I Hate You--Don't Leave Me - Jerold J. Kreisman [32]
This fear of engulfment is well illustrated by T. E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia), who at age thirty-eight writes about his fear of closeness to his overbearing mother: “I have a terror of her knowing anything about my feelings, or convictions, or way of life. If she knew, they would be damaged; violated; no longer mine.”6
OBJECT CONSTANCY PHASE (25-36 MONTHS). By the end of the second year of life, assuming the previous levels of development have progressed satisfactorily, the child enters the object constancy phase, wherein the child recognizes that the absence of mother (and other primary caregivers) does not automatically mean her annihilation. The child learns to tolerate ambivalence and frustration. The temporary nature of mother’s anger is recognized. The child also begins to understand that his own rage will not destroy mother. He begins to appreciate the concept of unconditional love and acceptance and develops the capacity to share and to empathize. The child becomes more responsive to father and others in the environment. Self-image becomes more positive, despite the self-critical aspects of an emerging conscience.
Aiding the child in all these tasks are transitional objects—the familiar comforts (teddy bears, dolls, blankets) that represent mother and are carried everywhere by the child to help ease separations. The object’s form, smell, and texture are physical representations of the comforting mother. Transitional objects are one of the first compromises made by the developing child in negotiating the conflict between the need to establish autonomy and the need for dependency. Eventually, in normal development, the transitional object is abandoned when the child is able to internalize a permanent image of a soothing, protective mother figure.
Developmental theories propose that the borderline is never able to progress to this object constancy stage. Instead, the borderline is fixated at an earlier developmental phase, in which splitting and other defense mechanisms remain prominent.
Because they are locked into a continual struggle to achieve object constancy, trust, and a separate identity, adult borderlines continue to rely on transitional objects for soothing. One woman, for example, always carried in her purse a newspaper article that contained quotes from her psychiatrist. When she was under stress, she would take it out, calling it her “security blanket.” Seeing her doctor’s name in print reinforced his existence and his continued interest and concern for her.
Princess Diana also took comfort in transitional objects, keeping a menagerie of twenty stuffed animals—“my family,” she called them—at the foot of her bed . . . As her lover James Hewitt observed, they “lay in a line, about thirty cuddly animals—animals that had been with her in her childhood, which she had tucked up in her bed at Park House and which had comforted her and represented a certain security.” When she went on trips, Diana took a favorite teddy bear with her.7 Ritualized, superstitious acts, when done in extremes, may represent borderline utilization of transitional objects. The ballplayer who wears the same socks or refuses to shave while in the midst of a hitting streak, for example, may simply be prone to the superstitions that prevail in sports; only when such behaviors are repeated compulsively and inflexibly and interfere with routine functioning does the person cross the border into the borderline syndrome.
Childhood Conflicts
The child’s evolving sense of object constancy is consistently challenged as he progresses through developmental