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This view of identification is consistently emphasized in many of Freud’s later writings, as, for instance, in The Ego and the Id (1923), where he writes that primary identification with the parents “is apparently not in the first instance the consequence or outcome of an object-cathexis; it is a direct and immediate identification and takes place earlier than any object-cathexis” (p 31). He argued that this process is not restricted to melancholia but is of quite general occurrence. These primary identifications were to a large extent the basis of what we describe as a person’s ‘character’. But, more importantly, he suggested that identifications deriving from the dissolution of the Oedipus complex form the nucleus of the super-ego (cf. J. Strachey 1957, p. 240-242). (See also entries THE UNCONSCIOUS, CONFLICT, EGO PSYCHOLOGY) Writing on Freud’s connection to relational theories, Modell (1995) states: “Freud’s later theories emphasized the significance of identification and object loss in structure formation … Freud posited that what was internalized represented a relationship between persons. For example, in An Outline of Psychoanalysis (Freud, 1940), he described the superego’s function in relation to the ego as carrying on the functions performed by people in the outside world. Fairbairn essentially extended Freud’s concept of internalized object relations. Although Freud never developed a relational theory as such, for he never embraced the concept of a self, in my 1968 monograph Object Love and Reality, I noted that there is in fact a latent Freudian theory of object relations” (Modell, 1995, p. 109). Indeed, on more than one occasion, Freud (see 1917b, p 347 and the accompanying footnote) evoked the notion of a ‘complemental series’ in questions of aetiology, that is, a varying complementarity between internal and external factors, depending upon the instance. In his Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego, Freud warned against dichotomy between the internal and external factors: “It is true that individual psychology is concerned with the individual man and explores the paths by which he seeks to find satisfaction for his instinctual impulses; but only rarely and under certain exceptional conditions is individual psychology in a position to disregard the relations of the individual to others” (Freud, 1921, p. 69). II. B. Roots in Freud - The Problem of Object-Relations: Object Relations as Secondary to Drives The problem of object-relations is evident throughout Freud’s writings. It surfaces early on, for instance, in the Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality , where Freud writes: “There are…good reasons why a child sucking at his mother’s breast has become the prototype of every relation of love. The finding of an object is in fact a refinding of it” (1905: 222). The libidinal object, however, is viewed by Freud – within the general metapsychological framework of the instinctual source, aim and object – specifically in terms of object-choice and drive satisfaction/frustration. In classical theory pleasure points the way to object-choice (Freud 1909: 108). And by emphasizing, for the most part, what satisfies or frustrates drive, Freud thereby privileged a biological perspective on object-relations, giving priority to the energetic and economic dimension in human experience.
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