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Dualistic thinking has been characteristic of psychoanalytic theory since its inception. In the development of Freud's ideas, such dualism became enshrined in the doctrine of instinctual drive and the psychoeconomic point of view: self-preservative instincts versus sexual instincts, Eros versus Thanatos, libidinal drives versus aggressive drives, narcissistic libido versus object libido. This dualistic tradition has persisted in psychoanalytic self psychology as well. From Kohut's early papers on narcissism (1966, 1968) to his final theoretical statement (1984), human subjective worlds have been pictured as populated by two distinct types of psychological objects—selfobjects, experienced as part of oneself and/or serving to maintain the organization of self, and “true” objects, firmly demarcated from oneself and targets of passionate desire. Such dualities, like all typological systems, lend themselves to the irresistible temptation to substantialize the products of human thought, transforming psychological categories into static, immutable entities—reifications that necessarily obscure the complex, ever-shifting flux of human psychological life. These typological reifications lead inevitably to the encrustation of false dichotomies that, in turn, become sources of endless ideological controversy, as in the current heated debate over the centrality of developmental deficit versus psychic conflict in psychoanalytic theory.
The selfobject—true object dichotomy that pervades Kohut's thought originated in the Procrustean bed of classical drive theory. Narcissistic libido and object—instinctual energies each followed their own distinct developmental pathways, cathecting their respective targets of investment (Kohut, 1971). However, even after Kohut abandoned both classical metapsychology and the idea that selfobject relations evolve into