What makes object relations so sticky?
In our exploration of object relations, we’ve determined that the “bonding agent” is the key to freeing us from being trapped in the past with these psychodynamic building blocks. On the surface, the bonding agent is the affect of the experience, which the comparative mind uses to define the object relation and its parts – I’m little, weak, unlovable… The other is big, strong, the source of love…
Additionally, the mind uses the affect as its primary label for organizing object relations.
“Peeling” the object relationships off our consciousness can feel like pulling Velcro apart or separating something glued with contact cement. The glue stretches, like taffy. not wanting to release. Let me know if you’ve experienced something like this.
But, there are forces and dynamics at play here much deeper than emotional affect. Understanding these forces will take our work with object relations beyond the self into the realm of Being—the power behind the self’s throne.
Libidinal Energy
Libido is a term used in psychoanalytic theory to describe the energy created by the survival and sexual instincts. According to Sigmund Freud, the libido is part of the id and is the driving force of all behavior.
“Libidinal energy” is that which propels an “object instinct” like sexual desire. To Freud, “attachments of affection” are “libidinal ties.
Instincts or drives—innate and biological urge that seeks satisfaction in objects.
Do you see? Objects, objects, objects.
Our biological nature is deeper than our psychological nature. Our capacity for psychological evolution emerged from the biological matrix.
The animal we are has objective drives and needs. The psychological self has objective needs and imagined needs.
As part of the survival drive, many species developed a biological imprinting process between mother and offspring. For human beings, this process has evolved psychologically and emotionally into the attachment process.
Imprinting and attachment deepen psychologically through cathexis: an investment of energy into an object or an idea and/or the concentration of mental energy on one particular person, idea, or object.
So, returning to our illustration of an object relation, we have this dynamic:
- Something in the present triggers an object relation – bringing the past into the present via the comparative mind process.
- The object relation has an affect associated with it and an investment of libidinal energy contained in it.
- Reacting to and acting from the object relation loops the affect and invests more libidinal energy into it.
Let’s see if we can provide examples to help you recognize and feel into cathexis and libidinal energy. We’ll provide an example for each drive:
Survival Drive
Imagine you’re famished – “I’m starving.” You’re stuck in traffic and you start imaging that perfect meal that will “hit the spot.” You’re thinking, daydreaming, and imagining the experience of eating that food and the satisfaction it will bring. You’re salivating and your stomach starts growling – because your mind doesn’t know the difference between imagining and reality.
In this moment, as you play around with this, especially the imagining and the anticipation of chewing and relishing the flavors and textures of the food, can you sense the energy investment taking place? Are you aware of the psychological and biological energies being invested?
Sexual Drive
Anyone who has ever masturbated using fantasy should be able to recognize libidinal investment right away. Whether you’re just in your mind, looking at a photo or a video, it’s pretty easy to feel the energetic investment in the idea of the other, the interaction, and the satisfaction that results.
Social Drive
Ever been in love? Ever daydream, long for, or imagine all the possibilities with your beloved?
This should be another “no-brainer” for feeling the energy you are investing into an idea of an “other” and a possibility. The idea is not only the time, place, and interaction—your beloved is also an idea in your mind. You can spend hours and hours – no work at all – daydreaming energy into that object relation. For the most part, we call this being in a “relationship,” and we are. It’s just deeper and more complex than we realize because it’s based more on ideas and mental images rather than a real person.
Life: Real or Imagined?
We usually don’t spend a lot of time thinking about this type of thing. In fact, we consider it as how life is – and it is for 99.9% of the people, but you’re screwed up. You know there is something deeper, something more real than living in the world of imaginings and ideas.
You’re living the curse of those being called home – seeking the real.
It All Comes Down to Identity
What you’re taking yourself to be is an amalgamation —a mosaic of memories, with a familiar feeling tone permeating it all — that you string together and refer to as “I,” “me.”
It’s time to bust this whole operatic performance wide open, revealing exactly how you’ve been investing in the wrong “this is me” plan. It’s time to change brokers.
Object relations theorists and depth psychologists pretty much agree that the self develops from cathexis to the body, and from investing libidinal and psychic energy into objects—ideas of things, concepts, and mental representations.
The investment of energy is not only into the object, but also into the idea of you, the idea of the other, and the idea of what the relationship between the parts is.
BUT, here’s an important question
What’s the original source of that energy? Libidinal energy comes from the body. Where’s the energy coming from that cathects us to the body?
Well, it’s not energy at all, it’s presence, Being.
With the formation of the body, the individual consciousness enters into a feedback loop with it. Awareness and consciousness are extending and expressing themselves into and via the body/mind while the body/mind is sending, so to speak, impressions of experience nanosecond by nanosecond into the matrix of consciousness.
We often hear the phrase “the soul is very sensitive and impressionable”: the experience of and from the body/mind impresses itself upon the soul, and the soul takes that shape and then identifies with it. It’s easy to mistake this for some kind of embossing process, but this is not a situation of something outside of the soul impressing itself upon the soul.
No, this is a wholly internal, so to speak, process within the soul, the medium of experience. The body/mind, thoughts, feelings, sensations – everything – are forms arising within the soul. The soul, the forms, and “the everything” are Being, Beingness, “isness,” presence.
The soul is not pumping isness into the forms; the forms are of isness, too. Isness, presence is the nature of it all. The soul, being of isness itself, is, at a very subtle, non-thinking, nonreflective level, aware of – all is presence is not the way to describe this because there is nothing other than presence, so there is nothing available to make “all” relevant.
What happens is more like a constant stream of impressions from the body/mind (forms within forms), so to speak, that start to dominate the field of experience. They become foreground, while the more subtle sense of isness fades into the background. It’s the same way body/mind blanks out constant white-noise – the white-noise here being the more subtle sense of presence.
The basic, fundamental ingredient of libidinal energy, emotional energy, and everything else is isness, presence. So, we can say that cathexis is the investment (recognition) of isness, presence in the form, and that where things go off the rails is within the construct of duality, subject/object experience.
We’ve simply lost presence from the foreground of experience, which is a fairly easy situation to remedy.
Forget about Enlightenment! Let go of Awakening! Stop seeking I AM THAT!
The main barrier—the densest, most subtle veil—is “I.” Relating to THAT, or enlightenment, or awakening, or presence from I —the fly in the ointment —really mucks things up. So, let it go!
Yeah, yeah, yeah – easy for me to say. Actually easy for us all.
Where’s the beef!
Perhaps you remember Wendy’s 1984 commercial: “Where’s the beef?”
It’s that simple—where’s the isness? Where’s the isness in present experience? Where’s the isness in body/mind experience right now? Here’s a clue—it doesn’t involve a location, as it’s everywhere.
Where’s the isness in any object relation or mental process that’s foreground.? They, too, are isness, presence.
You have to relax, looking from the self, from self-referencing – from the body/mind, because its job is to interpret all perception in reference to body/mind to navigate this dimension of reality.
Here’s a tip – allow space, spaciousness, openness. Everything is obvious in space, and that’s what this site is about – Exploring the Obvious.
Next Up:
How Object Relations Benefit Us
John Harper is a Diamond Approach® teacher, Enneagram guide, and student of human development whose work bridges psychology, spirituality, and deep experiential inquiry. His newest book, Nurturing Essence: A Compass for Essential Parenting, invites parents to discover the role essence plays in child development. He is also the author of The Enneagram World of the Child: Nurturing Resilience and Self-Compassion in Early Life and Good Vibrations: Primordial Sounds of Existence, available on Amazon.