoidealizing end of the idealizing continuum, the analyst is likely to have the sometimes uncanny countertransferential experience of not recognizing himself at all in the analysand's experience of him.

* * *

Diane, a young lawyer and politician, illustrates the workings of an idealizing transference.

The significant benchmarks in Diane's emotional development as an adult consisted in a series of intense, idealizing relationships with mentors of various sorts. Choosing men and women who seemed talented and successful at whatever endeavor Diane herself was interested in at the time, she would apprentice herself to them. A talented person in general, she was especially skilled and seductive in the art of discipleship. She was extremely successful at positioning herself beside, behind, and/or underneath (in different contexts, different prepositions apply) the other, whom she would admire, protect, and devote herself to. Analytic inquiry revealed the implicit contract she felt pertained in such relationships. She would place loyalty to her mentor above all else, admiring, defending, and publicly representing him or her as a talented and special disciple, in a way she felt would enhance the mentor's reputation and status. She would speak of the mentor as someone who had attained a lofty, invulnerable pinnacle of existence, with all questions answered, all rough edges smoothed, and no frailties, foibles, or other evidence to the contrary. The mentor in turn was expected to regard her as his special charge, be loyal to her above all others, protect her from the hardships of life, and guide her deftly in a direct, linear fashion to the accomplished, privileged, and invulnerable status he himself had (presumably) attained in life.

The relationships lasted for quite a while and were often mutually satisfying to the two participants, both within and outside the fantasied idealizing pact. Not surprisingly, Diane invariably suffered periods of painful disillusionment and betrayal. Either the adored object exposed clay feet, or he proved less steadfast than Diane. Following periods of intense, smoldering rage and despair, new models would be established. Although very attractive, Diane seemed more girlish than womanly; she had few intense romantic involvements.

Sources for the structure of this idealizing mode were found in Diane's relationships with both her parents, who saw themselves as special, admirable people; they were intensely competitive with each other for recognition in general and for Diane's loyalty in particular. The mother was an extremely tough, overburdened woman, who presented herself as a saintly victim of her husband's failings. She saw Diane as a secret ally who (unlike the father) was sensitive to her plight, yet who, as the father's favorite, could influence him in ways beneficial to herself.

As an older sibling, Diane felt deprived of the affection and nurturance the mother provided for her younger brother and sisters. Demeaning Diane's needs seemed to be in part the mother’s way of assuaging her own guilt and despair at not being able to provide fully for everyone. The mother’s most intense relationships were with her babies and with damaged relatives of various sorts whom she took care of. Diane could gain access to her only through sympathizing with her, admiring her devotion to others and to herself as a small child, and forgiving her guilt at not constantly providing for Diane as well. Their relationship seemed to center around a deep yearning in both for a perfect mother-infant synchrony.

Diane's father was an extremely volatile, paranoid man who kept his explosive rage and terror in check through an elaborately constructed obsessional devotion to fastidiousness and detail. As a young man, he had been a rather dashing figure, adventurous and successful in sports; but a series of injuries and career disasters left him shaken, somewhat bewildered, and extremely bitter. He had been very involved with Diane, his eldest daughter, especially when she was small. Diane adored her father and loved hearing stories of his bravery and exploits. She became an accomplished student of her father’s perfectionism and certainty, a good soldier in her father's army. She believed she had earned his "chosen" status over her siblings, and felt protected and safe under her father’s harsh but sure control. It was only as Diane grew older that she realized how fearful and temperamental her father was. There were many disappointments involving her father's refusal to join Diane in activities in the outside world, and frightening outbreaks of sadistic violence. He had enormous difficulty tolerating her accomplishments and would either demean them, claim credit for them, or both. Diane's disillusionment with her father was very gradual; she resisted it strongly. She was frightened at how crazy she feared her father was, but deeply loved the bond she felt as the favorite child of a noble and fearless man.

She developed a strong, conflictual counteridentification with the mother. On the one hand, she felt intense longings to join in what Diane viewed as her mother's masochistic, degraded status; on the other hand, her father was her model for operating effectively in the world. There were intense oedipal yearnings and a sense of herself as an oedipal victor. Surely she would be a better, more submissive, more appreciative wife to her father than her mother was. Furthermore, she felt herself to be like her father in many respects, explosive and rageful.

Although Diane chose a very different life course from either parent and had left the family in many fundamental respects, the structure of her relationship with her father was preserved into adulthood. When she visited, her father would bait her with his political and social prejudices in an effort to reclaim his place as the object of unquestioned loyalty. If Diane (predictably) differed with her father, he would up the ante, his taunts getting more and more bitter. Diane found herself agreeing with her father to "keep him under control." In many respects, she played a central role in the family, operating as a kind of double agent. Her father needed to see Diane as loyal to him, as the repository of his bruised hopes for respect and renewal. Her mother regarded Diane as her champion and as leverage with her husband, placating him and thereby enhancing his stability and keeping the family intact. Diane's divided loyalties, as she strove to be each parent's "daughter," made her later career in politics seem uncomplicated; life within the family was a tension-filled juggling act. We came to see that she had taken the common elements in both these relationships, connection through exclusive devotion and through submission, as the basis for her manner of integrating relationships with significant others in general.

The predominant features of the transference were organized around just these lines. The analyst was viewed as someone with ready answers to all of life's important questions, with a perfectly organized and disciplined personal existence. He was seen as demanding total devotion, in terms of solemn dedication to the analytic work and repeatedly expressed loyalty to him as a person. Diane did in fact work very hard, seemed to get a great deal out of the treatment, and tried to be a rewarding patient for the analyst. An early dream, several months into the analysis, provided the first evidence of the doubts Diane unconsciously harbored, an image of the analyst as omnipresent and omniscient.

“I was wandering through some kind of forest. I had to descend a cliff, and had to go very slow, as it was quite steep. It was hard to get a good grip, and I was frightened. I started slipping a little, but then got to a clearing. There were other people there. One was older and wiser. He said that to get down the slope, I'd have to be very careful about bears; sometimes they charge down the mountain. His advice was to take pillows to beat off the bears. I followed the advice. Then I was beating at the bears frantically with the pillows. I was afraid I would be killed.”

Associations to the bears uncovered fears concerning her father's explosive rages and terror of her own rages as well. Her hopes in analysis were for a better idealized father, one who would guide her along a course which would protect her from what she felt was her own bestiality (partially an identification with her experience of her father). It was extremely important to her to see the analyst as perfect and all knowing, as providing a safe route through the dense thicket of her own conflicts, diverse identifications, and divided loyalties. As the dream suggests, she harbored secret fears about the analyst's powers and dependability; the possibility that the analyst was not what he seemed to be provoked extreme anxiety and was difficult for her to sustain in conscious thought. One of the central dimensions of the analysis entailed an articulation and gradual working through of this erotic-idealizing pattern of integration, both within and outside the transference. The analyst often was pleased and amused by, as well as curious about, the wondrous attributes with which Diane endowed him. It was these countertransferential feelings, combined and expressed in the analyst's participation, which helped to make it possible for Diane to consolidate a relationship with the analyst along necessarily idealizing lines as well as to gradually begin to question and transform that pattertl of relating.

Racker (1968) makes the point that a crucial feature of exploration of the transference is inquiry into the patient's fantasies about the countertransference. This was very much the case with Diane. Devotion to the analyst seemed absolutely essential to her, not only because of the security and certainty it seemed to provide, but also because she secretly felt that it was the only sort of relationship the analyst was able to sustain. She was convinced that he, like all people, felt closest to another only when he saw the other as very much like himself, agreeing with all his opinions and prejudices. Differences would surely make the analyst anxious and self-doubting and would be experienced as hostile. Kindness would consist in unquestioning devotion.

Challenging and inquiring into these assumptions began to free Diane of them. She began to see that treating someone else as if they were God might not particularly enhance their self-esteem, and that she regarded other people as shallow, vulnerable, and brittle. She assumed that the analyst would feel he had nothing to offer her as a woman rather than as a baby or small girl. As these beliefs were explored and challenged, the relationship began to open up and become more complex.

If she was not being submissive, Diane feared, competitive feelings  might emerge and the relationship would become "messy." There was considerable evidence in her dreams of a longing to dethrone the analyst and other pedestaled icons whom, during her waking life, she was so carefully protecting from herself and others. As she slowly became more competitive, she became aware of fears of retaliation: if you're strong, people "give it to you"; if you appear frightened and confused, kindness and consideration result. She realized how secretly powerful she had come to feel in her passivity, and how little she attended to her considerable prowess and resources as a woman. She both longed for and feared being overwhelmed-as she so often had been, as a child, by her father. Alternatively, she was terrified of how brittle her heroes seemed to be and how easily crushed they might be by her hidden strengths.

The analytic process itself was experienced in the context of this transferential configuration. There was an extraordinary desire to surrender to the analyst sexually and, in a more global way, to be made over according to the image of perfection attributed to the analyst. On the other hand, she deeply resented the submission she felt was demanded of her and struggled resistively against it. A dream midway through the analysis highlighted these issues:

“I had to go for immunization shots. I was very anxious about them, but various people kept telling me it was no big deal. When I got to the doctor's, I had to bend over to get the shots in my rear end. It was very bothersome, but I felt it was a concession I had to make. My primary concern was that they would hurt. The pain was a burning, one in each butt. As it was happening, I tried to concentrate. ‘It won't burn so much; it will be over quickly.’ It wasn't nearly so bad as I thought it would be.”

The shots in the dream became a central metaphor in Diane's increasing awareness of how much she both desired and resented the (sexual) submission and incorporation she experienced in the analytic relationship. She was supposed to take in the analyst's ideas, look the other way, surrender totally. On the one hand, she felt this act would save her; on the other hand, she felt humiliated and enraged by it.

As these conflictual features of the transference were articulated and questioned, a deep fear of being abandoned and utterly alone emerged. Only gradually was Diane able to sustain a beliefin the possibility of the analyst's liking and helping her as her own person rather than as a replica of the image she had fashioned out of the analyst's attributes and her idealizing elaborations of them. She began to realize how much effort was going into convincing herself that the analyst was already far down whatever road she herself was pursuing. She started thinking of admired others not as providing blueprints for living, but as resources to be used, digested, and selectively absorbed.

Henry was born into the kind of familial circumstances which make pseudoidealization an emotional necessity for survival. He was the second of three children born to an extremely poor Jewish family on the lower east side of New York. The father was a remote, highly intellectual man who was only peripherally involved with the family. The mother was a hard-working, long-suffering woman whose experience seemed laced with psychotic terrors and compulsions. She was paralyzed by the outside world, which she experienced as treacherous and forbidding, and felt it necessary to control her children in bizarre and intrusive ways, including forced feedings and rigorous regimes oforder and cleanliness. Her first son had been born severely damaged and had died in infancy. Henry's younger sister had become a compliant, seemingly perfect child, surrendering herself to the mother's ministrations. As an adult, this sister suffered from crippling inhibitions and a severely restricted life in close proximity to the mother.

Henry's life centered around an essentially fantastic relationship with his father. He neatly segregated his experience of his parents through splitting: his mother was wholly malevolent and dangerous; his father was benevolent and caring. Everything seemed to depend on being able to preserve this image of the father, which gave Henry at least some hope in an otherwise frightening existence. He portrayed the father to himself as someone extraordinarily wise and in tune with him. The father knew what his son was feeling and secretly joined him in hatred of the mother's oppressive regime. Yet the father knew that it was best for him to remain silent and not interfere. He was with Henry every step of the way, but their secret alliance would have to be denied, for Henry's own good, if he ever attempted to bring it out in the open.

Henry's fantasied bond with his father was mediated largely through the image of the dead elder brother. This loss had been extremely painful for the father and had probably contributed substantially to his withdrawal. He had pictured his eldest son as a renowned rabbi; the birth of the younger children did not begin to compensate for his loss. Henry became very interested in intellectual and religious pursuits; by becoming the father's image of the dead brother, he hoped to consolidate his own tie to his father. It was, ironically, the father's almost-total remoteness which made this fantasy possible. Henry filled in the space vacated by his father's emotional absence with what he needed to protect himself from his fear of and identification with the mother.

Henry was able to draw on his considerable talents and vitality to create a rich and diversified life for himself. Nevertheless, he suffered pervasive anxieties and inhibitions, which had brought him into treatment. He was married to an active, successful woman, in many respects the opposite of both his parents. He felt warm admiration for and dependency upon her, using her as a kind of executive function for any of his own wishes and ambitions in life. Relations with friends and colleagues were integrated along similar deferential lines. The transference was joined on this basis, characterized from the start by extreme idealization divorced from any actual experiences or benefits.

Two dreams, the first about a colleague, the second about his boss, both with clear allusions to the transference, illustrate both the benign and the masochistic dimensions of this type of idealization. The first dream occurred about six months into the treatment.

“I was in an art class with George. We were using special pencils. Every time I went to use mine, it kept breaking off in the sharpener. I began to panic. I couldn't complete the assignment. George walked up to me and showed me his pencil, which was perfect. He was teaching me how to use the sharpener, showing me what I was doing wrong.”

This dream captures the hopefulness that is invariably a crucial feature of object ties characterized by idealization and pseudoidealization. By attaching to (and sexually submitting to) a perfect other, a new start is possible; the damaged self (expressed here through the castration imagery) is remediable.

The second dream, reported about a year later, reveals another facet of this sort of integration.

“Harry and I were with some other people in a construction area. We were trapped somehow. Harry figured how to get out. One by one people had to enter a wooden encasement. Harry would push them so they would swing in the encasement out to safety. I was waiting for him to push people through. Then it was my turn. I got encased and then needed to be pushed through. As I was waiting, I heard Harry walk away. I realized he had forgotten to push me. I felt I would suffocate and started to panic. I told myself, ‘Don't panic, or you'll use up too much air.’ Then I awoke.”

Once again, the father-boss-analyst is a larger-than-life figure; everything depends on utilizing his powers, on following his lead out of danger. Yet the dread of being let down, the total surrender necessary to be taken care of, the abject dependency required by the other (encased like the dead brother) - these are suffocating.

Both the benign and the masochistic facets of the idealization were prominent in this transference. The analyst and the analytic process were granted wonderful magical powers to heal and to show the way. The relative reticence of the analytic stance made it possible to attribute incredible wisdom to the analyst. His words were coyly sought, captured and savored with great enthusiasm, and transformed into formulas for living, like embroidered homilies hung on the wall. This search for something new and healing had much of the quality that Balint terms "the new beginning," and that Winnicott and Kohut stress in the handling of narcissistic illusions. Henry sought something different within the only framework he knew, through a re-creation of the object tie to the father. Self-abnegation, glorification of and deference to the other, were assumed to be the price of contact, the best way to use the help of another, to capture that person's attention, to sustain his or her interest.

In addition to its reparative features, Henry's idealization served important defensive purposes against his intense rage at the other for what he felt was the deference demanded; his doubts about the other's constancy, resources, and caring; his anxiety about his own capacities and autonomy. Whereas the idealization of his father was a powerful adaptive device during his childhood, saving him from terror and despair, idealization of his wife and the analyst in his adulthood kept him encased in a self-perpetuating cycle of constricted and truncated relations with others. The more he elevated the other as magic savior, the more damaged he felt; the more damaged he felt, the more apprenticeship to the magic savior seemed the only way out.

The most constructive response to Henry's idealizing transference encompassed both acknowledgment and joining of the "new beginning" aspect and questioning and interpretation of the defense aspect. To challenge his idealization vigorously and to interpret it prematurely only as a defense against rage or separation would have been to preclude a deep transferential engagement. Henry's search for a new start was mediated through the old object tie. To refuse to meet him there would have been to drive him out of treatment or into a compliant, superficial adaptation to the analyst's demands. Nonetheless, to avoid interpreting the masochistic and defensive aspects of his idealization would have been to condemn Henry to this and only this mode of integrating relationships with others. One could envision a prolonged, intense devotion to the analyst, helpful in many respects, but without the impetus for Henry to engage others, beginning with the analyst, in a more complex and mutual fashion.

Viewing narcissistic illusions as defensive highlights their role in perpetuating internal equilibrium and constrictions in living. Viewing narcissistic illusions as growth enhancing highlights their potential role in enriching self-experience. The defensive and constructive features of narcissistic illusions are integrable; they both are considerably enriched when viewed in the context of a relational matrix, as interactive vehicles for attachments to significant others and as characteristic patterns of interpersonal integration.

In actuality, the analytic relationship is two highly conflictual, simultaneous relationships which continually interpenetrate each other – a neurotic, constricted form of integration (Loewald's "old" object; Fairbairn's "bad" object) that dissolves over time, and a healthier form of integration (Loewald's "new" object; Fairbairn's "good" object) that is slowly opened up and consolidated. The analyst's participation in the analysand's illusions is essential to establishment of the narcissistic integration; the analyst's questioning of illusions is essential to the dissolution of this integration and the establishment of a richer form of relation.

The analyst's descriptions, interpretations, and questions all provide the analysand with a form of participation which operates outside the narcissistic integration. What is provided in this sort of interaction is not an opportunity for the analysand to renounce illusions, but to experience them in a broader context-not as constrictive limits on his relations with others, but as possible forms of enriching interactions. The analyst's own ease in engaging and disengaging in illusions about himself and others is crucial to this process. One might think of it in terms of the analysand's learning or internalizing a kind of "love of life," sustainable without illusions yet continually enriched by them.