Temporality—Variations on a Theme of Hans Loewald: An Introduction to a Relational Panel

Abstract

This paper introduces a panel on temporality in the work of Hans Loewald, presented at an IARPP conference in 2022. The presenters highlight Loewald’s idea that the experience of time shapes our understanding of ourselves and the world. Each author applies Loewald’s notion of temporality to clinical material: Cheryl Goldstein uses the image of a “rift” in our relationship to time in her treatment of a young woman unable to bear the guilt of separating from a depressive mother. Shoulamit Milch Reich and Amir Atsmon present the case of a traumatized young boy unable to integrate, or link, the dimensions of past, present, and future, resulting in fragmentation and psychic collapse. Robin Young and Gila Ofer each explore gender development through a Loewaldian lens in which regressive wishes can safely emerge in treatment and ego development resume. Implicit in these presentations is the seminal influence of Loewald on clinical work and his integrative appeal across psychoanalytic orientations.

Keywords:

• differentiation
• Hans Loewald
• integration
• merger
• temporality

“ … every writer creates his own precursors. His work modifies our conception of the past, as it will modify the future.” Jorge Luis Borges (1968), “Kafka and his Precursors.” In: Other Inquisitions 1937–1952.

I was pleased to accept the editor’s invitation to write an introduction to these four illuminating papers, presented at an IARPP conference in 2022 by colleagues with whom I am in a weekly Loewald reading group. There is some irony in the invitation, in that I am the sole Freudian in the group, a fact that speaks to the broad appeal of Loewald’s integrative contributions to psychoanalysis. I will present a brief discussion of the central theme of the panel, temporality, as a framing construct for appreciating these papers. I will also highlight their main theoretical premises and clinical examples. As Loewald provided few illustrations of his work, the search for a “clinical Loewald” has been a primary interest for those intrigued by his theorizing but unsure how to apply it. This unique ensemble of papers provides such an application of Loewaldian theory to practice. In addition, the authors present their view of Loewaldian ideas through their Relational perspective, another framing construct.

Temporality

Hans Loewald’s work is deeply imbued with the theme of temporality and explores the relationship between time, memory, loss, identity, and psychological development. His insights show how our perception and experience of time shape our understanding of ourselves and the world. Loewald challenges the traditional notion of memory as a static record of past events and proposes that memory is a dynamic and fluid process, and that the subjective experience of time, rather than a linear succession of moments, is continually constructed and reshaped in the present. In a recent paper on Loewald, Lacan, and après-coup, Margulies (2023) cites Loewald’s conception of time as a “linking activity” in which past, present and future “are woven into a nexus of “interaction.” The temporal modes do not form a straight line proceeding inexorably into the future but are in a “reciprocal relationship” and “continually modify each other” (Loewald, 1972, pp. 143–144, also quoted in Margulies, supra, p. 827).

Throughout his work, Loewald emphasizes this interconnectedness of temporality with memory and personal identity. He suggests that our sense of self, our personhood, is not a fixed entity but rather a dynamic and evolving experience.

Cheryl Goldstein’s Image of the Rift

Cheryl Goldstein begins her paper with a reference to Gerald Bruns, a literary scholar who argues that there is a “rift” in the traditions that structure our relationship to time (Bruns, 1991). This rift paradoxically both holds apart and calls together, creating a caesura of painful differentiation.

Goldstein associates the temporal dimension with differentiation and loss, and she notes that Loewald placed processes of differentiation and integration at the heart of the formation of psychic structure. Loewald sees structural change as arising from painful loss, not by identifying with the lost object as Freud posited, but rather through processes of internalization, making the other part of the self.

Goldstein describes the early stages of development in Loewald’s model as beginning with an objectless and atemporal unity between the infant and the world. Painful differentiation disrupts this oceanic bliss when the infant recognizes that her needs cannot be met through wishful hallucinatory gratification, but in fact rely for their fulfillment on a dynamic interaction with the environment. “Memorial activity” is Loewald’s term (Loewald, 1976, p. 149) for the process of linking internal experience (e.g., hunger) and external intervention (gratification). This integrative process is the basis for ongoing psychic structure formation. The infant’s “Memorial activity” (as the term suggests, an active process, not a passive registration of stimuli) marks the loss and sets in motion a process of mourning, as the infant gives up omnipotence and oneness. This change allows the infant to recognize both sameness and difference, which are inextricably linked.

I would add that Loewald’s temporal model is in contrast with the spatial metaphors used by Freudian theorists of his time, which resulted in a reified model of mind where one “part” of the mind was dissociated from another. While a partitioned mind could account for psychic conflict, it sacrificed a phenomenological whole. Loewald avoided this theoretical conundrum by using a temporal rather than spatial model.

Time, in Loewald’s model of development, begins with a “primordial separation,” an early stage during which infants begin to recognize themselves as distinct from their caregivers and the world around them, detaching an ego from a prior oceanic state (Loewald, 1951). This formulation of ego development is at variance with the traditional view that the ego develops as a shield or membrane against a hostile external environment, personified by the father (Loewald, 1951). Loewald’s reformulation of ego development appears throughout this suite of papers. Repetition of these interactions etches the distinction between internal and external, ego and reality, but requires memorial activity to link past and present, providing for the development of object constancy and tolerance of frustration.

Goldstein’s account of Loewald’s temporal model also clarifies the significant emphasis he placed on futurity. In oedipal development and the formation of the superego, the future is a beacon light that illuminates ambitions, goals, moral values, and ideals. Out of infantile narcissism, and en route to the formation of the superego, an “ideal ego” forms, seeking identification and merger with an idealized parental imago. Out of the “ideal ego,” an “ego ideal” forms and continues to seek perfection through merger.¹ Only when the infant begins to relinquish the idealized parent—itself a painful loss—can a superego form, as both part of the self and an internalization of the parental figures.

Goldstein explores further the theme of mourning and loss in the process of superego formation in the oedipal phase, in which the idealized and omnipotent parents must be “killed off,” requiring the child to pay the price of guilt and responsibility for this act of parricide. To the extent superego formation involves identification with the parent (or, I would add, taking the parent as an incestuous object), the process of separation and individuation is incomplete. In successful superego development, the parental figures take up positions within the psyche, but are now, to a greater or lesser extent, coextensive with the child’s own morals, values, and ideals.

In Loewald’s version of the oedipal complex, the parricide may be symbolic and metaphoric, but no less akin in psychic consequence to the actual murder of the parents. Goldstein points out that, in Loewald’s account, responsibility for one’s life involves bearing the guilt for this murderous act, a lifetime of atonement. Loewald engages a play on the word “atonement,” parsing it as “at-onement,” and suggesting both unification (“at one”) and differentiation (the hyphen). Goldstein notes the important distinction in Loewald’s model between identification and internalization, the latter being a more completely metabolized “taking in” of the object, such that it loses its character as an object and becomes fully part of the self, whereas in identification, the self endeavors to become like the object.

Goldstein presents a clinical illustration of this process of transformation from identification to internalization through the therapeutic achievement of separation, guilt and atonement in the case of “Miri,” a woman in her mid-twenties who presented with anxious concerns about her sexuality. As the analysis progressed, it became clearer that Miri experienced frustrated wishes that were less about sexuality than a need/wish/fear of separating from her depressive and clinging mother and younger sister. In contrast to her denigration of her mother and sister, Miri seemed to idealize her father and older sister, as representing ideals that she could not reach. The idealized/devalued version of her family history, however, concealed more complex traumas and losses, chiefly the loss of her mother’s two other children in utero, suggesting that her mother was deeply grief-stricken when caring for Miri as an infant. In treatment, Miri came to view her desire for autonomy as a parricidal wish, rendering it difficult for her to live her own life fully. Through her work with Goldstein, Miri became better able to empathize with her mother’s losses, and yet maintain her own boundaries. In Loewaldian terms, she became better able to atone for her guilt over striving to live her own life. Miri’s ability to maintain her independence while showing empathy for her mother was a sign of internalization of, rather than identification with, a grieving mother.

Goldstein concludes her paper by returning to the role of atonement, or at-onement, as an expression of the Rift. She underscores the paradox that “difference, not sameness” binds people together and posits that Loewald stressed the value of accepting rather than overcoming difference. In support of Goldstein’s thesis, I would add that Loewald often objected to the idea that that psychoanalytic goals should not be expressed as a mastery of the id by the ego, a replacement of the unconscious by the conscious, the triumph of secondary process over primary, or the resolution and replacement of infantile transferences with “mature” object relations devoid of transference. Rather, he stressed that these aspects of human life should be in commerce with each other. In Loewald’s poetic words, “To make the unconscious conscious, is one-sided. It is the transference [italics in the original] between them that makes a human life, that makes life human” (Loewald, 1978/2000, p. 550).²

The sociocultural implication for Goldstein is that just as in the individual sphere we must recognize our lack of wholeness, so too in larger social contexts we need to accept difference as the beginning of a more “expansive dialogue.”

Shoulamit Milch-Reich and Amir Atsmon’s Dramaturgy of Development

In the paper by Milch-Reich and Atsmon, the authors also describe Loewald’s model of development in terms of processes of merger and differentiation, with attendant anxieties about engulfment and castration. They view the relational matrix in which the ego develops as comprising both time and space in a shared psychic field. The authors elaborate Loewald’s metaphor of the theater (Loewald, 1975) by emphasizing the analyst’s dual roles as “merging actor,” intimately attuned to the mental state of the patient, and as “dramaturg,” the director of the action and vision holder. The authors demonstrate these therapeutic roles through an extended clinical example.

The authors present the case of Danny, a 12-year-old boy who developed quasi-psychotic symptoms after his mother suddenly fell into a coma, leaving her cognitively impaired. After an arduous recovery away from home, the mother immersed herself in neuroscience research, again spending long hours away from the home. Faced with this double rejection by his mother, Danny retreated to his room, lost weight, withdrew from school and social activity, began hoarding newspapers, and immersed himself in a world of words, severing contact with his family.

Milch-Reich and Atsmon draw on Loewald to view Danny’s disturbance in terms of problems with linking and differentiation, and they discuss the role of the therapist as one of “being with” the patient in the transference, while also “being ahead of” him in what they call the “differential.” These terms underlie the therapeutic roles of “merging actor” and “dramaturg.”

The authors understand the clinical material in terms of the dynamic interplay of merger and differentiation and the twin fears of engulfment (mother) and separation/castration (father). Unlike stage models of development, Loewald’s developmental theory does not posit a linear progression nor, as noted above, does it suggest that the relinquishment of an earlier or more “primitive” position is the goal of development or therapy. The authors see Loewald as anticipating Relational theory’s notion of multiple self-states in maintaining rather than “resolving” these tensions.

The authors also use Loewald’s postulation of two developmentally related experiences of temporality, one in which there is no division of past, present, and future, but instead a complete absorption in being (Loewald, 1976), and another mode of experiencing time in which past, present and future form an integrated nexus and in which memory serves a linking function. The failure of that integration is evidenced by Danny’s fragmented experience, destroying associative links. As he collects meaningless scraps of newspaper, Danny loses sense of meaning and connection, with each instant a meaningless shell.³ Milch-Reich and Atsmon question how these levels of experience communicate with each other and how the self or ego develops a sense of continuity and cohesion. For Loewald, the ego function of linking facilitates the cohesion of the ego and the interplay of the wish for oceanic merger and more differentiated modalities of experience. The authors conclude that Loewald views the self as “a matrix of relational space and time [italics in the original].”

Loewald’s notion of language, the authors explain, avoids making sharp distinctions between verbal and preverbal stages and does not privilege the verbal and consensual over the preverbal and idiosyncratic use of language (Loewald, 1978a). Speech and language are conveyed through the all-pervasive ministrations of the mother in which her voice is part of the global mother-child interaction. Rather than one mode of language superseding the other, Loewald sees the linking of experience (thing presentations) and language (word presentations) as a way of creatively reconciling these two modes of language development: If language does not broaden from its original primary process state the child will be autistically entangled; if language is drawn too much into secondary process, the result will be an affectively dead and empty experience.

The authors pursue the question of how Loewald’s theory can be used to treat states of collapse and fragmentation as exhibited by 12-year-old Danny. They conceptualize Danny’s symptoms as a result of loss of linking, the ability to connect different levels of experience such as past, present, and future. In Shoulamit’s approach,⁴ the therapist takes on the role of merging actor responsible for creating a sense of relatedness with the patient, while as dramaturg guiding the patient toward a higher level of development.

The authors focus on the concepts of “being with” the patient in the transference and “being-ahead-of” the patient in the differential. Much like a Vygotzkyan seeking of a zone of proximal development, the therapist needs to occupy a space just ahead of where the patient is developmentally to foster growth and new learning, but not so much ahead as to lead to failure. Loewald’s temporal emphasis on futurity and the “tension system” (Loewald, 1951, 1960) between parent and child is in accord with this model of growth from the viewpoint of the future. Transference alone would result in unending repetitions of the past without the goal direction of this differential.

In the clinical material presented, Danny undergoes a transformation from defensively clinging to out-of-date newspapers to living in an uncluttered and organized space. The family’s taking a camping trip, at the therapist’s suggestion, provides the present-day external reality that allows for the “tasting of the blood” in Loewald’s metaphor (Loewald, 1960), that allows the contemporary objects to be linked with unconscious affective intensity. The therapist allows Danny to receive an “embodied experience” of his future that can transform his past.⁵

Robin Young’s Gender Development Through a Loewaldian lens

The next two presentations—by Robin Young and Gila Ofer—apply Loewaldian thinking to gender development.

Young provides an account of how Loewald has become a precursor to Relational theorists, notably Stephen Mitchell and Lew Aron, and situates Loewald in the historical context of the development of a Relational orientation. She then applies Loewald’s ideas about temporality to gender development, using a clinical vignette to highlight the usefulness of Loewald’s conceptions. In particular, Young describes Loewald’s central thesis about development as a lifelong “navigation between unity and differentiation.”

In a broader context, Young sketches the emergence of “classical psychoanalysis,” built on the Strachey English translation of the Standard Edition, and the emergence of ego psychology and object relations theory⁶ in the United States. Loewald, a European émigré and native German speaker, understood the Freudian text differently, ranging from matters of translation (e.g., of Trieb as drive or instinct) to an interpretation of Freudian theory modeled after the language of natural science (force, energy, cathexis).

Young briefly describes Loewald’s use of the “ego” in a broader sense than the ego of the tripartite model. I concur that Loewald used the term to refer to the total person, arising from, and differentiated out of, the interactions with the mother, with whom the infant exists in an “original unity.” The twin processes of merger (unity) and differentiation continually define the emerging ego. Young also notes the importance of temporality in Loewald and his conception of a fluid interplay between past, present, and future, as noted above. The concept of transference posits the repetition of the past in the present, but a further application of Loewald’s temporal framework views transference enactments as containing a perspective of the future.

Loewald’s developmental model, according to Young, derives from these conceptions of ego development and temporal flux. Like Goldstein, Young traces the steps from an original undifferentiated union with the mother to the creation of a separate ego through interactions of frustration and gratification of need. Young adds that the baby also experiences attributes of the mother as a separate object in this process of “detaching” an ego (Loewald, 1951). Development proceeds through a process of unity and differentiation and takes place in time zones that are not clearly demarcated as fixed stages.

In applying Loewald to contemporary accounts of gender and sexuality, Young acknowledges that Loewald did not directly theorize about gender development, but she applies Loewald’s insight about early ego development occurring within a relational matrix to issues of gender development, not just ego development. Young views gender and sexual development as influenced by the mother’s attitude toward her child’s gender, which the mother views from the outset of her child’s development as the “same” or “different” from her own. Depending on the mother’s valence, she may foist premature differentiation on a cis-gendered male child or delay differentiation with the cis-female. Young clarifies that these experiences of early transmission of gender assignment do not foreclose more complex development of the ego/self.

Young applies Loewald’s insights to a case of a 30-year-old self-identified gay woman, “T,” who presented with symptoms of depression that soon lifted, revealing a problematic relationship with a lover toward whom she felt inferior as a woman. T’s gender dysphoria was most explicitly expressed when she told her therapist she felt she was “really a man” and would be happier if she had a body truer to her experienced gender identity. Young relates that T’s early history involved growing up in the care of a mother who had severe and persistent mental illness and clung to T, both physically and emotionally. In terms of Loewald’s model of development, T’s ability to differentiate from her mother may have been thwarted by her mother’s neediness. Young hypothesizes that T’s wish to be a man may be a way of creating what McDougall (1980) has called a “phallic barrier.” Loewald, too, as early as 1951, noted that interactions with the father facilitate the child’s differentiation from the mother and protect against engulfment.

Young also adopts Loewald’s idea that identification and internalization are the core processes in the fluctuation between merger and differentiation. T’s developmental arrest is her inability to differentiate from, and internalize, her mother, who continually thwarted her child’s separateness. Young draws upon Loewald’s model of oedipal disengagement from pre-oedipal thralldom, noting that differentiation requires the mobilization of aggression toward the object and initiates a mourning process over destroying the object. T’s wish to be a man is an expression of her need to differentiate from her mother, without which her ego development cannot proceed. Her desire to change gender is a concretization of this psychic dilemma, one that Loewald’s developmental model helps elucidate with a “compassionate” and “deeply humane” sense of caring. Young concludes that, in Loewald’s theory of ego development, the “dance of relationship is the matrix of life.”

Gila Ofer’s Revisiting an Unknown Woman

Gila Ofer’s paper examines Freud’s (1920) case report of female homosexuality from the comparative lens of Freud’s and Loewald’s approach to Oedipal development. She addresses Freud’s theoretical and technical method and his conception of female sexuality as contrasted with Loewald’s.

Like other critics of Freud, Ofer finds his heteronormative and patriarchal attitudes offensive. In the case at hand, a young woman ran away from her parents when her father gave her a reproving look when encountered in public with her female lover. She jumped over a wall and flung herself onto a railway line, after which her parents brought her to Freud for treatment. Freud was reluctant to treat her under the circumstances, as she lacked internal motivation for analysis. Ofer views the collusion between Freud and the young woman’s father as an anti-therapeutic alliance in which both men intended treatment to lead their patient/daughter to relinquish her relationship with her lover. In practice, Ofer regards Freud as exhibiting bias against homosexuality despite his theorizing about the normality of homosexual wishes and universal bisexuality.

Ofer provides a brief biographical sketch of Loewald that suggests the origins of his more compassionate clinical approach. Loewald lost his father at a young age and grew up in the care of a loving mother. His training in philosophy under Heidegger was a foundational experience, and his disillusionment with his mentor’s joining the Nazi party a profound betrayal. Loewald emigrated to the United States where he underwent an interpersonal psychoanalysis, leading in the author’s account to his being marginalized by establishment psychoanalysts, but later discovered by Relational theorists (Aron, Mitchell) and some contemporary Freudians (Lear, Chodorow, Balsam).

Ofer also maintains that Loewald argued against the scientific model in favor of one stressing the arts as a source of knowledge and diverged from the then-regnant paradigm of ego psychology. It may also be pointed out that Loewald did not follow other ego psychologists (Merton Gill, Roy Schafer, Robert Holt) who abandoned the natural science model for a hermeneutic one. Loewald held firm to his alignment with Freud and Freudian metapsychology, although significantly revising this terminology, filling a gap between the natural science model and hermeneutics.⁷

Ofer provides a summary of key tenets of Loewald’s theory, such as the undifferentiated mother-infant field; the link between drives and object relations from the beginning of life; internalization of interactions as a key factor in ego development and therapeutic action; and the grounding of the Oedipal complex in terms of seeking emancipation and autonomy rather than rebellion and submission. Loewald also took a stand against the blank screen version of analytic neutrality, favoring theatrical or artistic conceptions of the role of the analyst (as artist, director, co-actor). In relation to time, Loewald’s inclusion of the future highlights goals and ideals that beckon rather than invite regressive and repressive forces that push back.

In her imagined account of Loewald’s treatment of Freud’s patient, identified in the paper as Margarete von Trautenegg (nee Csonka), Ofer envisions Loewald as attuned to this young woman’s conflicting attitudes toward her parents, and sees Loewald as facilitating her self-discovery in treatment rather than imposing parental and societal values and mores on her. Ofer proposes that Loewald would have seen her suicidal attempt as stemming from fear of the loss of the love of her parents in response to her forbidden wishes, choosing self-destruction rather than mourning the loss of their approval.

In Loewald’s approach, the therapist would show respect for the patient and her choices and not only focus on her negative affects, such as scorn, anger, envy and vindictiveness. Loewald would have viewed the treatment as a site for resumed ego development allowing regressive wishes for primary maternal love to emerge. Ofer concludes by stating that Loewald utilized Freud’s language but created a broader theory that linked primary and secondary developmental stages and encompassed nonverbal elements. By doing so, Loewald avoided a rigid theoretical path and provided a model for treating gender nonconforming patients with creativity and compassion.

Ofer’s paper appears to be a companion piece with Robin Young’s, both focusing on gender and sexual identity to illustrate how Loewald might be applied in a contemporary setting, where greater tolerance is shown for gender variation. It is, of course, conjectural to say how the historical Loewald would have reacted, as we know little of his actual treatment approach, but both papers extrapolate plausibly from Loewald’s theory to circumstances and settings Freud did not explicitly address, and in this way help to articulate the clinical Loewald.

Variations on the Theme of Temporality in Loewald

The four papers in this panel take up the subject of temporality in Loewald from different perspectives, much as Loewald describes his paper on therapeutic action as illuminating that landscape from several vantage points (Loewald, 1960, p. 222). I view this ensemble of papers more in musical terms in which themes and variations are orchestrated through four movements. The fluidity of time is evident in this process of ebbing and flowing.

Several Loewaldian ideas about time emerge with particular clarity and recurrence in these papers. One is the distinction between a linear, chronological conception of time versus a more subjective experience, shaped by memorial activity and unconscious processes. A fluid relationship between these two modes of experiencing time is critical for the therapist to appreciate.

Development is another temporal construct in Loewald’s theory, consisting not of fixed stages and phases but more fluid time zones, in which there is movement between polarities of merger and differentiation. The urge to complete development, even if currently arrested, is a positive striving that makes therapy possible. The therapist, for significant periods, may need to be the holder of this vision. For Loewald, the goal of treatment should be stated as, “Where id was, there shall ego become [emphasis added],” a translation Loewald preferred for the German word werden (Loewald, 1970, p. 48). Loewald’s idea, first expressed in the “Therapeutic Action” paper (Loewald, 1960), is that the parent holds an image of the child’s developmental potential. In the therapeutic situation, the therapist may be the one to hold out this hope in the face of seemingly intractable impasse. All of these aspects of temporality were critical in the case material presented.

Another unifying theme, apart from the stated one of temporality, is the authors’ search for the clinical Loewald. Loewald famously provided few examples of his actual work, a vignette here or there but not a technical guide. He did not rule out the possibility that “[a] better understanding of the therapeutic action of psychoanalysis may lead to changes in technique (Loewald, 1960, p. 222),” but implicitly left “such clarification” to future others. Loewald’s interest in his papers was more in clarifying “theoretical psychoanalysis,” with less explicit emphasis on the observational data of the consulting room. Many readers of Loewald feel that his language, so authentic in its rendering of human experience, achieves the quality of clinical reality without a manual to guide the practitioner. The panelists, however, have sought to find in Loewald’s extant teachings a pathway to a clinical Loewald suitable for contemporary practice.

I mentioned at the outset that I am the sole avowed Freudian in a study group devoted to a relational reading and rendering of Loewald. Is there anything notably different in our perspectives? My answer is largely no, but there was to my Freudian ear an absence of the language of sexual and aggressive drive derivatives stirring anxiety or dysphoria, triggering defensive operations, and culminating in observable symptoms, resistances, and transference reactions, all of which represent compromise formations as posited by Modern Conflict Theory. The Relational model espoused by the authors stresses processes of merger and differentiation that seem to proceed without primarily defensive aims or sexual and aggressive underpinnings.

In a recent survey of transference, Ellman and Weinstein (2023) comment on how Loewald’s “integrative concepts allow for different theoretical orientations to be joined within his theoretical framework” (p. 766). Despite some differences in emphasis, I strongly concur that the authors of this remarkable ensemble of papers have illustrated the compatibility of Loewald to their Relational turn.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Seymour Moscovitz

Seymour Moscovitz, PhD, is a psychoanalyst in private practice in New York City. He received his analytic training at the NYU Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis and at the Institute for Psychoanalytic Training and Research. He is on the teaching faculty at both institutes. Dr. Moscovitz is a co-founder of the Hans W. Loewald Center.

Notes

¹ These constructs are similar to Kohut’s “idealized parental imago” and “grandiose self” and the idealizing and merger transferences (Kohut, 1966).

² See also The Freud Lectures at Yale University. The chapter based on those lectures was “Transference and Love,” originally published in Loewald (1978b, p. 31), and re-published in Jonathan Lear’s (2000, p. 550).

³ Borges addressed a similar loss of meaning in his short story, “Funes, the Memorious” (Borges, 1962), in which a man, paralyzed in an accident, has only discrete eidetic perceptions of one moment after another but loses the capacity for abstract though.

⁴ I will follow the authors’ convention of referring to the therapist by her first name.

⁵ Danny’s use of his father to fold and arrange fragmented newspapers reminded me of observing, in the context of a custody evaluation, an interaction between a father and his 6-year-old son, who entered a tantrum state that would not be assuaged. After enduring his son’s inconsolable state for several minutes, the father silently took some folders out of his briefcase and told his son he had to “give the doctor some papers.” He began folding each one, methodically, making no demands of his son, who seemed transfixed by the metronome-like, predictable regularity of the sound and now able to regulate his affect in reciprocal relationship with his father, much as Danny’s father helped him achieve homeostasis.

⁶ It may be noted, however, that Loewald complained of the barriers to the acceptance of object relations theory, stating “there still seems to be a tendency to put up a ‘no admittance’ sign when metapsychological considerations point to object relations as … essential constitutive factors in psychic structure formation” (Loewald, 1970, p. 299).

⁷ In an anecdote reported by Rosemary Balsam (2008), Loewald once tripped over stairs at a conference. Not injured, Loewald quipped that he may have fallen “through the cracks of ego psychology and self psychology, or was it between hermeneutics and natural science? (p. 1121).”