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This article offers a reading of Loewald's (2000) concept of the “new object” in the light of the philosophies of Martin Heidegger (1969, 1996) and Luce Irigaray (1985, 1993, 2002). The article demonstrates how the ontological mode of analysis developed by these philosophers can help clarify and even suggest revisions to Loewald's fundamental project: rethinking the concept of reality implicit in classical psychoanalytic theory. The article argues that although Loewald and Irigaray share a basic affinity as thinkers of “difference,” the latter's emphasis on the trauma of sexual difference provides a helpful correction to Loewald's seemingly minimal appreciation of the perception of gender in debilitating or facilitating development. In so doing, the article extends Alan Bass's (2000) attempts to theorize a specifically sexualized form of anxiety inherent to the internalization of difference as it is described by Loewald.