The Use of Detachment in Narcissistic and Borderline Conditions*

One aspect of the current developmental emphasis in psychoanalysis is that the concept of ego defense has become more broadly conceptualized so as to take into consideration the evolution of certain defenses prior to the full development of the ego and of intrapsychic conflict. The work of Anna Freud, Sullivan, Fairbairn, Winnicott, Guntrip, Kernberg, and Mahler has been particularly influential in shaping this perspective. Detachment, for example, is seen at the early stage of human growth as guardian of the integrity of the ego itself, arising to protect a fragile, growing sense of differentiated self from the threat of potential annihilation by internal and external stimuli that the ego is not yet strong enough to integrate. The role that detachment plays in character formation and in ego functioning during later stages of development has received less theoretical attention, although its adaptive as well as its more pathological manifestations are commonly acknowledged.

One difficulty, as I have elaborated more fully elsewhere (Bromberg, in press), is that the immense contribution of the British School has tended to make detachment synonomous with “schizoid,” and patients are described as though detachment were a monolithic, undifferentiated state. Its developmental function is thus difficult to relate to the great differences in personality structure in which it appears or to its use in the same personality structure as different developmental changes occur in treatment over time.

Detachment as an ego defense is in some ways a singular phenomenon although it shares attributes in common with other