Splitting the Mind

Abstract

In the previous chapter it was argued that despite the advances present in object relations theory, its potential contribution to a social psychoanalysis is limited by its adherence to a ‘primary unity’ view of the psyche and its tendency to describe the environment as passive and at best supportive of the child’s naturally determined development. In these affiliations, traditional object relations theory appears to go against its own constructionist premises, which make the structure and content of the mind a product of interactions with specific people. Instead, it assumes a basic healthiness or ‘goodness’ in the child which needs only tolerant conditions to reach fulfilment. This assumption is challenged by approaches that contest the idea that there is an inherent unity to the mind, and in particular that the ego is a whole entity at the start of life. Traditional Freudian psychoanalysis, for example, regards the ego as a developmental achievement, built on the basis of a heterogeneous unconscious which is always threatening to disrupt its precarious unity. The ego is thus a construction, as is the super-ego and the whole organisation of unconscious desire. Underlying the fragile ego are id impulses, particularly destructive ones, which repeatedly threaten the integrity of ego functioning.