The loss of the image of self-contained perfection, the ideal of infantile narcissism, and the development of substitute symbols of the ideal may be necessary as a “buffer against the narcissistic rebuffs of life” (p. 155), according to the author of this article.

Leonoff describes how early repression and disavowal create a space for illusion, for mental creation. Citing Winnicott and Green, he notes that the mother's tolerable absences create a space for ego development, as exemplified by the transitional object and imaginary companion. Such a bridge to the object is maintained, the author posits, with the help of “something in the form of the ideal” (p. 155), “an indestructible good thing” that protects against “total absence” and provides “the promise of refinding a perfect existence” (p. 156). However, the author notes, when absences are traumatic, the space may be filled with a fetish—a symbol of the refusal to acknowledge lack, of a complete self that does not need the other. This objectless fetishistic state exists