The Therapeutic Properties of Unconscious Oneness Fantasies—Evidence and Treatment Implications1

THERE ARE CERTAIN WISHES and fantasies, typically unconscious, that are directed toward a state of oneness with another person; in the terminology of psychoanalysis, a state in which, to varying degrees, representations of self and object are merged. In The Search For Oneness(Silverman, Lachmann and Milich, 1982), we considered the presence of these wishes and fantasies in a variety of human activities. We cited numerous references in the psychoanalytic literature to what clinicians commonly refer to as symbiotic wishes—unconscious wishes of adult patients with various forms of psychopathology for a kind of union with a gratifying maternal figure. We argued that these unconscious wishes of union with the "good mother" of infancy underlie the frequently appearing expressions in adults of unconscious oneness fantasies; i.e., fantasies of having obtained a state of oneness with important figures in the individual's life. However, we left open the possibility that these oneness fantasies may, at times, be rooted in later phases of development, including the oedipal period and may involve father, as well as mother, as the sought for object of merger. We attempted to demonstrate the extent to which these oneness fantasies are implicated in non-pathological as well as pathological behaviors, and the ubiquity of these fantasies in a variety of human pursuits,