Post on 26-Feb-2023
Session 214
EMDRIA Virtual Conference 2020 1
Using Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) Therapy to
Improve Object Relations
Jillian Tucker, DSWLCSW, EMDRIA Certified Therapist
September 27, 2020
W.R.D. Fairbairn – 1943The Repression and the Return of
Bad Objects (with Special Reference to the ‘War Neuroses’)
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Implications for Clinicians
illustrates the evolution of classic psychotherapy theory in the context of a contemporary evidence-based trauma treatment
potentially improves the understanding of the underlying mechanisms of change in EMDR
might add a trauma-informed intervention to the toolbox of object relations-oriented therapists
brings awareness to Resource Development
• possibly improves object relations in environments deficient in good object models
• infinite reservoir of good object sources in one’s imagination
• could prevent trauma for mapping in so strongly in real time
• can be taught by anyone in a mentorship position
Person in Environment
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How we hold the past
How we interpret the present
How we anticipate the future
i carry your heart with me(i carry it inmy heart)
-e.e. cummings (1952)
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“What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.”
-attributed to Henry Stanley Haskins (1940)
“Let us call the person from whom sexual attraction proceeds the sexual object and the act towards which the instinct tends the sexual aim.”
(Freud, 1905, p. 135)
Sigmund Freud
*significant people as “objects,” connected to libidinal urges and drives
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Sigmund Freud
*can “fantasize” about an object and hold the fantasy when the person is not present
*1915 “Instincts and their Vicissitudes” - pleasure-seeking for ego incorporation “
* 1917 “Mourning and Melancholia” - melancholic suffering is due to loss of actual object and the object that has become part of the person; can let go of lost external object because of holding on to internal model it created
“This new psychical agency continues to carry on the functions which have hitherto been performed by the people in the external world: it observes the ego, gives it orders, judges it and threatens it with punishments, exactly like the parents whose place it has taken.”
(Freud, 1940, p. 79)
Sigmund Freud
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“From the beginning the ego introjects objects ‘good’ and ‘bad,’ for both of which its mother’s breast is the prototype – for good objects when the child obtains it and for bad when it fails him.”
(Klein, 1935, p.145)
Melanie Klein
*furthered the concept of internalizing objects
*difficulties in object integration sets the stage for psychopathology
Donald Winnicott
*internal objects contending with each other
*personality is a duel between the true and false selves going back to earliest encounters with mother, each self relating to successful vs failed attempts to overcome “impinged” interactions with the caring environment
*theorists differ in how much internalized objects are based off of objective model of actual experience vs subjective fantasy of the experience
*focused on the positive self-concept that can be fostered through the care of a good‐enough mother
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Margaret Mahler
*separation‐individualization theory ‐ Freudian “drive energy” for instinct and gratification yet caretaker experience for intrapsychic development
*infants recognizing a difference between themselves and mother – “I” and “not‐I” – beings to form a “feeling of self” that is based on a mediation between inner and outer perceptions
*mother’s “holding behavior” facilitates ego organization and later allows the child to individuate by having a “sense of sharing his mother’s magic powers”
Edith Jacobson*both drives and object experiences
*depression as attempting to obtain “magic love” from their love objects that would allow them to recover a lost ability to love and function
*instincts and aggression influence how a child internalizes objects, but that the overall task in order to achieve a positive self‐image is to integrate the good and bad internalized objects
*connects drive gratification with object‐seeking by suggesting that internalizing objects creates psychic ego structures
Otto Kernberg
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Thomas Ogden*unconscious object relations established in the past are continuously interacting and evolving with interpersonal relationships in the present
*self and object suborganizations ‐ capable of their own brand of cognitions and emotions that color experiences and influence meaning‐making
Jay Greenberg & Stephen Mitchell
“…people react to and interact with not only an actual other but also an internal other, a psychic representation of a person which in itself has the power to influence both the individual’s affective states and his overt behavioral reactions.”
(1983, p.10)
Defining a Good Object
Capable of accepting, in a loving and integrative way, both a person’s goodness and badness as well as destructive and constructive urges
(Skolnick, 2006, p. 7)
“The achievement and acceptance of doubt, which is a lifetime struggle of good objects, is an anathema to bad objects”
(Skolnick, 2006, p. 7)
“Good enough mother” leads to positive sense of self
(Winnicott, 1953; Bowlby, 1958; Ainsworth, 1974)
Help a person “feel confident about the present and future” and able to “rest contented” even when the external good object is absent – transitional object
(Winnicott, 1960c, p. 417)
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Defining a Bad Object
“exciting (but not satisfying), enticing, bewitching, addicting, engulfing, rejecting, punishing, and persecuting”
a mixture of “the actual negative attributes of the parental figures,” as well as “the child’s fantasies and distortions about these figures”
“bad” might not be a “moral valuation,” but it instead refers to the child’s unsatisfactory and frustrated experience with the parent figure
(Seinfeld, 1990, pp. ix-x)
Defining a Bad Object
the extent that the bad object impacts the psyche is based on:
1. The extent to which bad objects have been installed in the unconscious and the degree of badness by which they are characterized
2. The extent to which the ego is identified with internalized bad objects
3. The nature and strength of the defenses which protect the ego from these objects.
(Fairbairn, 1943, p. 330)
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The Moral Defense
“The child would rather be bad himself than have bad objects.”
(Fairbairn, 1943, p. 331)
“It is better to be a sinner in a world ruled by God
than to live in a world ruled by the Devil.”
(Fairbairn, 1943, p. 331)
W.R.D. Fairbairn
The Moral Defense
Burden of Badness: the child “purges” the external bad objects of their badness, and “he is rewarded by that sense of security which an environment of good objects so characteristically confers.”
(Fairbairn, 1943, p. 330)
“Outer security is thus purchased at the price of inner insecurity: and his ego is henceforth left at the mercy of a band of internal fifth columnists or persecutors, against which defenses have to be, first hastily erected, and later laboriously consolidated.”
(Fairbairn, 1943, p. 331)
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The Moral Defense
“What are primarily repressed are neither intolerably guilty impulses nor intolerably unpleasant memories, but intolerably bad internalized objects.”
(Fairbairn, 1943, p. 329)
The victim “resists the revival of the traumatic memory because this memory represents a record of a relationship with a bad object.”
(Fairbairn, 1943, p. 329)
“It becomes evident, accordingly, that the psychotherapist is the true successor to the exorcist. His business is not to pronounce
the forgiveness of sins, but to cast out devils.”
(Fairbairn, 1943, p. 333)
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“The resistance [to releasing bad objects from the unconscious] can only be really overcome when the transference situation has developed to a point at
which the analyst has become such a good object to the patient that the latter is prepared to risk the
release of bad objects from the unconscious.”
(Fairbairn, 1943, p. 332)
Therapist as a Good Object
“What is psychoanalytic psychotherapy? It is, as I see it, the provision of a reliable and understanding human relationship
of a kind that makes contact with the deeply repressedtraumatised [sic] child in a way that enables one to become
steadily more able to live, in the security of a new real relationship, with the traumatic legacy of the earliest formative
years, as it seeps through or erupts into consciousness.”
(Guntrip, 1975, p. 332)
Therapist as a Good Object
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Therapist as a Good Object
The client “is not slow to realize he is being cured by means of a hair from the tail of the dog that bit him…
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…It is only when the released bad objects are beginning to lose their terror for him that he really begins to appreciate the virtues of mental immunization therapy.”
(Fairbairn, 1943, p. 337)
Potential Overlap between Object Relations Theories and EMDR
Role of the psychotherapist
Aim of psychotherapy: increase positive
internalizations, reduce negative internalizations
Long-term implications of therapy: “mental immunization therapy”
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Potential Overlap between Object Relations Theories and EMDR
“The purpose of the eight-phase EMDR therapy is to help liberate the client from the past into a healthy and productive present.”
(Shapiro, 2018, p. 2)
Potential Overlap between Object Relations Theories and EMDR
“…much of what we consider to be a mental disorder is the result of the way in which information is stored in the brain. Healing begins when we unlock this information and allow it to emerge.”
(Shapiro, 2018, p. 7)
“Our work is to keep our hearts open in hell.”
-Stephen Levine
(Shapiro, 2018, p. 162)
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Potential Overlap between Object Relations Theories and EMDR
“EMDR processing is not causing the client’s distress; it is simply releasing it. The targeted event has been the source of continuous dysfunction in the client’s life. It is the root of the presenting complaint… An abreaction during EMDR processing is a sign that the dysfunctional material is being metabolized…is a sign of the transformation of the disturbing material and should therefore be viewed as a sign of emerging health.”
(Shapiro, 2018, p. 165)
therapeutic alliance + visualization + bilateral stimulation (BLS)
Adaptive Information Processing (AIP)
EMDR
“Imagination is more important than knowledge.”
-Albert Einstein, 1929
“AIP regards most pathologies as derived from earlier life experiences that set in motion a continued pattern of affect, behavior, cognitions, and
consequent identity structures.”
(Shapiro, 2018, p. 15)
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5 Senses EmotionsBody
SensationsNegativeCognition
Adaptive Information Processing (AIP)
Peaceful Place
Nurturing Figures
Protective Figures
Wise Figures
Resource Development
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Case Examples
Future Work
Spark a discussion about object relations and EMDR links
Expand use of resource development
Considerations about keeping and increasing positive resourcing sources in schools (arts, music, literature, recreation, history, etc.)
Possibly contributes to understanding the emotional impact of Artificial Intelligence and avatars
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Thank You
EMDRIA staff & participants
i carry your heart with me(i carry it inmy heart)
-e.e. cummings (1952)
References
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References
Cummings, E. E. (1952). “[i carry your heart with me(i carry it in].” Retrieved December 10, 2018, from https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/49493/i-carry-your-heart-with-mei-carry-it-in
Fairbairn, W. R. D. (1943). The repression and the return of bad objects (with special reference to the ‘war neuroses’). British Journal of Medical Psychology, 19, 327-347.
Fairbairn, W. R. D. (1944). Endopsychic structure considered in terms of object-relationships. The International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 25, 70-93.
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References
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References
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