The fictive object and disordered attachments*

This paper examines the challenges encountered by the analyst when working with patients with disordered attachment relationships, particularly disorganized-disoriented. The author proposes that early in development these patients retreat from authentic contact with their attachment figures into a world of fictive relationships, as a defense against punishing and malignant maternal environments. Consequently, the conscious internal working models that develop are based on the self with the fictive object, leading to an overall lack of coherence in the attachment narratives of these patients. The author contends that the fictive object becomes part of implicit relational knowing and is identified by the highly discrepant semantic-episodic memories in explicit memory. The fictive object incorporates aspects of Fairbairn's “moral defense,” Bowlby's idealized internal working model, Sullivan's “illusory me-you patterns,” Riesenberg-Malcolm and Roth's falsely idealized object, and Bion's reverse of proper alpha function. A detailed case illustration is presented that demonstrates how the analyst's recognition and understanding of the phenomenon of the fictive object facilitates the patient's capacity for authentic relatedness within the analytic dyad.