You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
Object relations theorists believe that the intrapsychic universe originates from an undifferentiated state which splits into images of good and bad objects linked by positive or negative affect to images of good and bad selves. This splitting keeps the two crucial affective systems separate, a normal defense mechanism until around the close of the separation-individuation phase (36 months) when the part units are integrated and repression supplants splitting as the principal defense mechanism.
Both the split and an attempt at its reconciliation are demonstrated in the following associations of a young man in treatment.
The first involved his fascination with a recent book, The Collapsing Universe, by Isaac Asimov. He told of its intriguing thesis about the birth of the universe: billions of years ago the universe was all one mass. There was neither time nor space, just one Gargantuan primeval atom or cosmic egg. Then there was a “big bang.” The monolith exploded—the most powerful explosion yet experienced. Out of the wildly speeding fragments of the cosmic egg, the galaxies eventually formed. And it is thought that the universe is still expanding from the original force of the “big bang.”
This is an example of what Grotstein calls the “baptism” of space. The patient has told us of his first experience of differentiation, of time and space, and of himself as separate. Grotstein writes: “Without separation in time and distance there can be no concept of psychic space and therefore no perception, and certainly no representation.”
Sometime later in his treatment he became enchanted with the popular film Star Wars. He described his strong identification with the hero, Luke Skywalker, who had grown upon the desolate planet Tatooine. He recounted how Luke, in search of himself, joined a group of rebels led by his real father Ben Obi Wan-Kenobi (whom he did not know) against the cruel Galactic Empire. The rebels eventually win, and the symbol of destructive evil, the Death Sta