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Dr. Alexander offers the following formulation: to retain an omnipotent fantasy of union with the mother, the patient must avoid accomplishment and success which otherwise would lead to his separate existence as an adult. Success, therefore, gives rise to separation anxiety and destroys the omnipotence. The author gives an interesting clinical example.
Omnipotence is based on identification with the split-off, idealized object—the good breast-mother—and is normal in the earliest stages of life. An example is the hallucinatory wish fulfillment of the infant described by Freud.
Reactivation of omnipotence in later stages has to do with the development of the manic defense, as described by Hanna Segal and others. Dr. Segal states that manic defenses “are evolved in the depressive position as a defense against the experience of depressive anxiety, guilt, and loss. They are based on the omnipotent denial of psychic reality, and object relations are characterized by triumph, control, and contempt.”
In my opinion, it is this important concept of the manic defense which unifies the ideas around the problem of omnipotence, separation anxiety and the avoidance of pleasure. Manic defenses deal very specifically with problems of loss, i.e., separation anxiety. The omnipotent behavior is a part of the manic defense. This broader concept helps the analyst interpret the material in the psychoanalysis of such patients in a more pertinent and effective way. The analysis of the omnipotence, which Dr. Alexander stresses in his clinical example, appears to be of major importance in allowing further manifestations of the manic defense and the depressive position to come into the psychoanalysis.
In such patients as described by the author, the mother, although a problem, is all he has within. She isn't much, but without her there is no good internal object. Separateness here means mainly a destruction of the internal object and subsequently of the self. In more normal circumstances, the chil