Meetings of the New York Psychoanalytic Society

November 24, 1964. COMMENTS ON OBJECT RELATIONS IN SCHIZOPHRENIA AND PERVERSIONS. Robert C. Bak, M.D.

In the Abraham A. Brill Memorial Lecture, Dr. Bak examines the question of object relations in schizophrenia and perversions, a subject which provides valuable data for theoretical constructs concerning the early phases of psychic development. Freud's insight into schizophrenia was formulated in terms of libido theory, but currently the emphasis has shifted to the study of the nature of object relations, their development, and their pathological vicissitudes. Maturational sequences have been studied by Mahler, the self-nonself differentiation by Jacobson, and the change from need satisfaction to object constancy by Hartmann. Despite these excellent studies many questions in the area of object relations require further elaboration.

Bak points out that object constancy is not only the capacity to sustain a firm libidinal relationship and the object representation; it also implies a capacity to perceive the object as it is in reality, with a minimum of subjective distortion. Object constancy and a high level of reality testing are linked together and are partially interdependent. Similarly the link between word, symbol, and thing representation is anchored in object relationships and is the prerequisite for comprehensible communication. Object constancy, or the preservation of the object, requires an alteration of aggressive impulses, raises the threshold of frustration tolerance, and changes the patterns of gratification. A high level of object relationship decreases ambivalence, allows operation of more stable defenses, and permits sustained interests and work habits less damaged by drive pressures. This develops only when there is complete separation of self from object, and early fused identifications remain successfully repressed in the archaic layers of the id. Object constancy in this sense is the phenomenological basis of ego strength and is dependent