Queer Children, New Objects; the Place of Futurity in Loewald's Thinking

The present is not enough. It is impoverished and toxic…

I am honored to be joining my colleagues in this brief symposium inspired by Loewald's idea of the analyst as a new object (1960). Drawing on my experience in child work, I will explore a somewhat undertheorized part of his paper on therapeutic action: the transformational potential held by new objects that are constituted through the envisioning of an other's future. This has especially potent implications when it comes to queer children because their otherness can often make their futures seem or actually be tenuous. I'll follow the trail of Loewald's thinking on futurity to reflect on queer kids1 considering psychoanalytically the recent onslaught of queer youth suicides2 and exploring how we can collectively try to keep these children in mind.

Loewald's essay has been celebrated for its progressiveness in marrying the topographical model with an understanding of early mother-infant dynamics and for recognizing the centrality of the patient-analyst relationship (Chodorow, 2008; 2009). The place of futurity in his work however, remains largely unexplored. With notable exceptions (Cooper, 1997; Jacobs, 2008; ), his belief in the clinical power inherent in analytic imaginings of a patient's future, quoted extensively below, has not been given its clinical due.

The parent ideally is in an empathic relationship of understanding the child's particular stage in development, yet ahead in his vision of the child's future and mediating this vision to the child in his dealing with him. This vision, informed by the parent's own experience and knowledge of growth and future, is, ideally, a more articulate and more integrated version of the core of being that the child presents to the parent. This “more” that the parent sees and knows, he mediates to the child so that the child in identification with it can grow. The child, by internalizing aspects of the parent, also internalizes the parent's image of the