Anne Tyler: The American Family Fights for its Half-Life

This paper explores Kohut's assertion that people need and can benefit from selfobjects throughout life. It is my intention, by analyzing Anne Tyler's novels, to trace the use of selfobjects by fictional parents and their adult children, with special reference to the impaired cohesion of the American family. Central to such an analysis is a description of the reciprocal internal representations of parents and children. As depicted by Tyler, these representations are too often pathogenic, resulting in parental depression and immature selfobject configurations in their grown children. Although Tyler's fictional world of essentially gentle, repressed, lower-middle-class WASPS is no longer broadly representative, her novels raise inescapable questions about the psychological viability of the American family in general.

Is it true, then, that we can regenerate ourselves even in our later years, perhaps renewing the capacity for growth in untried directions? This is the point of view expressed by Galatzer-Levy and Cohler in their essay, “Selfobjects in the Second Half of Life” (1990). Their optimism derives from Kohut's assertion that people need and can benefit from selfobjects throughout life (Kohut, 1977). The choice of such selfobjects may involve idealized others—mentors, for example—without being unrealistic or rooted in infantile needs. By the same token, it is possible that traumata experienced later in life may have a powerful negative effect on the otherwise mature personality, blocking further movement or development. These views are consistent with the idea that adult development is multidirectional and that new selfobjects can promote individualized lines of development throughout most of the life cycle. Erikson's stage theory of psychosocial development is likewise consistent with the expectation that qualitative changes in personality organization occur during the adult years (1968).