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Postmodern Identity and ObjectRelations Theory: On the Seeming

Obsolescence of Psychoanalysis
Axel Honneth
Published online: 24 Sep 2007.

To cite this article: Axel Honneth (1999) Postmodern Identity and Object-Relations Theory: On
the Seeming Obsolescence of Psychoanalysis, Philosophical Explorations: An International Journal
for the Philosophy of Mind and Action, 2:3, 225-242, DOI: 10.1080/10001999098538708
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Postmodern Identity and

Object-Relations Theory:
On the Seeming Obsolescence of Psychoanalysis
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Axel Honneth

Abstract

In the field of social sciences

and that of cultural theory,
In face of the postmodern ideal of a mutiple subject,
there has been talk at regular
classical psychoanalysiss normative orientation toward
intervals since the end of the
the egos capacity to cope consistently with reality may
Second World War of psyseem obsolete. However, a psychoanalytic theory
choanalysis being obsolete.
which is revised in the light of object-relations theory,
In these fields where the
integrationist social psychology, and an intersubjectivist
notion is not just an ideoloaccount of the formation of the drives can answer the
gical weapon this signifies
postmodern challenge. According to this alternative
the tendency of a growing
psychoanalytic view, the goal of a healthy development
discrepancy said to have
of personality is a state of an inner capacity for dialoopened up between the origue, able to account normatively for altering forms of
ginal and the current socioego-identity under changing social conditions.
cultural conditions of psychoanalysis. What Freud
and his disciples had to presume as conditions of socialization when they set out to construct a psychoanalytic theory of the development of the ego can no longer be found in the social
reality of a society that has developed so far that the original concepts have lost
their explanatory power and are thus, as it were, obsolete.
As is well known, the first striking foray into the development of such a thesis of the obsolescence of psychoanalysis was made by Theodor W. Adorno and
Herbert Marcuse in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Both claimed that there was
a social process that was destroying personal autonomy, which made obsolete the
psychoanalytic notion of an intrapsychic conflict between the demands of the drives and the reality principle. The central idea which shares many points with
David Riesmanns thesis of the other-directed character (Riesman 1950) is that
societys controlling instances have such an immediate effect on the defenseless
individual weakened by socialization that we can no longer speak of ego-strength
being acquired via the mediation of the Oedipus complex (Adorno 1967, 1968;
Marcuse 1984). Although it received a new impetus from post-structuralism in
the 1980s but as a philosophical premise rather than a social diagnosis in the
meantime this thesis of the end of the individual has almost turned into its
opposite. That which dominates the contemporary sociological diagnosis is no
Philosophical Explorations Nr 3 September 1999 225-242

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Axel Honneth

longer the image of the individual as a total conformist incapable of autonomy,

but the notion of an augmentation of individuality through an internal multiplication of identity. Within just a few decades, the place of the thesis of the subjects
loss of autonomy has been taken over by the thesis of a postmodern personality
which, according to its aspirations, has so many identities at its disposal in a playful and frictionless manner that the ideal of a multiple subject is already beginning to appear on the horizon.
However, this modified, contemporary diagnosis is once again accompanied
by the critical assertion that new developments in society bring about the obsolescence of the program of psychoanalytic theory. Of course, now it is not the
individuals total integration into the relations of constraint of society which causes psychoanalysis, with its categorical framework stemming from the beginning
of the century, to falter. Rather, it is its implicit notion of psychic health, its normative orientation toward the egos capacity to cope consistently with reality,
which is said to contribute to psychoanalysis finding itself in the process of rapidly becoming obsolete.1
What then is up for debate in the wake of this postmodern challenge is
whether psychoanalytic theory and practice does indeed presuppose an image of
personal identity and ego-development that is principally incompatible with tendencies toward an intrapsychic pluralization of subjects. In this essay, I wish to
examine a question related to this by attempting to clarify in a first step what the
rational, empirically tenable kernel of the contemporary diagnosis consists of.
After subtracting all exaggerations and simplifications, my thesis will be that from
such diagnoses we may draw the conclusion that these days the ego-identity of
the subject is more flexible and more open to alternatives (section I). To the
extent that there are indeed tendencies associated with these developments that
make the classical ideal personality of psychoanalysis appear obsolete, I shall in
the next step of my argument propose taking ones bearing from another paradigm of the psychoanalytical tradition, the normative ideal of which corresponds
better to the sketched processes of the liquefaction of ego-identity. According to
my conviction, object-relations theory in particular as developed in the writings
of Donald Winnicott presents such an alternative, in which the ideal of personality is free from all the limitations of Freuds original approach. In order to be
able to present the full spectrum of the implications of this different version of
psychoanalysis, I shall work out the correspondences and differences between an
interactionist social psychology and object-relations theory (II). Because the
objection often raised against such a revision of psychoanalysis is that it cannot
fully account for the theory of drives of the orthodox approach, I shall in a third
step attempt to sketch how one may imagine the integration of a psychoanalysis
revised on interactionist grounds and the theory of drives. For this, I shall rely to
a large extent on the often neglected writings of Hans W. Loewald, the kernel and
challenge of which I believe lies in the attempt to reconstruct the process of the
formation of drives as one of communicative exchange with the social environ1

226

What certainly played a catalyzing role in this trend to bid a historical farewell to psychoanalysis
was Foucaults parallel critique, which not only gave impetus to the superficial trend to engage in
Freud-bashing in the United States (on this, see Lear 1995) but also made awareness in general
more skeptical: see Foucault 1981; the best overview is provided by Lagranges 1990.

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ment (III). In a last step, I shall attempt to delineate the consequences that result
with respect to the fundamental ideal of personality from the synthesis that arises
from the integration of a theory of drives and object-relations theory. It will emerge that the goal of a healthy development of personality aimed at here is a state
of an inner capacity for dialogue, able to account normatively for the altered
forms of ego-identity in an appropriate manner. To this extent, there can be no
talk of an obsolescence of the tradition in an orientation along the lines of a psychoanalysis that has been revised intersubjectively (IV).

I.
To a certain extent, the above formulation of the issue at hand presupposes that
in recent discussions there is already a clear idea of what we have to understand
by a tendency toward the development of a postmodern subject. A glance at
recent research publications, however, quickly and unequivocally shows us that
this is not the case (Wenzel 1995; Joas 1997, chap. 9). Pseudo-scientific nonsense is blended with suggestive new descriptions and interesting observations in
such an inextricable manner that we are still very far from a consistent and convincing determination of the new personality type. Thus, for instance, the observation that there is a higher degree of reflective formation of identity is found
alongside thoughtless, indeed irresponsible praise for multiple personalities,
which is supposedly no longer in need of any kind of higher level integration of
the various components of its identity; the customary recommendation of a ceaseless self-creation of the subject is situated alongside talk of the gradual opening
of the individual to the other in its own self. Only very few of these assertions will
be able to withstand an empirical test, and only a few of the various recommendations will actually prove to be acceptable or desirable in light of our moral principles.2
Conversely, however, today it would undoubtedly be negligent to ignore completely the findings of such an initially probing, diffuse contemporary diagnosis
entirely on the basis of its internal inconsistency and provisional character. Upon
sober consideration, the kernel found to be worth preserving will probably turn
out to be the observation that at least in highly developed societies subjects
have a tendency to allow for and to represent a surplus of internal possibilities of
identity larger than could have been the case in conditions of the conventional
ascription of roles and more rigid behavioral expectations. Fuelled by sociocultural changes in primary relations quickly subsumed under the concept of sexual revolution and promptly accelerated by the multiplication of social relationships, the willingness of individuals to understand their own biographies as the
linear process of the development of an identity at the end of which they find
occupational roles and the gender-specific division of labor in the family, has in
the meantime decreased. This relatively rigid scheme of identity on which Parsons, for instance, could still base his theory of socialization as though it were self2

On the psychoanalytic critique of the currently fashionable talk of multiple personality as a normative goal, see e.g. Leary 1994.
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evident (Parsons 1951, chap. VI; Parsons 1964) has been replaced by the tendency to open ones own self-understanding to completely different possibilities of
identity, for example, in the form of membership of very different social milieus,
greater contact with unfamiliar forms of life, and an expansion of explorative
sexual orientations.3 It is to this extent that the sociocultural transformations with
which we are said to be concerned today under the catchphrase postmodern personality can be grasped dispassionately at the outset as processes of an intrapsychic pluralization of subjects.
This admittedly somewhat coarse synopsis of recent contemporary diagnoses
is still very vague and leaves open numerous questions that are primarily of a
purely conceptual nature. It is completely unclear, for example, why these tendencies toward an opening of individuals to a surplus of internal possibilities of
development are supposed to be processes that lead to a scattering of self or loss
of identity, since in the more advanced currents of the sociological tradition,
such concepts as identity and self always signified exactly the syntheses that a
subject had to carry out in order to be able to sense numerous temporally and
spatially disparate experiences, convictions and actions as the coherent activities
of an ego (Straub 1991; Nunner-Winkler 1985; Joas 1997, chap. 9).
Equally vague and merely suggestive, it seems to me, is the presumption that
we must understand the above-mentioned upheavals in the individuals relation
to self as the overcoming of a constraint that is said to stem solely from the normative orientation toward the goal of individual ego-identity. To my mind, two
completely different concepts of identity are being confused here, in that the
social expectation of a certain kind of individuality is carelessly equated with the
formal competencies that we must presuppose when we speak of the successful
formation of ego-identity (Straub 1991; Joas 1997, p. 240; Erikson 1959). No
matter how significant such conceptual inconsistencies may be, what is naturally
of primary interest in this context is to what extent there should be a challenge to
psychoanalysis contained in the tendencies described. To put the question more
precisely: In view of the sociocultural upheavals of recent times, how can we
speak of an obsolescence of the projects and concepts with which psychoanalytic theory grasps the development of the ego? As we know, after his revolutionary discovery of the unconscious, Freud was primarily interested in those intrapsychic processes through which the ego could attain a kind of strength vis--vis
the corporeal claims of the id and the socially mediated expectations of the superego a strength that Freud always associated with psychic health. For him,
questions concerning the subjects formation of identity did not arise, for the
simple reason that research conducted in the United States on the concepts of
self and identity had not yet found any reception in Europe. After 1945, Erik
Erikson was the first to make an impressive attempt to open psychoanalysis and
its model of personality to sociopsychological studies in which the communicative presuppositions of the development of the self were the center of attention.
The outcome of this scientific synthesis was the notion that subjects attain a personal identity on the basis of silent acts of ego synthesis by means of which an
3

228

As principal examples of such a diagnosis, let us just mention here Giddens 1991 and Habermas
1987.

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inner unity and continuity is established between individual demands of the

drive and social expectations. Thus in Erikson, too, there was the predominance
of a concept of ego-identity that basically referred to the conscious and unconscious accomplishments of integration through which a subject, in the stream of
numerous experiences and impressions, could acquire an awareness of inner
unity.4
All the more urgent, then, is the question why in view of such formal, open
notions of ego-identity psychoanalysis should not be able to do conceptual justice to the subjects new, plural relation to self.
Once again, a certain simplification seems appropriate to me, in order to make
visible that point in psychoanalysis at which the criticism of being obsolete could
possibly be directed to. It may well be that in the tradition of Freudian psychoanalysis there has always been a certain inclination to imagine the ideal, desirable relation of the ego to its surrounding world and inner psychic life according
to the model of rational control. To be able to cope with reality in an appropriate
manner, the subject must have enough ego-strength to strike a balance between
unconscious demands of the drive and social norms in order to be capable of
work and interpersonal bonding. According to such a model, what would have
to serve as the standard of psychic health would be the subjects ability to have at
its disposition a large number of accomplishments attained by ego synthesis, all
of which have to be in service of coping with reality. And that which is regarded
as the embodiment of that reality which the individual subject copes with, and
which therefore requires an increase in ego-strength, is self-evidently a social
reality that is essentially characterized by the imperatives of lifelong occupational work and a family life based on the division of labor. If we relate this ideal of
personality to the sociocultural tendencies that were presented above as the result
of recent contemporary diagnoses, then the contours of the criticism which justifiably may be leveled at psychoanalysis today become evident: Its basic concepts, and indeed its entire notion of inner psychic life, are tailored to the normative goal of bringing the zone of the unconscious under the rational control of
the ego, and to do so to such a degree that it cannot take into consideration this
new, more open relation to self of the subject that is currently beginning to develop as a consequence of an accelerated de-traditionalization. Succinctly put: Psychoanalysis finds itself in the process of rapidly becoming obsolete because on the
side of inner psychic life it lacks the necessary correlate to the idea of a communicative liquefaction of the identity of the ego.
I have so far made an extremely simplifying presentation, merely to arrive
quickly at a first, provisional determination of the challenge presumably facing
psychoanalysis under todays altered conditions. In what follows, however, I will
reverse the direction of my argument and switch to a defense of psychoanalysis
which will essentially serve to show that the conceptual instruments for grasping
inner psychic life in a manner appropriate to the tendencies of our time are already available in the most advanced versions of psychoanalysis. Of course, in
4

Unfortunately, this legacy of Eriksons was never really adopted in the further development of psychoanalysis, as it is found in a synthesis of ego-psychoanalysis (Kohut) and object-relations theory; see Wallerstein 1998 and Seligman and Shanok 1995.
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order to develop such a line of defense, it will first be necessary to introduce a

restriction the justification of which will probably not be entirely comprehensible
until I come to the end of my reflections. Only those further developments of psychoanalysis which, in the tradition of object-relations theory, attempt to grasp the
formation of inner psychic life as a conflict-ridden process of internalizing interactive relations are in a position to complete the task at hand, for they are manifestly forced, in conceptual terms, to imagine the interrelationship of intrapsychic
forces or instances according to the same communicative pattern that ideally prevails in the interactive relations within which the child attains, by way of differentiation, the capacity for ego-identity. For that reason, the image of personal
maturity present in such communication theory versions of psychoanalysis is not
that of efficient ego-strength, but that of an enrichment of the ego through a communicative liquefaction of inner life.
As I have already outlined, I first wish to proceed by briefly sketching the initial premises of a psychoanalysis understood in terms of a theory of recognition,
and shall do so by referring to the writings of Donald W. Winnicott. The resulting
model of the interactive constitution of the relation to self will then be deepened
with the help of insights from a theory of drives we owe to the work of Hans W.
Loewald. In this way, it ought to become clear that even the intrapsychic organization of drive-potential can be grasped as a process of differentiation that unfolds
during the various stages in which the childs interactive relations expand. It is
only on the basis of the resulting synthesis that in a final step it will become evident that, in disclosing the individual psyche as an inwardly transposed structure of communication, there is also an imperceptible shift in the normative determination of the development of the ego: The goal of strengthening rational capabilities of control is replaced by the idea of a vital richness of intrapsychic events
as we can probably say with Winnicott and Loewald.
2.
For Freud and his followers, the childs interactors were initially only significant
to the degree to which they acted as the objects of libidinal charges stemming
from the intrapsychic conflict between the unconscious demands of the drive and
the gradually emerging controls of the ego. Only the mother was granted the
independent status of a significant other, beyond this merely intermediate, secondary role, because the threatened loss of the mother in the phase of psychological helplessness of the infant was considered to be the cause of all more mature
varieties of anxiety. For that reason, there could not be any theoretical attempts
along the path opened up by Freud to grasp the emergence of the individual psyche as a process that must unfold in the form of internalizing interactive relations
with an ever-increasing circle of significant others. Instead, psychosexual development and thus also the formation of the relation to self were conceived of
according to the pattern of an endogenous process of maturation in which the
relation to other persons was to have merely a catalyzing function in the unfolding of the potential of the drive bound to the body.
This starting position which precluded any fruitful exchange with the
approaches of intersubjective theory of American social psychology could only
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lastingly change the degree to which the psychoanalytic movement took notice of
those studies in which the psychic value of affective bonding experiences for the
success of the childs process of maturation was demonstrated empirically. One
outcome of the resulting shift of attention is, of course, object-relations theory, in
which the organization of libidinal drives is viewed as being systematically connected to early childhood relations with other persons in order to arrive at a more
complex and differentiated account of the development of the ego.5 What quickly emerged from this perspective in terms of fruitful insights, which was then broadened by intersubjectivity theory, in at least three respects displays close points
of contact with the tradition of interactionist socialization research; in this regard
I concentrate in what follows on the theoretical convergence which may be identified between Winnicotts interpretation of psychoanalysis and the work of George Herbert Mead. Of course, similar conclusions can be drawn with respect to the
writings of Melanie Klein.6
1. Both theoretical approaches presuppose that the childs psyche represents
merely an unstructured complex of experiential stimuli and instinctual impulses
until the first elementary interactive experiences with primary significant others
prepare the way for early forms of a reciprocal relationship. The infant learns, as
it were, from the reactive behavior of its interactors to relate to its as yet unorganized experiences in such a way that it can arrive at the first stages of the organization of the psyche. According to both models, something like the inner life of
the subject is only formed to the degree to which external communicative relations are translated, in the form of internalizations, into intrapsychic relation patterns. Everything we customarily describe as forms of an individual relation to
self whether moral feelings, acts of the will, or need articulations is the outcome of interactions that have, as it were, been shifted inside and there have led
to the formation of instances that relate to one another in a communication-like
manner. In respect to this theoretical starting point, the two models are in agreement, so much so that the differences pertain only to the developmental dimensions to which special attention is accorded by each model. Whereas Mead pursues above all the intersubjectively mediated emergence of moral consciousness,
Winnicott is, under the same aspect, primarily interested in examining the motivational development of the bonding capability and of creativity.
2. A second element common to both theoretical approaches becomes evident
as soon as the question is raised how the one, central mechanism of internalization is supposed to bring about both, i.e., the socialization and the individuation of
the subject. What is meant by this apparently paradoxical formulation is the fact
that every process of human socialization has to simultaneously complete two
contradictory tasks. On the one hand, during the process of internalization, society is supposed to extend, as it were, step by step into the maturing child, while
the childs individuality has, on the other hand, to be increased gradually in this
5
6

Very good overviews of the development and paradigms of object-relation theory are offered by
Greenberg & Mitchel 1983 and Eagle 1989.
In what follows I further develop reflections I first presented in parts of my book The Struggle for
Recognition (1995, chapters 4 and 5); I see my proposal very strongly supported by Thomas
Ogdens (1992) attempt to draw conclusions from object-relations theory for a psychoanalytically extended concept of the subject.
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very same process in order to be able to finally assume the form of a unique personality. The interpretative suggestion put forward by the two theoretical approaches to resolve this problem follows from widening the process of internalization
by adding the principle of demarcation, of differentiation. Basically, internalization means disempowering an external, at first passively experienced communicative relation by reconstructing it in complex ways in ones own inner life, where
it can then serve as an intrapsychic instance to demarcate itself from the surrounding social world. Accordingly, with each step of successful internalization,
the subjects ability to gain independence from external objects, significant others
and instinctual urges is increased, so that the latitude for individual need articulations of instincts and goals also expands at the same time. The intrapsychic
instances, which are the product of a successful process of internalization, create,
so to speak, the internal space of communication that is necessary to be able to
distinguish oneself from the ever-increasing circle of communication partners and
to arrive at an autonomous life plan.7
Along the lines of this theoretical solution we may, for instance, locate Meads
proposal to explain the process of socialization as a development in which by
internalizing the external perspective of first a concrete and then an increasingly
generalized other the child gradually learns to establish in itself the instance of
a me, which helps it to gain autonomous control of its own urges to perform
action. Of course, this explanatory model is not very far from Winnicotts notion
that the childs ability to be by itself and to creatively discover its own potential
of needs in play is developed, to the extent to which internalizing the significant
others caring behavior succeeds. Typically, however, both models assume that the
real pressure toward the further individuation of the child comes from an instance which, as it were, is left over from the process of internalization as a barely
organized residuum. Following Freud, Winnicott calls it the id, and with reference to William James, Mead calls it the I. With that, I come to the third point
that the two models seem to have in common.
3. In both Meads interactionism and Winnicotts object-relations theory, it is
assumed that in the process of internalizing external communication patterns, a
realm of the psychic flux of experience is, so to speak, left out, and this then becomes the reservoir for unconscious urges to perform actions and of the demands of
drives. The drives gathered here are not able to cross the threshold to the possibility of reflective awareness because they were not structurally grasped by the
organizing reconstruction of the psyche that commenced with the internalization
of the interactive behavior of the first significant others. According to both
models, it is from this barely (or not at all) organized realm of corporeal urges of
the drive the id in Freuds sense that the intrapsychic pressure pushing the
maturing subject in the direction of individuation is said to originate: The urges
withheld from consciousness represent, as it were, silent demands within the
communication space opened up in the psyche, demands that perpetually force
individuals to again go beyond the attained level of their compromises with the
7

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Ogden also speaks of intrapsychic space as a relation that is to be conceived of according to the
pattern of relations of interaction, which will be very significant for my further argument; see
Ogden 1992, p. 616.

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surrounding social world in order to reach a higher level of individuation in their

articulation of needs. To that extent, the process of socialization unfolds in the
childs gradually achieving independence through the internalization of social
patterns of interaction, which under ideal conditions is always a process of individuation, too. Now, in the context of these observations, both Mead and Winnicott speculate on the possibility of developing a dialogue-like relation with the I
or with ones own unconscious. I shall return to this problem at the end of this
paper, when we will be concerned with connecting the personality ideal favored
by object-relations theory to current contemporary diagnoses.
Thus, the three hypotheses mentioned i.e., social interaction preceding the
organization of the psyche; the double function of internalization as a mechanism
both of socialization and of the attainment of independence; and the significance
of a barely organized realm of the psyche as the unconscious driving force behind
individuation represent fundamental theoretical convictions about which there
seems to be a high level of agreement between the interactionism of George Herbert Mead and object-relations theory. Both traditions assume that the organization of intrapsychic events can be understood as the establishment of an inwardly transposed communication space from which only one thing is excluded,
namely, the reservoir of unconscious urges of the drive that structurally could not
undergo the processing linked to the internalization of patterns of external interaction.
The point at which significant differences between the two models emerge is
connected with a premise that in principle constitutes the starting point of the
construction of Winnicotts theory. In agreement with a number of other psychoanalysts, he assumes that the early acts toward achieving independence which
of course accompany the first affective visualization of the independence of
external reality to a certain extent represent excessive demands on the child and
will therefore spellbind its intrapsychic life right up to adulthood. It seems to me
that in this bold, far-reaching thesis we find the key to what can be understood
as the specifically psychoanalytic contribution to the modern understanding of
the subject. For this reason, a lot of effort ought to go into refuting the empirical
objections raised today against the assumption of a primordial state of symbiosis,
objections that are based on recent research into infant development.8
The reason Winnicott gives for his central thesis that there is an early trauma
that takes a lifetime to overcome is fundamentally easy to appreciate, even if a
number of doubts about it have recently been registered. If it is true that the young
child can only learn to organize its psychic forces with the help of internalizing the
early interaction patterns of stable care provided by its mother (or another significant other), then this must be preceded by a stage of experienced unity, of the
absence of difference between subject and reality. This earliest phase for which
there are a large number of more or less apt concepts in psychoanalysis, ranging
from primary narcissism to symbiosis has to be conceived of in such a way that
here the infant sees its own urges and drives merged with the corresponding, satis8

The important objections come from Daniel Stern (1992), who can call on the results of his own
experimental research; an excellent overview of the discussion is given by Domes 1997, chap. 1
and 5.
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fying reactions on the part of the significant other, so much so that there cannot
be a gap between its own self and reality in its affective experiencing. The newborn
is therefore not only entirely dependent on the caring and tending behavior of its
primary significant other in the practical sense of sheer survival due to its organic deficiencies but also in the deeper sense of its own experience, the neonate
is as yet in no way separated from the surrounding world of satisfying, reactive
behavior. Winnicott is convinced of the key intrapsychic significance of this primordial experience of symbiosis, not only for the infant, but in principle also for
the mature human being. Indeed, he is so convinced that he devotes his psychoanalytic theory to explaining the mechanisms with the help of which the gradual
visualization of an independent reality can be mastered in the early years.
But here again it has to be emphasized that he was not concerned with the
process of cognitively creating a scheme of objective, detached reality, but solely
with the mechanism by means of which the child succeeds in affectively recognizing the reality of a significant other who is independent of its own wishful fantasies. The hypothesis with which Winnicott attempts to explain this decisive developmental step consists of the magnificent idea of the transitional object, of
which here I can give only a very brief account (Winnicott 1974, pp. 1-25). In
the highly affectively charged relation to objects in its immediate experiential
environment be it parts of a toy, the corner of a pillow, or its own thumb the
infant establishes, usually with the silent consent of the significant other, an independent zone of reality that is neither just a part of inner experience nor already
a component of the world of objective facts. On the contrary, what constitutes the
distinctiveness of such an intermediate zone of experience is the circumstance
that it is visualized by all those involved as an ontological sphere in the presence
of which the question of fact or fiction is not raised.
If one takes into account the developmental phase in which the discovery of
these intermediate objects of significance occurs, then there are grounds for supposing that they represent surrogates for the mother, who has just been lost to
external reality. Because they are ontologically ambiguous in nature, the child can
actively use them to keep symbiotic fantasies alive, even after the experience of
separation, and can simultaneously use them to creatively probe reality. In this
playful yet reality-checking manner of use, it also becomes apparent that the
function of transitional objects cannot be restricted to the symbiotic appropriation of the role of the mother as experienced in the state of merging. The child
relates to the objects it has selected not only with symbiotic tenderness but also
with repeated attacks of rage and attempts to destroy them.
Winnicott believes that one may conclude from this that, in the case of transitional objects, one is dealing with ontological links, as it were, that mediate
between the primary experience of being merged and the awareness of separateness. In the playful interaction with these affectively charged objects, the child
repeatedly attempts to bridge, symbolically, the painful gap between inner and
outer reality. The fact that this coincides with the emergence of intersubjectively
accepted illusions allows Winnicott to go one step further and to arrive at a thesis that has consequences that are both far-reaching and difficult to assess. Because the ontological, mediating sphere arises as the solution to a task that people
continue to face throughout their lives, it is the psychological origin of all adult
interests vis--vis cultural objectivations. Not without a sense of sharpening the
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speculative point of the matter, Winnicott writes:

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It is assumed here that the task of reality-acceptance is never completed, that no

human being is free from the strain of relating inner and outer reality, and that relief
from this strain is provided by an intermediate area of experience ... which is not challenged (arts, religion, etc.). This intermediate area is in direct continuity with the play
area of the small child who is lost in play (Winnicott 1974, p. 13).

Thus, the idea of transitional objects leads to a notion of the infants developmental process that, although it shares a number of premises of intersubjectivity
theory with Mead, at a decisive point, however, in contrast emphasizes an element of brokenness, of fragmentation, in the expanding cycle of interaction and
internalization. Just as for Mead, for Winnicott the child achieves the first form of
independence as soon as it has internalized the caring behavior of the concrete
other to such a degree that it has established an intrapsychic source that enables
it to playfully explore and thus begin to control its environment. From the perspective of the infant, however, this emancipating step also means leaving behind
the original symbiotic state with the mother, and therefore having to go through
a far-reaching, painful experience of separation an experience that requires lifelong compensation by means of habitually necessary excursions into the intermediate zone of transitional objects.
Shifted to a level of generalization at which conclusions become evident for
our notion of the intersubjectively mediated character of the relation to self, the
following hypothesis follows from Winnicotts conjecture: We human beings are
able to become independent in the sense of developing an intrapsychic capacity
for dialogue only if, in the required accompanying process of recognizing the
independence of our interactors, we can simultaneously acquire the ability to fall
periodically below the particular demarcations of ego we have already achieved
in order to be able to endure the ever-increasing distance from the original state
of symbiosis. To that extent, the task of maintaining a balance between the wish
for being merged and ego demarcation is a psychic challenge that not only the
infant but also every adult has to accept again and again.9 Before drawing from
these reflections the conclusions they imply for an ideal of personality, I wish to
briefly append the drive-theoretical presuppositions that necessarily belong to a
complete picture of the intrasubjectively mediated process of the human being
becoming a self.
3.
In the conception of development of personality sketched so far, it is still entirely unclear which role can be played by the drive-theoretical hypotheses, which
together with the assumption of a primordial state of symbiosis undoubtedly constitute the other great legacy of psychoanalysis. Following the observations so far,
all we know is that the individual subject becomes independent by internalizing
external patterns of interaction, by means of which a kind of space of communi9

Following Melanie Klein, Ogden (1992) formulates this notion in a similar manner.
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Axel Honneth

cation can develop within the psyche, and complementary to the surrounding
social world. Moreover, we know that excluded from this intersubjectively mediated organization of the psyche there seems to be a particular segment in which
corporeal demands of the drive are represented in a form that is hardly structured. Finally, we also know that another element is added to the picture thus intimated, namely, the fact that the communicatively constituted emancipating process of the subject is invariably refracted to the extent that as compensation for
the separation suffered from the initial symbiotic state there is a need to continually transgress the limits of the self, which takes the form of a playful excursion into the intermediate world of transitional objects or cultural imaginations.
But none of this can explain the role played in individual development by that
surplus drive-potential from which Freud and his disciples believe they can proceed.10
At this point, the reflections Hans Loewald made in an attempt to give the formation of drive-potential in the human being an intersubjective theoretical reading will be of further help. His hypotheses agree closely with the developmental model presented so far, since they also refer to the mechanism of gradually
internalizing patterns of interaction in order and here he goes beyond Mead and
Winnicott to interpret the organization of the psyche as a whole as a process of
structuring surplus drive-potential.11 What in this way is finally explained is the
fact ascertained so far only on the periphery that in establishing an intrapsychic space of communication, an instance the I or the id assumes the form
of an unorganized, as it were, residuum without structure.
In his reflections on a theory of drives, Loewald proceeds from a conceptual
model that is very well known from the pragmatic tradition of the theory of socialization: We have to conceive of the individual psyche as an organism the development of which unfolds in the form of a continuous interchange with its environment.12 At the beginning that is to say, during the infants early phases of life
this organic configuration of the psyche represents nothing more than completely undirected activity of the drive without any structure. There, the human
beings drive-potential, understood as the whole of organic needs and urges, does
not have any bond to specific objects and therefore strives, aimlessly, for an active interchange with the environment. For this reason, Loewald also insists that at
this early point of development we cannot yet properly speak of drives in a terminological sense; for this term can only be applied to needs or urges which already achieved psychic representation by having been, as it were, merged with an
object, and this in the form of elementary memory images of experienced situations of satisfaction. According to Loewald, such a transformation of merely
organically conceived urges into drives can come about only when the mothers
caring behavior stands out for the infant from the diffuse interchange with the
environment as a first pattern of interaction that is accompanied by regularly
recurring states of satisfaction. The formerly undirected impulses of need can
10 The following reflections are an attempt to respond to objections raised against my reception of
object-relations theory in The Struggle for Recognition (1995); see e.g. Gumberger 1995.
11 In what follows I refer to Loewald 1980; on Loewalds importance for the development of psychoanalysis, see e.g. Lear 1998 and Whitebook 1999.
12 Loewald, On Motivation and Drive Theory (pp. 11920) in his 1980, pp. 102137.
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now attach themselves to specific objects, signaling satisfaction with the help of
mnemonic images in such a way that they can be represented in the psyche, and
thus assume the form of drives. Loewald has a magnificent image for this first step
in the organization of the drive, one that serves above all to emphasize the degree to which the appropriate caring reaction of the primary significant other is not
a matter of a mere means for abolishing excited states but, conversely, a matter of
the creative act of generating and organizing excitation processes as such: In the
process of a mothers caring activities, Loewald (1980, p. 131) writes, drives
come into being in the child.13
If drives have come into existence in this way in the psychic life of the child,
then according to Loewald we are concerned with the general conditions of that
early phase we have already come to know as a state of merging in Winnicott.
Here we cannot speak of an eventful visualization of an external reality, because
the infant still has to regard the object of its now psychically represented urge as
an integral part of the behavioral activity with which it strives for the satisfaction
of its drives. I consider the real achievement of Loewalds drive-theoretical works
to consist of how he describes the process of individuation, in proceeding from
this early phase of symbiosis, as one that unfolds in the form of a differentiation
of the life of the drive (which is as yet indistinct) into various instances, each of
which represents the internalization of a particular pattern of interaction between
the infant and the environment. This central intuition is best understood as follows: The development of an intrapsychic space of communication comes about
to the extent to which typical schemata of interaction with vital partners are shifted to the inside and there, with the help of the energy of the drive that has by
now been discharged, they are formed into instances. Thus, as a whole there
emerges the notion that the psyche of the maturing human being builds an interactive network of resources in which parts of the energy of the drive have acquired an organized form through processes of internalization.14
However, before such a formation of intrapsychic organizational units can
come about, Loewald must of course presuppose a phase during which the
infants experience of symbiosis is burst open so that the energy of the drive can
be freed for the purposes of forming these instances. Just like Winnicott, Loewald
describes this separation phase as a process in which the child tends to be overburdened. The illusion of being integrally merged with the object breaks under
the experiential pressure of the significant others becoming independent. This
occurs in such a manner that parts of the energy of the drive now have to be used
for organizing such cognitive activities as can serve the intentional engendering
of intersubjective interchange. In this first splitting of the energy of the drive into
the zone without structure of the id and the organized zone of elementary functions of the ego, we can see the pattern according to which Loewald henceforth
describes all further processes of the childs individuation as being processes of
differentiation. Some of the psychic energy of the drive is continually used to esta13 Loewald is following here Melanie Klein and W. Bion.
14 See e.g. Loewald, Internalization, in his 1980, pp. 6986; Drive Theory, Object Relations, and
Psychic Structure Formations, in his 1980, pp. 20718; Internalization, Separation, Mourning,
and the Superego, in his 1980, pp. 25776.
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Axel Honneth

blish functionally efficient organizational units in the inner world, which can be
understood as the outcome of internalizing patterns of interaction experienced in
the outer world. In this process of differentiation, which first generates the ego
and then the superego as crystallized forms of the energy of the drive, there
remains in the inner world as an archaic residuum the id, which in comparison
to the other resources has only been integrated or organized slightly.
Unfortunately, I do not have enough space here to further elaborate on all the
fruitful consequences that would follow from this very specific understanding of
the process of individuation for our portrayal of the developing subject. It would
not only allow us to better understand what it means to comprehend the individual relation to self as the outcome of an intrapsychic process of differentiation
that has to unfold on the strength of the internalization of external interaction
patterns, but it would also provide us with the pioneering insight which, incidentally, is in agreement with the notions of a George Herbert Mead or a John
Dewey that achievements of the ego or functions of the superego are not to be
understood as forces counteracting the drives, but as forms of their organized
bundling, as having the role of giving form to the energy of the drive. But instead of pursuing these thoughts further, I shall restrict myself in what follows to
briefly mentioning the two implications of Loewalds interpretation of psychoanalysis, which will enable me to return to the starting point of my paper.
1. Even though I have made only very brief remarks about his work, it ought
to be clear to what extent Loewald can give a drive-theoretical turn to the notion
of an intrapsychic space of communication. If human energy of the drive has to
be understood as something that, after the phase of separation in early childhood,
is used for the construction of intrapsychic resources which for their part have
to be grasped as the outcome of internalizing external patterns of interaction
then the psyche of the maturing human being presents itself as a network of communication of variously organized drive energies. With a small sense of speculation, one could say that everything constituting our inner life wishes, stimulation of conscience, appraisals of reality, and ideals consists as a whole of numerous voices representing more or less solidified forms of drive energy. When internalization is successful, these relate to one another in a quasi-dialogistic manner.
This is why Loewald can also mention on a number of occasions that, under ideal
circumstances, the human psyche has to be understood as a context of interaction that has been shifted inside, a context that enjoys a complementary relation
with a communicative life-world in which the individual encounters the other in
very different roles of interaction (i.e., relations of recognition).
2. Even more essential for my purposes, it seems to me, is a second implication of Loewalds theory, one I could not elaborate on in this short presentation.
Like Winnicott, he believes that the potential for inner dialogue can develop
sooner or better the more willing the individual is to yield temporarily to experiences that involve a transgression of the limits of the ego and thereby allow a
drop below intrapsychic distinctions already achieved. In Loewald, this deep
insight is connected to the idea that the early, as yet incomplete stages of the integration of the ego represent a power source for the mature, differentiated personality because it permits us to remain familiar with experiences of being merged,
the overcoming of which was the price of individuation. This is why we gain the
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strength needed to maintain the balance between symbiosis and independence

from periodic transgression of the limits of the ego. Let me close my presentation
of Loewalds theory with a quote that I think aptly presents the point I have been
attempting to make:
I mentioned earlier that Freud has raised the problem of psychological survival of earlier ego stages side by side with later stages of ego-development, a problem that he says
has as yet hardly been investigated. If we look closely at people we can see that it is
not merely a question of survival of former stages of egoreality integration, but that
people shift considerably, from day to day, at different periods in their lives, in different moods and situations, from one such level to other levels. In fact, it would seem
that the more alive people are (though not necessarily more stable), the broader their
range of egoreality levels is. Perhaps the so-called fully developed, mature ego is not
one that has become fixated at the presumably highest or latest stage of development,
having left the others behind it, but is an ego that integrates its reality in such a way
that the earlier and deeper levels of egoreality integration remain alive as dynamic
sources of higher organization.15

4.
From these sentences it becomes clear in an impressive manner to what extent
the ideal of personality in psychoanalysis is shifted when we, rather than starting from the orthodox premises, orient ourselves toward the results of an integration of object-relations theory and drive theoretical assumptions as I tried to
outline: The mature state of the subject is no longer measured in terms of abilities to control its needs and its surrounding world i.e., in terms of egostrength but in terms of the capacity to be open to the many sides of ones
own person, as articulated in Loewalds sentences defining the concept of aliveness. If the development of personality is described as a process which, following the steps in the internalization of patterns of interaction, unfolds as the
gradual construction of an intrapsychic space of communication, then we have
the following new specification of personal maturity: We must regard as mature as fully developed the individual who can realize his or her potential for
inner dialogue, for the communicative liquefaction of his or her relation to self,
by ensuring that as many of the various interactors as possible obtain a hearing
in the individuals own inner life. In short, the goal of inner aliveness, of intrapsychic richness, has taken the place occupied in early psychoanalysis by the
notion of ego-strength.16
From this perspective it is easy to establish a link with the beginning of my
paper. Viewed dispassionately, at the center of recent contemporary diagnoses
is the observation, concerning current transformations of personality structure,
that today we are concerned with a process of the inner pluralization of sub15 Loewald, Ego and Reality (p. 20), in his 1980, pp. 320.
16 This normative reorientation also becomes clear in attempts to go beyond the model of ego-psychology by moving in the direction of an object relations idea of the lifespan tension between
unity and complexity; an exemplary illustration of this is Seligman & Shanok 1995.
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Axel Honneth

jects, with a communicative liquefaction of their ego-identity as I remarked

at the outset. And the question was whether in view of these current tendencies
psychoanalysis finds itself in the process of becoming obsolete. In order to answer this question, I proposed that instead of taking ones lead from the classical version of psychoanalysis one should take ones lead from its new conception in object-relations theory. And to preempt the possible objection that the
heritage of the theory of drives might be lost in such a revision, I have included the suggestions that Hans Loewald submitted with regard to an interactionist conception of the theory of drives in my attempt to sketch an intersubjectively inclined psychoanalysis. The result of this integration, as has hopefully
become evident, is the idea that the individual formation of drives occurs parallel to that process of interiorization in which the maturing subject learns contemporaneously to establish intrapsychic instances and to delimit itself from its
social environment by means of the interiorization of continuously enlarging
interactive relations. Yes, Loewalds considerations put forward the suggestion
one which goes beyond Winnicott that this process of intrapsychic differentiation by means of interiorization is similar to that of the process of the formation
of drives. The energy necessary to build up intrapsychic instances is obtained
from the originally undirected potential of drives, and is used in the organization
of the psyche by means of the appropriate cathexis of interactors, so that the gradually evolving intrapsychic instances are themselves forms of organization of the
basis of drives. If we take into consideration the additional thesis i.e., that the
adult subject continues to have to overcome the experience of separation after the
successful establishment of intrapsychic instances then the new ideal of personality connected to these revised foundational assumptions becomes evident. In
order to maintain the necessary balance of differentiation and the transgression of
the limits of the ego, of separation and symbiosis, the individual subject must be
in a position to temporarily fall back behind the lines of the established limits of
the ego, and in so doing to keep open an inner leeway for alternative identities.
In other words, psychic health grows with the ability for a rationally controlled
regression, by which intrapsychic and hitherto excluded ego alternatives are kept
alive and can be made fruitful for actually occurring actions. It is precisely this
ideal of personality that is capable of incorporating a liquefaction of ego-identity
corresponding to an appropriate determination by social tendencies. Not only
does it offer the necessary basic principles needed in order to explain what
liquefaction and flexibility of the identity of the ego may mean today, it is also able
to sketch the normative situation which we should productively have in view as
the goal of contemporary developments. Therefore, there can be no talk of the
obsolescence of psychoanalysis if we give it the turn toward the intersubjective
theoretical conception recommended here.
Nonetheless, we should not suppress the fact that in the passage cited, Loewald makes a parenthetical remark that could cause some irritation: He says that
the person who can be more alive in the sense intended here is not necessarily
more stable. It might well be the case that we have to understand this almost
casual remark as a reference to an alternative concerning the ideals of personality distinguished. It can be that unlocking the inner capacity for dialogue ultimately provides a person with less ego-strength than is necessary for coping routi240

Postmodern Identity and Object-Relations Theory

nely with daily conflicts and challenges. That, however, would mean that in view
of current changes in the structure of personality we are faced with the decision
between two cultural developmental possibilities: Either the masculine personality having ego-strength, which acquires the capacity for coping with reality by
suppressing other possibilities of identity, or the internally rich personality that
has been rendered flexible, as it were, yet which lacks the stability necessary for
routine, daily life.

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CV

Translated from the German bij John Farrel and Jo Khler.

Axel Honneth, born 1949 in Essen (Germany), studied Philosophy, Sociology and German Literature in Bonn, Bochum and Berlin. At present he is Professor for Social Philosophy at the Johann
Wolfgang Goethe-University in Frankfurt/Main. Currently his main research is on social philosophy, moral philosophy and moral psychology. His main publications are: Social Action and Human
Nature, Cambridge University Press 1988; Critique of Power, MIT-Press 1990; The Struggle for Recognition, Polity-Press 1994; The Fragmented World of the Social: Essays in Social and Political Philosophy,
Suny-Press 1995.
E-mail: honneth@em.uni-frankfurt.de

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