Struggle Against the Introjects1

In previous communications I have studied various aspects of the complex relationship between the ego as a total field of organized forces, and the internal images, resulting from early introjections.

From the point of view of general homeostasis, an ideal condition is achieved when the essential introjects become completely assimilated and integrated into the ego. However, such an ideal situation is hardly ever attained in view of intense ambivalent hypercathexis of the original internalized images. Thus, the ego develops various reactions in its constant attempts to achieve the impossible task of complete integration.

In the course of this struggle sectors of the ego consisting, as it were, of introjected images, become externalized and clustered around real persons. Between the latter and the ego reactions develop duplicating some of the original situations prevailing between the infantile ego and its main objects.

This parallelism could be demonstrated in analysis of male homosexuality, latent and manifest schizophrenia (1). An important concept that emerged in the course of these investigations was the externalization of various aspects of the self. In this process they, too, having become fused with various aspects of the original objects, became externalized together with them, so that, for instance, in male homosexuality the homosexual partners proved to be substitutes not only for the parental objects but for the self as well.

Former studies have demonstrated the indestructibility of original images in the ego field of certain individuals. Yet the amount of aggression directed toward these objects by an ego, overflowed by strong ambivalence (original as well as a result of defusion of instinctual drives), forces the ego to attempt various forms of struggle which, basically, cannot change the situation. Despite the compulsion with which the ego repeats these attempts at destruction, the internalized objects do not cease to exist and to exert their power.