IPA Inter-Regional Encyclopedic Dictionary of Psychoanalysis

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individual’s projections. Certainly, objects bear us. But ironically enough, it is precisely because they hold our projections that the structural feature of any one object becomes even more important, because we also put ourselves into a container that upon re-experiencing will process us according to its natural integrity”. IV. Bb. Šebek: Totalitarian Object The concept of ‘totalitarian objects’ (internal and external), as formulated by Michael Šebek (1996; 1998), is based on psychoanalytic work conducted under the totalitarian communist régime in Czechoslovakia. The concept helps in linking external totalitarian power with intrapsychic totalitarian forces. The latter are seen as partially internalized and part of the archaic unconscious mind. Šebek notes that insofar as totalitarian régimes and tyrants exist throughout human history, this supports the likelihood of the trans-generational transmission of totalitarian objects. The ‘omnipotent’, ‘omniscient’ and ‘almighty’ character of these objects, according to Šebek (1998, p. 2017), reveals a process of primitive idealization – including, the recourse to totemism, various Gods, monarchs, dictators, charismatic authoritarian leaders, political extreme movements and ideologies. The destructive and abusive character of the object is hidden or disguised by these various forms of idealization. Šebek proposes that totalitarian objects are essentially ‘ambiguous’: saving and also penetrating (aggressive); possessive, haunting and controlling function over the internal psychic space, causing internal oppression and unfree existence. As such totalitarian objects block development to maturity, support the formation of dogmatic ideologies, and impede spontaneous creative thinking. Šebek further maintains that when a person perceives the world through the lens of totalitarian objects, located mostly in the unconscious Ego, he/she does not see independent objects but only objects being in his or her possession/manipulation. These objects function as part of the split-off, destructive self, or are located in a severe, sadistic superego. They may also be projected as the basis of paranoid thinking. For Šebek, totalitarian objects in their various forms can cause the negative therapeutic reaction, or a type of therapeutic impasse. They remain mostly unconscious and, in this unrecognized form, exist as gods, ghosts, devils and monsters; timeless objects of the unconscious, they enter into a dream, fantasy, behavior and even the conscious mental space. In sum, Šebek proposes these objects represent an unconscious structure for the basic uncertainty in the world leading to adherence to external saviors, or populistic, totalitarian and fundamentalist leader.

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