The Allergic Object Relationship1

I have provisionally given the name allergic object relationship to the kind of relationships encountered in patients suffering from well-known allergic conditions, especially asthma or eczema. The fundamental nature of such relationships, being specific as well as frequent, places them in the same category of theoretical and practical importance as other systems of object relationships, such as those recently described by Bouvet.

The allergic object relationship, which clearly distinguishes it from typically neurotic relationships, lies in the subject's incessant endeavour to come as near as possible to the object until he merges with it, as it were in an indistinct mass.

The allergic object relationship comprises two active phases: first the finding of the object, and secondly the control of it.

The taking up and utilizing of the object is immediate, complete, and violent, and bears the mark of a most archaic character. It is a deep and boundless identification of the subject with his object; an undifferentiated confusion.

During the first minutes of the interview the allergic patient often makes a series of slips which show that he is confusing the physician's personality with his own. He will say for instance: 'I have come to see you because you are suffering from asthma.' Here we apparently have a mechanism of projection of which the effect is incomparably more extensive than that with which we are familiar in the neuroses and psychoses: it is more than just a part of a complete identification with the object. The patient, who is generally keenly intuitive, quickly gets to know what the physician wants and does his best to supply it in a phase of triumphant identification. In a sentence such as 'You certainly wish me to tell you about your mother', the slip 'your mother' is a projection which is part and parcel of a process of participation essentially pertaining to identification. The impression given by these patients is by no means misleading, and thei