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A premise of this paper is that secondary narcissistic investment is a defensive response of the ego to the signal of separation anxiety stimulated by the perception of a state of separateness. Separation anxiety is an implicit potential in all character neuroses. Therefore, narcissistic investment and separation anxiety are a ubiquitous component of the human condition.
Mahler13 has described the normal processes of primary separation-individuation. Although these are normal developmental processes, they stimulate defensive responses of the toddler's immature ego. In Beyond the Pleasure Principle Freud4 explored the defensive nature of these processes in an attempt to explain the repetition compulsion. An ego confronted with the frightening perception of its separateness experiences separation anxiety. This anxiety and concomitant perceptions of helplessness and vulnerability motivate the ego to engage in activity that symbolically represents the ability of the toddler subject to control the maternal object. Freud describes a child:
At the age of one and a half he could say only a few words…. He was, however, on good terms with his parents and their one servant girl and tributes were paid to his being “a good boy.” He did not disturb his parents at night, he conscientiously obeyed orders not to touch certain things… and above all he never cried when his mother left him. At the same time he was very attached to his mother…. This good little boy had the disturbing habit of taking any small objects he could get hold of and throwing them away from him into the corner, under the bed and so on, so that hunting for his toys and picking them up was quite a business. As he did this he gave vent to a long drawn out “o-o-o-o” accompanied with an expression of interest and satisfaction…. The child had a wooden reel with a piece of string tied around it…. What he did was to hold the reel by the string and throw it over the edge of his
Page 35curtained cot, so that it disappeared…. He t