Internal objects' or ‘chimerical monsters’?: the demonic ‘third forms’ of the internal world

Abstract

The concept of 'object' whether internal or external, is a hold-over from the Enlightenment and from the positivistic certainty of nineteenth-and early twentieth-century science. Its use in current psychoanalytic theory and practice is now obsolete because of the contributions of post-modernism and their emphasis on subjectivity and relativity. In place of the word 'object', the author favors a return to pre-Enlightenment psychology in order to address the presence and clinical manifestation of what the term 'object' screened, i.e., demons, monsters, chimerae, ghosts, spirits, etc. In terms of external 'objects', he favors such terms as 'persons' or 'subjects', which also reflects an adjustment to the post-modern emphasis on the ineffability of the Other.

A Syncretic Approach to the Role of Pathological Organizations in Violence

“…Moreover, in a language that is redolent of his Jungian‐inspired reconceptualization of the unconscious as an implicate order populated by third forms and preternatural presences (Grotstein, , , ), Grotstein describes the relation between the psychotic and non‐psychotic parts of a pathological organization as constituting a metaphorical ‘latter day “pact with the devil” ’ (Grotstein, , p. 196; Freud, ; Grotstein, , ; Klein, ), the clinical implications of which he elucidates as manifesting in the form of an anxious and collusive mode of relating, in which the patient maintains a covert and disingenuous loyalty not only to the therapist but also to his pathological internal objects (Grotstein, ).…”

“…This attempt to bring into dialogue aspects of Kleinian psychoanalysis with analytical psychology takes its inspiration from the work of Michael Fordham and his successors on the ‘Jung–Klein hybrid’ (Fordham, ). As will become apparent, it is suggested that this convergence of Jungian with post‐Kleinian psychoanalytic perspectives is given exemplary expression in the work of James Grotstein, whose own development of a theory of subject‐relations (Grotstein, , ) owes much to analytical psychology. Consequently, Grotstein's work can also be viewed as providing a significant contribution to the ongoing attempts to heal the historical rift that has existed between psychoanalysis and analytical psychology (Culber‐Koehn, ; Eisold, ; Jacoby, ).…”

Who's afraid of the Wolfe couple: the interlocking traumatic scene

“…Another form of shocking experience derives from psychic invasion and possession by unprocessed (sometimes unprocessable) material from one's ancestors. Such forces may form themselves into sinister alien inner figures manifesting in dreams and scenes as witches, burglars, intruders, ghosts, uncanny presences or ‘chimerical monsters’ (Grotstein 1997). These are the inter‐generational phantom presences in the relationship.…”

“…Due to marital 'fit', or valency (Bion 1961), mutual projective identifications (Scharff & Scharff 1991) and the unconscious covenant 5 (Grotstein 2000) operating between couples, each will play out this role with a vengeance. When the traumatic complex which is the puppet master behind such a script is impervious to modification from alternative experience, the model scene may border on the psychotic, in that each person caught up in such a scene cannot distinguish the 'play' from reality.…”

Book Review: Dark Traces of the Past: Psychoanalysis and Historical Thinking

“…It reminds me of James Grotstein’s use of the metaphor “undead” to describe the stifling and paralyzing experience of melancholia: “The departed object becomes a haunting, undead, yet unalive ghost, which shares unaliveness and undeadness with the object to which it is ‘Siamese-twinned’” (1997, p. 70). Similarly, Freud’s contemporary, the philosopher/educator Franz Rosenzweig, spoke of a state of undeadness (see Santner 2001).…”