Drives and objects – Observations on the origins of the emotional object world

Commentary on Wolfgang Loch's paper ‘Drives and Objects – observations on the origins of the emotional object world’

“…This contribution was originally published by Wolfgang Loch in German in and has only recently been translated into English by Harriet Hasenclever. It is a wide‐ranging conceptual tour de force which presents a revised theory of the establishment of the psychical reality of internal objects and the psychical space of these emotional objects.…”

“…It can be illustrated by the following quotation:

Indeed these are processes which have to unfold in the way described if we are to succeed in living life without losing ourselves in alienation and without falling for the pseudo‐rationality of an ideology that wards off this alienation and must lead to a dissolution and perversion of psychical existence. (Loch, , p. 66).

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“…As Loch himself puts it:

A primal identity is founded in this very first phase of the encounter between the developing human being and its environment – represented in utero and post partum as a rule by the mother […] and it can be said that its identity consists in what‐it‐is‐for‐someone‐else, for in the reactions which are evoked through interactions during this stage of symbiosis the mother's unconscious needs regarding her child play a determining, indeed decisive role. (, p. 57)

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“…Rejecting the notion that the ego is hypothetical in nature, he writes that

the ego is directly the transcendent unity of states and actions and in reality, the relation of the ego to the qualities, states and actions is neither a relation of emanation … nor of actualization … it is a relation of creation constructed by consciousness. (Loch, , p. 58)

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“…Loch continues, first, by noting that Kant was aware of this issue and resolved it by “pointing to the necessary coupling of time with place to enable psychological and physical objectivation and with it the introduction of the category of substance” (Loch, , p. 58). He then mentions the way in which successive instants can acquire constancy so that substance is experienced.…”