Object Relations in a Drive Theory Model*

This Paper is dedicated to man's capacity to create fantasy and dreams.

On the occasion when I presented the following ideas I witnessed Rudy Ekstein, a fellow speaker, realize his dream. He told us his earliest fantasies and during the conference one of them came true: he was primus, a storyteller who shines. Ekstein accepted his dream and achieved the success he dreamed of.

I was delighted, too, listening to Nathan Schwartz-Salant, because he said so well what we all experience with our deeply regressed patients. I had expected to discuss the relatedness between analyst and patient returning to primordial fantasies but Schwartz-Salant said everything I wanted to say.

The following connects to my attempts as an analyst to capture with my patients the experience of the never experienced; those experiences that when made conscious may make life more satisfying. I would like also to form a framework within which to think about the earliest level of patient-analyst interaction. Allow me to review, just briefly, the history of Freudian analysis in order to place these thoughts within the framework of my title, “Object Relations in a Drive Theory Model.”

In Freud's early work, he attempted to reconstruct each patient's actual past; but by midpoint in his professional life, he was more concerned with resolving patients' resistances to knowing their past. His