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Despite his Positivism and avowed atheism, Freud remained a moralist requiring individuals to transcend narcissism in favor of the discovery of the object both of knowledge (as in establishment of the reality principle) and of love (for “in the last resort we must begin to love in order not to fall ill” [Freud, 1914, p. 85]). Stephen King's (1982) Novella The Body and Rob Reiner's 1986 film version of the story, Stand By Me, concern the sort of (literal or metaphorical) encounter with death which can sometimes liberate the narcissistic subject from self-enclosure. Winnicott (1969a) enables us to theorize the role of thanatos (interpreted in a demythologized sense as “the death complex” of aggression and separation) in this emancipatory event. This event is only liberating, however,
Dr. Carveth is Associate Professor of Sociology and Social and Political Thought, York University, and a member of the faculties of the Toronto Institute of Psychoanalysis, the Toronto Institute of Contemporary Psychoanalysis, the Toronto Child Psychotherapy Programme, and the Advanced Training Programme in Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy of the Toronto Psychoanalytic Society.
Earlier versions of this paper were presented to the Extension Programme of the Toronto Psychoanalytic Society, May 1992, and to the Ottawa Psychoanalytic Society, September 1992.
when the subject has sufficiently internalized a good-enough object or possesses sufficient current self object support to permit separation from the subjective object and, in this way, to advance from archaic to mature object relations. The theological utility of these concepts for the psychoanalytic demythologization of Christian symbolism is explored.