Reflections on Object Relations in Psychoanalytic Theory: Twenty-Seven Years Later*

Somewhere along the line as I was thinking about preparing for this anniversary colloquium I decided not to prepare any written remarks. It was a bit of a hard decision; I thought there might be a lot of people here today, and I am very aware that our transferences to the institute where we trained never really go away, so I knew that speaking without a written paper would result in my feeling much more anxious than if I did have one. Naturally, I wondered why I'd chosen to face the anxiety, and the first thing that came to mind was my father's voice—I told you that these transferences last—saying “Well, that's you, of course.” Which was something that he often said, and which I never really understood, although I didn't take it as a compliment and figured that it was a rough equivalent of “You have nobody to blame but yourself.”

That's true, I don't, but I can stand up to my father and say that blame isn't really the issue; I've made a choice, and anxiety is the price I've chosen to pay for something that's important to me. And what's important is the chance to be in this moment, in this place, with these people and to live the experience as fully as possible. Because the book we're talking about today is very much of this place, of these people, and of a friendship that grew here, although it comes from a very long time ago. And the best way to reconnect with it, which is something I don't do except maybe implicitly in the course of everyday life, is to immerse myself in this moment as fully as possible. Today is very poignant for me,