Assimilation and encapsulation:

Study of idealized objects

Abstract

First of all, a study is made of the idealized object concept m its evolution from the works of Freud up to those of M. Klein and her school, emphasizing above all the importance of dissociative processes, the correlation between idealization and persecution and the ego‟s handling of the introjected or projected idealized object. In its normal evolution, the idealized object is gradually assimilated by the ego, and is “de-idealized” in the same degree. But the increase of dissociative mechanisms and schizo-paranoid anxieties may make an encystment necessary; this brings about a disturbance in the structure of the ego. There follows the examination of a partial clinical material which allows the study of the state and destination of the idealized objects in two patients. In the first case, the idealized object was represented by an ideological system, — a discovery — which the ego lodged in itself, encysted and protected against manifold persecutors. The disturbance in the patient‟s sublimatory activity with regard to the encystment of the object is studied. In the second case, the idealized object was represented at the time of the analysis by a loved person (a pathological love with extreme dependence on the object). The successive positions of the object in the course of the analysis, its genesis in the individual casestory of the patient, its relations with the ego and the corresponding situation of the persecutory objects are examined. The following conclusions are derived from the study of these cases: 1) The knowledge of the characteristics of idealized objects in their relation with the ego allows for greater precision in psychoanalytic prognosis. 2) The idealized object may function on very different structural levels and may be more or less assimilated or encysted by the ego in one and the same individual, according to the moment. 3) On top of its normal evolutionary stages, the idealized object may adopt very different forms and one part of it may be encysted while other parts are being assimilated to the ego, a fact which implies a splitting of the idealized object. 4) Eventually the characteristics which enable us to appreciate the degree of encystment or assimilation of the idealized object are enumerated.