“The emptier the real exchange, the greater is his devotion to the promising, yet depriving features of his parents which he has internalized and seeks within.”
Greenberg & Mitchell, 1983

Using the works of Fairbairn, Guntrip, Bowlby, Mitchell, Benjamin, and others, Dr. Cohen examines the dynamics involved in toxic, destructive relationships. If you treat people who are enmeshed in abusive relationships, you may feel frightened and frustrated as they edge closer to self-destruction. Some may withstand physical and emotional abuse. Others may subvert their identities, emptying themselves of need and desire, accommodating completely and seamlessly to their objects.

Why can’t they leave? How do they endure so much to get so little? How does someone who is so decimated begin to feel their own feelings and experience their own needs? What kinds of enactments emerge in the analytic space?

As many of you who work with this population know, object-relational and contemporary relational theories provide valuable concepts for understanding these kinds of attachments, and for helping us to empathize with and help these traumatized individuals.

*Fairbairn (1944) spoke of the “obstinate attachment” to the exciting object.