You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
This article considers the actual role of the person chosen as the love object at different life stages. For various reasons, and ironically so, the actual love object has been neglected in psychoanalysis. This is in part because the notion of object in psychoanalysis often refers essentially to an element of the psyche, and the construction of the psyche has been confused with that of objects. In psychoanalysis, the loss of an object is considered as a psychic phenomenon, rather than as the disappearance of a loved one; and the end result has been that the loved object as a person has often been left out of consideration by analysts. Careful adherence to metapsychological viewpoints, as well as efforts to keep our distance from such developmental models as those of Bowlby and Anna Freud, have contributed further to this lack of interest in the actual person loved. (One exception is found in the work of Jean Laplanche, who situated the role of the mother/parent—especially his or her attitudes and responses to the child—at the very core of the psyche.)
Internal objects are lost if they are not subject to a permanent reconstruction, like a language that is no longer used. The cathexis of a new person has the power, more or less lasting, to remodel these internal objects, and, for better or worse, to remodel the self and its structures. An intensely cathected relationship with a new person opens up the subject's psychic structure and leads to the possibility of its modification via the integration of new elements elaborated in this relationship. This possibility of change is what confers strangeness on a new amorous experience. In an encounter with a loved person—that is, with a new object—patterns of repetition compulsion find an opportunity for renewal and change, a shift away from that which was previously sought to be repeated, and toward the actual experience as lived. Repetition is involved, of course, but there is also a potential 11w change because of the fresh