A Fairbairnian Structural Analysis of the Narcissistic Personality Disorder David P. Celani Fairbairn’s structural theory is based on the developing child’s need to dissociate actual events between himself or herself and his or her objects that are excessively rejecting in order to contine an uninterrupted, pristine attachment to them. This eventuates in three selves in relation to three objects: One pair is conscious (the central ego which relates to the ideal object), while the other two pairs (the antilibidinal ego, which relates to the rejecting object, and the libidinal ego, which relates to the exciting object) are mostly held in the unconscious. ­Fairbairn saw the fluid relationship between the two split-off pairs of ­unconscious part selves and the conscious central ego as the primary ­dynamic of the human personality. The author proposes a specific variation in Fairbairn’s structural theory to account for the development of narcissism. Specifically, this disorder is viewed as the result of a developmental history in which the child finds himself or herself in an exceedingly hostile interpersonal environment that precludes the child from using an idealized version either of his or her parental objects as the “exciting object.” The child therefore substitutes a grandiose view of himself or herself as the exciting object. This defense deflects external influences and replaces relationships with external objects with a closed internal world that is comprised of an admiring part-self basking in reflected love from its relationship with an exciting part-object.

Many psychoanalysts are generally aware of Fairbairn’s model, despite the fact that it has remained in the background of psychoanalytic thought. Much of the credit for keeping his model alive goes to the work of Greenberg and Mitchell (1983), as well as Mitchell (1988, 2000) individually, Grotstein and Rinsley (1994), and Skolnick and Scharff (1998), and most recently by Odgen’s (2010) welcome summary of Fairbairn’s work. This paper will dePsychoanalytic Review, 101(3), June 2014

© 2014 N.P.A.P.

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scribe Fairbairn’s structural theory and then offer a new way of viewing the dynamics of narcissism from within his metapsychology. This paper is a part of a continuing effort to apply Fairbairn’s structural theory to the existing literature on specific diagnostic groups, including the borderline, hysteric, and obsessional personality disorders (Celani, 1993, 2001, 2007, 2010). Narcissism is an important topic in the development of many psychoanalytic theories as this disorder involves the development and maintenance of the self and the origins self-esteem, as the following passage from Mitchell (1986) notes: By granting self-love a position prior to object love and in a continual reciprocal relation to it, Freud opened up for psychodynamic consideration the whole realm of issues and phenomena pertaining to self-regard and self-esteem regulation. The concept of narcissism allowed the drive model to address itself to the kinds of questions which were to become central to subsequent relational model theorists such as Sullivan, Kohut and others—questions like: How does a person come to experience and visualize himself the way he does? How does self-regard develop and how is it maintained? (p. 108)

Fairbairn’s model of the human personality with its emphasis on the child’s complete dependency upon his or her objects for the child’s own personality formation places parental empathy, which he assumed was the generator of the child’s self-regard, at the very core of his theory. Fairbairn challenged Freud’s instinct model of human motivation by modifying Freud’s concept of “libido” from objectless sexualized energy to the fundamental need for attachment of the human infant to his or her objects; Fairbairn (1943) maintained “(1) that libidinal “aims” are of secondary importance in comparison with object-relationships, and (2) that a relationship with the object, and not gratification of impulse, is the ultimate aim of libidinal striving” (p. 60). Attachment to objects in Fairbairn’s (1940) model is the most basic and indivisible motive upon which all later personality development is based, and parental behaviors that interfere with the child’s attachment to his or her object are the “first cause” (Cooper, 1985) for the creation of defenses and for the development of fixations. Fairbairn (1943) paired this first assertion, which was clearly

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unpopular with his classical analytic colleagues, with the equally radical position that the human unconscious was not an instinctual source of energy, but, rather, a group of structures that develop as a consequence of the dissociation of traumatic events that were disruptive to the child’s attachment to his essential object. Thus, the unconscious in Fairbairn’s model is an accrual of dissociated relational events that had to be forcefully banished from awareness: “I now venture to formulate the view that what are primarily repressed are neither intolerably guilty impulses or intolerably unpleasant memories, but intolerably bad internalized objects” (Fairbairn, 1943, p. 62). His structural theory, introduced in 1944, had six separate substructures, three selves, and three associated objects. One pair of self and object structures are conscious, while the other two pairs remain mostly in the unconscious. Fairbairn’s and Freud’s models represent entirely different philosophical positions regarding the nature of man and the operation of the human psyche, and consequently are mutually exclusive (Rubens, 1984). Given Fairbairn’s radical positions, it is not surprising that the analytic community largely ignored his challenge until the mid 1980s, since he asked them to abandon the fundamental concepts of classical theory and accept a purely interpersonal model, as noted by Mitchell (1999): “Placing relationality at the center of motivation, development, and psychodynamics in the way Fairbairn did was regarded as obliterating what was most central to Freudian psychoanalysis—its foundation in drive theory” (p. 90). THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE SELF AND THE STRUCTURALIZATION OF THE UNCONSCIOUS

In Fairbairn’s model, the gradual development of the “self” is not the result of the maturing of primitive drives into new, higherlevel structures due to societal pressures, but rather a consequence of the child’s relationships to his objects. Parental support, attention, and encouragement fosters the elaboration, the gradual differentiation, and the ongoing maturation of the child’s ego (the “central ego”), which exists in rudimentary form from the outset of life. Unlike Freud’s “ego,” the ‘central ego’ is not

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conceived as originating out of something else (the “id”), or as constituting a passive structure dependent for its activity upon impulses proceeding from the matrix out of which it originated, and on the surface of which it rests (Fairbairn, 1944, p.106). Fairbairn’s central ego (or self) is the key structure in the individual’s developing personality, and its robustness is completely dependent on the interpersonal environment in which it finds itself. Parental rejection, neglect, and indifference impede the central ego’s development. In the following quotation, Fairbairn (1941) cites “parental” rejection as the key causative factor; however, in most other similar passages he focused specifically on maternal rejection as the prime cause of regression and developmental fixation: What emerges as clearly as anything else from the analysis of such a case is that the greatest need of a child is to obtain conclusive assurance (a) that he is genuinely loved as a person by his parents, and (b) that his parents genuinely accept his love. It is only in so far as such assurance is forthcoming in a form sufficiently convincing to enable him to depend safely upon his real objects that he is able to renounce infantile dependence without misgiving. In the absence of such assurance his relationship to his objects is fraught with too much anxiety over separation to enable him to renounce the attitude of infantile dependence; for such a renunciation would be equivalent in his eyes to forfeiting all hope of ever obtaining the satisfaction of his unsatisfied emotional needs. Frustration of his desire to be loved as a person and to have his love accepted is the greatest trauma that a child can experience. (pp. 39–40)

The child reacts to the parents’ neglect/indifference by dissociating memories of intolerably rejecting relational events. These events coalesce in the child’s unconscious and gradually form internal (sub) ego structures that are relational templates of the traumatic external relationship. Simultaneously, the deprived child’s conscious, central ego is depleted because relatively large parts of it have to be split off into two subselves and dissociated in tandem with the memories of the relationship with the two facets of the “bad object” (Fairbairn, 1944). The first subself that is split off (originally a part of the central ego) has experienced intolerable abuse or neglect, and was originally called the “internal saboteur” by Fairbairn (1944), which he later changed to the “antilibidinal

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ego” (Fairbairn,1954). The antilibidinal ego has experienced hostile or neglectful relational events at the hands of the “rejecting object” (Fairbairn, 1944) that are too intolerable for the central ego to accept as coming from the same parent that it relates to, and consequently these events are impossible to integrate. Clear, conscious awareness of these incompatible events would destroy the attachment between the child’s central ego and the “ideal object” (the supportive/loving object-partner of the central ego). The memory of the parent’s rejecting and indifferent behavior, along with the antilibidinal ego’s emotional response to the experience of abuse has to be banished into the unconscious so that the central ego’s conscious attachment to the ideal object can continue unimpeded. Robbins (1992) has noted that the ideal or idealized object is “idealized” not through the pathway of fantasy enhancement, but rather by the elimination of negative events: “Over time the idealized object is modified by accretion of positive experience and evacuation via repression of frustrating elements” (p. 256). The dissociative defense is needed when, for example, a young child who has experienced chronic abandonment in relation to his object, and is saturated with despair and rage, is suddenly faced with the parent who unexpectedly returns home and resumes the parenting role, as if nothing unusual has happened. In an instant “normal” life resumes, and the child must dissociate the antilibidinal rage provoked by the neglect of the rejecting aspect of the parent and sit down to dinner and accept food from the same object who had been neglecting him or her just hours, or even moments before. The central ego simply cannot afford to remember or consciously know about these relationally disruptive events because of its absolute dependency (Fairbairn, 1941, p. 46) on the object. In effect, the dissociative defense allows the child to create a “good object” for himself or herself, even if one does not exist in reality. A second relationship between a dissociated subself and partobject develops on the “exciting” side of the bad object (Fairbairn, 1944). Fairbairn assumed that a second intolerably frustrating relationship emerged from the child’s extreme need of his or her object. The second subself of the child that had to be dissoci-

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ated was called the “libidinal ego” because it was suffused with overwhelming longing for the desperately needed “exciting object,” an aspect of the parent that seemed almost in reach but was consistently unavailable. Fairbairn assumed that the libidinal ego had to be dissociated along with its exciting object partner (defined as a fantasy-enhanced vision of the parent’s alluring and emotionally promising aspects) because the constant unfulfilled temptation created by the child’s need for love produced too much rage in the child for the central ego to accept as being associated with the ideal object. I take issue, later in the paper, with Fairbairn’s view that this structure has to be repressed because of intolerable frustration. The exciting object does not have to offer much nurturance to act as an alluring object for the infant or child, as it gets its power over the child from its very existence. That is, the moment the infant sees his or her mother, the infant flails his or her arms with anticipation and excitement, even if the parent has been consistently indifferent. The more the infant is deprived, the greater his or her need and the more intense the excitement, “Even if they neglect him, he can’t reject them; for if they neglect him, his need for them is increased” (Fairbairn, 1943, p. 67). The relationship between the libidinal ego and its exciting object is fraught with intense need-driven emotionality, and adult patients dominated by this self structure may act out by stalking the (in reality) indifferent object as well as engaging in self-destructive pursuits of unsuitable objects from whom the individual begs for love (Celani, 1994, 1999). Fairbairn’s model is the only analytic model that makes human longing for attachment a structural part of the model. Unfortunately for the developing child, the two split-off parts of his or her central ego (the libidinal and antilibidinal subegos) that are identified with the two part-objects (the exciting and rejecting objects) detract from the development of the child’s personality. The intense identification of the two subegos with one or the other aspects of his or her object does not let the child’s central ego “sample” bits of the object and incorporate those parts that match his or her interests, needs, and talents. Rather, the object is internalized as a complete “unit,” and, once internalized,

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it is isolated in an unchanging interior world, forever relating to the child’s self as either a rejecting or alluring/promising object. Not infrequently, the internalization of this once external object is completely foreign to the child’s inherent needs and disposition as noted by Howell (1988): How does it happen that an “internalized object” becomes a part of the self that can take executive control, as is often seen in DID [dissociative identity disorder]? . . . [It is] a result of being intensely attached to the aggressor (often much more intensely than if there had been no abuse), the child’s mimicking of the aggressor’s behavior is a form of enactive, procedural, dyadic learning. In contrast to nontraumatic identifications, which add to a person’s already coherent identity and repertoires of behaviors and understandings, trauma-related identifications detract from a person’s identity. The aggressor’s goals and behaviors appear to have supplanted the child’s own agency, initiative, and rage, because, as a consequence of peritraumatic dissociation, the latter have not been adequately synthesized among various self-states. (p. 226)

In severely dysfunctional families, the intensity and frequency of intolerable parental behaviors (rejecting or exciting) creates a great deal of the child’s personality, both in terms of powerful emotional reactions, and in terms of the development of the two separate subegos. Both these isolated structures (they relate only to their specific object) have an urgent sense of purpose; the antilibidinal ego seeks to defeat, change, or subvert the rejecting object, while the libidinal subego attempts to woo and force love out of the exciting object. These structures are saturated with purpose and meaning, and have a history that is not shared with the central ego. The antilibidinal ego has faced extreme adversity, if not outright attacks, from the rejecting object, while the libidinal ego has provided essential fantasies of rescue, and both these structures have been central to the child’s psychological survival. The events they endured and the plans and strategies they developed for coping with the object form a worldview and create much of the child’s personality structure. In fact, many individuals from impoverished developmental histories have more “personality” in their mostly unconscious structures than they do in their central ego. The central ego is impoverished, not only by the splitting defense but also by the fact that in neglectful and abusive

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families there tends to be less of a history of relational interactions in which the parent quietly, deliberately, and systematically met the child’s developmental needs (Celani, 2010). The intensity of the relationship between the two subselves and part-objects forge the most significant aspects of the deprived child’s personality, despite the fact that this same history is saturated with pain, rejection, and illusory hope. To eliminate these intensely emotional, highly motivated, and irrational subselves with their intense and meaningful relationships to their associated objects, who were either passionately fought against or pursued with unlimited hope, would be to give up the largest and most meaningful attachments and identities that the individual developed during childhood. Both split off subselves have powerful incentives to continue their attachment to their part-objects. The antilibidinal self is not able to mature without the help of the ideal object, and consequently it tries to change the rejecting object into a nurturing one. It uses passive-aggressive techniques, cynicism, and outright harassment toward the rejecting object, often pointing out where it has failed (Celani, 2005, 2010; Odgen, 1983, 2010). Conversely, the libidinal self is equally unable to separate from the exciting object because without the promise of love the entire fragile structure will collapse into an abandonment depression (Armstrong-Perlman, 1991). Both subselves need their respective part-objects to survive and both hold on to the part-object regardless of the incessant teasing or rejecting behavior that they experience. The following quote from Odgen (2010) captures the quality of the internal dialogue between the antilibidinal ego (internal saboteur) and the rejecting internalized object: Neither the rejecting object nor the internal saboteur is willing to or able to think about, much less relinquish, that tie. . . . The power of that bond is impossible to overestimate. The rejecting object and the internal saboteur are determined to nurse their feelings of having been deeply wronged, cheated, humiliated, betrayed, exploited, treated unfairly, discriminated against, and so on. The mistreatment at the hands of the other is felt to be unforgivable. An apology is forever expected by each, but never offered by either. Nothing is more important to the internal saboteur (the rejected self) than coercing the rejecting object into recognizing the incalculable pain that he or she has caused. (p. 109)

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The attachment between the antilibidinal ego and the rejecting object is based on hate, which is just as potent as the need-forlove–based attachment that binds the libidinal ego to its exciting object, as Fairbairn (1944) noted: “The truth is that, however well the fact may be disguised, the individual is extremely reluctant to abandon his original hate, no less than his original need, of his original objects in childhood” (p. 117). Fairbairn (1944) assumed that these structures remained encapsulated within the psyche; however, the reenactments that these structures provoke are externalizations of one of the four split-off selves, and the “other” with whom the individual interacts is seen as the self or object partner to the enacted self. Simultaneously, the patient’s central ego is repressed during the time that one of the four previously unconscious structures takes over the executive functions. There are four possible enactments that emerge from Fairbairn’s structural theory (Celani, 1993, 2010): 1. The analyst may be experienced (most commonly) as a rejecting object (when the patient is in the antilibidinal ego state). 2. The analyst is experienced as an exciting object (when the patient is in the libidinal ego state). The patient can also identify with his or her internal objects, and in these enactments the following may occur: 3. The analyst may be experienced as an incompetent, damaged self (when the patient is in the rejecting object ego state). Or 4. Most infrequently, the analyst is seen as a needy and longing self (when the patient in the exciting object ego state). The type of patient that creates this last style of relationship has been beautifully described by Main (1957). DEPRIVATION AND STRUCTURALIZATION

Trauma was central to Fairbairn’s model and, as previously noted, he felt that maternal rejection was the greatest trauma that an infant or child could experience because of his or her inherent neediness and helplessness. He did not assume that the effects of trauma were specific to the development of narcissistic defenses; rather, he saw “splitting of the ego” (Fairbairn, 1944), which re-

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sulted in the “schizoid,” as the most general consequence of trauma (Fairbairn, 1940, 1941). In fact, Fairbairn never wrote about narcissism, and a literature search of contributions to Fairbairn’s theory has turned up one paper on Fairbairn’s theory and narcissism (Padel, 1986). This paper mentions the importance of narcissism briefly in the larger context of a general review of Fairbairn’s model, without offering a specific model of the disorder. Unlike drive theorists, Fairbairn did not assume that the child’s self had an energy source of its own; therefore, the rejected child’s traumatic withdrawal from the actual relationship with his or her maternal object has extremely serious consequences. The consistently rejected child is forced to maintain a sense of aliveness by gathering internalizations of his or her (rejecting) object(s), which form the child’s inner world. Fairbairn used Klein’s concept of the forceful internalization of objects, but in Fairbairn’s metapsychology these internalizations are not motivated by instincts; rather, they are the only pathway the rejected child has for sustaining a sense of aliveness and hope in a hostile and unloving environment. Thus, the rejected and emotionally neglected child attempts to compensate for the relational poverty in his or her external world by turning to the more available and easily accessed inner world in which he or she can endlessly battle with the rejecting object or woo the exciting object. The internal world allows a continuous sense of connection to his or her objects, regardless of the external environment. This internalization of external relationships prevents a catastrophic abandonment crisis, because the internal structures identified with the objects are parts of the child’s own ego that can never be lost, as noted by Odgen (2010): “By creating an internal object relationship with the unloving mother, the infant directs his nascent object love toward an internal object, an object that is part of himself ” (p. 105). Despite these internalizations, there is still a sense of emptiness because no amount of defensive splitting can create the needed good object. The consequence of emotional deprivation is a reliance on behaviors that partially satisfy the developmentally starved child. This compensatory behavior was described by Fairbairn (1941) in the following quotation, which is a continuation of the one on maternal rejection appearing earlier in this paper:

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And it is this trauma above all that creates fixations in the various forms of infantile sexuality to which a child is driven to resort to in an attempt to compensate by substitutive satisfactions for the failure of his emotional relationships with his outer objects. Fundamentally these substitutive satisfactions (e.g., masturbation and anal eroticism) all represent relationships with internalized objects, to which the individual is compelled to turn in default of a satisfactory relationship with objects in the outer world. (p. 40)

Today, a modern equivalent of Fairbairn’s substitute satisfactions would be intense fantasy-driven identifications with aggressive, heroic, or sexually successful characters in video games. Sexuality is not a substrate upon which personality rests in Fairbairn’s theory, but rather is one (of the many) forms of “substitutive satisfactions” by which the child tries to make himself or herself feel better, and which signal the absence of normal emotionally sustaining relationships with whole persons. The child who has given up hope on whole-object relationships is now vulnerable to a lifetime of pursuits of short-term, part-object relationships that offer superficial and ultimately unsatisfying forms gratification without ever meeting the fundamental attachment requirements of the central self. A FAIRBAIRNIAN VIEW OF THE STRUCTURE OF NARCISSISM

Fairbairn sees psychopathology arising from the splitting of the central ego into part-selves and part-objects due to toxic parental behavior, although, as mentioned, he never applied his model to the disorder of narcissism. Drive theorists, using the structures of classical psychoanalysis, suggest that narcissism arises because of a fusion of the ego with the ego ideal, which effectively destroys the striving of the ego to live up to the standards of the ego ideal since they become one and the same. Consequently the narcissist feels completely comfortable because his or her ideal self, ideal object, and actual self are all one (Kernberg, 1970). In my interpretation of Fairbairn’s model (Celani, 1993, 1994,1998,1999, 2001,2005, 2007, 2010) I have taken the position that the development of the exciting object is a necessity for psychic survival, and is often consciously available, a position that Fairbairn never mentions. He assumed that the “teasing” result-

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ing from a continuously frustrating object was toxic and had to be repressed (Fairbairn, 1944). In my experience, as well as in other’s (Scharff & Scharff, 2000), the libidinal ego is consciously available and is frequently called upon by the individual to stave off feelings of abandonment. In most circumstances the deprived and traumatized child weaves libidinal ego fantasies around his or her actual (parental) objects who have previously stimulated the child’s hope for love, even in those cases where the parents have done so in a deliberately manipulative manner. Fairbairn’s metapsychology offers the possibility (again, one that he never explored) that the primary difference in the genesis of the narcissistic disorder as compared to most other disorders is that children who develop narcissistic defenses do not amplify small aspects of their parental objects to create an exciting object because their interpersonal reality has been so intolerably harsh and contained so few moments of empathic attunement that they are unable to create a life-sustaining fantasy of a loving parental object. Instead, the child takes the radical step of utilizing an idealized view of himself or herself as the exciting object by engaging the splitting defense once again. In this defense the libidinal ego uses a splitoff and idealized view of itself as a substitute for the parentalbased exciting object. The result is that the libidinal ego looks at an idealized part of itself as if it were an object. The libidinal self it is not fused, but rather it is in a relationship with a modified fragment of the central ego that contains the alluring/promising elements of itself as a substitute for the parental object. The libidinal ego is now able to strive for and experience love from this self-created exciting object. The only other disorder that seems to use a similar dynamic is the anorexic, who (in Fairbairn’s metapsychology) uses the thinness of her body as the exciting object and sees her emaciated body through the eyes of her libidinal ego (Bruch,1978). No amount of argumentation can convince the anorexic that her exciting object body is actually the very opposite of beautiful. A good example of compensatory self-repair by using an exciting object vision of the self was displayed by a patient of mine who used extreme narcissistic defenses. He was an isolated man in his late sixties who had been a successful film director as a young-

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er person and who had lived with admiring women who supported him financially. Over time his indifference to their needs, coupled with his lack of success later in life, caused each of these partners to abandon the relationship and move on. He came in for treatment for a chronic and ever-increasing depression. During our work he was hit by a car while crossing the street and sustained a number of broken bones that hospitalized him for over a week. While in the hospital he had a dream in which he saw an enormous animal, part wild stag and part bull with the iridescent plumage of a peacock around his neck, who was in pursuit of his harem of does. The stag was angered because his pursuit was interrupted by hunters who chased him and interfered with his desires. My patient said he felt extremely close to the stag, and he thought about the dream innumerable times, which brought him comfort. In Fairbairn’s metapsychology, this dream restored his exciting object view of himself, while simultaneously containing a reference to the accident which interfered with his preferred view of himself. The self-created exciting object holds the promise of repairing all deficits within the self as long as the libidinal self lives up to the standards of the exciting object. This is not a passive relationship, in that most narcissists work continuously for athletic, academic, financial, or social success that supports the libidinal ego’s admiration of the exciting object, and allows the libidinal ego to bask in its reflected glory. In working with narcissistic patients, it is possible to understand much of their behavior as “performances” that are designed for themselves as the primary audience. This “closed system “ model of the inner world (Fairbairn, 1958) supports the observation that narcissists are self-satisfied and are able to deflect, ignore, or minimize negative judgments from external objects that normal individuals would experience as compelling. Once the child begins to use a fantasy-enhanced vision of himself or herself as the exciting object, he or she will spend a lifetime crafting and inflating the libidinal self so it can become worthy of the exciting object’s approval. Strenger (1998) sees bodybuilding as a physical enactment of self-creation, of building a physical self that can be admired as if it were an exciting object, and of simultaneously rejecting the limitations that have been placed upon it by reality:

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It is based on the premise that such limitations can be overcome, that we can create ourselves in the image of our own desire. . . . The desire of the bodybuilder bears a family resemblance to the Cartesian desire for mental self creation and the artist’s attempt to create a persona that will become his or her personal identity. . . . The bodybuilder exemplifies the principle that it is better to pay a high price for a sense of authorship than to accept the limitations of fate. (p. 649)

Strenger’s statement offers an optimistic view of self-creation, as if it is a choice and a positive act of liberation. In contrast to this view, Fairbairn’s model suggests that the child who is forced to use narcissistic defenses is doing so in a desperate attempt at selfcreation because his or her objects failed to offer enough emotional support during the child’s development to allow his or her central self to develop a robust identity in relationship to an available and supportive ideal object. Fairbairn’s (1944) dissociative model sees the “self” as an entity that is comprised of a “multiplicity of egos” (p. 90), each striving for dominance over the others. However, he saw the contest between the structures as being contained within the inner world. He was not comfortable with the notion that any one of the four mostly unconscious structures could become the executive, conscious ego. He assumed that both libidinal and antilibidinal egos and their associated objects were held in the unconscious by the force of repression exerted by the central ego (Fairbairn, 1944, pp. 104–105). He also assumed that the central ego had to remain in the executive position at all times (Fairbairn, 1941, p. 52). However, there is compelling evidence (Celani, 2001, 2007, 2010; Scharff & Scharff, 2000) that these substructures can emerge from the unconscious and take over the executive role while the other, less powerful part-self/part-object structures remain repressed. In this application of Fairbairn’s metapsychology, the narcissistic personality disorder is seen as a fragile system “directed” by the libidinal ego, an unintegrated and previously repressed fragment of the original central ego in the role of executive ego that relates to a self-created exciting object. Simultaneously, the catastrophic alternative view of the self and object (antilibidinal ego/rejecting object) remains tightly sealed in the unconscious along with the underdeveloped central ego/ideal object.

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THE GRANDIOSITY DEFENSE

Despite the narcissist’s reliance on his or her inner world and use of the grandiosity defense (the libidinal self admiring a nearperfect and loving exciting object to the exclusion of the outside world), he or she is often vulnerable to sudden disruptions and reversals. Annie Reich’s (1960) paper on narcissism illustrates the sudden breakdown of the grandiosity defense. Her beautifully written paper uses the language and metaphors of drive theory, as she dramatically describes the sudden shift from grandiosity to despair in the following passage: The very process of self-admiration involves contempt for others. Undisguised phallic-exhibitionistic impulses of this type generally are combined with unmitigated, primate aggression: the patient “blinds” others with his magnificence; he “rubs in” his successes, as though he were forcing his enormous penis on his audience. But with the collapse of his phallic grandiosity, this vehement aggression instantly turns back on his castrated self. Instead of admiring and loving himself the patient now hates himself. A drive diffusion has occurred, which the ego in its state of regression is unable to master. (p. 225)

This rapid shift from grandiosity to absolute worthlessness is explained by Reich as a drive diffusion, in which the defense of grandiosity (motivated by libido) suddenly loses its power and exposes the underlying damaged self. Looking at the same example from the perspective of Fairbairn’s metapsychology, the use of the splitting defense also accounts for this type of the sudden reversal in terms of the switch from one fragile ego state to its opposite. Specifically, Reich’s example describes the sudden collapse and repression of this patient’s libidinal self/exciting object constellation from its role as the executive ego and its replacement by the antilibidinal self/rejecting object constellation. Splitting can be triggered by any real or imagined failure of the exciting object to impress his or her audience or an actual undeniable event in the external world that penetrates his or her awareness. Reich (1960) beautifully described the intensity and the consequences of this event, again in classical analytic language: Unsublimated, eroticized, manic self-inflation easily shifts to a feeling of utter dejection, of worthlessness and to hypochondriacal

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anxieties. “Narcissists” of this type thus suffer regularly from repetitive, violent oscillations of self esteem. It is as though the warded off feeling of catastrophic annihilation, which had started off the whole process originally, were breaking through the elegant façade again each time. . . . Usually the tiniest disappointment, the slightest physical indisposition, the most trifling experience of failure can throw the patient into extreme despair. (p. 224)

When Fairbairn’s metapsychology is applied to this scenario, it reveals that the deeply split individual who encounters an undeniable insult from the external world cannot stop the splitting process once it is triggered. That is, the individual cannot somehow “force” himself or herself to return to his or her central self/ ideal object structure, simply because this constellation (central self/ideal object) is the weakest of the three pairs in this personality organization. Once the individual’s grandiose libidinal ego/ exciting object constellation begins to crumble, it is replaced with a suddenly derepressed antilibidinal ego/rejecting object constellation, with the fearful, cynical, and self-hating antilibidinal ego in the role of executive ego. This is similar to the pattern of the more unstable borderline personality disorder (Celani, 1993, 2010), who splits from the libidinal ego/exciting object constellation back to the antilibidinal ego/rejecting object constellation because of frustration with his or her objects over rejection of an immediate need, or worse, the threat of abandonment. All narcissists are not as fragile as Reich has described, and many can maintain seeing themselves from the perspective of their libidinal ego, despite insults from reality. These individuals remain stable over long periods of time and often find themselves in leadership positions where their self-assurance is a key part of their success. CLINICAL INTERVENTIONS WITH NARCISSISTIC PATIENTS

Fairbairn’s model suggests that unrealistic transferences will be commonplace in analytic work with narcissistic patients because the patient’s libidinal ego cannot easily assume the task of seeking help from another. The narcissist’s most common transference is to dominate the analyst by pressuring him or her to join the patient’s libidinal ego in admiration of his or her exciting object’s

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presentations. This interpersonal style is challenged by the analyst’s security, and by his or her possession of insights into the patient’s behavior that places the patient at a distinct disadvantage. Interpretations or even observations will often be experienced as a direct assault on the patient’s libidinal view of himself or herself. Worse, the narcissist’s only alternative view of himself or herself is his antilibidinal ego/rejecting object constellation, due to the weakness the narcissist’s central ego. The other possible initial transference, given the dominance of the patient’s libidinal ego, is to see the analyst as part of the patient’s exciting object, and overvalue him or her as brilliant and unique. This is an equally fragile, unrealistic, and easily disrupted transference, though more flattering to the analyst than the former. The dynamics of the narcissistic personality disorder ensure that narcissists only present themselves for treatment when they are under great stress. Patients using either type of initial transference have difficulty even recognizing the analyst as being a (possibly helpful) ideal object, as their dominant libidinal ego relates only aspects of itself or to parts of its exciting object. When the patient’s central ego finally does emerge, it will be very wary of accepting help because of the potential of feelings of humiliation that have the potential to reawaken the antilibidinal ego and allow it to become the executive ego. Treatment, especially the initial sessions of treatment, flies into the very teeth of the patient’s strongest defenses, a point made by Mitchell (1986) in his discussion of Kernberg’s view of narcissism: Based on the illusions of self-sufficiency and perfection of the grandiose self, they undercut the very basis on which the psychoanalytic process rests, the presumption that the analysand might gain something meaningful from someone else (in this case the analyst). Despite what might be considerable psychological suffering and a genuine interest in treatment, the analysand whose character is organized around a grandiose self cannot allow the analyst to become important enough to him to really help him. The analyst and his interpretations must be continually devalued, spoiled, to avoid catapulting the patient into a condition of overpowering longing, abject dependency and intolerable hatred and envy. (p.110)

The last sentence of Mitchell’s passage is nearly identical to the definition of the “antilibidinal ego” in Fairbairn’s metapsy-

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chology. Later in the same paper Mitchell (1986) divides the ­approaches to narcissism into two camps, the first consisting of ­Orthodox Freudian theory, Ego Psychology, and Sullivan’s Interpersonal theory in which “[all] converge in an essentially similar technical approach to the clinical phenomenon of narcissistic ­illusions” (p.113). These very different models all see the grandiose self as a regressive defense that is designed to contain frustration, aggression, and dependency. They all advocate the interpretation of grandiosity: “Transferential illusions concerning either the self or the analyst must be interpreted, their unreality pointed out, their defensive purpose defined” (p. 113). He then notes that this aggressive interpretative approach is in sharp contrast to Kohut and Winnicott, who see narcissistic illusions as “the deepest source of creativity” (p. 114). The previous quotation from Strenger (1998) on self-creation lands directly in this second theoretical camp. In the following passage Mitchell (1986) cites Winnicott’s (1945) emphasis on the reparative effect of the “holding environment” that is inherent in the analytic situation as an alternative approach to the aforementioned aggressive interpretation of grandiosity: Whereas Freud saw the analytic situation in terms of abstinence (instinctual wishes emerge and find no gratification), Winnicott sees the analytic situation in terms of the satisfaction, not of instinctual impulses per se, but of crucial developmental experiences, missed parental functions. The couch, the constancy of sessions, the demeanor of the analyst-these become the “holding environment” which was not provided in infancy. . . . Winnicott sees the analytic process in terms of a kind of revitalization: the frozen aborted self is able to reawaken and begin to develop as crucial ego needs are met. (p. 115)

Fairbairn has an almost identical view of the role of the good object in his 1958 paper on treatment. Interestingly, Fairbairn’s model rests on both sides of Mitchell’s bifurcation of treatment approaches to the narcissist. On the one hand, the grandiosity defense is seen as a defense against intolerable frustration, and it is not seen as a source of creativity. On the other hand, Fairbairn sees treatment as requiring a “good object” (or more precisely, an ideal object) who provides the patient with necessary comfort and

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emotional supplies that then allow the patient’s central ego to grow in relation to the ideal object analyst, thus erasing the patient’s developmental deficit. The existence of such a personal relationship in outer reality not only serves the function of providing a means of correcting the distorted relationships which prevail in inner reality and influence the reactions of the patient to outer objects, but provides the patient with an opportunity, denied to him in childhood, to undergo a process of emotional development in the setting of an actual relationship with a reliable and beneficent parental figure. (Fairbairn, 1958,p. 377)

My approach to patients with narcissistic personalities, informed by Fairbairn’s metapsychology, is to avoid confrontation, interpretation, or even mention of the patient’s grandiosity defense. Rather, my focus has always been on the unearthing of “bad object” memories, a tactic that makes the relationship less adversarial and avoids assaulting the patient’s defensive fortress. In Fairbairn’s (1943) view the “release of bad objects” (p. 69) is the primary goal of treatment for all patients with splits in their ego structure. This process involves developing a narrative that is fundamentally concerned with the unearthing of previously dissociated, minimized, or emotionally isolated relational events in which the patient’s legitimate dependency needs were neglected, or when he or she was subjected to some form of abuse. The goal is to modify the patient’s internal structures by slowly dissolving the potency of the sub-egos while simultaneously increasing the dominance of the central ego. Thus I conceive it as among the most important functions of psychoanalytical therapy (a) to reduce the split of the original ego by restoring to the central ego a maximum of the territories ceded to the libidinal ego and the internal saboteur, and (b) to bring the exciting object and the rejecting object so far as possible together within the sphere of influence of the central ego. (Fairbairn, 1944, pp. 129–130)

This approach emphasizes cooperation between analyst and patient and avoids discussion of the immediate transference process by redirecting the patient’s reiteration of self-adoration toward a very different issue. As the patient releases material over

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time, the analyst can discuss it in terms of childhood deprivation, and gradually the reality of the patient’s experience of neglect and indifference at the hands of his objects will emerge as the central topic of discussion. Material that was initially intolerable for the patient to accept (regarding parental failures) during the first sessions often becomes a commonplace co-created reality over a large number of sessions. In some ways, this type of clearly directed narrative allows the patient to stop acting and to take himself or herself and his or her history seriously. This therapeutic strategy is designed to reduce the importance of the sub-egos by stripping them of their unconscious agendas. Over time the dissociated and frustrated need for love of the libidinal ego, and the impotence, fear, and rage of the antilibidinal ego that once bound these structures to their respective internalized objects becomes conscious, understood, and integrated into the central ego (Celani, 2010). The Fairbairnian therapeutic narrative is designed to make the once overwhelmingly powerful rejecting object and the equally alluring exciting object into a single object—a commonplace flawed and failed parent that can be seen as a unified, though often pathetic, human being. It simultaneously reconstructs the image of the patient from a heroic caricature to a person who has suffered severe and continuous assaults to his or her developing sense of self. CLINICAL EXAMPLE

I will use my work with “Thomas,” an owner of a number of auto dealerships in the Mid- Atlantic States, as a brief example of this approach. Thomas came to me as a patient several months after selling his chain of auto dealerships to an investment group and taking a six-month lease on a large lakefront home in Vermont as an escape from a recent debilitating depression. He planned to move back south when the lease was over, thus leaving less than five months for twice a week face-to-face psychotherapy informed by Fairbairn’s metapsychology. This framework limited my goals to introducing him to, and helping him accept, those alternative self-states that he had minimized or dissociated. Thomas reported that he had been feeling uncharacteristi-

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cally weak, despondent, and lacking in direction for a number of months after the sale of his dealerships. These feelings were amplified simultaneously with the sale of his dealerships by an unexpected confrontation with two of his trusted managers, whom he thought of as his two best (and only) friends. They came into his office together and quit simultaneously, and in their exit interview called him a “cruel ingrate.” This came as a shock as he saw himself as a strong but fair leader who was loved by his employees. His increasing age, the loss of structure and power brought about by the sale of his dealerships, and the abandonment by the only two “friends” (that he assumed) he had, undermined his self-satisfied libidinal ego/exciting object sense of self. It had given way to his antilibidinal self, which was indecisive, fearful, and depressed. Prior to his first session with me, he went to the medical school’s bookstore and bought several psychiatric texts on diagnostics, despite his complete lack of familiarity with the field. When he felt fortified with new information from the texts, he called and made an appointment with me. His first appearance in my office surprised me, as he was ­expensively dressed and groomed, and, most remarkably, wore carved Western-style boots, virtually unknown in a wet, snowy New England winter. He also wore an outsized expensive watch and carried a beautifully made leather briefcase, which he opened to display several of the psychiatric books that he had recently purchased. Instead of becoming part of his libidinal ego, enthralled by his self-presentation, I felt defensive and self-conscious, as if I was not going to live up to his standards of dress and success. My (antilibidinal) countertransferrence response was to feel unkempt, shabby, and ashamed of my modest consulting rooms. His selfpresentation was enough to induce me to feel antilibidinal because I saw him as a very successful man who would (probably) disapprove of a therapist below his level of accomplishment. In his opening “statement,” Thomas reported that he had come to northern New England because he had seen Vermont Life magazine and admired (idealized) the state for its pure air and industrious citizens. He came here to relax and reclaim his lost confidence, despite the fact that he had never been here before and had no relationships with anyone in the area. He also report-

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ed that he had self-diagnosed and was suffering from a “major depression.” His hyperautonomous style offered him some protection from an external authority and allowed him to resist the feeling that I had something to offer him, which might have triggered feelings of dependency on me that would further enlarge his antilibidinal ego. Thomas initially interacted with me as if I were going to become a part of his libidinal ego and join him in the admiration of his exciting object presentations. He displayed an amused, avuncular interpersonal style as he described his history of dating young and beautiful women, most of whom were winners of beauty contests. Over time, three of these women moved in with him, in relationships that were clearly mutual part-object relationships. These women were attracted to his success, wealth, and prestige, and Thomas used them as prizes who became part of his exciting object. In each instance, he smilingly noted that he had to send each of them on her way because of an imperfection: one took too much time with her makeup, another spent too much time on the phone with friends, and the third was a reluctant cook. The minor frustrations made these women appear flawed, and thus they had to be eliminated from being part of his exciting object. His lack of any genuine emotional attachment to them made rejecting them painless. These stories, I felt, were designed to enhance his exciting object self-presentation and demonstrate to me (who he assumed would become part of his admiring libidinal ego) that he was impervious to the normal vicissitudes of life and existed in a world of luxury and infinite choices. In the same vein, he also described hiring an interior decorator to set up his lavish household, much of which had been shipped from his prior home. It included a “wall of firearms” and an extensive shoe collection, as well as a collection of antique and rare fishing rods, all which came in custom display cabinetry. He kept most of his collections in his bedroom so he could look admiringly at them as he got up in the morning. In Fairbairn’s metapsychology these collections enhanced his libidinal ego’s admiration of himself as a successful and potent exciting object. Soon after the first session my response to Thomas was no longer antilibidinal, but rather I felt saddened by his emptiness, as he appeared to be an actor go-

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ing through a series of performances set up for the two of us to admire, to the point that I could not even sense the presence of his deeply buried central ego. My patient’s self-confirming internal world was shattered temporarily by the need for his luxury car (a part of his exciting object presentation) to be serviced. Thomas appeared for his late afternoon appointment looking slightly disheveled, reporting that he had dropped his car off at the dealership as it needed several hours of work and that he walked to my office—a distance of at least five miles. He refused to call a cab because it would have been fuel for his antilibidinal ego due to his sudden vulnerability and need of external objects, so he chose to walk. My greatest emotional reaction to him occurred after this session, as he had been my last patient of the day. As I left my office I saw him walking toward the dealership, dressed in his custom leather jacket and Western boots, hunched over as he walked against the cold wind. I felt an immediate sense of grief as his vulnerability and isolation was blatantly obvious, and I was overcome by a feeling of fruitless empathy toward him. Over the short period that we worked, Thomas stopped his “performances,” without any interpretations or observations from me, and contributed to the development of a clinical narrative of his history. He never was comfortable with the reconstruction of his history as it was almost unendurably bleak, nor did I feel him express gratitude toward me as his collaborator. That might have pushed him too close to his antilibidinal dependency and envy, as described in the previous quotation from Mitchell (1986). However, as noted, he completely dropped his grandiose poses and began to see the ineluctable connection between his depression and his deprived and neglectful history. This brief vignette illustrates how the clinician can use Fairbairn’s structural theory to understand the extent of defensiveness and the difficulties of working with this seemingly robust, but terribly fragile, patient population. CONCLUSION

I have reviewed Fairbairn’s object relations theory and then proposed an explanatory model for the narcissistic personality disor-

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der based on his metapsychology. Up to this point in time Fairbairn’s theory has not been used as the specific explanatory basis for the development and maintenance of narcissism, but his structural theory, along with his theory’s emphasis on dissociation, splitting, and multiple subselves, lends itself to the explanation of this disorder. It appears to have enough substance to offer a reasonable and coherent explanation for narcissism, without relying on drive theory.

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The Psychoanalytic Review Vol. 101, No. 3, June 2014