The Mind Object: Precocity and Pathology of Self-Sufficiency

About this book

How to Help People Who Have Only Their Minds to Love Can a person relate to his or her own mind as an object depend upon it to the exclusion of other objects idealize it fear it hate it? Can a person live out a life striving to attain the elusive power of the minds perfection yielding to its promise while sacrificing the bodys truth? Winnicott was the first to describe how very early in life an individual can in response to environmental failure turn away from the body and its needs and establish "mental functioning as a thing in itself." Winnicotts elusive term the mind-psyche describes a subtle yet fundamentally violent split in which the mind negates the role of the body its feelings and functions as the source of creative living. Later Masud Khan elaborated on Winnicotts notions. This exciting book extends Winnicotts and Khans ideas to introduce the concept of the mind object a term that signifies the central dissociation of the mind separated from the body as well as underscores its function. When the mind takes on a life of its own it becomes an objectseparate as it were from the self. And because it is an object that originates as a substitute for maternal care it becomes an object of intense attachment turned to for security solace and gratification. Having achieved the status of an independent object the mind also can turn on the self attacking demeaning and persecuting the individual. Once this object relationship is established it organizes the self providing an aura of omnipotence. However this precocious schizoid solution is an illusion vulnerable to breakdown and its associated anxieties. Making a unique contribution The Mind Object explores the dangers of knowing too muchthe lure of the intellectfor the patient as well as for the therapist. The authors illuminate the complex pathological consequences that result from precocious solutions.