The Release of Internal Images1

In previous studies I have followed the vicissitudes of internal images within the ego, that is of images of original objects to which the child had been related in a diffuse hate-love relationship.

In particular I was concerned with parental images of certain individuals whose attitude toward their parents had, at that early stage of development, been characterized by deep ambivalence or rather, as I have called it, bipolarity. In these persons the incorporation of such images of original hate-love objects had resulted in a split within the ego along the lines of the bipolar cathexis.

In following the vicissitudes of internalized images I encountered on many occasions, within the mental system, situations calling for their externalization. I shall call the process in question the 'release' of the introjects.

I described this process at some length in the discussion of male homosexuality and of schizophrenia. I shall complete this description by a few illustrations from psycho-analytic observations of latent schizophrenics.

Patient A, a college student in his early twenties. Starting with his tenth year and long into his late adolescence, he used to beat the pillows in his bed furiously and then embrace them, throw spitballs at the wall, and fight imaginary armies. It appears that all these imaginary objects were substitutes for parental images, externalized out of his wish to fight it out with them and to grab them lovingly at the same time.

Yet A externalized his introjects also without any active participation of his ego: then they came to haunt him at night, he was tormented by the feeling of their invisible and frightening presence, and looked for them under the bed and behind the closed door of his bedroom.

Now in the course of his analysis A repeats the process of externalization in everyday life and in transference. On a dance floor, in a classroom, or in a restaurant he is constantly harassed and at the same time attracted by characters consisting of real