Bisexuality and Ego Structure1

Some ego-structural conditions play an important part in the establishment of heterosexual development. These conditions centre round the phenomena of internalization by the ego of objects or parts of them and of externalization by the ego of some of its own features into object representations. Through internalization of an object the ego identifies itself with it. In order to understand these phenomena clearly, one has to keep in mind that internalization (identification) and externalization may have a more resonant or more substitutive character. As will be clarified in this paper, externalization and resonance identification may be closely interrelated.

The phenomenon of mental or emotional resonance may well be compared with a musical chord struck on one instrument and echoed on another. Resonance identification takes place when those features and feelings of another person, which are duplicated in one's own ego, continue to be emotionally acknowledged in that person. Many psychological phenomena rest on resonance identification, as for example the phenomena of empathy, sympathy, pity, compassion, and that process which Anna Freud describes as 'altruistic surrender'; combined with substitutive externalization, it operates also in our deepest feelings of love and hatred. But each of these phenomena manifests different mechanisms and should be analysed separately. For instance, compassion is the more passive, and pity the more active ego state. The pitying ego regards the suffering of another person in a way which is more externalized on the object, while in compassion the resonance identification is stronger. At any rate, resonance identification plays an important part in every meaningful interpersonal relationship, and vicarious gratification through the experiences of another individual is due to resonance identification.

Substitutive internalization occurs when some features or attitudes of an object are replaced by those which have arisen in the ego