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Kohut's (1971, 1977, 1984) seminal contribution of selfobject as mirror needs for recognition, twinship needs for alikeness, and idealizing needs have greatly added to our understanding of development and behavior. Following Kohut's (1984) consideration that there were many selfobject needs yet to be discovered, I observed early on what I defined later as the “undifferentiated selfobject” (Rowe, 2005a, 2005b, 2008), which is fundamental to development from infancy and throughout life. This paper explains suicidal ideation as an attempt to maintain the undifferentiated selfobject experience through behavior and fixation. Once patients are able to recognize and describe this fundamental self-object experience in the treatment, their suicidal behavior and fixations diminish because they are no longer needed as avenues of expression.
I became aware of this selfobject need in the treatment of severely emotionally traumatized adults and children. All had suffered continuous rejections of developing mirror, idealizing, and twinship selfobject needs. These patients evidenced symptoms of seemingly intractable fixations and repetition compulsions that Freud (1937) described as unresolvable and whose analysis he saw as interminable. These symptoms included compulsive, suicidal, addictive, and attention-deficit/hyperactivity behavior.
While some patients spoke freely of wishing to rid themselves of their difficulties, they were at the same time compulsively