Psychodynamics of the Depressive Character: Response to Discussion of Bernhard Berliner's Article

To the Editors: In his account of the “depressive character” [“Psychodynamics of the Depressive Character,” The Psychoanalytic Forum, Vol. 1, No. 3], Dr. Berliner has introduced a “need to be loved”—an “instinctual need,” as he calls it—which is clearly incompatible with the psychoanalytic theory of instincts and with the definition of “love” which derives from this theory. The whole thrust of Freud's sexual or “life instinct” theory is that an active ego relates to passive objects, not for the purpose of loving them, much less of being loved by them, but for the purpose of satisfying somatic needs. Freud's paper on “Instincts and Their Vicissitudes” makes a definitive statement: “the word ‘to love’ moves further and further into the sphere of the pure pleasure-relation of the ego to the object and finally becomes fixed to sexual objects in the narrower sense and to those which satisfy the needs of sublimated sexual instincts.”1 A later statement makes this point even more explicit: “Love with an inhibited aim was in fact originally fully sensual love, and it is so still in man's unconscious.”2

While “being loved” is casually mentioned by many analysts, including Freud himself, it has no formal place in the psychoanalytic theory of sexual instincts, since it implies a situation to which the theory simply does not extend: that of a passive ego being related to active objects which are seeking somatic satisfactions of some sort. We can always overcome such problems by overlooking them, or by blurring the old distinctions so that, for instance, Freud's passive “loved” objects become “love” objects, both active and passive, in Berliner's view. Or else we can back off, reconsider the problems, and see whether they might be avoided if we take a somewhat different theoretical line.

In regard specifically to “being loved,” I have shown elsewhere that Fairbairn's object-relations theory provides us with a viable alternative.3 Fairbairn took the position that the ego's object-s