Barriers to Falling and Remaining in Love, Kernberg (1974)
Falling and remaining in love requires the achievement of two developmental stages. (1) Whole Object Relations. This is the integration of internal object relations that leads to an integrated view of self and others. (2) Full Genital Enjoyment. This involves overcoming oedipal conflicts and other unconscious prohibitions against sex. There are four configurations along the continuum of falling in love.
(1) Severe Narcissism. These individuals are almost entirely incapable of establishing sexual and tender relationships with others. They might become sexually excited by a body or by a person considered attractive by others.
(2) Moderate Narcissism. These individuals have never fallen in love but can be sexually promiscuous. When they feel sexually interested in someone, they unconsciously feel envy and greed and want to take possession of the other. Although they lust after the object before sex, their enthusiasm and interest dies immediately afterward; since they have projected their envy and greed, they now view the sex object as wanting to take away their own freedom.
Example. A man loses interest in women after having sex with them. His interest is “geared exclusively to their breasts, buttocks, vaginas, soft skin, and, above all, to gratifying his fantasy that women were teasingly concealing and withholding all their ‘treasures.’” He eventually realizes in analysis that he envies women because he envied his mother. He remembered “clinging desperately to her warm and soft body while she coldly rejected his expression of love as well as his angry demands upon her.” Once he understood his destructive tendencies toward the analyst and women, he experienced guilt and depression and finally found ways to repair the harm that he caused. Once he became concerned for the object, his relation to her and other women changed.
(3) Primitive and Intense Falling in Love. These individuals so greatly idealize their love objects that their descriptions do not create a realistic picture of them. They exhibit an infantile dependency and can experience genital gratification.
(4) Neurotic. These individuals are able to form stable and deep object relations without the capacity for full sexual gratification. When we develop the capacity for whole object relations, oedipal relations can develop and sexual prohibitions can become a problem. We start to repress our sexual desires.
Example. A young woman sleeps around with several different men; she only becomes sexually aroused when the man is humiliating her. When she was 6, her mother died; her stepmother was domineering and aggressive, and her father was weak and submissive. During analysis, different oedipal struggles emerged in the transference: at first she saw the analyst as weak, just like her father; she then wanted the analyst to desire her, just as she had longed for her mother; she then saw the analyst as rejecting, just as her mother had been rejecting.
(5) Integration. Sex integrated with tender, stable, deep object relations. Falling and remaining in love requires “the resolution of the conflicts on the continuum of developmental tasks highlighted in the examination of the pathology of each of these stages of development.” The narcissist must develop “the capacity for concern and guilt” and overcome his “deep, unconscious devaluation of the love object.” The borderline must resolve “the splitting mechanisms responsible for this primitive idealization” and learn to “tolerate and resolve the pregenital conflicts against which primitive idealization was a defense.” The neurotic must resolve his “unconscious, predominantly oedipal, conflicts.”
(1) Severe Narcissism. These individuals are almost entirely incapable of establishing sexual and tender relationships with others. They might become sexually excited by a body or by a person considered attractive by others.
(2) Moderate Narcissism. These individuals have never fallen in love but can be sexually promiscuous. When they feel sexually interested in someone, they unconsciously feel envy and greed and want to take possession of the other. Although they lust after the object before sex, their enthusiasm and interest dies immediately afterward; since they have projected their envy and greed, they now view the sex object as wanting to take away their own freedom.
Example. A man loses interest in women after having sex with them. His interest is “geared exclusively to their breasts, buttocks, vaginas, soft skin, and, above all, to gratifying his fantasy that women were teasingly concealing and withholding all their ‘treasures.’” He eventually realizes in analysis that he envies women because he envied his mother. He remembered “clinging desperately to her warm and soft body while she coldly rejected his expression of love as well as his angry demands upon her.” Once he understood his destructive tendencies toward the analyst and women, he experienced guilt and depression and finally found ways to repair the harm that he caused. Once he became concerned for the object, his relation to her and other women changed.
(3) Primitive and Intense Falling in Love. These individuals so greatly idealize their love objects that their descriptions do not create a realistic picture of them. They exhibit an infantile dependency and can experience genital gratification.
(4) Neurotic. These individuals are able to form stable and deep object relations without the capacity for full sexual gratification. When we develop the capacity for whole object relations, oedipal relations can develop and sexual prohibitions can become a problem. We start to repress our sexual desires.
Example. A young woman sleeps around with several different men; she only becomes sexually aroused when the man is humiliating her. When she was 6, her mother died; her stepmother was domineering and aggressive, and her father was weak and submissive. During analysis, different oedipal struggles emerged in the transference: at first she saw the analyst as weak, just like her father; she then wanted the analyst to desire her, just as she had longed for her mother; she then saw the analyst as rejecting, just as her mother had been rejecting.
(5) Integration. Sex integrated with tender, stable, deep object relations. Falling and remaining in love requires “the resolution of the conflicts on the continuum of developmental tasks highlighted in the examination of the pathology of each of these stages of development.” The narcissist must develop “the capacity for concern and guilt” and overcome his “deep, unconscious devaluation of the love object.” The borderline must resolve “the splitting mechanisms responsible for this primitive idealization” and learn to “tolerate and resolve the pregenital conflicts against which primitive idealization was a defense.” The neurotic must resolve his “unconscious, predominantly oedipal, conflicts.”
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