Women, the Instinctual Self, and the Demon Lover

The ability to consciously experience, contain, and direct erotic desire toward a loved other is a developmental task and achievement. When such development is derailed, reparative development stands out as a therapeutic goal. There is a tendency in certain schools of thought, particularly self psychology, poststructuralism, and certain relational schools, to sanitize psychoanalytic theory. In my opinion, these schools go too far away from the instinctual aspects of experience, and fail to focus on the body within treatment. Attention to the subtle nuances of penetration anxiety and containment anxiety is critical to transference analysis and to the object relations work of contact, connection, and internalization.

I believe that instincts are object directed, not directionless, not directed toward pleasure or tension reduction into a nirvana state. However, when there are early disruptions in preoedipal stages of mothering, causing a “basic fault” in core self formation, subjective desire cannot be contained in a subjective self. Instinct becomes split off and addictively tied to part-object