Before and After the Fall: Horizontal and Vertical Object Orientations in the Analysis of a Patient with Grievances

 

 Before and After the Fall: Horizontal and Vertical Object Orientations in the Analysis of a Patient with Grievances 

Speaker: John Steiner

 Discussant: Lord John Alderdice, marking his election to Honorary Fellowship of the Society.

Chair: Vic Sedlak, President of the British Psychoanalytical Society

Friday 7th February 2025
6.00pm - 8.00pm (GMT)

Hybrid - In person at the Institute of Psychoanalysis or Online
This event will be recorded and available for 1 week.

 

In this paper I will re-examine the grievances commonly arising in an analysis which create a vertical relationship made up of either humiliation or triumph. The intense feelings that are generated serve to keep the relationship alive and prevent the recognition of loss. The lost object has become internalised as a critical figure functioning as a super-ego and making demands of the patient that he is unable to fulfil. Because he feels looked down on the patient attempts to reverse the humiliation by turning the tables in a response of manic triumph which results in the creation of “up or down” world in which one or other participant is on top. This commonly binds the self and the lost internal object in a mutually hostile relationship which interferes with the work of mourning. I describe the relationship as vertical because either the self or the object is felt to take a position looking down on the other. However, the hostility is accentuated because of  the traumatic experience of a fall from an earlier idealised horizontal relationship. Clinical material is presented to illustrate the vertical relationship and to show that sometimes, for reasons that remain poorly understood, progress is able to resume as a softening of the grievance allows the turning point of mourning to be reached - John Steiner

Not all the concepts that have emerged from individual psychoanalytic exploration transfer well to the psychology of large groups, but John Steiner has set out some key principles from clinical experience that not only apply but illuminate key elements of geo-politics particularly at this time of crisis in international relations - Lord John Alderdice

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