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Developments in Object Relations Controversies Conflicts and Common Ground 1st Edition Lavinia Gomez
‘This scholarly, extraordinarily thorough review of object relations theories is a significantly updated version of Summers’s first volume. Integrating theory and its clinical implications and locating each theory within its historical context, Summers helps the reader to understand each theory’s underlying assumptions and their implications for the clinical moment.’
Joyce Slochower, PhD, ABPP
‘Readers of all persuasions, from those new to psychoanalytic thought to those immersed in it for decades, will find nourishment on every page. Simultaneously scholarly and readable, this volume emphasises the practical clinical implications of theory, helping us all to become better therapists.’
Nancy McWilliams, emerita visting professor, Rutgers Graduate School of Applied and Professional Psychology
‘Dr Summers not only carefully and clearly summarises major psychoanalytic theories, but also does what no other author has done: he articulately spells out the specific treatment implications of each theory he discusses. This alone makes his book extremely useful and even invaluable.’
Morris Eagle, professor emeritus, Derner Institute of Advanced Psychological Studies, Adelphi University
Object Relations Theories and Psychopathology
Twenty-nine years since the first edition was released, Frank Summers has renewed his lucid and thorough clarification of the various object relations theories to demonstrate their evolution and continued significance for therapeutic practice.
This volume includes elucidation of the major scholarship that has advanced the ideas of object relations theorists such as Fairbairn, Klein, Winnicott, Kernberg, and Kohut, since the publication of the first edition. A thorough and detailed new chapter devoted to the emergence and development of relational psychoanalysis has been added to make this volume a “state of the art” articulation of current object relations thinking. The ideas and assumptions of each theory relative to metapsychology, psychopathology, and treatment are expounded, alongside a critical evaluation of the strengths and limitations of each approach. With extensive use of historic case material, Summers shows how each object relations theory yields specific clinical approaches to a variety of syndromes, and how these approaches entail specific modifications in clinical technique.
This volume will be essential reading for all analysts, psychologists, psychiatrists, and social workers who wish to familiarize themselves with object relations theories in general, sharpen their understanding of the work of specific object relations theorists, or enhance their ability to employ these theories in their clinical work.
Frank Summers, Ph.D., ABPP, is a clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst; professor of clinical psychiatry and the behavioral sciences, Northwestern University; and a super vising and training analyst, Chicago Psychoanalytic Institute and Chicago Center for Psychoanalysis. A former president of the Division of Psychoanalysis of the American Psychological Association, he maintains a psychoanalytic therapy practice in Chicago, Illinois.
Object Relations Theories and Psychopathology
A Comprehensive Text
Second Edition
Frank Summers
2nd edition published 2024 by Routledge
4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN and by Routledge
The right of Frank Summers to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
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First published 1994 by The Analytic Press
Published 2014 by Psychology Press 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 and by Psychology Press 27 Church Road, Hove, East Sussex, BN3 2FA
Psychology Press is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business Copyright
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN: 9781032779317 (hbk)
ISBN: 9781032779300 (pbk)
ISBN: 9781003485452 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781003485452
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To Renée
Acknowledgements
I wish to thank Kate Hawes for suggesting this project and making it possible. I want to express my gratitude to Kate for all her support through the years of my association with Routledge. And I want to give a special thank you to Georgina Clutterbucks for her exceptional responsiveness to my frequent inquiries. Her empathic support in shepherding this work to the point of its publication is deeply appreciated.
Preface to the Second Edition
The first edition of this book was published twenty-nine years ago as a textbook intended for both beginning and experienced clinicians who may be interested in either learning about object relations theories for the first time or integrating these theoretical approaches more fully into their work. In the time that has elapsed since the first edition rolled off the presses, there has been theoretical and clinical emendations to each of the theories discussed in the first edition.
Many creative clinicians and theorists have added new clinical insights, theoretical approaches, and clinical techniques that have expanded the contributions of object relations theories to psychoanalysis. That fact has motivated this second edition to bring the discussion of all theories and the paradigm drawn from them in the concluding chapter into the innovative and vibrant world of contemporary psychoanalysis.
Writers whose work was just beginning to achieve some attention or were unknown in the analytic community when the first edition was published constitute the main body of the new material. The most influential of these ideas is the development of relational psychoanalysis, and for that reason the chapter on interpersonal theory in the first edition has been supplanted by a new chapter on relational psychoanalysis, with an introductory section on the interpersonal tradition. This chapter follows the others because it is the most recently developed and is a product of the confluence of previous object relations theories and interpersonal thought.
Relational analysis was born from other theories and includes major concepts from many of them. The other additions are all extensions of the theories in the first edition.
The purpose of this second edition is to provide in one volume a comprehensive elucidation of the major object relations theories with their contemporary iterations. This volume will have succeeded in its purpose if psychoanalytic clinicians, psychoanalysts, students of psychoanalysis, therapists of any persuasion as well as academics interested in the cross fertilization of ideas between psychoanalysis and other disciplines, are stimulated to include ideas from these theories in their theoretical and clinical thinking. Those who do will travel a little deeper into the rich, variegated, complex, and often perplexing world of contemporary psychoanalysis.
1 Introduction
The Origins of Object Relations Theories
Object relations theories have been a part of psychoanalysis whether implicitly or explicitly since the 1950s at least. They began to garner more attention after the publication of the Greenberg and Mitchell text in 1983, but they have become widely read and discussed in mainstream psychoanalytic discourse only in the past two decades. Psychoanalytic theorists and clinicians who have doubts about the usefulness of traditional psychoanalytic theory, with either some or all patients, have turned increasingly to object relational theories to broaden or transform their theoretical and clinical viewpoint In addition, these theories have been subject to different interpretations. Greenberg and Mitchell (1983) and the relational school view object relational theories as part of a wider movement to supplant ego. Psychology with a relational model of psychoanalysis. On the other hand, Kernberg (1984) and the Kleinian School (1960) tend to see object relational concepts as an extension of ego psychology. Both Kohut and Winnicott accommodated to drive theory early in their theorizing, but both men ultimately abandoned the ego-drive model in favor of a purely psychological approach emphasizing early relationships as the key variable in the developmental process and personality formation.
In an attempt to redress the pitfalls of the traditional model, Greenberg and Mitchell (1983) published the first comprehensive description and analysis of each of the major theories. Their book not only has probably made the single most significant contribution to the dissemination of object relational ideas in psychoanalytic history, but also may be regarded as the foundation for what later became relational psychoanalysis. Nonetheless, it had two significant limitations: It did not present each theory as an integrated whole, and it did not draw out the unique clinical implications of each theory.
Despite the important contributions of the Greenberg and Mitchell text, their focus on theory resulted in a neglect of the clinical implications of each theory discussed. The intention of the first edition of this book was to address both these limitations by presenting each theory in terms of its basic concepts, the views of development and pathology derivative therefrom, and then to show the clinical implications of each theory. Most importantly, the purpose of this edition is to extend the first edition by including scholarship on each theory that has been written and discussed for the past twenty eight years. The aim, that is, is to elaborate and extend each of the major object relations theories to show the current state of the discourse within each theory.
Every development in psychoanalysis is a reaction to a current model that is found wanting in some fashion. Object relations theory is a reaction to the drive-ego model of the psyche. Object relational theories were developed by clinicians dissatisfied with the clinical and theoretical limitations of the classical psychoanalytic model. Because each
object relational theory is a reaction to the classical theory, one cannot grasp the meaning and importance of the theories without an appreciation of the history of the psychoanalytic ideas from which they came. Therefore, as a means of introduction to object relational theories, we begin with ego psychology to see how object relations theories grew from the Classical model of the mind. This discussion sets the context for the presentation of object relational theories in subsequent chapters.
The Origins of Ego Psychology
When Freud abandoned the theory of sexual trauma as the etiology of neurosis in favor of endogenous drives, psychoanalytic theory shifted to consideration of the internal workings of the mind. Freud (1915a) began to focus on inborn drives as the’ motivating force of psychopathology and eventually extended this to personality development in general. As drives and their vicissitudes came to be considered the critical factor in development, psychoanalytic theory made a decisive move away from external events, including trauma, as the focus of its method and theory toward the functioning of the mind which was now conceived to be a product of the drives, or biological tension states, which aim for gratification via tension reduction. According to this drive model, human motivation originates in the press of biological drives which gain psychological expression in the form of wishes, and these wishes power psychological functioning. Psychopathology, in this model, is caused by the repression not of memories of external trauma, but of wishes (Freud, 1915b). The pathogenic conflict is between the censorship of consciousness and unconscious wishes for instinctual gratification (Freud, 1915c). When the repression barrier is broken through by disguised expression of unconscious wishes, symptoms result. The clinical implication of this shift from the trauma theory to the drive model was that the goal of the analytic process became the uncovering of unconscious wishes, the repression of which was considered the cause of neurosis.
The study of unconscious wishes and their manifestation in psychopathology dominated psychoanalytic theory and practice from 1897 to 1923. With the publication of The Ego and the Id in 1923, this situation began to change (Freud, 1923). Freud pointed out in that work that the unconscious cannot be equated with wishes, nor’ the conscious with the forces of repression. The mechanism of repression is itself unconscious. Further, the guilt which motivates the repression is also unconscious. These facts led Freud to superimpose his structural model of ego-id-superego on the topographic model of unconsciouspreconscious-conscious. The ego, which consists of the repressive mechanisms, is largely unconscious, and the superego, which is the moral system motivating the repression of unacceptable wishes, has a conscious component, the conscience, and an unconscious component in the form of unconscious guilt. From the viewpoint of this structural model, psychological conflict takes place not between the unconscious and the conscious, but between the unconscious components of the ego or superego and the id. Psychopathology is a compromise formation between an id content, such as a sexual wish, which is otherwise blocked from consciousness, and an ego defense mechanism, such as repression, due to its unacceptability to the moral system, or superego. Psychopathology is, therefore, a result of conflict between competing psychological structures. This shift in Freud’s theoretical thinking marked a change in psychoanalytic theory and practice away from the exclusive focus on drives to an equal emphasis on the forces opposing it (Freud, 1937). These opposing forces included both the motive, which was considered to be guilt, a function of the
The Origins of
Relations Theories 3 superego, and the defense mechanisms which it employed to keep the wish unconscious, an ego mechanism.
With this theoretical shift, the ego now assumed the central role in the functioning of the psyche. The degree of health or’ pathology of the personality, from this viewpoint, was a function of the ability of the ego to manage the press of drive-based wishes for discharge and the constraints of reality upon such gratification. The moral constraints from within in the form of the superego are an additional counterpressure to drive discharge which the ego must manage. Ego strength, or the capacity of the ego to handle the conflicting demands of id, reality, and superego, now assumed the pivotal role in the well-being of the personality. Ultimately, the ego must balance the demands of id, superego, and reality to achieve psychic balance. To the degree that the ego is not able to accomplish a functional balance, the personality will fall ill. For example, if the ego is forced to use excess repression, wishes will seek substitute expressions of discharge and hysterical symptoms will result. To the extent that the ego displaces unacceptable wishes onto the environment, phobic fears will occur. Thus does ego psychology include the functioning of the ego in all psychopathology. Every symptom implies a failure of the ego to balance effectively the need for drive discharge with the constraints of superego strictures and reality (Fenichel, 1945).
In accordance with this view, Freud changed his conceptualization of anxiety. Whereas he had originally viewed anxiety as the result of dammed up libido due to repression, he now reconceptualized anxiety as a warning signal to the ego (Freud, 1926). When the ego senses danger from unacceptable wishes, it will experience anxiety. The ego, sensing danger from within,’ employs a defense mechanism to ward off the threatening affect and restore the ego to temporary balance, even if at the price of a symptom outbreak. From the viewpoint of the structural model, anxiety is not a product of repression, but rather motivates repression and other defenses. This reconceptualization of anxiety is another indication that Freud by this point had given the ego the central role of synthesizing the various pressures to which the psyche is subject.
The structural model resulted in a concept of psychological organization. The ego is not simply a group of mechanisms, but a coherent organization whose task is to relate to reality and promote the functioning of the personality by balancing competing pressures. That is to say, the ego is the adaptive capacity of the organism. According to this view, in the healthy personality, the ego is the master of the id, superego, and relations with reality. This concept led Freud to the question of how such mastery is possible given the biological origins of the psyche. He had to account for the establishment of a psychological organization, the structured ego, which opposes the gratification of the drives, from which all human motivation originates.
Freud’s answer was that the ego developed from drive frustration. Gratification is never all the child wants, even in the best of circumstances. Eventually the preoedipal tie to the mother is given up, and later the oedipal object must be relinquished (Freud, 1923). The loss of these early objects, according to Freud, forces the child to set up a substitute internal psychological’ representation of the parents to replace the abandoned objects of childhood longings. As the early attachment to the mother is given up in reality, she is taken in psychologically. The object cathexis of the mother is replaced by identification with her. In the oedipal phase, which Freud considered decisive for the identifications, the longing for the parent of the opposite sex is given up, and the child either intensifies identification with the same sex parent or identifies with the opposite sex parent in response to the loss.
The Origins
Relations Theories
These identifications will determine the gender identification of the personality and concomitantly form the superego-ego ideal complex. Each relinquishment of a childhood object results in identification which helps form the ego structure. As Freud (1923) said:
When it happens that a person has to give up a sexual object, there quite often ensues an alteration of his ego which can only be described as a setting up of the object inside the ego . . . the process, especially in the early phases of development, is a very frequent one, and it makes it possible to suppose that the character of the ego is a precipitate of abandoned object-cathexes and that it contains the history of those object-choices [p.29].
In Freud’s formulation, the id drives the organism to seek object contact in order to achieve instinctual gratification. When’ reality forces the relinquishment of these objects, they are taken in via identification and form the basis of the ego. Thus, the ego develops out of the id by frustration of wishes and loss of objects. In Freud’s view, the ego is the part of the id that, from the necessity of frustration, relates to reality and is formed by becoming like the objects reality forces it to relinquish. Likewise, the superego is a ““precipitate of abandoned object cathexes of the id,” “ but it is also a reaction formation against those choices in the form of moral objection. Thus, both the ego and superego are formed from the internalization of previously cathected objects.
The Classical Ego Psychologists
Freud’s pioneering suggestions regarding the importance of the ego and the mechanisms of its development have become the basis for ego psychology, which has extended the concept of the ego even further than Freud himself. Anna Freud (1936) enumerated a variety of defensive mechanisms used by the ego to keep wishes unconscious. She pointed out that the various defenses used by the ego become resistances in the analytic process, so that psychoanalytic treatment is equally focused on ego mechanisms and id wishes. She drew further implications from the structural model by pointing out that psychoanalytic assessment of development and psychopathology must include the functioning of the ego. Subsequent ego psychologists have extended further the concept of the ego’s autonomy from the id. Hartmann (1939) pointed out’ that some of the mechanisms used by the ego, such as perception, motility, and memory, do not develop from frustration, but are autonomously developed functions, which he called ““apparatuses of primary ego autonomy.”“ These functions later become integrated into the ego and are utilized for its functioning as part of an integrated whole. Hartmann (1939) pointed out that since these ego functions exist from birth and originate outside of conflict, one cannot properly speak of the ego as developing ““out of”“ the id; rather, both ego and id develop from an undifferentiated matrix. As development proceeds, gradual differentiation takes place as ego and id become separate systems. This concept removes the original dependence of the ego on the id which characterized Freud’s formulation. Further, a part of ego functioning is not in conflict at any given time, and Hartmann referred to this part of the ego as a “conflict-free ego sphere.” For example, he pointed out that while fantasy is at times a product of frustrated wishes, it is also a useful means for the consideration of alternatives in solving problems, and in this case is not a product of conflict.
The concept of autonomous ego apparatuses did not mean that Hartmann disputed Freud’’s view that drive frustration leads to the structuralization of the ego. For Hartmann, there are two sources of ego development: the inborn apparatuses of primary autonomy
The Origins of Object Relations Theories 5 and the frustration of drives, which results in secondary autonomy. With regard to this second source, Hartmann agreed with Freud that energy from libidinal frustration is used for the organized ego, but he added his view that aggression is a more significant source’’ of ego structuralization than the libido (Hartmann, Kris, and Lowenstein, 1949). Hartmann pointed out that since the intent of the aggressive drive is to destroy the object, its discharge is more dangerous than the libidinal drive. Consequently, neutralization is more critical for the aggressive than the libidinal drive. For the same reason, in the view of Hartmann and his colleagues, permanent object relations are more dependent on the sublimation of the aggressive than the libidinal drive. Neutralized aggression leads to structuralization of the ego which allows for good object relationships and object constancy and which, in turn, make possible the further neutralization of aggression, and a benign cycle ensues.
Conversely, Hartmann accorded unneutralized aggression a primary role in much of psychopathology. For example, when un-neutralized aggression attacks an organ, psychosomatic illness results. When aggression is not neutralized at all, no counter-cathexis is possible, aggression erupts over the organism, object relations are not possible, and a schizophrenic process results (Hartmann, 1953).
In Hartmann’’s view, the ego is a group of functions, including both defenses and adaptive mechanisms, and these functions are organized into a system he called the “synthetic function” of the ego. This system is not simply an outgrowth of the id, but an organized, adaptive capacity which controls functioning in health and has its own sources of growth in addition to frustration of wishes. Nonetheless, complete ego autonomy is not possible in’ Hartmann’’s view because the ego uses energy from the drives, especially the aggressive drive. The organized ego achieves only a relative autonomy from the id to which it is always linked.
Rapaport viewed the relationship between ego and id as the relationship between constitutional givens and the creation of the personality (Rapaport, 1951, 1957). Although he agreed with Hartmann that the ego developed from an undifferentiated ego-id matrix, he pointed out that in healthy development, the emergent ego organization obeyed its own laws, distinct from and independent of the elements from which it emerged. Insofar as the ego is autonomous from the id, it is better adapted to reality, and more capable of functioning. The extent to which the ego is unable to achieve autonomy from the id is the degree to which it will be a slave to it, with a resultant inability to adapt to the demands of reality. The health of the personality, in Rapaport’s view, is a function of ego autonomy, the ability of the ego to manage the id pressures. The actual content of id wishes and the conflicts to which they give rise are of little moment to Rapaport as the same wishes and conflicts may exist in healthy and pathological personalities. The difference is to be found in the ability of the ego in health to achieve autonomy from the id so that it can manage its conflicts without symptomatic outcome.
Arlow and Brenner (1964) have extended Hartmann’s concept of ego autonomy by pointing out that the topographic model was not superseded by the structural model, but replaced by it. In contrast to the common ego psychological view as represented by’ Hartmann and Anna Freud that the topographic model can be used along with the structural model, Arlow and Brenner point out that the two models are, in fact, contradictory because anti-instinctual forces are unconscious. Conflicts are not between the preconscious and unconscious because both instinctual wish and the force that opposes it are unconscious. The concept of the preconscious has been obviated by the central role of the ego in psychic conflict. Because the preconscious cannot determine the nature of the psychic content with which the instinctual wish is in conflict, it has been replaced by the ego.
The Origins of Object Relations Theories
In agreement with Rapaport, Arlow and Brenner endorse Hartmann’’s view that the ego and id develop from an undifferentiated matrix. However, they point out that all mental phenomena include some degree of compromise between ego and id, so that the two institutions are not separable except under conditions of conflict (Brenner, 1981). The ego as excutant of the id must find a way to help it achieve instinctual gratification. To accomplish this goal, the ego must negotiate the dangers to which all id wishes give rise. Therefore, according to Brenner (1976), all mental phenomena are products of a compromise formation including wish, guilt, anxiety, and defense. The id wish conflicts with guilt, creating anxiety which is warded off by defense. The task for the ego is to find a way to allow instinctual gratification within the limits set by guilt and anxiety. To perform this task, the ego uses a variety of mental mechanisms, such as fantasy, perception, cognition, and the ‘functions typically labelled “defense mechanisms” (Brenner, 1981).
In this view of mental functioning, defenses are not a specialized group of mechanisms, as conceptualized by Anna Freud (1936) and Hartmann (1939). Because all ego functions have both defensive and adaptive value, one cannot label any particular ego maneuvers as “defenses” (Brenner, 1981). All mental mechanisms may and frequently do serve both adaptive and defensive purposes. Socially acceptable, healthy behavior is no less a compromise formation than symptoms. When instinctual gratification is excessively compromised to satisfy the demands of guilt and anxiety, symptoms or pathological character traits result. The decisive factor in health or illness for Brenner (1976) and Arlow (1963) is the ability of the ego to execute a compromise formation that allows instinctual gratification without symptoms.
White took the final step in the theoretical movement toward the concept of the autonomous ego with his view that the ego has its own independent energies (White, 1963). Unlike other ego psychologists, White based his position on animal and child development research. He pointed out that there is abundant evidence from animal research to support the concept of non-biological motivation. A variety of animals will learn mazes and solve problems when all their drive needs are satisfied. Further, rats and other animals will learn complex material solely for the experience of novelty and being able to explore, and, among rewards of novelty, they prefer objects they can manipulate and have an effect upon. White noted that Harlow’s monkeys will learn solely ‘for the reward of looking outside, and that the learning curve for this experience is similar to that achieved for biological rewards. White concluded that there is a drive for mastery over the environment, which he termed effectance motivation.
White pointed to experimental and naturalistic observation of infants and young children which he believed supported the existence of a need for effectance independent of biological motivation. He noted that observation of infants as early as the days after birth has shown that they will spend some time in exploration, and that this time increases until by about one year the child spends about six hours per day in playful exploration. Infants will perform activities during the “play time” for no reward other than the successful completion of the behavior. White noted Piaget’s observation that infants as young as three months learn to repeat behavior for the sole purpose of having an effect on the environment, and show clear signs of delight when successful. White also pointed out that children will choose to perform activities which, in fact, delay gratification, but provide the enjoyment of mastering a skill. For example, children prefer to use a spoon to eat, although instinctual gratification is delayed, to using their hands, which gratifies the biological urge more quickly, but denies the child the joy of mastery.
White concluded that the drive for effectance is not only separate from, but may also be in conflict with, biological drives. He considered this motivation to be fueled by energies
The Origins of Object Relations Theories 7 inhering in the ego apparatus that were totally independent of instinctual needs. Hendrick, from a more purely psychoanalytic viewpoint, came to the similar conclusion that there is a drive for mastery which fuels the organization of the ego (Hendrick, 1942, 1943). However, Hendrick resolved the issue by postulating a drive “to do and learn to do” (Hendrick, 1942, p.40). White points out that the motivation to have an effect on the environment shares none of the characteristics of a drive per se: it has neither somatic source, nor consummatory pattern, nor specificity of aim. White’s argument is that only the acceptance of independent ego energies can account for the animal and child research data, and, therefore, he concludes that the ego does not develop from a common matrix with the id, but is separate and autonomous from birth. White’s position is the final step in the evolution of ego psychology toward the liberation of the ego from its dependence on the id.
In White’s formulation, there is no role for abandoned object cathexes in the development of the ego. Independent ego energies require no object relations to achieve structuralization. The parents’ role in ego development is to provide identificatory objects for modeling effectance. The child wants to be like the father in order to achieve his competence in effecting the environment. This concept of identification is very different from Freud’s view of “taking the object in” in order to withstand the pain of loss. White views identification as a form of imitation, not an incorporation of the objects as it was for Freud.
Whether ego psychology conceives the ego as completely independent of the id, as in White’s formulation, or more functionally autonomous, as in the theories of Hartmann and Rappaport, ego psychology comes to see the ego as a separate organization from the id. This model of the mind as consisting of drives and an ego organization which has some autonomous ability to regulate their discharge will be referred to here as the “drive-ego” model. According to this model, the crucial issues in development are the vicissitudes of the drives and, concomitantly, the organization of the ego, the adaptive capacity of the organism.
As can be seen from this review, within ego psychology there are two views of ego autonomy. According to Hartmann and Rapaport, the ego originates from both inborn apparatuses and the neutralization of drives; White and Hendrick view the ego as having its own energies. For Hartmann and Rapaport, ego autonomy is only relative as they adhere to Freud’s notion that the ego is formed partly on the basis of drive frustration. By contrast, White abandoned the notion of structuralization through frustration.
White’s more complete cleavage from Freud led to a departure from the frustration model of ego development. White was able to marshal considerable experimental and observational evidence to support his view of total ego autonomy. In so doing, he gave only the most minimal role to object relationships in the development of the ego. White viewed the ego as originating in psychic energy, similar to the energy fueling the id. By contrast, Hartmann and Rapaport in their view of the relative autonomy of the ego, saw a direct connection between the vicissitudes of object relations and ego development. In their view, frustration in drive-fueled object relationships led to the structuralization of the ego. However, their derivation of the ego from id energy was speculative, lacking the evidential support of White’s theory.
Ego Psychology and the Psychoanalytic Process
The classical ego psychologists tended to emphasize theory, but they did draw some clinical implications from their view of the importance of the ego in development and pathology. Rapaport (1954) pointed out that the clinician cannot make an assessment solely on
the basis of knowledge of the patient’s drives and their vicissitudes. Such an assessment would leave out of account the functioning of the personality, its strengths and weaknesses, prognosis, and suitability for analysis. Due to the influence of ego psychology, psychoanalytically informed assessment now typically includes judgments regarding the patient’s ego strengths and weaknesses as well as its structure. Psychopathology is understood not simply in terms of the conflicts which produced it, but also by the way the individual handles the conflict, that is, by the ego mechanisms utilized for this purpose. From the ego psychological viewpoint, the structure of the ego is as much at issue in the understanding of pathology as the conflict with which the ego is grappling.
With regard to direct application to the psychoanalytic process, it has been mentioned that Anna Freud (1936) adopted the view, endorsed by her father (Freud, 1940), that analysis is only half about unconscious wishes, as the other half is concerned with the ego and superego, their structure and functioning. Interpretation is geared toward the ego mechanisms as much as what they conceal. “Ego analysis” has come to mean analyzing the defensive organization as much as the drive-based wishes presumed to underlie it. Although this may seem like a self-evident technical principle from the contemporary viewpoint, it is a clear departure from the technique Freud adopted in Studies on Hysteria when he advocated using any means to circumvent the patient’s defenses to bring forth unconscious repressed material (Freud, 1895). Ego psychology shifted the theory of technique to defense interpretation, according this aspect of the process a role equal to interpreting unconscious wishes.
Arlow (1987) and Brenner (1976) have extended the concept of defense analysis by drawing out the clinical implications of their view that symptoms are compromise formations effected by the ego. They point out that defense analysis is not a clinical process distinguishable from the analysis of wishes. That is, one does not analyze defenses “first.” Since every mental phenomenon is a compromise formation, its analysis includes interpretation of the wish, guilt, anxiety, and defense that compose it. In Brenner’s view, a complete interpretation includes understanding all the elements of the compromise formation entering into the symptom.
Analysis, as the psychology of mental conflict, is always concerned with the unconscious conflict between a wish pressing for instinctual discharge and the danger situation which its gratification would produce. The analysis of the danger situation that motivates defense may be termed ego analysis, but it is not separable temporally from other aspects of interpretation. Indeed, in Arlow’s (1963, 1969) view, both the id wish and the “danger” to which it gives rise are unconscious fantasies, so that pathology is ultimately a product of unconscious fantasies, one from the side of the id, and the other motivating the ego’s defense.
In the view of both Arlow (1987) and Brenner (1976), the role of the analyst is solely to interpret unconscious conflict. The analytic task, therefore, is to understand psychic conflict and make conscious the compromise formations to which it gives rise. All the patient’s behavior is a product of a compromise formation, so the aims of the analysis are to grasp the underlying conflicts of whatever the patient is doing. The patient tries to enlist the analyst to gratify the unconscious wish, and, by not complying, the analyst facilitates its expression (Arlow and Brenner, 1990). Brenner (1979) sees no role for the development of an analytic alliance or any other non-interpretive behavior on the part of the analyst to form a relationship with the patient. If the patient pressures the analyst for an alliance, the analyst’s role is to interpret the conflict that underlies that wish, not to comply with it. Brenner’s (1979) contention is that analysts too quickly forget the importance of analyzing
The Origins of Object Relations Theories 9 conflict in severe emotional symptoms, such as excessive dependence, suicidal ideation, and depression. The success of the analysis is a function of the analyst’s ability to maintain the analytic stance irrespective of the conflict at issue. Because conflict is ubiquitous, after all the elements of the conflict are made conscious, defenses will still operate and a new compromise formation will be effected (Brenner, 1976). However, the defenses will be less intense resulting in a new compromise formation allowing greater control and integration by the ego and increased instinctual gratification. According to Arlow (1987) and Brenner (1976), the result of a beneficial analysis is not a change in the defenses, but a new compromise formation that allows instinctual gratification without symptom formation.
Despite these clinical implications of ego psychology, another group of ego psychologists has advanced the view that there has been a “developmental lag” between the advances in ego psychological metapsychology and the clinical theory derived from this major theoretical shift (Gray, 1982). These contemporary ego psychologists believe that the theory has dramatic clinical potential never realized by its founders. Their contention is that despite widespread acceptance of ego psychology as the metapsychological foundation of psychoanalysis, practice has continued to employ an “id” model. Gray points out that Freud’s original technique of circumventing the defenses in whatever way necessary still has undue influence on technique, although in more subtle fashion than overt suggestion and manipulation. For example, if the patient is angry at the analyst, to interpret this quickly as an aggressive drive derivative from childhood is to bypass the negative transference and the defenses against it, thus increasing and perhaps preserving resistance. To the extent that the analyst relies on quick interpretation of impulses, he is utilizing id, rather than ego psychology, in his conduct of the clinical process. If the analyst insists on confronting impulses that the patient is trying to keep unconscious, he will necessarily be met by resistance, and it may appear that suggestion or manipulation is in order. However, according to Gray, such interventions are not called for. The reason for the increased resistance and apparent need for non-interpretive intervention is to be found in the analyst’s technique of bypassing the defenses.
In contrast, Gray (1990) proposes a technical model based on the recognition that the patient’s symptoms are a product of the defensive processes of the ego. According to this model, the analyst listens for drive derivatives, but does not intervene until the patient’s ego unconsciously interferes with the flow of the material. This resistance reflects the defensive functioning of the ego, and attention is directed to it. In Gray’s view, interpretation is always approached from the side of the defense.
He assumes that the patient’s resistance is caused by a fantasy of danger if certain words are spoken to the analyst (Gray, 1990). By directing attention to the immediate resistance, this fantasy will be addressed and may itself be revealed as a defense. The goal of this type of intervention is to increase the patient’s awareness of his unconscious ego, rather than to bring impulses into consciousness.
Gray’s fundamental point is that a strict adherence to the principles of ego psychology dictates a focus on ego functioning within the session as the best means for understanding the way the ego defends and adapts. Because the purpose of interpretation is to help the patient give up his defenses, he must be shown how they work in the analytic relationship. In Gray’s (1973) view, a major advantage of this approach is that it leads the patient to become self observing. Gray points out that the patient is most likely to become self analytic if he sees his defenses operating on a moment to moment basis.
Gray (1987) has applied the same reasoning to the treatment of the superego. He feels that analysts tend to overlook the analysis of the superego because Freud was pessimistic
regarding the subjection of this psychic agency to analytic scrutiny. Freud (1920, 1926) saw it as a form of resistance linked to the death instinct and, therefore, defying analyzability. In Gray’s view, the superego is an alienated part of ego functioning and should be analyzed like any symptom with the goal of making it conscious. As the nature and origins of the superego become conscious, it is brought under the control of the ego. Whereas Freud believed the superego could be influenced mostly by suggestion, Gray sees it as an analyzable portion of the ego which, when made conscious, enhances ego functioning.
Weiss (1971) agrees with Gray’s emphasis on the importance of here-and-now defense analysis, but he extends further the contemporary ego psychological theory of how the analytic process achieves therapeutic results. Weiss argues against the classical theory of analytic technique that unconscious urges become conscious due to frustration by the neutrality and abstinence of the analytic setting. If this were so, their eruption into consciousness should be disruptive, rather than helpful. Weiss points out that defenses are given up when the ego feels it is safe to do so. This fact indicates that the lifting of the defenses is under the unconscious control of the ego. When the ego judges reality to be safe, it lifts the defenses, and the ego defenses change from being a segregated portion of the ego to an ego-syntonic control mechanism in harmony with the rest of the ego. In the analytic setting, this means that the patient will test the analyst to judge whether he or she can safely endure the revelation of anxiety-provoking impulses. When the analyst is so judged, unconscious impulses can become conscious and will then be subject to ego regulation. According to Weiss, this process explains why making the unconscious conscious is helpful rather than disruptive. It is Weiss’s contention that classical theory has remained within the outmoded frustration theory and, therefore, failed to appreciate the role of the ego in the clinical process, thereby exemplifying the “developmental lag” between the metapsychology of the ego and the clinical theory. The value of defense analysis, according to Weiss, is that it changes the relationship of the defenses to the rest of the ego, and this psychic shift is what makes possible the appearance of unconscious wishes. By failing to appreciate this connection, the frustration theory cannot account for the therapeutic benefit of interpretation. Weiss (1988) has reported empirical evidence to substantiate his claim regarding the operation of the analytic process. Using blind ratings of clinical protocols in a limited number of cases, his data show that when repressed contents become conscious, the patient’s anxiety is lower and his experience more vivid. The classical theory would predict the opposite, but the data support Weiss’s hypothesis that the unconscious becomes conscious when the patient feels safe rather than disrupted. In addition, Weiss found that after the patient’s unconscious demands are frustrated by the analyst, the analysand tends to feel less anxious, bolder, and more relaxed. If the patient tested the analyst to have the demands gratified, as predicted by the classical model, the patient would be more anxious. This finding also confirms Weiss’s hypothesis that the patient tests to see if the analyst is safe, and, if the analyst shows he is safe by maintaining his neutrality, the patient will feel relief and be able to bring forth more material. In a similar study, Weiss reported that patients’ intensity of experience and insight were aided by interpretations which tended to disconfirm unconscious beliefs, and patients who did better in analysis tended to receive such interpretations. In Weiss’s view, this explains why some interpretations work and other do not. If an interpretation tends to confirm a patient’s anxiety-provoking unconscious belief, such as that he is inadequate, the interpretation will not help, but if the interpretation tends to disconfirm the belief, such as by indicating the belief is a fantasy, it will bring relief.
Weiss uses these findings to support his contention that the analytic process works by defense interpretation and maintenance of a neutral analytic stance, both of which help the patient feel safe, and this safety opens the patient to previously warded off impulses, which results in analytic success.
This group of ego psychologists has applied the insights of ego psychology to a reconceptualization of analytic technique. The importance of drive interpretation recedes in their model in favor of detailed attention to the operation of the defensive functioning of the ego in the analytic setting. According to this model, impulses need not be directly addressed, but will emerge when the defenses are properly interpreted and the patient feels safe after having successfully tested the analyst’s neutrality. To the degree that the analyst is able to make the setting safe by adherence to analytic neutrality and defense interpretation, progress toward the analytic goals will be made. The approach of this group is a clear and consistent application of the structural model to the analytic process.
Ego Psychology and Object Relationships
All ego psychologists discussed thus far have either ignored or minimized the role of object relationships in the formation of the ego. In contrast, the third branch of ego psychology views ego formation as a function of object relationships. This viewpoint, which provides the foundation of object relational theories, is based on Freud’s (1923) concept of the ego as the “precipitate of abandoned object cathexes” (p.29). W. Ronald Fairbairn in Scotland and Melanie Klein in London, working independently, both drew the implication from this statement that the ego consists of internalized object relations. Fairbairn, whose work is discussed in Chapter 2, endorsed the concept of the ego’s autonomy from the drives, but pointed out that the growth of the ego is dependent on satisfactory object relationships. His protégé, Harry Guntrip, whose theoretical and clinical contributions are also examined in the second chapter, further developed the relationship between early object relationships and the growth or arrest of the ego.
Klein, whose work is the subject of Chapter 3, also believed that ego development is a product of internalized object relationships. Unlike Fairbairn and Guntrip, Klein’s contention was that endogenous libidinal and aggressive drives give rise to object relationships which, from the earliest phase of infancy, form the basis of the ego. The significance she accorded the drives, as we shall see in Chapter 3, sets her theoretical views apart from other object relational theorists, but her theoretical and clinical system was based on ego growth via the internalization of objects. Klein’s theoretical system spawned a group of followers who adopted the fundaments of her conceptual scheme, although frequently modifying certain aspects of it.
Klein’s views were sharply criticized by Anna Freud (1927) who, as we have seen, adopted the more traditional ego psychological position that the ego was formed from the frustration of drives. The result was a split in British psychoanalysis between the “Kleinians” and the followers of Anna Freud (Segal, 1979). Analysts who neither accepted the Kleinian system nor rejected all of its postulates became known as the British “middle school,” or “independents” (Raynor, 1991). Fairbairn and Guntrip are often included in this group along with Michael Balint and Donald Winnicott (Sutherland, 1980). Balint (1968), like Fairbairn, emphasized the importance of the primary love relationship as the foundation of ego development. Winnicott was influenced by Klein’s object relational theory, but his views regarding the relationship between early object relations and ego development emphasizing the mother-child bond rather than drives.
Winnicott’s theoretical and clinical views, the subject of Chapter 4, are the most comprehensive system of thought to come from the British “middle school.” In America, Edith Jacobson (1964) was the first theoretician to link object relationships and the building of ego structure. In her view, drive development, ego maturation, and the growth of object relationships were all aspects of a unified developmental process. She agreed with Freud that pleasure and unpleasure are the primary infantile experiences, but she pointed out that in the earliest phase of infancy, the child cannot differentiate pleasure from its source. In this first phase, then, the child’s fantasies are of a merger with the mother which forms the foundation of all future object relationships. Her contention was that the concept of the oral stage had to be expanded beyond feeding and oral erotism to a whole range of experiences that clustered around oral gratification and frustration.
At about three months, in Jacobson’s view, the maturation of the ego leads the child to differentiate the love object from the self. At this point, the beginnings of self- and objectimages are formed, and they cluster along the lines of the drive organization.
Gratifying experiences become libidinally organized self-object units distinct and independent from the aggressively organized self-object units born of frustrating experiences. In this phase, every experience of closeness or gratification leads to the temporary experience of return to the early merger state. These fantasies are incorporative, or introjective, as the child wishes to become the mother. In contrast to customary usage, Jacobson viewed introjection as a primitive mechanism of incorporating the object in fantasy whereby the object became the self. Analogously, she viewed projection as the primitive experience of “ejection” whereby the self became the object. In Jacobson’s view, the earliest identifications consisted of the refusion of self and object-images; they were not true ego identifications.
According to Jacobson’s view of development, if the mother is able to “tune in” to the discharge pattern of the infant, sometime in the first year the infant begins a more active form of primitive identification by imitating the parent. This new behavior is a developmental step forward because the infant is active and utilizing an ego mechanism, motor behavior. Nonetheless, Jacobson points out that imitation is not a true ego identification because it is founded on the magical fantasy of becoming the mother, rather than being the mother. Imitation, in Jacobson’s view, is merger through activity, rather than through physical contact.
In the second year, the child learns to distinguish the features of the love object and the temporal sense develops. These two capacities allow the child to be the object without the fantasy of the object. At this point, selective identification begins to replace fusion as a true ego identification, and the child is thus able to differentiate wishful and real self-images. The child’s wishful self-image combines with the identification with the idealized parent to form the ego ideal; this benign structure compensates for the lost fusion.
Concurrently, the negative self-image built from frustrating experiences, realistic parental prohibitions, and the ideal self- and object-images combine to form the superego. Jacobson pointed out that unless the child admires qualities of the parents, he cannot form a meaningful ego identification in which the ego is modified to assume characteristics of the object. Although she believed that all identification has a component of separation and, therefore, aggression, her contention was that the formation of the ego is dependent primarily on the mother’s attunement to the infant’s discharge needs. In her view, this attunement is the basis for the libidinal object relationship which fosters the development of positive self- and object-images. These internalized positive images are the basic units out of which the healthy ego is formed. Aggressive object relationships are inevitable, but if the positive self- and object-images are strong, they keep frustration within manageable
The Origins of Object Relations Theories 13 limits, preventing excessive aggressiveness. In turn, the strong ego is more able to withstand gratifying experiences without merging, and frustrating experiences without return to primitive identifications. The relationships among drive discharge, ego maturation, and object relationships are complex and reciprocal from Jacobson’s point of view. The healthy formation of the ego and superego structures is inseparable from maternal attunement to the child’s discharge needs and the satisfaction of the resulting object relationship.
Jacobson, unlike traditional ego psychologists, gave a primary role to the nature of the early object relationship in the formation of psychological structure. Her view of the importance of this relationship emphasized both gratification and frustration of drive needs, and included both in ego identification. For Jacobson, the crucial process in early development is the shift from the fantasy world of the mother to being like the mother. This gradual movement from fantasy to reality is made possible by the reciprocal influences of object relationships and identification. Jacobson’s view that the ego develops in accordance with the early object relationships and resulting identifications extended the connection between ego development and object relationships well beyond Freud’s concept of abandoned object cathexes. In Jacobson’s view, the nature of the real relationship between mother and child was crucial, and the bond that grew out of this relationship was central in ways that went beyond its frustrating component.
A similar step from a different direction was taken by Mahler Pine, and Bergmann (1975) who believed the birth of the psychological self is the outcome of the separationindividuation process. They define separation as awareness of separateness from the primary object and individuation as the assumption of individual characteristics. Although Mahler and her coworkers conceptualized this process as intrapsychic and therefore not directly observable, they believed it could be inferred from systematic observations of the behavior of infants and young children with their mothers.
Mahler agreed with Jacobson’s contention that in early infancy self and object cannot be differentiated. According to Mahler’s developmental scheme, after a brief “autistic” phase devoid of object contact, the one-to-six month old infant is in a “symbiotic phase” in which all experience is fantasized as part of the self. The separation-individuation process begins with the child’s emergence from symbiosis and lasts until the onset of the oedipal phase at about thirty six months. The first subphase, from six to ten months, is termed “differentiation” and is characterized by the child’s first awareness of its difference from the environment. From about 10 to 16 months, the child engages in “practicing,” moving away from the mother both physically and emotionally to explore the world. According to Mahler, at about 16 to 25 months, the child is in the “rapprochement” phase as it suddenly seems to realize that there is danger in moving away, and seems to want to return to the earlier bond. Nonetheless, the child still needs to separate, and this resistance to losing its gains results in an “ambitendency”. Eventually, the child moves away again toward independence and one can infer the existence of internalized emotional object constancy.
In Mahler’s view, the intrapsychic process of separation-individuation, if successful, results in the internalization of whole objects with both good and bad qualities. However, if the process is disturbed at any point, the ego’s development will be impaired and either a preoedipal form of pathology will result or, at minimum, oedipal development will be distorted. Thus, Mahler, like Jacobson, viewed object relationships as an inherent part of ego development. Mahler saw the bond formed between mother and child, and the child’s ability to use it, as the crucial component in the child’s internalization process and consequent ego development. Like Jacobson’s theory, Mahler’s view of ego development extended the role of object relationships well beyond the concept of frustration.
The clinical implications of Jacobson’s and Mahler’s revisions of psychoanalytic theory have emphasized the extension of psychoanalytic treatment to severe psychopathology. Jacobson’s view of ego development led her to treat depressives, borderline patients, and even psychotic individuals by analytic means. She did, however, acknowledge that the treatment of preoedipal psychopathology requires modification of the strict interpretive stance. Pregenital fantasies may often be used for the treatment process, rather than interpreted. For example, Jacobson (1954) allowed the idealizing transferences of depressed patients to go on for extended periods without interpretation because she believed such patients are attempting to recover their lost ability to love through “magic love” of the analyst. To interpret such a transference quickly is to interfere with the patient’s need to use the analyst in a way which can ultimately lead to restored functioning. Jacobson’s primary contribution to technique was to show that analytic treatment could be successful with severely disturbed patients as long as the analyst was willing to be more flexible regarding interpretation than the classical technique allows. Jacobson appeared to draw no clinical implications from her theoretical views for the analytic treatment of neurotic patients and, consequently, made no effort to modify the classical model for the treatment of such patients.
Similarly, Mahler (1971, 1972) focused the clinical implications of her theory on reconceptualizing the treatment of severe pathology. Mahler conceptualized the severe forms of childhood psychosis on the basis of her developmental theory. Infantile autism is fixation at the autistic level of development and childhood schizophrenia was considered by Mahler (1952, 1968) to be a pathological fixation at the symbiotic phase. Her contributions in these areas were to offer a new conceptualization of these severe illnesses based on an empirically derived developmental model.
Although these conceptualizations in themselves are highly original, Mahler (1971, 1972) made perhaps her most unique contribution to the understanding of pathology in her application of her developmental model to the borderline syndrome. In Mahler’s view, the borderline patient is caught in the “rapprochement” conflicts of the 16- to 25-monthold child. The borderline patient, like the child of this age, wishes to cling, but fears the loss of his fragile sense of self, and wishes to separate, but fears the dangers of moving away from the parental figure. In Mahler’s view, the borderline patient is fixated at the “rapprochement” crisis, and treatment should focus on the patient’s inability to resolve the separation-individuation process. However, Mahler provided no specific recommendations for technique.
Although Mahler’s clinical theory tended to focus on preoedipal pathology, unlike Jacobson she did believe that her developmental model had implications for neurosis. In Mahler’s (1975) view, “the infantile neurosis becomes manifestly visible during the oedipal phase, but may be shaped by the rapprochement crisis that precedes it” (p.332). Conflicts in negotiating the rapprochement subphase render more difficult the successful resolution of the oedipal phase, and, thereby, contribute to a neurotic outcome. In particular, Mahler thought that neurotic patients who oscillate between desires for merger and defense against reengulfment suffer from unresolved conflicts in the rapprochement subphase. While Mahler believed that her delineation of preoedipal developmental phases had significant implications for at least some neurotic patients, she did not construct a detailed technical model to show how these implications may be carried out.
The work of Klein, Jacobson, and, to a lesser degree, Mahler all exerted a strong influence on Otto Kernberg whose views are the subject of Chapter 5. Kernberg adopted Jacobson’s blend of drives, object relations, and ego structuralization to construct a
The Origins of Object Relations Theories 15 developmental theory based on the internalization of drive-based object relations. As will be seen in Chapter 5, Kernberg, like Jacobson, views development as a series of object relationships with increasing degrees of structuralization and differentiation. Like Klein and Jacobson, Kernberg believes drives fuel psychological structure, but he also conceptualizes drives as inherently object relational, and the ego as formed from object relational units.
Heinz Kohut’s work does not bear the stamp of Jacobson’s theory so clearly, but her influence can be seen in Kohut’s abandonment of the concept of the ego in favor of the self. While other object relational theorists use the concept of the self, Kohut was the clearest in substituting self structuralization for ego formation as the foundation of the developmental process. Kohut, like all other object relational theorists, viewed early object relationships as the key to the formation of psychological structure, but he conceived of the psyche as a self structure rather than and organization of ego mechanisms. His systematic views on the development, pathology, and treatment of the self, to be discussed in Chapter 6, have spawned self-psychology as a separate “school” within psychoanalysis.
Conclusion
Let us summarize to this point: In Freud’s view, abandoned object cathexes formed the ego structure via identification. However, the concept of ego autonomy first introduced by Hartmann challenged the contention that frustrating object relations alone motivate ego development. If the ego has its own sources of motivation, its development is not fueled by frustration, and the “frustration” theory of ego development is simply untenable. If the ego has a degree of autonomy, but is partly motivated by drive neutralization, then Freud’s concept of ego development from abandoned objects can still play a role in the structuralization of the psyche. However, it is unclear how such a speculative transformation of psychic energy comes about, and, in any case, White showed that ego functioning occurs in the absence of drive frustration. Furthermore, Jacobson and Mahler have shown that the mother-child relationship includes much more than frustration, that aspects of the whole relationship are internalized to form the ego and superego structures. Their work demonstrated that ego autonomy is not in conflict with the view that ego formation is a product of object relationships. All the major object relational theorists have departed from Freud in adopting the view that psychological structure is a product of object relationships, and not simply their frustrating aspects.
From the viewpoint of classical ego psychology, then, there is a conflict between object relations and ego autonomy because ego formation necessarily falls back on the frustration of drives. Because White viewed object relations as rooted in drive frustration, he could not admit them into his theory of autonomous ego development. While White provided impressive evidence of learning that was not drive motivated, even more persuasive evidence is now available indicating that the infant and growing child seek object contact independent of the drives almost from birth (Bowlby, 1969, Lichtenberg, 1983, Stern, 1985). For example, neonates seek the gaze of the parent and even search for it if it is not there. In addition, they differentiate the mother from other figures very early. Animal research shows that a variety of animals attach to maternal figures without other reward. More evidence of this type will be presented in Chapter 8; here it suffices to observe that there is abundant evidence that contact with objects is autonomously motivated. White, who had no concept of autonomously motivated object relations, could understand the ego development only in terms of psychic energy.
The Origins
Relations Theories
Once the assumption is abandoned that psychological structure necessarily grows out of frustration, it is possible to view personality formation as a matter of the internalization of autonomously motivated object relationships. From this viewpoint, object relational theories become an extension of the concept of complete ego autonomy and also of Freud, Hartmann and Rapaport’s notion that the ego develops from object relations, shorn of the assumption of frustration. All object relational theories view the personality as a complex product of early object relationships. Different theorists, as we shall see, accord the drives different roles in this process, but none of these theorists link the frustration of drives to the structuralization of the personality. An object relational theory as defined here and used throughout this text, signifies any systematic effort to account for personality development and pathology on the basis of the internalization of relationships with others. This model is contrasted with the drive-ego model, according to which the drives and their vicissitudes, however disguised, sublimated, or neutralized, along with ego mechanisms, account for personality development.
The relational origins of the psyche have been carried even further than the object relational view by the interpersonal theorists. Beginning with Sullivan’s interpersonal theory of the personality, the Sullivanians have developed a theory of personality formation, psychopathology, and psychoanalysis based on the principle that all psychological phenomena are interpersonal. Until recent years, the Sullivanians have remained outside mainstream psychoanalysis, however with the publication of Greenberg and Mitchell’s (1983) book showing the relationship between Sullivan and the interpersonalists, on the one hand, and object relational theorists, on the other, the interpersonal viewpoint has been given greater consideration within established psychoanalytic theory. Because of the theoretical linkage between object relational and interpersonal theory, the latter viewpoint is discussed in some detail in Chapter 7.
The thrust of psychoanalytic work within the object relational paradigm is being carried out by a group of theories which, although differing considerably, have as their underlying commonality the view of development and pathology as a product of the internalization of early interpersonal relationships. Consequently, they conceptualize the psychoanalytic process as a treatment focused on the manifestations of these internalizations in the form of object relationships. Each object relational theory has a different view of the critical factors in development and pathology and a distinct concept of the significant ingredients of successful analytic treatment. As we shall see, some theories tend to accord the drives a major role, whereas other theories abandon drive theory entirely. The theories also differ on the role of the environment versus constitution in pathology, and on the critical environmental variables implicated in questions of health and pathology. In their conceptualizations of the treatment process, they differ on both the role and content of interpretation and the extent to which other interventions are desirable. Consequently, we cannot speak of a single “object relations theory.”
Object relations is an umbrella concept for any theory which derives its principles of human motivation from the need for early relationships and consequently views the primary goal of psychoanalytic treatment as modification of the object relationships that have grown out of these early relationships. Precisely how the personality develops from early relationships and what the implications of this are for treatment is answered differently by each theory, and we now turn to the individual object relational theories to see how each variant of this model addresses these issues.
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1.XIII. Ye gods! think also of that goddess' name Whose might two hours on end the mob proclaim.
4.XIII. The Priest uplifts his voice on high, The choristers make their reply.
14.XIII. When you've guessed it, with one voice You'll say it was a golden choice.
1.XIV. Shall learning die amid a war's alarms? I, at my birth, was clasped in iron arms.
10.XIV. At sunset see the labourer now Loose all his oxen from the plough.
1.XV. Without a miracle it cannot be— At this point, Solver, bid him pray for thee!
11.XV. Two thousand years ago and more (Just as we do to-day), The Romans saw these distant lights— But, oh! how hard the way!
The most remarkable part of the search—or so Lord Peter thought— was its effect on Miss Marryat. At first she hovered disconsolately on the margin, aching with wounded dignity, yet ashamed to dissociate herself from people who were toiling so hard and so cheerfully in her cause.
"I think that's so-and-so," Mary would say hopefully And her brother would reply enthusiastically, "Holed it in one, old lady. Good for you! We've got it this time, Miss Marryat"—and explain it.
And Hannah Marryat would say with a snort:
"That's just the childish kind of joke Uncle Meleager would make."
Gradually, however, the fascination of seeing the squares fit together caught her, and, when the first word appeared which showed that the searchers were definitely on the right track, she lay down flat on the floor and peered over Lord Peter's shoulder as he grovelled below, writing letters in charcoal, rubbing them out with his handkerchief and mopping his heated face, till the Moor of Venice had nothing on him in the matter of blackness. Once, half scornfully, half timidly, she made a suggestion; twice, she made a suggestion; the third time she had an inspiration. The next minute she was down in the mêlée, crawling over the tiles flushed and excited, wiping important letters out with her knees as fast as Peter could write them in, poring over the pages of Roget, her eyes gleaming under her tumbled black fringe.
Hurried meals of cold meat and tea sustained the exhausted party, and towards sunset Peter, with a shout of triumph, added the last letter to the square.
They crawled out and looked at it.
"All the words can't be clues," said Mary. "I think it must be just those four."
"Yes, undoubtedly. It's quite clear. We've only got to look it up. Where's a Bible?"
Miss Marryat hunted it out from the pile of reference books. "But that isn't the name of a Bible book," she said. "It's those things they have at evening service."
"That's all you know," said Lord Peter. "I was brought up religious, I was. It's Vulgate, that's what that is. You're quite right, of course, but, as Uncle Meleager says, we must 'look a little farther back than that.' Here you are. Now, then."
"But it doesn't say what chapter."
"So it doesn't. I mean, nor it does."
"And, anyhow, all the chapters are too short."
"Damn! Oh! Here, suppose we just count right on from the beginning —one, two, three——"
"Seventeen in chapter one, eighteen, nineteen—this must be it."
Two fair heads and one dark one peered excitedly at the small print, Bunter hovering decorously on the outskirts.
"O my dove, that art in the clefts of the rock, in the covert of the steep place."
"Oh, dear!" said Mary, disappointed, "that does sound rather hopeless. Are you sure you've counted right? It might mean anything."
Lord Peter scratched his head.
"This is a bit of a blow," he said. "I don't like Uncle Meleager half as much as I did. Old beast!"
"After all our work!" moaned Mary.
"It must be right," cried Miss Marryat. "Perhaps there's some kind of an anagram in it. We can't give up now!"
"Bravo!" said Lord Peter. "That's the spirit. 'Fraid we're in for another outburst of frivolity, Miss Marryat."
"Well, it's been great fun," said Hannah Marryat.
"If you will excuse me," began the deferential voice of Bunter.
"I'd forgotten you, Bunter," said his lordship. "Of course you can put us right—you always can. Where have we gone wrong?"
"I was about to observe, my lord, that the words you mention do not appear to agree with my recollection of the passage in question. In my mother's Bible, my lord, it ran, I fancy, somewhat differently."
Lord Peter closed the volume and looked at the back of it.
"Naturally," he said, "you are right again, of course. This is a Revised Version. It's your fault, Miss Marryat. You would have a Revised Version. But can we imagine Uncle Meleager with one? No. Bring me Uncle Meleager's Bible."
"Come and look in the library," cried Miss Marryat, snatching him by the hand and running. "Don't be so dreadfully calm."
On the centre of the library table lay a huge and venerable Bible— reverend in age and tooled leather binding. Lord Peter's hands caressed it, for a noble old book was like a song to his soul. Sobered by its beauty, they turned the yellow pages over:
"In the clefts of the rocks, in the secret places of the stairs."
"Miss Marryat," said his lordship, "if your Uncle's will is not concealed in the staircase, then—well, all I can say is, he's played a rotten trick on us," he concluded lamely.
"Shall we try the main staircase, or the little one up to the porch?"
"Oh, the main one, I think. I hope it won't mean pulling it down. No. Somebody would have noticed if Uncle Meleager had done anything drastic in that way. It's probably quite a simple hiding-place. Wait a minute. Let's ask the housekeeper."
Mrs. Meakers was called, and perfectly remembered that about nine months previously Mr Finch had pointed out to her a "kind of a crack like" on the under surface of the staircase, and had had a man in to fill it up. Certainly, she could point out the exact place. There was the mark of the plaster filling quite clear.
"Hurray!" cried Lord Peter. "Bunter—a chisel or something. Uncle Meleager, Uncle Meleager, we've got you! Miss Marryat, I think yours should be the hand to strike the blow. It's your staircase, you know— at least, if we find the will, so if any destruction has to be done it's up to you."
Breathless they stood round, while with a few blows the new plaster flaked off, disclosing a wide chink in the stonework. Hannah Marryat flung down hammer and chisel and groped in the gap.
"There's something," she gasped. "Lift me up; I can't reach. Oh, it is! it is! it is it!" And she withdrew her hand, grasping a long, sealed envelope, bearing the superscription:
P LAST W T
M F .
Miss Marryat gave a yodel of joy and flung her arms round Lord Peter's neck.
Mary executed a joy-dance. "I'll tell the world," she proclaimed. "Come and tell mother!" cried Miss Marryat.
Mr. Bunter interposed,
"Your lordship will excuse me," he said firmly, "but your lordship's face is all over charcoal."
"Black but comely," said Lord Peter, "but I submit to your reproof. How clever we've all been. How topping everything is. How rich you are going to be. How late it is and how hungry I am. Yes, Bunter, I will wash my face. Is there anything else I can do for anybody while I feel in the mood?"
"If your lordship would be so kind," said Mr. Bunter, producing a small paper from his pocket, "I should be grateful if you could favour me with a South African quadruped in six letters, beginning with Q."
N . The solution of the cross-word will be found at the end of the book.
THE FANTASTIC HORROR OF THE CAT IN THE BAG
The Great North Road wound away like a flat, steel-grey ribbon. Up it, with the sun and wind behind them, two black specks moved swiftly. To the yokel in charge of the hay-wagon they were only two of "they dratted motor-cyclists," as they barked and zoomed past him in rapid succession. A little farther on, a family man, driving delicately with a two-seater side-car, grinned as the sharp rattle of the o.h.v. Norton was succeeded by the feline shriek of an angry Scott FlyingSquirrel. He, too, in bachelor days, had taken a side in that perennial feud. He sighed regretfully as he watched the racing machines dwindle away northwards.
At that abominable and unexpected S-bend across the bridge above Hatfield, the Norton man, in the pride of his heart, turned to wave a defiant hand at his pursuer. In that second, the enormous bulk of a loaded charabanc loomed down upon him from the bridgehead. He wrenched himself away from it in a fierce wobble, and the Scott, cornering melodramatically, with left and right foot-rests alternately skimming the tarmac, gained a few triumphant yards. The Norton leapt forward with wide-open throttle. A party of children, seized with sudden panic, rushed helter-skelter across the road. The Scott lurched through them in drunken swerves. The road was clear, and the chase settled down once more.
It is not known why motorists, who sing the joys of the open road, spend so much petrol every week-end grinding their way to Southend and Brighton and Margate, in the stench of each other's exhausts, one hand on the horn and one foot on the brake, their eyes starting from their orbits in the nerve-racking search for cops, corners, blind turnings, and cross-road suicides. They ride in a baffled fury, hating each other. They arrive with shattered nerves and fight for parking places. They return, blinded by the headlights of
fresh arrivals, whom they hate even worse than they hate each other. And all the time the Great North Road winds away like a long, flat, steel-grey ribbon—a surface like a race-track, without traps, without hedges, without side-roads, and without traffic. True, it leads to nowhere in particular; but, after all, one pub is very much like another.
The tarmac reeled away, mile after mile. The sharp turn to the right at Baldock, the involute intricacies of Biggleswade, with its multiplication of sign-posts, gave temporary check, but brought the pursuer no nearer. Through Tempsford at full speed, with bellowing horn and exhaust, then, screaming like a hurricane past the R.A.C. post where the road forks in from Bedford. The Norton rider again glanced back; the Scott rider again sounded his horn ferociously. Flat as a chessboard, dyke and field revolved about the horizon.
The constable at Eaton Socon was by no means an anti-motor fiend. In fact, he had just alighted from his push-bike to pass the time of day with the A.A. man on point duty at the cross-roads. But he was just and God-fearing. The sight of two maniacs careering at seventy miles an hour into his protectorate was more than he could be expected to countenance—the more, that the local magistrate happened to be passing at that very moment in a pony-trap. He advanced to the middle of the road, spreading his arms in a majestic manner. The Norton rider looked, saw the road beyond complicated by the pony-trap and a traction-engine, and resigned himself to the inevitable. He flung the throttle-lever back, stamped on his squealing brakes, and skidded to a standstill. The Scott, having had notice, came up mincingly, with a voice like a pleased kitten.
"Now, then," said the constable, in a tone of reproof, "ain't you got no more sense than to come drivin' into the town at a 'undred mile an hour This ain't Brooklands, you know I never see anything like it. 'Ave to take your names and numbers, if you please. You'll bear witness, Mr. Nadgett, as they was doin' over eighty."
The A.A. man, after a swift glance over the two sets of handle-bars to assure himself that the black sheep were not of his flock, said,
with an air of impartial accuracy, "About sixty-six and a half, I should say, if you was to ask me in court."
"Look here, you blighter," said the Scott man indignantly to the Norton man, "why the hell couldn't you stop when you heard me hoot? I've been chasing you with your beastly bag nearly thirty miles. Why can't you look after your own rotten luggage?"
He indicated a small, stout bag, tied with string to his own carrier.
"That?" said the Norton man, with scorn. "What do you mean? It's not mine. Never saw it in my life."
This bare-faced denial threatened to render the Scott rider speechless.
"Of all the——" he gasped. "Why, you crimson idiot, I saw it fall off, just the other side of Hatfield. I yelled and blew like fury. I suppose that overhead gear of yours makes so much noise you can't hear anything else. I take the trouble to pick the thing up, and go after you, and all you do is to race off like a lunatic and run me into a cop. Fat lot of thanks one gets for trying to be decent to fools on the road."
"That ain't neither here nor there," said the policeman. "Your licence, please, sir."
"Here you are," said the Scott man, ferociously flapping out his pocket-book. "My name's Walters, and it's the last time I'll try to do anybody a good turn, you can lay your shirt."
"Walters," said the constable, entering the particulars laboriously in his notebook, "and Simpkins. You'll 'ave your summonses in doo course. It'll be for about a week 'ence, on Monday or thereabouts, I shouldn't wonder."
"Another forty bob gone west," growled Mr. Simpkins, toying with his throttle. "Oh, well, can't be helped, I suppose."
"Forty bob?" snorted the constable. "What do you think? Furious driving to the common danger, that's wot it is. You'll be lucky to get off with five quid apiece."
"Oh, blast!" said the other, stamping furiously on the kick-starter The engine roared into life, but Mr. Walters dexterously swung his machine across the Norton's path.
"Oh, no, you don't," he said viciously. "You jolly well take your bleeding bag, and no nonsense. I tell you, I saw it fall off."
"Now, no language," began the constable, when he suddenly became aware that the A.A. man was staring in a very odd manner at the bag and making signs to him.
"'Ullo," he demanded, "wot's the matter with the—bleedin' bag, did you say? 'Ere, I'd like to 'ave a look at that 'ere bag, sir, if you don't mind."
"It's nothing to do with me," said Mr. Walters, handing it over. "I saw it fall off and——" His voice died away in his throat, and his eyes became fixed upon one corner of the bag, where something damp and horrible was seeping darkly through.
"Did you notice this 'ere corner when you picked it up?" asked the constable. He prodded it gingerly and looked at his fingers.
"I don't know—no—not particularly," stammered Walters. "I didn't notice anything. I—I expect it burst when it hit the road."
The constable probed the split seam in silence, and then turned hurriedly round to wave away a couple of young women who had stopped to stare. The A.A. man peered curiously, and then started back with a sensation of sickness.
"Ow, Gawd!" he gasped. "It's curly—it's a woman's."
"It's not me," screamed Simpkins. "I swear to heaven it's not mine. This man's trying to put it across me."
"Me?" gasped Walters. "Me? Why, you filthy, murdering brute, I tell you I saw it fall off your carrier. No wonder you blinded off when you saw me coming. Arrest him, constable. Take him away to prison——"
"Hullo, officer!" said a voice behind them. "What's all the excitement? You haven't seen a motor-cyclist go by with a little bag on his carrier, I suppose?"
A big open car with an unnaturally long bonnet had slipped up to them, silent as an owl. The whole agitated party with one accord turned upon the driver.
"Would this be it, sir?"
The motorist pushed off his goggles, disclosing a long, narrow nose and a pair of rather cynical-looking grey eyes.
"It looks rather——" he began; and then, catching sight of the horrid relic protruding from one corner, "In God's name," he enquired, "what's that?"
"That's what we'd like to know, sir," said the constable grimly.
"H'm," said the motorist, "I seem to have chosen an uncommonly suitable moment for enquirin' after my bag. Tactless. To say now that it is not my bag is simple, though in no way convincing. As a matter of fact, it is not mine, and I may say that, if it had been, I should not have been at any pains to pursue it."
The constable scratched his head.
"Both these gentlemen——" he began.
The two cyclists burst into simultaneous and heated disclaimers. By this time a small crowd had collected, which the A.A. scout helpfully tried to shoo away.
"You'll all 'ave to come with me to the station," said the harassed constable. "Can't stand 'ere 'oldin' up the traffic. No tricks, now. You wheel them bikes, and I'll come in the car with you, sir."
"But supposing I was to let her rip and kidnap you," said the motorist, with a grin. "Where'd you be? Here," he added, turning to the A.A. man, "can you handle this outfit?"
"You bet," said the scout, his eye running lovingly over the long sweep of the exhaust and the rakish lines of the car.
"Right. Hop in. Now, officer, you can toddle along with the other suspects and keep an eye on them. Wonderful head I've got for detail. By the way, that foot-brake's on the fierce side. Don't bully it, or you'll surprise yourself."
The lock of the bag was forced at the police-station in the midst of an excitement unparalleled in the calm annals of Eaton Socon, and the dreadful contents laid reverently upon a table. Beyond a quantity of cheese-cloth in which they had been wrapped, there was nothing to supply any clue to the mystery.
"Now," said the superintendent, "what do you gentlemen know about this?"
"Nothing whatever," said Mr. Simpkins, with a ghastly countenance, "except that this man tried to palm it off on me."
"I saw it fall off this man's carrier just the other side of Hatfield," repeated Mr. Walters firmly, "and I rode after him for thirty miles trying to stop him. That's all I know about it, and I wish to God I'd never touched the beastly thing."
"Nor do I know anything about it personally," said the car-owner, "but I fancy I know what it is."
"What's that?" asked the superintendent sharply
"I rather imagine it's the head of the Finsbury Park murder—though, mind you, that's only a guess."
"That's just what I've been thinking myself," agreed the superintendent, glancing at a daily paper which lay on his desk, its headlines lurid with the details of that very horrid crime, "and, if so, you are to be congratulated, constable, on a very important capture."
"Thank you, sir," said the gratified officer, saluting.
"Now I'd better take all your statements," said the superintendent. "No, no; I'll hear the constable first. Yes, Briggs?"
The constable, the A.A. man, and the two motor-cyclists having given their versions of the story, the superintendent turned to the motorist.
"And what have you got to say about it?" he enquired. "First of all, your name and address."
The other produced a card, which the superintendent copied out and returned to him respectfully.
"A bag of mine, containing some valuable jewellery, was stolen from my car yesterday, in Piccadilly," began the motorist. "It is very much like this, but has a cipher lock. I made enquiries through Scotland Yard, and was informed to-day that a bag of precisely similar appearance had been cloak-roomed yesterday afternoon at Paddington, main line. I hurried round there, and was told by the clerk that just before the police warning came through the bag had been claimed by a man in motor-cycling kit. A porter said he saw the man leave the station, and a loiterer observed him riding off on a motor-bicycle. That was about an hour before. It seemed pretty hopeless, as, of course, nobody had noticed even the make of the bike, let alone the number. Fortunately, however, there was a smart little girl. The smart little girl had been dawdling round outside the station, and had heard a motor-cyclist ask a taxi-driver the quickest route to Finchley. I left the police hunting for the taxi-driver, and started off, and in Finchley I found an intelligent boy-scout. He had seen a motor-cyclist with a bag on the carrier, and had waved and shouted to him that the strap was loose. The cyclist had got off and tightened the strap, and gone straight on up the road towards Chipping Barnet. The boy hadn't been near enough to identify the machine—the only thing he knew for certain was that it wasn't a Douglas, his brother having one of that sort. At Barnet I got an odd little story of a man in a motor-coat who had staggered into a pub with a ghastly white face and drunk two double brandies and gone out and ridden off furiously. Number?—of course not. The barmaid told me. She didn't notice the number. After that it was a tale of furious driving all along the road. After Hatfield, I got the story of a road-race. And here we are."
"It seems to me, my lord," said the superintendent, "that the furious driving can't have been all on one side."
"I admit it," said the other, "though I do plead in extenuation that I spared the women and children and hit up the miles in the wide, open spaces. The point at the moment is——"
"Well, my lord," said the superintendent, "I've got your story, and, if it's all right, it can be verified by enquiry at Paddington and Finchley and so on. Now, as for these two gentlemen——"
"It's perfectly obvious," broke in Mr Walters, "the bag dropped off this man's carrier, and, when he saw me coming after him with it, he thought it was a good opportunity to saddle me with the cursed thing. Nothing could be clearer."
"It's a lie," said Mr. Simpkins. "Here's this fellow has got hold of the bag—I don't say how, but I can guess—and he has the bright idea of shoving the blame on me. It's easy enough to say a thing's fallen off a man's carrier. Where's the proof? Where's the strap? If his story's true, you'd find the broken strap on my 'bus. The bag was on his machine—tied on, tight."
"Yes, with string," retorted the other. "If I'd gone and murdered someone and run off with their head, do you think I'd be such an ass as to tie it on with a bit of twopenny twine? The strap's worked loose and fallen off on the road somewhere; that's what's happened to that."
"Well, look here," said the man addressed as "my lord," "I've got an idea for what it's worth. Suppose, superintendent, you turn out as many of your men as you think adequate to keep an eye on three desperate criminals, and we all tool down to Hatfield together. I can take two in my 'bus at a pinch, and no doubt you have a police car. If this thing did fall off the carrier, somebody beside Mr Walters may have seen it fall."
"They didn't," said Mr. Simpkins.
"There wasn't a soul," said Mr. Walters, "but how do you know there wasn't, eh? I thought you didn't know anything about it."
"I mean, it didn't fall off, so nobody could have seen it," gasped the other.
"Well, my lord," said the superintendent, "I'm inclined to accept your suggestion, as it gives us a chance of enquiring into your story at the same time. Mind you, I'm not saying I doubt it, you being who you are. I've read about some of your detective work, my lord, and very smart I considered it. But, still, it wouldn't be my duty not to get corroborative evidence if possible."
"Good egg! Quite right," said his lordship. "Forward the light brigade. We can do it easily in—that is to say, at the legal rate of progress it needn't take us much over an hour and a half."
About three-quarters of an hour later, the racing car and the police car loped quietly side by side into Hatfield. Henceforward, the fourseater, in which Walters and Simpkins sat glaring at each other, took the lead, and presently Walters waved his hand and both cars came to a stop.
"It was just about here, as near as I can remember, that it fell off," he said. "Of course, there's no trace of it now."
"You're quite sure as there wasn't a strap fell off with it?" suggested the superintendent, "because, you see, there must 'a' been something holding it on."
"Of course there wasn't a strap," said Simpkins, white with passion. "You haven't any business to ask him leading questions like that."
"Wait a minute," said Walters slowly. "No, there was no strap. But I've got a sort of a recollection of seeing something on the road about a quarter of a mile farther up."
"It's a lie!" screamed Simpkins. "He's inventing it."
"Just about where we passed that man with the side-car a minute or two ago," said his lordship. "I told you we ought to have stopped and asked if we could help him, superintendent. Courtesy of the road, you know, and all that."
"He couldn't have told us anything," said the superintendent. "He'd probably only just stopped."
"I'm not so sure," said the other. "Didn't you notice what he was doing? Oh, dear, dear, where were your eyes? Hullo! here he comes."
He sprang out into the road and waved to the rider, who, seeing four policemen, thought it better to pull up.
"Excuse me," said his lordship. "Thought we'd just like to stop you and ask if you were all right, and all that sort of thing, you know. Wanted to stop in passing, throttle jammed open, couldn't shut the confounded thing. Little trouble, what?"
"Oh, yes, perfectly all right, thanks, except that I would be glad if you could spare a gallon of petrol. Tank came adrift. Beastly nuisance. Had a bit of a struggle. Happily, Providence placed a broken strap in my way and I've fixed it. Split a bit, though, where that bolt came off. Lucky not to have an explosion, but there's a special cherub for motor-cyclists."
"Strap, eh?" said the superintendent. "Afraid I'll have to trouble you to let me have a look at that."
"What?" said the other. "And just as I've got the damned thing fixed? What the——? All right, dear, all right"—to his passenger. "Is it something serious, officer?"
"Afraid so, sir. Sorry to trouble you."
"Hi!" yelled one of the policemen, neatly fielding Mr. Simpkins as he was taking a dive over the back of the car. "No use doin' that. You're for it, my lad."
"No doubt about it," said the superintendent triumphantly, snatching at the strap which the side-car rider held out to him. "Here's his name on it, 'J. S ,' written on in ink as large as life. Very much obliged to you, sir, I'm sure. You've helped us effect a very important capture."
"No! Who is it?" cried the girl in the side-car. "How frightfully thrilling! Is it a murder?"
"Look in your paper to-morrow, miss," said the superintendent, "and you may see something. Here, Briggs, better put the handcuffs on him."
"And how about my tank?" said the man mournfully. "It's all right for you to be excited, Babs, but you'll have to get out and help push."
"Oh, no," said his lordship. "Here's a strap. A much nicer strap. A really superior strap. And petrol. And a pocket-flask. Everything a young man ought to know. And, when you're in town, mind you both look me up. Lord Peter Wimsey, 110A Piccadilly. Delighted to see you any time. Chin, chin!"
"Cheerio!" said the other, wiping his lips and much mollified. "Only too charmed to be of use. Remember it in my favour, officer, next time you catch me speeding."
"Very fortunate we spotted him," said the superintendent complacently, as they continued their way into Hatfield. "Quite providential, as you might say."
"I'll come across with it," said the wretched Simpkins, sitting handcuffed in the Hatfield police-station. "I swear to God I know nothing whatever about it—about the murder, I mean. There's a man I know who has a jewellery business in Birmingham. I don't know him very well. In fact, I only met him at Southend last Easter, and we got pally. His name's Owen—Thomas Owen. He wrote me yesterday and said he'd accidentally left a bag in the cloakroom at Paddington and asked if I'd take it out—he enclosed the ticket—and bring it up next time I came that way. I'm in transport service, you see—you've got my card—and I'm always up and down the country. As it happened, I was just going up in that direction with this Norton, so I fetched the thing out at lunch-time and started off with it. I didn't notice the date on the cloakroom ticket. I know there wasn't anything to pay on it, so it can't have been there long. Well, it all went just as you said up to Finchley, and there that boy told me my strap was loose and I went to tighten it up. And then I noticed that the corner of the bag was split, and it was damp—and—well, I saw what you saw. That sort of turned me over, and I lost my head. The only thing I could think of was to get rid of it, quick. I remembered there were a lot of lonely stretches on the Great North Road, so I cut the strap nearly through —that was when I stopped for that drink at Barnet—and then, when I thought there wasn't anybody in sight, I just reached back and gave
it a tug, and it went—strap and all; I hadn't put it through the slots. It fell off, just like a great weight dropping off my mind. I suppose Walters must just have come round into sight as it fell. I had to slow down a mile or two farther on for some sheep going into a field, and then I heard him hooting at me—and—oh, my God!"
He groaned, and buried his head in his hands.
"I see," said the Eaton Socon superintendent. "Well, that's your statement. Now, about this Thomas Owen——"
"Oh," cried Lord Peter Wimsey, "never mind Thomas Owen. He's not the man you want. You can't suppose that a bloke who'd committed a murder would want a fellow tailin' after him to Birmingham with the head. It stands to reason that was intended to stay in Paddington cloakroom till the ingenious perpetrator had skipped, or till it was unrecognisable, or both. Which, by the way, is where we'll find those family heirlooms of mine, which your engaging friend Mr. Owen lifted out of my car. Now, Mr. Simpkins, just pull yourself together and tell us who was standing next to you at the cloakroom when you took out that bag. Try hard to remember, because this jolly little island is no place for him, and he'll be taking the next boat while we stand talking."
"I can't remember," moaned Simpkins. "I didn't notice. My head's all in a whirl."
"Never mind. Go back. Think quietly. Make a picture of yourself getting off your machine—leaning it up against something——"
"No, I put it on the stand."
"Good! That's the way. Now, think—you're taking the cloakroom ticket out of your pocket and going up—trying to attract the man's attention."
"I couldn't at first. There was an old lady trying to cloakroom a canary, and a very bustling man in a hurry with some golf-clubs. He was quite rude to a quiet little man with a—by Jove! yes, a hand-bag like that one. Yes, that's it. The timid man had had it on the counter quite a long time, and the big man pushed him aside. I don't know what happened, quite, because mine was handed out to me just
then. The big man pushed his luggage in front of both of us and I had to reach over it—and I suppose—yes, I must have taken the wrong one. Good God! Do you mean to say that that timid little insignificant-looking man was a murderer?"
"Lots of 'em like that," put in the Hatfield superintendent. "But what was he like—come!"
"He was only about five foot five, and he wore a soft hat and a long, dust-coloured coat. He was very ordinary, with rather weak, prominent eyes, I think, but I'm not sure I should know him again. Oh, wait a minute! I do remember one thing. He had an odd scar— crescent-shaped—under his left eye."
"That settles it," said Lord Peter. "I thought as much. Did you recognise the—the face when we took it out, superintendent? No? I did. It was Dahlia Dallmeyer, the actress, who is supposed to have sailed for America last week. And the short man with the crescentshaped scar is her husband, Philip Storey. Sordid tale and all that. She ruined him, treated him like dirt, and was unfaithful to him, but it looks as though he had had the last word in the argument. And now, I imagine, the Law will have the last word with him. Get busy on the wires, superintendent, and you might ring up the Paddington people and tell 'em to let me have my bag, before Mr Thomas Owen tumbles to it that there's been a slight mistake."
"Well, anyhow," said Mr Walters, extending a magnanimous hand to the abashed Mr. Simpkins, "it was a top-hole race—well worth a summons. We must have a return match one of these days."
Early the following morning a little, insignificant-looking man stepped aboard the trans-Atlantic liner Volucria. At the head of the gangway two men blundered into him. The younger of the two, who carried a small bag, was turning to apologise, when a light of recognition flashed across his face.
"Why, if it isn't Mr Storey!" he exclaimed loudly "Where are you off to? I haven't seen you for an age."
"I'm afraid," said Philip Storey, "I haven't the pleasure——"
"Cut it out," said the other, laughing. "I'd know that scar of yours anywhere. Going out to the States?"
"Well, yes," said the other, seeing that his acquaintance's boisterous manner was attracting attention. "I beg your pardon. It's Lord Peter Wimsey, isn't it? Yes. I'm joining the wife out there."
"And how is she?" enquired Wimsey, steering the way into the bar and sitting down at a table. "Left last week didn't she? I saw it in the papers."
"Yes. She's just cabled me to join her. We're—er—taking a holiday in —er—the lakes. Very pleasant there in summer."
"Cabled you, did she? And so here we are on the same boat. Odd how things turn out, what? I only got my sailing orders at the last minute. Chasing criminals—my hobby, you know."
"Oh, really?" Mr. Storey licked his lips.
"Yes. This is Detective-Inspector Parker of Scotland Yard—great pal of mine. Yes. Very unpleasant matter, annoying and all that. Bag that ought to have been reposin' peacefully at Paddington Station turns up at Eaton Socon. No business there, what?"
He smacked the bag on the table so violently that the lock sprang open.
Storey leapt to his feet with a shriek, flinging his arms across the opening of the bag as though to hide its contents.
"How did you get that?" he screamed. "Eaton Socon? It—I never ——"
"It's mine," said Wimsey quietly, as the wretched man sank back, realising that he had betrayed himself. "Some jewellery of my mother's. What did you think it was?"
Detective Parker touched his charge gently on the shoulder.
"You needn't answer that," he said. "I arrest you, Philip Storey, for the murder of your wife. Anything that you say may be used against you."
