Session 214 EMDRIA Virtual Conference 2020 1

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.”


“It is better to be a sinner in a world ruled by God

than to live in a world ruled by the Devil.”


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.”


“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.”


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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.”


The victim “resists the revival of the traumatic memory because this memory represents a record of a relationship with a bad object.”


“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.”


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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.”


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)


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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.”


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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“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)


“…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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“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

Ainsworth, M. D. S. (1973). The development of mother-infant attachment. In B. Caldwell & H. Ricciuti (Eds.) Review of child development research (Vol. 3, pp. 1-94). Chicago, IL:

University of Chicago Press.American Psychiatric Association. (2013). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental

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Psychotherapy Integration, 29(1), 23-31.Beattie, H.J. (2003). ‘The repression and the return of bad objects’: W.R.D. Fairbairn

and the historical roots of theory. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 84(5), 1171-1187.The Bible. Authorized King James Version, Oxford University Press, 2008.Bowlby, J. (1958). The nature of the child’s tie to his mother. The International

Journal of Psycho-analysis, 39(5), 350-373.Broad, R. D., & Wheeler, K. (2006, May). An adult with childhood medical trauma

treated with psychoanalytic psychotherapy and EMDR: A case study. Perspectives in Psychiatric Care, 42(2), 95-105.Buckley, P. (Ed.). (1986). Essential papers on object relations. New York, NY: New

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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.

Fairbairn, W. R. D. (1952). Psychological Studies of the Personality. London: Routledgeand Kegan Paul.

Fitzsimons, G.M., & Bargh, J.A. (2003). Thinking of you: Nonconscious pursuit of interpersonal goals associated with relationship partners. Journal of Personality and

Social Psychology, 84(1), 148-164.Freud, S. (1986). Three essays on the theory of sexuality. In P. Buckley (Ed.), Essential

papers on object relations (pp. 5-39). New York, NY: New York University Press. (Original work published 1905)

Freud, S. (2001). On narcissism: An introduction. The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Volume XIV (1914-1916): On the History of the

Psycho-Analytic Movement, Papers on Metapsychology and Other Works (pp. 73-140). London: Vintage. (Original work published 1914)

References

Freud, S. (2001). Instincts and their vicissitudes. In J.Strachey (Trans.), The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Volume XIV (1914-1916):

On the History of the Psycho-Analytic Movement, Papers on Metapsychology and Other Works(pp. 117-140). London: Vintage. (Original work published 1915)Freud, S. (2001). Mourning and melancholia. In J.Strachey (Trans.), The Standard

Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Volume XIV (1914-1916): On the History of the Psycho-Analytic Movement, Papers on Metapsychology and Other Works(pp. 237-258). London: Vintage. (Original work published 1917)Freud, S. (1923). The ego and the id. New York, NY: Basic Books, 1959.Freud, S. (1940). An outline of psycho-analysis. The International Journal of

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References

Guntrip, H. (1975). My experience of analysis with Fairbairn and Winnicott (How complete a result does psycho-analytic therapy achieve). International Review of Psycho-

Analysis, 2, 145-156.Haskins, H. S. (1940). Meditations in Wall Street. New York, NY: William Morrow

and Company.Jacobson, E. (1954). Transference problems in the psycho-analytic treatment of severely

depressive patients. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 2(4), 595-606.Jacobson, E. (1964). The self and the object world. New York, NY: International

Universities Press, Inc.Kernberg, O. (1966). Structural derivatives of object relationships. International

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NY: Jason Aronson. Klein, M. (1935). A contribution to the psychogenesis of manic-depressive states.

International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 16, 145-174.Klein, M. (1945). The Oedipus conflict in the light of early anxieties. In Love, guilt and

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References

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University of Chicago Press.Korn, D. L., & Leeds, A. M. (2002). Preliminary evidence of efficacy for EMDR

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References

Mollon, P. (2005). EMDR and the energy therapies: Psychoanalytic perspectives. London: Karnac.

Mollon, P. (2001, summer). Psychoanalytic perspective on accelerated information processing (EMDR). British Journal of Psychotherapy, 17(4), 448-464.

Ogden, T.H. (1983). The concept of internal object relations. The International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 64, 227-241.

Parnell, L. (2007). A therapist’s guide to EMDR: Tools and techniques for successful treatment. New York: W.W. Norton & Company.

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Winnicott, D. W. (1969). The use of an object. The International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 50, 711-716.

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Session 214 EMDRIA Virtual Conference 2020 1

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