YOU in Narcissist's Harem of Internal Objects
Channel: Prof. Sam Vaknin
Date: 2021-02-09

Separation is wound/void/empty core – individuation (“self”) scar tissue – dead mother (not good enough environmental mother who provides no ego care) creates Balint’s “basic fault”

Ego formation  disrupted owing to problems in object relations

To fill the void: internal objects (phantasy, schizoid self-sufficiency, narcissistic grandiosity) or external objects (object relations, love)

Relationships with internal objects are same as with external ones, owing to confusion.

They involve:

idealization-devaluation cycles, 

shared fantasy as organizing principle, 

approach-avoidance

Idealized internal objects are nucleii of grandiosity, participate in co-idealization and self-idealization

Devalued internal objects either become persecutory or are projected

Shared fantasy involves 

autoeroticism (sex), 

omnipotence and omniscience (services), 

and self-supply (emanating from idealized internal objects)

Approach-avoidance and intermittent reinforcement engendered by the schizoid core's pain aversion (love is pain, repressed to be avoided) but also to 

convert partner to bad internal object (object constancy which applies to both good and bad objects)

Reestablish safe solitary space (in healthy people, boundaries define the personal space, here they ARE the space)

Test parental sufficiency (unconditional love and acceptance) 

Reenact early childhood conflict

Sadistic pleasure

Quote from "Empty Core: An Object Relations Approach to Psychotherapy of the Schizoid Personality" by Jeffrey Seinfeld, Ph.D., published by Jason Aronson, 1991

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