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Eugene O'Neill's plays have been discussed as reconstructions of things past. Desire Under the Elms and Mourning Becomes Electra depicted his unconscious conflicts (Weissman, 1957; Lichtenberg and Lichtenberg, 1972). Ah Wilderness and The Great God Brown reflected his wished-for and his conflicted adolescence (Lichtenberg, 1989). But O'Neill's barely disguised autobiography formed the plot for the tragedy of the Tyrone family of Long Day's Journey into Night. In this play O'Neill (1955) used his father's and his brother's first names-James, Sr., and Jamie-for two of the characters but called himself Edmund, reversing names with the brother (in the play he is named Eugene) born before him who died at 18 months. Extensive criticism from both literary (e.g., Floyd, 1985; Manheim, 1982) and psychoanalytic perspectives has addressed the obvious as well as subtle parallels between O'Neill's life and the life of the Tyrone family.
In this chapter we illustrate the spiraling disintegration of the Tyrone family as archaic selfobject needs in each family member are constantly revived and disrupted by disappointment and disillusionment. Persistently unmet longings for mergerlike states and nurturance are activated in each family member, and their continuous ruptures result in increasingly desperate efforts to restore an archaic sense of bliss through drugs, alcohol, grandiose fantasies, and defensive denials (Kohut, 1984; Lachmann and Beebe, 1989). Specifically, Mary Tyrone's deterioration