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Early Developmental States of the Ego. Primary Object-Love
Frühe Entwicklungsstadien des Ichs. Primäre Objektliebe
Balint presented this report at the first symposium of the second Four Countries Conference, in Budapest in May 1937. Its subject is the sharply conflicting theories of the earliest stages of mental life, which had grown into almost 'local' views in London, Vienna and Budapest. Balint holds that the clinical material is the same everywhere and that the disagreement comes from different standpoints, expectations and terminology. As common ground he takes Freud's description of infantile love in 'Female Sexuality' (1931): boundless, exclusive, insatiable and ambivalent. The London school, as Joan Riviere presents it, explains these traits by an innate oral sadism rooted in the death drive, by early projection and introjection, and by anxieties about bad objects. Robert Waelder's Viennese critique rightly disputes London's evidence and concepts, but it leaves the children's greed and hostility unexplained. The Budapest group (Alice Balint, Imre Hermann and Balint himself, following Ferenczi) treats the recurring formal features of the analytic situation as transference and as traces of the earliest experiences. Each member supports this from a different field: comparative pedagogy, primate studies and sexual theory. Balint reports that, deep in analysis, patients come to want small, primitive gratifications such as a kind word or being touched. When these are refused, the patients show despair, hatred and fear of retaliation. When they are granted, the patients fall into an addiction-like bliss that collapses at the first frustration. The wishes themselves are always aimed at an object, and when they are met at the right time and in the right measure they produce no more than a quiet sense of well-being. Two further lines of work point the same way. Hermann studied the instinct to cling, which develops in the human infant because it is torn from its mother's body too early. Alice Balint described the mother's equal libidinal share in the mother–child unity, and an archaic, naively egoistic love that assumes the partner's wishes are the same as one's own. From these lines of work Balint draws the concept of primary object love. It is an early phase that cannot be skipped and is not tied to any erogenous zone. Its aim is passive: to be loved and gratified without giving anything in return. Narcissism and active object love grow from it as detours. London and Vienna are both right and both wrong. London studied only the vehement reactions to frustration and missed the quiet experience of satisfaction. Vienna could explain the infantile phenomena only with ad hoc hypotheses. Both cling to the hypothesis of primary narcissism, which Balint names as the source of their confusion of tongues. Primary narcissism, he argues, is a negative concept reached by extrapolation and defined by 'not yet', and the play between 'already' and 'not yet' protects it from every objection. It has never been observed clinically: what appears is only secondary narcissism, mixed with remnants of damaged object love. It also fits poorly with everyday facts, such as the hypersensitivity and insatiability of narcissistic people, or a crying newborn who calms when picked up. Balint notes converging work by Glover, Federn, Isakower, Müller-Braunschweig and E. P. Hoffmann. He answers the objections that the infant knows no external world and that sucking and grasping are mere adaptations. He warns that the logically simplest state need not be the original one, as biology learned with the amoeba. Primary object love is also an extrapolation, but a shorter and testable one, and Balint offers it as a working hypothesis for the study of infants and psychotics.
Main ideas
- Psychoanalysis explains by tracing phenomena back genetically, and at the earliest stages it can only infer. There London, Vienna and Budapest had developed conflicting, almost local views. Balint traces the conflict to differing standpoints, expectations and terminology rather than to different material. As shared ground he takes Freud's 1931 description of infantile love as boundless, exclusive, insatiable and ambivalent, bound to end in disappointment and hostility.
- In the London view, as Joan Riviere presents it, the infant is born in primary narcissism. Vehement sadistic impulses, stemming from the outward-turned death drive and from delays in gratification, come before weaker loving ones. These give rise to persecutory anxiety, projection and introjection, the effort to keep good objects apart from bad, and reparation. Robert Waelder's Viennese critique persuasively challenges London's evidence and its use of concepts, but it cannot account for the greed and hostility that Freud describes.
- Following Ferenczi, the Budapest group (Alice Balint, Imre Hermann and Michael Balint) treats the formal features of the analytic situation as transference. They read the features that recur monotonously, and grow clearer as analysis frees the patient of acquired mechanisms, as traces of the earliest experiences. They support this from comparative pedagogy, primate studies and sexual theory respectively.
- Deep in analysis, patients come to want small, primitive gratifications from the analyst: a kind word, the use of first names, a small gift, being touched. Refusal produces a picture much like London's infant: despair, worthlessness, hatred, sadistic fantasies and fear of retaliation. Gratification produces an almost manic, addiction-like bliss that collapses at the first frustration.
- The wishes themselves are always directed at an object and never go beyond the level of fore-pleasure. Met at the right time and in the right measure, they yield only a tranquil, quiet sense of well-being. The noisy, addictive reactions are secondary: they are responses to frustrations that the child in the patient has misunderstood.
- The earliest phase of extra-uterine life is therefore object-directed, not narcissistic, but passive. Its aim, to be loved and satisfied without the slightest return, remains the final aim of all erotic striving. Narcissism is one detour that reality forces: clinically observed narcissism is always a protection against a bad or refractory object. Active object love, which gratifies the partner in order to be loved back, is the other.
- Imre Hermann's work: primate infants spend their first months clinging to the mother's body, while the human infant is torn from the mother–child dual unity too early. In response it develops substitute expressions of an instinct to cling: sleeping postures, the Moro reflex, sucking and grasping. All of these are active and object-directed; indeed the child is not suckled but actively sucks. Clinging is the precursor of tenderness and may underlie sadism and masochism.
- Alice Balint's work: seen from the mother's side, mother and child are libidinally equivalent, each both receiver and giver. Their archaic, naively egoistic love assumes that what is good for one is right for the other, and it cannot bear demands beyond this harmony. The same ruthless egoism and paranoid sensitivity reappear in the transference and in the sense of fusion at orgasm.
- The three lines of work arrive at primary, or primitive, object love. It is an early phase that cannot be skipped, and all later relations bear its traces. It is not oral, anal or genital, but a form of relation in its own right; separating it from any erogenous zone could untangle the confusion between the development of drive aims and that of drive objects. Its biological basis is the instinctual interdependence of mother and child, which our culture breaks too early, and this is the source of clinging and of children's insatiable greed.
- London and Vienna are each right and wrong. London studied only the vehement reactions to frustration and overlooked the quiet experience of satisfaction, so its theory is correct in everything except proportion. Vienna saw this but could explain the observed greed and ambivalence only ad hoc. Both cling to primary narcissism, which shuts out any relation to the outside world, and this assumption causes the confusion of tongues between them.
- Primary narcissism is a negative concept reached by extrapolation and defined by 'not yet'. Every counter-example can be dismissed as 'already' a later development, and Freud himself called it a supposition. Clinically only secondary narcissism, mixed with remnants of mutilated object love, is ever seen. The theory also fits poorly with familiar facts: no being can survive without a caring environment, narcissistic people are hypersensitive and insatiable rather than indifferent, and newborns stop crying when picked up. The concept is not shown to be false, but it is superfluous and confusing.
- Glover, Federn, Isakower, Müller-Braunschweig and E. P. Hoffmann have reached similar conclusions. The objection that the infant knows no outside world assumes what has to be proved. Biology finds object-directed tendencies from the sperm cell onward. A logically simplest, closed narcissistic state need not be the original one, as the amoeba, the Robinson Crusoe economy and Rousseau's beginnings of culture show. Primary object love is also an extrapolation, but a shorter and testable one, offered as a working hypothesis for studying infants and psychotics: the 'end of the amoeba saga'.
What it shows
- 1937
Sándor Ferenczi influenced Michael Balint
Balint traces the shared starting point of the Budapest school's work on early object relations straight back to Ferenczi, and through him to Freud. He was Ferenczi's pupil and successor at the Budapest polyclinic, and after his death his literary executor, who transcribed and translated the Clinical Diary.
- 1937
Michael Balint critiqued Primary narcissism
Balint argues that primary narcissism has never been observed: what the clinic shows is always secondary narcissism, mixed with the remains of a damaged object love. The hypothesis may not be false, but by definition nothing can be learned about it, so it is superfluous; he blames it for the confusion of tongues between the Vienna and London analysts.
- 1937
Primary love opposes Primary narcissism
Balint puts primary object love in the place Freud's theory gave to primary narcissism. What can be studied at the start of life is the child's primary relation to objects, and the narcissism seen in the clinic is secondary, mixed with remains of a mutilated object love.
- 1937
Alice Balint developed Primary love
Michael Balint names Alice Balint's research, with Imre Hermann's and his own, as one of three independent lines of thought whose results support each other and together make up the thesis of a primary object love.
- 1937
Michael Balint introduced Primary love
At the Budapest meeting of 1937 Balint gathers his own findings and those of Alice Balint and Imre Hermann into one thesis: a primary, or primitive, object love comes before any narcissism, every child must pass through it, and all later relations keep traces of it. He collected the papers on it in Primary Love and Psycho-Analytic Technique (1952).
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- 1939
Michael Balint collaborated with Alice Balint
Balint presents his work on early object relations as converging with Alice Balint's and Imre Hermann's, reached by separate paths. In 1939, from Manchester, the couple published a joint paper asking whether transference is the patient's work alone or whether the analyst's behaviour shares in it.
- 1914
Sigmund Freud introduced Primary narcissism
Freud set out primary narcissism in 'On Narcissism: An Introduction' (1914), as an original libidinal investment of the ego from which object cathexes are later sent out and to which they can be withdrawn. Balint's critique of 1937 takes the hypothesis as Freud's.