Object-Relationships in Schizophrenia and Perversion1

Schizophrenia and perversion are not the best fields for psychoanalytic investigation, which was developed primarily as a method for the study of neuroses. Nevertheless, because of my early interest in the major psychoses, especially schizophrenia, I have given considerable thought to the problem of describing schizophrenia in terms of psychoanalytic theory. It may be the irony of fate that at the time when I might have reached a better understanding of therapy, I had to discontinue working with schizophrenic patients, since their treatment proved to be incompatible with full-time analytic activity. Recently, however, I have been able to review my older views by renewed contact with schizophrenic patients at Albert Einstein Medical College. Some of the most valuable data and theoretical constructs on the early phase of psychic development were derived, or perhaps I should say divined, by Freud's ingenious insight into the schizophrenic syndrome. Freud (1914) identified the pathological process as the detachment of the libido from its object. This was later supplemented by the metapsychological description of withdrawal of cathexis from preconscious and unconscious representations. Freud described the schizophrenic process, in the then current terms of libido theory, with more emphasis on the regression of libido than of the ego. In later years we have grown accustomed to seeing these phenomena more in terms of regressed object-relationships. And since object-relationship, its development and its pathological changes, remain the focus of our attention, I console myself that I am not going too far afield from your interest.

We must admit that the concept of object-relationship is one of the most condensed in psychoanalysis, especially if we take into consideration the different maturational levels from self–non-self differentiation through need-satisfaction to object constancy.

The development of a constant object implies far more than the capacity to sustain l