The Character of the Incest Object: A Study of Alternation Between Narcissism and Object Choice

In Freudian psychoanalytic theory, it is said that the organism attempts to find an object for its sexual drives as a rediscovery, in effect, of the relationship established with its mother during infancy. There are two paths possible for this object finding. First, there is the “anaclitic” in which the organism seeks its early infantile prototypes, such as in its various relationships with its mother. Second, there is the “narcissistic” in which the organism is actually seeking its own body and finds it in someone else. (1) In its early stage of development, the infant organism reacts to the wholeness of the situation and thus for the organism, it is the relationship, rather than the mother as such or the self as such, that has significance. In other words, it is in psychic maturation only that the organism begins to differentiate between itself and other objects, including its mother. (2) This paper will develop the idea of the shifting that takes place in this primary stage of development as the organism differentiates itself and its mother as objects, in terms of the shifting field between self and object which later is again brought into focus as the maturated organism seeks a love object.

Freud felt narcissism to be a universal and original condition, from which object-love later develops without necessarily causing the narcissism to disappear. Auto-eroticism would then develop as many of the infant's libidinous urges were gratified on his own body and auto-eroticism then is said to be the sexual activity of the narcissistic phase of