Appreciating Ogden’s Re-conception of Destruction but with a Developmental Arc: When Is the Big Scary Ape Destructive?

ABSTRACT

In this manuscript, we engage with Thomas Ogden’s recent reconceptualization of D.W. Winnicott’s seminal description of the movement between object-relating and object-usage. We begin by closely reading Ogden updates to Winnicott’s description of the movement from object-relating, the time in infancy where babies relate primarily along dimensions of a shared reality and sameness to object-usage where they can “use” objects in the external world and so tolerate difference. Ogden highlights how this process necessarily involves the mother’s “real destruction”; the felt and lived experience of her identity as a “good enough mother” being destroyed by the baby’s aggression. Although we find this an incredibly valuable addition to the literature, we believe that Ogden’s reconceptualization does not quite go far enough. Describing this destruction as real maintains problematic confusion surrounding the infant’s agency. Accordingly, we provide a different way of viewing development, which highlights the dynamics of articulation and collapse. This idea allows us to better appreciate and situate destruction within the realm of adolescence. We offer examples from literature and our clinical work to demonstrate this.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Throughout the paper, we move between using the more “traditional” language of mother-baby we are aware of course that parents are not limited by gender or biological relationship. Indeed, our later discussion of collapse rather than destruction, if anything helps broaden the idea of parent to include any who might measure or collapse the wave of the small child. However, we generally us the language of mother-infant to be consistent with the existing language and also to remain within some of the narrative arc (for instance, McCourt’s stinky face).

2. We use infant because there is confusion on our part of the age of the baby, infant, toddler, child etc., being discussed. However, Ogden refers to his experiences with a 6-month-old throwing frankfurters and noting that the intermediate position that Winnicott is discussing in the move from relating to usage then occurs prior to this. From our perspective, this is then in infancy (at least earlier than 6 months).

3. We feel sympathetic to this claim and need to also note that the theorizing about the internal worlds of infants and small children has been important to us. Hence, we think this solution remains problematic Since we have in other publications used models of the movement between paranoid-schizoid and depressive positions to understand the therapeutic process and various phenomena, we do not move away from this model lightly or without some anxiety. But we also feel that Ogden’s key contribution here is that real subjective experience of mother as being destroyed from the situation means that we do not need to also hold this cumbersome and complicated view of the infant’s deep unconscious fantasies of destruction as real or as memory.

4. Consider as well that in Winnicott’s (1975b) paper “Hate in the Countertransference” he offers eighteen “reasons why a mother hates her baby” (p. 201). All of them are clearly or arguably situation, except one” “He tries to hurt her, periodically bites her, all in love” (our emphasis).

5. The words the we put in quotes here are the ones commonly used by physicists. For readers largely unfamiliar with quantum physics they could read a short article (Orzel, 2015) by Chad Orzel titled, Six things Everyone Should Know About Physics.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Philip J. Rosenbaum

Philip J. Rosenbaum, Ph.D. is a clinical psychologist, supervising psychoanalyst and the Director of Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS) at Haverford College. He received his psychoanalytic training at the William Alanson White Institute. His interests are in studying the commonalities between contemporary interpersonal analytic practice and cultural psychology, particularly as it is connected to field theory and understanding meaning making processes as they occur in and are constituted by social and interpersonal situations. He is the editor of the recently published book Making Our Ideas Clear: Pragmatism and Psychoanalysis and is the co-editor of the Journal of College Student Psychotherapy. Additionally, he has published in Culture & Psychology; Theory & Psychology; and Contemporary Psychoanalysis. He is in private practice in Philadelphia, PA and his website is www.philiprosenbaumphd.com

Richard E. Webb

Richard E. Webb, Ph.D. is a clinical psychologist with a private practice in psychotherapy in Lansdale, PA (outside of Philadelphia). He is the Director Emeritus of Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS) at Haverford College. He is interested in the intersection between existentialism and psychoanalysis, especially around the issues of agency and self-authorization. He has published in Theory & Psychology, The International J. of Psycho-Analysis, and J. of Constructivist Psychology. With co-author, Philip J. Rosenbaum, he has two articles currently in press: Liberal as young and conservative as middle ager: Facing mortality from various existential positions (Journal of Psychohistory), and Tribalism: Where George Orwell leads us and where and understanding of existential-relational positions extends us (Theory & Psychology). Email: [email protected]