On Being Good: The Internalized Sibling With Examples from Late Adolescent Analyses

Many an adolescent analysand, at some moment in the analytic journey, considers himself or herself “a good person.” The self-evaluation at that moment will mesh with fantasies of how he or she is perceived by the analyst. When this state is achieved, a unique sense of self-satisfaction and peace permeates the atmosphere. The wish can often be identified as part of childhood experience. I hope to show that in such instances an overt or implied comparison with a sibling can be involved; I wish to consider here only the relation of subjective states of goodness to internalized representations of sibling interaction.

The articulated state of being good, with its outward presumption of shared approved value, is subject to the inner influence of self and object representations as they meld with the hierarchical layers of psychosexual development, their drive derivatives, and the contemporary reverberation with the analytic environment. The meanings of a personal state of goodness within the analytic experience are often illuminated in contrast to the patients' sense of badness. An individual sense of goodness can run counter to