Obsessional Character PDF

David P. Celani Obsessional character: The specific characteristics of families that produce obsessional children impact the child's developing ego structures in similar ways. This style of developmental history creates predictable self and object configurations in the inner world, which then tran...

David P. Celani Obsessional character: The specific characteristics of families that produce obsessional children impact the child's developing ego structures in similar ways. This style of developmental history creates predictable self and object configurations in the inner world, which then translate via repetition compulsion into obsessional behavior in adulthood. Fairbairn left the field of psychoanalysis a powerful but unfinished model that has been regarded as an exercise in theorizing rather than as a practical analytic tool suited to diagnosis and treatment of major disorders. In reality, his model speaks directly to the most passionate and universal human conflicts: the lifelong search for nurturance by individuals with unmet dependency needs; the dashed hope for love by those who repeatedly choose bad objects; the vengeful reactions of need-driven adults when their demands are rejected; and the self-destructive, sometimes fatal attachments of battered women to partners who are harmful to them. The obsessional patient, at first glance, seems excessively mature—if not old—for his stated age. As a young adult he may appear highly conventional, over rather than under controlled, and interested in “mature” topics, including the sciences and technology. Appearances do not reveal the whole story as the obsessional is likely to be socially timid and overly dependent and passive aggressive in his personal relationships as a consequence of his developmental history that ignored his needs, while simultaneously requiring him to perform well in the external world, as noted in this quote from Barnett (1969): The child is simultaneously infantilized in regard to interpersonal skills and instrumental competence within the home, while considerable demands are made for him to achieve outside the home in school, work or sports. Consequently, he seeks to verify his significance by performances of ever increasing perfection in the impersonal world outside the home, which then entitle him to the attention and applause he has no other means of winning. His insignificance to family life and the low premium put on his own needs and development as a person foster dependency, feelings of insignificance and incompetence in intimate situations, even in the face of success in the larger world. Despite his enormous ambivalence, the obsessional individual cannot avoid attachments to others because his unmet dependency needs drive him toward partners who promise to compensate for his developmental emptiness. Unfortunately, relational success is severely limited in the obsessional character by his massive insecurity and ambivalence as noted by Mallinger (1982): The sense of inner weakness makes him feel insubstantial, vulnerable to being easily influenced, swayed or overpowered by external forces, especially the wishes of others. In addition, he feels as if both his identity and his sense of autonomy, unanchored as they are, can at any moment be obliterated or swallowed up by these perceivedly more powerful outside forces. Despite the initial romance of a new relationship, the obsessional's powerful unmet needs, coupled with the transferences emanating from the unconscious templates of self and others soon change a potentially loving relationship into one rife with adversarial contests. In short, his powerful inner structures cause him to misperceive his love object either as a rejecting object, or as a complaining, undermining antilibidinal object. Thus the obsessive's early unmet needs make him feel that he is being forced into a relationship with an object that he sees as either malevolent or hopelessly inferior, and his childhood frustrations continue. This is the tragedy of so many obsessionals who are highly competent in terms of instrumental behaviors, and yet whose internal structures turn potentially loving partners into opponents. The attachment between the antilibidinal ego and the rejecting internalized object, which is the attachment based on hate and the desire to overpower each other in the inner world, becomes the template of many obsessional interpersonal relationships. Thus, in Fairbairn's model it is the lack of emotional support that retards the child's development and, as a consequence, he remains intensely fixated on his needed object, waiting for the required emotional supplies. This fixation on the neglectful object causes the child to lose out on essential developmental experiences that are available to his peers who are blessed with nurturing parents, thus causing him to drop developmentally behind similarly aged children. Over time, early unmet needs accrue and increase the pressure on the child for emotional support, which further intensifies his fixation on the depriving object. Fairbairn recognized the counterintuitive consequence of deprivation of the child's legitimate needs: a greater and more desperate attachment to the depriving object compared to children with good (developmentally supportive) objects. [The antilibidinal ego does not want to give up its quest to reform the rejecting object's view of him.] Unfortunately, the relaxed internalization of good objects is almost never the case in the histories of obsessionals who are raised in “highly verbal” families, (Adams 1973) in which language is used in a punitive and contradictory manner. The constantly changing meanings and prohibitions keep the developing child in a state of tension and emotional flux, never knowing what set of rules will (or will not) apply, as noted by Sullivan (1956): No matter what aggression anyone perpetuates on another—no matter what outrages the parents perpetuate on each other, or the elder siblings perpetuate on each other, on the parents, or on little Willie—there is always some worthy principle lying about to which appeal is made. And the fact that an appeal to an entirely contradictory principle was made 15 minutes earlier does not seem to disturb anybody. A child raised in this atmosphere has enormous difficulty knowing what emotions mean, what he feels, what is prohibited and what is accepted. The result is a profound confusion in his central ego, as the object(s) to whom he relates change their position(s) so frequently that he cannot build a consistent view of himself or of his parents. This results in a feeling of unreality in the child and a lack of integration between words and feelings. Families in which the parents are harsh, critical and arbitrary—yet deny the impact of such behaviors—evoke a panoply of perplexing responses in the child … not only do parents of obsessionals tend to prohibit the direct expression of anger, resentment or retaliation, they also portray such behavior as unrelated to any conceivable precipitant. (Winckler, 1995) The central ego is the seat of volition in Fairbairn's model, and the obsessional disorder is perhaps the best example of distortion of this essential part of the self. Shapiro (1965) originated the focus on volitional problems of the obsessive. Mallinger (1982) notes that the criticism that a child is exposed to creates a great hesitancy in him to take independent action. Rather than be held accountable for decisions, feelings and actions that emanate from him, he represses or disowns these, focusing intently upon the apparent salvation provided by real or self-manufactured external directives and expectations. Any decision the obsessional makes exposes him to possible criticism either from his current external objects or from his internalized rejecting object. Over time his central ego is eroded to the point that the obsessional individual loses his sense of conviction about reality, as the following quote from Shapiro (1965) illustrates: A sense of conviction about the world—a sense of truth, in other words—involves a breadth of attention, an interest in and sensitivity to the shadings and proportions of things, and a capacity for direct response to them for which the obsessive–compulsive person is not geared. Instead, he concerns himself with technical details, indicators which he interprets according to authoritative rules and principles. The past section on covert parental criticism does not do justice to the intensity and pervasiveness of hostility in the histories of children who later develop obsessional personality disorders. Many writers see parental hostility as the mutative factor in the development of the obsessional personality, as the following quote from Kainer (1979) illustrates: Among my obsessional patients I noted certain similarities of background, especially in what I call the parental style. Although there were variations, each patient had at least one harshly critical parent. The criticism started early in life and had a flailing, arbitrary ring to it from which the child could not escape …. The criticism persisted, often over school performance (although the children performed well), and ranged over all aspects of the child's “beingness.” Earlier, Sullivan wrote extensively on the development of the obsessional, and he used even stronger language in his comments on the cruelty evident in their childhood histories. The following is one of his several observations on parental cruelty (1956): The recitations of the obsessional neurotic about the past gradually come to reflect rather singular brutality toward the patient by a significant person, usually the parent. If this rather brutal recital includes some thin disguise which the parent wore, I think you may always accept the account as being reasonably close to the truth. In other words, in a very considerable number of cases these patients have been subjected to really severe cruelty by a parent, but always the parent had a little mask to conceal the sheer brutality of what was going on. [Aggression permeates the experience of the obsessional, playing the major role in the etiology of the condition and figuring prominently in the obsessional patients’ symptomatic living. In such a family the parents camouflage the hostile behaviour towards the child with a facade of love and concern. They rationalize their own needs as being objectively right, and self-assertion by the child as wrong. I have observed that the discrepancy between the hostility implicit in the parents’ destructive behaviour and their explicit avowals of concern creates a dichotomy in the experience of the child. This dichotomy forms the nucleus around which a characteristic cognitive disorder develops which, I feel, is the central fault of obsessional living. Joseph Barnett] In the case of children destined to be obsessional, the awareness of parental neglect and hostility is split off into the engorged internalized rejecting part-object, which mirrors the very worst parts of the parental objects. This structure relates exclusively to his shame-filled antilibidinal self, which is simultaneously damaged, enraged, and vindictive. The type of critical and demanding formative experience that the obsessional is exposed to creates a particularly caustic and passive-aggressive antilibidinal self that is best described by Schmiel (1972), “The ironic, the sardonic, the mocking and contemptuous view of self and others can be regularly observed in the obsessional and teased out of his verbalizations and fantasies as well as his dreams”. Thus, the antilibidinal ego in the obsessional contains a massively shameful view of itself along with verbal hostility toward the rejecting object. It uses the same techniques that the parent (now internalized as the rejecting object) used to attack it, so it now demeans the rejecting object (as well as targeting similar objects in the external world via transferences) with the same style of self-righteous appeals to rules and universal truths. These two opposing subselves account for the often contradictory observations made about the obsessive. When the individual is faced with an object that he sees as powerful, his antilibidinal response may appear to be halting and hesitant while complying, or somewhat bolder when sarcastic. When compliance is displayed by the obsessional, he is on the antilibidinal side of the relationship and this signifies that he is not willing to risk a full battle with the object that might lead to abandonment. The cooperation that is displayed is modified by a halfheartedness which is just enough to appease the object and, simultaneously enough, satisfy his own need for some sense of power. Mallinger (1982) noted the development of passive aggressive thwarting behaviors as a consequence of the child's perception that his parents were not to be trusted, yet were too powerful to defy openly: He learns eventually, though, that he dare not resist openly. After all, not only might he doubt the strength and sincerity of his parents' allegiance to him; he also maintains an awareness of his relative helplessness, a sincere desire to please, a desperate need for approval, a fear of forcing his mistrust to the surface, and memories of prior painful experiences (of his own or those of his siblings) whenever open opposition was tried …. He may equate automatic acquiescence with death itself. Thus, the obsessive is trying to appease both the (external) rejecting object and his antilibidinal self at the same time. Conversely, a very different “obsessive” appears on those occasions in which the individual gets to identify with the rejecting object role when the object appears weak and he is in the dominant position. When given power, the obsessional eagerly takes on the rejecting object role and forces others into an antilibidinal position, , as Schimel (1972) has noted: The incorrigible person does not attack the really strong. Others are fair game. Authority is anathema to him. To authority that is exercised with any uncertainty, the incorrigible as with inferiors, is intolerant and inexorable. He manifests what amounts to a compulsion to punish. The struggle between the self-righteous and condemning rejecting object confronting an enraged but passive aggressive antilibidinal self can be the source of both symptoms and transferences. Many seemingly odd obsessional symptoms become comprehensible when viewed as a dialog between the incompletely repressed antilibidinal self in relationship to the rejecting object, while the individual is ostensibly in his central ego state. This often makes the obsessional patient feel “crazy” because he “knows better” than to behave in this manner, but in reality his powerful antilibidinal self and internalized rejecting object are operating independently of the central ego which is impotently standing by and observing, unable to stop the unwanted proceedings. The hysteric's libidinal ego seeks out a male object to parent her, as her mother failed in this capacity. Why is the obsessional individual not psychopathic? The answer lies in the central ego's early experience of attachment to an ideal object(s) that was just strong enough to prevent the child's collapse into sociopathy. Often, in the histories of obsessionals there is a good object, a grandparent or a mentor outside the family, to whom the child develops a central ego/ideal object emotional attachment, or enough early experiences to create a bond to small parts of his parents when they were behaving as ideal objects. The pathway to the ideal object—central ego relationship is often through performance at school, which allows the child to develop attachments outside of the family with teachers who support them. Sometimes children are fortunate enough to find adult tenderness inadvertently. The small but important central ego attachment that the child experienced during his development, along with his unmet developmental needs, is strong enough to keep him in the orbit of other humans. Unfortunately, his unmet childhood needs coupled with his powerful internal structures, including his cynical antilibidinal ego and his occasional identification with his aggressive and condemning rejecting object, make him a less than appealing romantic partner. Sadly, many obsessionals display a paradoxical discontinuity between their high performance in the world and their passivity, and passive-aggressive dependency within their marriages. The unfortunate circumstances of the obsessional's original interpersonal experiences are endlessly recreated in his adult interpersonal world, and he tends to live a life of emotional penury, even toward those who were once willing to love him. Battered woman The first psychological consequence of deprivation on the infant is fixation on the maternal object. This fixation is the result of the uncondi­tional nature of the child’s dependency on his objects. The lack of alternative sources of support, coupled with the occasional gratification that comes from even the most neglectful parents, causes the child to narrow his focus and increase his vigilance. This sharpened focus on the object insures that he will not miss even a scrap of needed attention or support. The infant’s focus on the non-gratifying object increases the longer he is deprived, thus a child that is chronically neglected over many years develops an enormous reservoir of unmet needs that are intensely focused on his objects. Neither the need nor the focus on others to meet these needs changes as the child develops into adulthood: however, the object of the focus can shift from the parents to the lover, or spouse. This “endopsychic situation,” as Fairbairn called it, can be seen in all disorders. For instance, an interesting variant of splitting can be seen in anorexia nervosa,where the young anorexic splits her own body into two part-objects, each of which provokes the emergence of a separate part-self. If she loses weight her body will appear to be an exciting object, and her libidinal ego will be the dominant part-self. Her perspective that her body is valuable and exciting will persist regardless of the negative opinion of her emaciated condition expressed by her therapist or friends. Conversely, if she gains weight she sees her body as a repulsive rejecting object and her antilibidinal ego will emerge as the conscious ego. Her antilibidinal ego is filled with self-loathing and she might punish herself with extreme exercise, purges or increased starvation. Any female child raised in a family that failed to meet her needs most of the time will develop an antilibidinal ego filled with anger, disappointment, and the desire for revenge against her rejecting part-objects. The child’s antili­bidinal ego grows every time she approaches her parents with a need, be it psychological support, closeness, approval or actual physical care. Every incident in which she is rejected adds to the size and strength of her antilibidinal ego. The size and power of her antilibidinal ego requires that she develop an equally potent libidinal ego to keep her attached to the exciting part of her objects. The two subegos must remain in balance in order to prevent collapse of her entire ego structure: the larger the child’s antilibidinal ego the larger the libidinal ego needs to be in order to keep her attached to her extremely frustrating objects. The central ego is anchored by many internalized good-object memories that control normal individuals’ anxiety (and prevent splitting) when they encounter rejecting parts of their objects. Conversely, developmentally deprived adults have impoverished central egos that have few good object memories to support them, and this weakened structure is easily pushed aside by the libidinal or antilibidinal subego. For example, if an individual dominated by his libidinal subego encounters actual rebuffs from an erstwhile exciting object, splitting will be triggered and the object will be seen as completely rejecting and the dominant sense of self will switch from the libidinal to the antilibidinal ego. Normal men do not interest the adult woman who has a deeply split ego structure. Her libidinal ego was created from unrealistic, larger-than-life fantasies about her objects. She is seeking a man who can fit into her unrealistic expectations. Her libidinal subego is not interested in average men who promise a normal and unexciting life, as they appear dull, boring, and weak. Conversely, her antilibidinal ego demands that her chosen object be deeply disappointing and enraging so it can resume the battle with the rejecting part of her new, displaced object. Why does the deeply split woman seek a displaced object? It is common in clinical practice to see adults with deprived developmental histories who remain single and either return home every weekend or continue to live in the family home while playing out the hope-and-despair scenario with her original objects. This occurs in cases where the individual’s developmental disappointment with her objects was moderate. The problem arises when the developmental disappointments were extreme and demand expression. The deprived child becomes accustomed to inhibiting her rage toward her original objects because it would bring on complete abandon­ment. Despite this inhibition toward her original objects, the enormity of the rage in her antilibidinal subego, as well as the enormity of hope in her libidinal ego demand expression. A “safer” object must, therefore, be found who can 1) behave in a rejecting and abusive manner without abandoning the now-adult woman, and 2) at the next moment split into a completely separate ego state and offer promises of undying love. The splitting defense in the abused woman has a larger task as she is often beaten severely, while her partner is seldom harmed. Her ego structure must be able to completely repress the perception of her partner as a violent and brutal rejecting object, and to reinstate a libidinal view of him as an exciting object, if they are going to remain together. The libidinal ego must be powerful and completely unrealistic as it must either believe that the violence never took place, or will never happen again. The abuser must also shift from his antilibidinal ego back to his libidinal ego soon after experiencing a near murderous antilibidinal rage at his partner. Clearly, the original parental objects are completely unsuited for this role as a target for their child’s antilibidinal rage as they simply would not tolerate, or under­stand, the level of rage emerging from their (adult) child.