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Contrary to folklore and psychiatric myth, separation from and loss of those we love do not cause psychopathology. Rather, failure to internalize those whom we have loved-or never having loved at all-causes psychopathology. During the course of psychotherapy or analysis, patients often “discover” forgotten loves. When this happens, the process of internalization moves forward. This observation derives from the fact that the psychodynamic work of mourning is to remember more than it is to say goodbye.
But if loss does not kill and if loving allows us to survive, why is there so extensive a psychoanalytic literature on loss and such a scanty one on internalization? I believe that the discrepancy derives from confusion between metaphor and myth. We have no language for internalization and a very limited one for attachment. The discussion of grief, loss, and separation provides patients and therapists alike a metaphor for discussing attachment and the people who live within us.
Unfortunately, psychoanalysis has a bad habit of turning metaphor into myth. When this happens error results. For example, one of the great contributions of Erik Erikson (1) was to help us to take the stages of orality and anality less literally; he has taught us that the terms serve as metaphors for the more critical developmental issues of trust and autonomy. Metaphor, like poetry, allows us to use mere words to encompass affect-laden relationships. Metaphor, like song, allows us to appreciate that those people whom we invest with affect may be taken inside. Myths, on the other hand, lead to sterile orthodoxy and unnecessary schisms in psychoanalytic institutes. The song “I've Got You Under My Skin” has more to teach a psychoanalyst than a fundamentalist exegesis of Jonah and the whale. Students of object relations theory too often begin to take their metaphors literally;