Discussion of Gustav Bychowski's Article, Congealment and Fluidity: Two Basic Patterns of the Defective Ego Dealing with Introjects

I would like to mention some of the thoughts Dr. Bychowski's stimulating paper has provoked in me. Dr. Bychowski calls the introjects “the cornerstone of the ego ideal.” It seems to me that before there are introjections and idealizations, there is the harmonious mother-child symbiosis characterized by the experience of basic trust. Experiences of gratifications reinforce this basic trust; experiences of frustrations create a differentiation. If they are short-lived and in tune with the child's gradually growing ability of mastery, the differentiation may lead to a gradual separation between the ego of the child from that of the parents.

This process of separation does not proceed without transient idealizations and vilifications of both parents and child, but if all are sufficiently in tune with each other, unfulfilled wishes and frustrations do not break down the basic trust, but gradually establish a more realistic assessment of each other, object constancy and gradually consolidated identity of the child. Introjected images of idealized or vilified parents and a correspondingly idealized or vilified self image seem to me to result from premature or belated frustrations that the child cannot master and integrate at the level of his actual ego development. Instead, they hamper the growth of the ego and genuine object relations. They become fixation points of narcissistic libido. They are not replicas of the real parents, but images of the child's wishes and fears, mingled with the wishes and fears of the parents, who expect from the child gratifications and compensations for their own frustrations. The child cannot live up to such ego-alien expectations without aiming at being an omnipotent hero or being defeated like a dwarf thrown back into the desperate helplessness of a child deprived of basic trust. The introjects are therefore the cornerstone of a false ego ideal that cannot be integrated. Introjections and projections

stand like a screen between the child