The Widening Gyre: Transformations of the Omnipotent Quest During Adolescence

In a seminal contribution, Silverberg (1949) delineated the role of the quest for omnipotence in neurosogenesis and normal personality development. Drawing upon the formulations of Freud (1911), (1909) and Ferenczi (1913), he traced the infant's passage from a theoretical state of 'unconditional omnipotence'—marked by the sense of total gratification at a time of actual maximum helplessness—to stages of 'conditional omnipotence' when, deprived of the mother's intervention, the child attempts to secure satisfaction and protection by hallucinatory wish-fulfilment, gestures and vocalizations that seem to prove its magical control over the object. As frustration mounts, the ineffectiveness of these modalities is increasingly recognized and

the infant gradually learns that his own wishes are not paramount … there is a reality surrounding him that must be taken into account and manipulated in its own terms, if he is to achieve fulfilment of his wishes … (Silverberg, 1949, p. 387).

Thus the primacy of the reality principle and the secondary process is established, slowly and painfully.

Silverberg found the concept of 'unconditional omnipotence' weak; he argued there would be no need for effort or progress in a milieu of constant, unbroken gratification. Effortless satisfaction would only be sought in retrospect, by an older, frustrated individual, for 'omnipotence is never something a person believes he possesses …' (Silverberg, 1949, p. 388). The child never accedes to the imposition of reality with unmitigated joy, and the adult never wholly disavows omnipotent wishes; only grudgingly do we accept the essence of the human condition, the state Silverberg characterized as 'partipotence'—'tentative and partially successful manipulations of reality' (Silverb