Meetings of the New York Psychoanalytic Society

June 9, 1970. ISOLATION, PRESERVATION OF OBJECT RELATIONS, AND ACTING OUT. Burness E. Moore, M.D.

Dr. Moore expands the concept of isolation beyond its customary use as a mechanism of defense, and sees it as a possible adaptive phenomenon of ego development which, when used repetitively in conjunction with other defenses, may determine a life style. Freud spoke of 'non-touching' as a defense against libidinous and aggressive contact with objects; the author sees the combination of isolation, splitting, and acting out as a way of preserving object relations. A case fitting the criteria used by Freud in A Special Type of Object Choice Made by Men, was presented to show the interrelationship between isolation, acting out, and the preservation of the object. The patient kept his multiple present-life relationships and his past object representations in well-circumscribed units with little or no overlap, and little or no development of affect. His behavior (acting out in the general sense) was highly rationalized, and intense affect was mobilized only after repeated interpretations. Multiple parental figures in childhood seemed to encourage this splitting of objects: 'object representations had really been fragmented and isolated … in such a way as to reconcile id impulses and superego reproaches with a minimum of anxiety and guilt'. This case demonstrated, in an exaggerated and pathological way, a developmental phase where non-touching, isolation, and splitting aided the normal separation of self and object representations. Furthermore, these processes allowed affect to be broken into more manageable quanta during the developmental phases when the ego was relatively weak.

In a more speculative vein, Dr. Moore wondered if extreme use of the processes may determine not only a life style but also prevent the dissolution of psychic structure when a patient is faced with a unified object, such as the analyst. Further, may there be a hierarchy of defenses, beginning