Jan Abram: On Desire and Female Sexuality: Some Tentative Reflections; EPF-Bulletin

64; p.155-165

Jan Abram: On Desire and Female Sexuality: Some

Tentative Reflections; EPF-Bulletin 64; p.155-165
Prelude
Freud discovered that resistance was the most powerful force acting
against the psychoanalytic cure in his treatment of the hysteric. He
realised that varying levels of resistance permeated the transference and
interpretation aimed at freeing the subject from the transferenceresistance.
Following Freud, Winnicott extended the scope of
psychoanalysis by emphasising the essential element of the interpsychic
dynamic between the subject’s primary psychic creativity and the object’s
psychic survival, i.e. the parent-infant relationship. Building on this the
author has argued for a dual conception of intrapsychic experience in
which both surviving and non-surviving objects play a crucial part in the
development of the self. These specific (intrapsychic) objects emanate
from the earliest and subsequent interpsychic exchanges in which the
m/other/object alternates between psychic survival and psychic nonsurvival.
This essay was instigated by a particularly powerful resistance in a
female analysand in which the fear of analysis revealed a fear of her own
desire. Unfortunately, for reasons of confidentiality, it is not yet possible
to include the clinical work for publication. The clinical picture illustrated
unconscious phantasies related to female sexual development. The
author suggests that desire dominated by a non-surviving object inhibits
growth and could constitute the root of the transference-resistance. In
contrast, desire in the context of a surviving object facilitates the
unfolding of the capacity to love. The author concludes that the
development of an intrapsychic surviving object in analysis relies on the
analyst’s psychic survival, which aids the growth of an intrapsychic

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surviving object. This experience facilitates the working through in the

transference, and hopefully leads to the work of mourning. It is argued
that while the fulfilment of desire liberates the self, enabling the subject
to become an adult, the reality principle demands that this liberation be
accompanied by disappointment because the m/other is ultimately
unattainable. It is only at the point at which the analysand is able
simultaneously to realise her desire alongside her disillusionment, that
she begins to develop a real capacity for discernment of the other. This
is turn has the potential to lead to the capacity for concern and mature
love.
‘… much will be gained if we succeed in transforming your
hysterical misery into common unhappiness. With a mental life that
has been restored to health you will be better armed against that
unhappiness’ (Freud, 1893).

The themes of this Conference invoke a re-examination of psychoanalysis

and its roots. Freud’s early discoveries, in his work with the hysteric,
showed how repressed oedipal sexual desire caused the hysteric’s
malaise. As the technique of psychoanalysis developed, successfully
easing the hysteric’s symptoms, Freud was soon confronted with the
problem of resistance in the transference (Freud, 1914). It is clear that the
problems of repression related to desire and sexuality are as relevant in
today’s consulting rooms as they ever were over a hundred years ago and
Freud’s early claim to transform hysterical misery into common
unhappiness is also as valid today as it ever was, and would constitute a
successful outcome for any analysis (Freud, 1893).
My reflections on these themes, rooted in Freud’s early work, were
initiated by the specifics of a particular phase of the treatment in which I

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gradually found that the patient’s fear of analysis revealed a fear of her
own desire. This path inevitably highlighted the themes of infantile and
female sexuality, as shown in the dream-like phantasies of the work,
related to her specific difficulties with developing a capacity to love as the
dynamics of a powerful transference-resistance emerged.1

Psychic survival
‘Hello object! I destroyed you! I love you! You have value for me
because of your survival of my destruction of you’ (Winnicott, 1971,
p. 90).
In his late work Freud was preoccupied with investigating the agency of
the mind that caused resistance and it led to his formulation of the death
instinct (Freud, 1920, 1937). Winnicott’s extensions of Freud’s theories
centres on the area of primary narcissism where the shadow of the object
is ever present (Roussillon, 2010). The alternative formulation to the death
instinct that Winnicott proposed focused on the infant’s internalisation of
the m/other’s reception of needs. In other words, the dynamic between
the infant’s primary psychic creativity and the m/other’s psychic survival
(and non-survival) colours and shapes the internal world and, for good
enough development, there is a need for a substantial amount of psychic
survival of the object. It is this that serves as a model for the interpsychic
dynamic between analyst and analysand that constitutes the
transference-resistance. The analyst’s holding and interpretation in the
analytic setting potentially offers the patient an experience of an object
who survives in the après coup of the transference. This aids an
overcoming of the resistance as the related phantasies, based on early
object relations, become more conscious. The processes of mourning and
working through, (both of which are crucial to the overcoming of

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resistance) lead to self-realisation and the development of insight.2

Co-incidentally, it will be noticed that the process I describe relates to the aims
of several Working Parties of the EPF, i.e. initiating psychoanalysis, comparable
methods, education, and the specificity of psychoanalysis.
Elsewhere, I have suggested that one extension of Winnicott’s theory
of aggression is the dual notion of an intrapsychic surviving and nonsurviving
object (Abram, 2003, 2005, 2007b). At the EPF Conference in
Vienna I presented my recent research related to Winnicott’s notes in
preparation for the 1971 IPA Vienna Congress. I suggested that these
notes illustrate how he was formulating his final concept on the use of an
object. In this (forthcoming)2 essay I compare these notes from the
archives with several of his writings that illustrate the evolution of his
thought. This tracking of Winnicott’s theories leads me to formulate the
extensions of the intrapsychic surviving and non surviving objects as a
natural extension of Winnicott’s emphasis on the nature of egorelatedness
(Abram, 2007a, p. 42).
These intrapsychic objects are in constant flux (positive and negative)
affected by the psychic survival or non-survival of the external
object/m/other. The infant’s primary psychic passion, (or as Winnicott
named it primary creativity), is either survived by the m/other or not. Thus
the human psyche is comprised of the internalised unconscious
memories that are intrinsic to both a surviving and non-surviving object.
The colour and texture of the surviving object (which emanates from both
the infant and the m/other) within the internal object world, helps the
infant to negotiate each stage of development. Conversely, in the context
of an (external) object that is not able to survive often enough, the infant
will internalise the experience of non-survival, which brings about an

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intrapsychic non-surviving object that may dominate the internal world.

The consequence of an internal non-surviving object will result in an
intense anticipation of the non-survival of the object in interpersonal
relationships, for example as manifested in paranoid states of mind.
I suggest that all patients turn to analysis because they are
overwhelmed by a non-surviving object that wields its power internally so
that any kind of development feels terrifying, because the ordinary
developmental stages are experienced as forbidden and therefore
dangerous. For some patients, particularly the hysteric, a resistance to
development is unusually intense, and the more analysis works, the more
the resistance intensifies. (The ‘negative therapeutic reaction’ relates to
the patient edging nearer the experience of the original catastrophe in the
après coup that activates the ‘fear of breakdown’—the breakdown that
has already occurred—that really dominates the analysis) (Riviere, 1936;
Winnicott, 1974). In these cases then, analysis reveals the ‘fear of desire’
so that the fear of ‘attaining the object of desire’ becomes highly
problematic and associated with a fear of desire. Winnicott indicates that
this fear, paradoxically, may stem from too much satiation—‘the baby is
not satisfied with satisfaction. He feels fobbed off. He intended, one might
say, to make a cannibalistic attack and he has been put off by an opiate,
the feed. At best he can postpone the attack’ (Winnicott, 1945, p. 154). It is
this sort of fobbing off that amounts to one kind of maternal failure that
constitutes non-survival of the object and may indicate that the baby has
experienced breakdown very early on.

The translation of ‘Wunsch’

According to Laplanche & Pontalis, Strachey’s translation of ‘Wunsch’ to
‘wish’ in English, was because of this word being closer to the German in

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meaning (1973). Meanwhile, Lacan followed Spinoza who said ‘desire is

the essence of man’ and stated that conscious desire is unimportant;
rather it is unconscious desire, which he says is entirely sexual, and is of
central concern to the psychoanalytic cure. There is not space here to
review Lacan’s theory of desire nor to review the use of the word desire
in the Anglophone psychoanalytic literature, but most English natives are
likely to agree that the translation of ‘Wunsch’ to ‘wish’ immediately
renders the word and concept sexless. To state that the hysteric wishes to
murder her mother and wishes to take possession of her father does not
carry the same sexual intensity as the word ‘desire’. It is the oedipal
dimension that gets lost in translation. But turning to the Oxford English
Dictionary for a definition of desire we find this quotation:
‘A man should pray to have right desires, before he prays that his
desires may be fulfilled’ (Jowett, 1875 3—quoted in the OED 2004 ed.)
Jowett’s quote illustrates that the word ‘desire’ in English is an
ambiguous word and tends always to carry a sexual association. The first
OED definition states that: ‘desire’ is ‘that feeling or emotion which is
directed to the attainment or possession of some object from which
pleasure or satisfaction is expected; longing, craving…’ (OED, ed. 2004).
In the second definition it specifically refers to a physical or sensual
appetite; lust. And in the third definition desire is a ‘Longing for
something lost or missed’. In each definition there is a clear reference to
the Other which indicates that desire, as an ordinary concept, always
involves another subject, i.e. the object. These definitions indicate a
conscious desire in contrast to Lacan’s theory that desire is unconscious.
Here I shall argue that desire, in the context of Winnicott’s formulations,
has a developmental dimension that emanates from the dyadic

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relatedness and thus has conscious and unconscious dimensions.

An examination of the definitions from the OED infer that something
must have occurred previously to the subject who feels desire, that
presumably has resulted in bringing about the ‘feeling [which
is]…directed to the…object from which pleasure or satisfaction is
expected’ (ibid.) In turn this presupposes that an experience of pleasure
or satisfaction is the basis on which desire emanates, and this connects
with Freud’s distinction between need and ‘Wunsch’ in The Interpretation
of Dreams. A biological need that is met creates satisfaction and this
precedes the developing of a mnemic image that comes about as the
consequence of satisfaction. Thus ‘Wunsch’ contains the memory traces
of the original satisfaction of need and infers psychic representation
(Freud, 1900).4 The point is that the capacity to feel desire indicates that
some development has already taken place. In other words to feel desire
is a capacity that is founded on a need having been met and that needs to
be met again.
Returning to the consulting room we may ask how do we transpose
the notion of desire to the analytic dyad? Perelberg has pointed out that
the transference is ‘by definition, filled with our patients’ desires, which
are linked to their unconscious phantasies and infantile sexuality’
(Perelberg, 2008, p. 133). It follows then that desire is at the heart of the
transference-resistance. The clinical work that instigated this tentative
exploration illustrated to me that the patient’s core anxieties related to
the erotic transference rooted in infantile sexuality. Here I want to
explore the meaning of ‘desire’ in the context of the transferenceresistance.
Needs and wishes
Akhtar has made a comprehensive survey of the distinction between

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needs and wishes in the psychoanalytic literature and pointed out that
Freud’s original distinction between needs and wishes has been most
developed in the work of Balint, Fairbairn, Suttie, and Winnicott (Akhtar,
1999).5 In Winnicott’s work, as I have previously pointed out, there is an
inferred theory of desire (Abram 2007a, pp. 7, 126, 270, 322, 324, 349, 211,
210) and especially related to his concept of psychic survival in his theory
of aggression (pp. 15-40).
Winnicott’s mother in her state of primary maternal preoccupation, a
state of mind in which she is able to unconsciously identify with her
baby’s predicament of helplessness, is able to adapt to the baby’s needs
(Winnicott, 1956). In the 1950s, in his lectures to social workers on human
development, Winnicott posits a concept that he calls the ‘first theoretical
feed’, which comes about from the mother’s capacity to identify with her
infant’s predicament of helplessness and dependence. While the first
theoretical feed is the result of a cumulative effect of many feeds (in which
needs are met) it does not just relate to the infant being physically fed
because it is the mother’s emotional psychic resonance that is key to how
the baby experiences his needs being met. Later, Winnicott evolved this
notion in his theory of the use of an object, which came about through the
m/other’s capacity to receive the baby’s primary passion/attack and to
survive it. When the object does not survive, through failure of adaptation
to need, the infant loses a sense of the continuity of being that seriously
interferes with a state of equilibrium. This results in trauma and, I am
suggesting that the baby translates this as the non-survival of the object6
(Winnicott, 1971).7
I wonder if we could think of a primary proto-desire that is rooted in
an internal experience of both survival and non-survival. If the mother is

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good enough then the intrapsychic surviving object will eclipse the nonsurviving
object, because there will always be an experience of nonsurvival.
In the case of the not good enough environment it will be the
non-surviving object that will eclipse the surviving object. This duality
between surviving and non-surviving objects occurs very early on in the
life of every human being and constitutes the qualitative foundations of
the infant’s approach to the object. The evolution of both intrapsychic
objects will depend on the interpsychic survival of the object at each
developmental phase, as already stated. Desire will always be present, in
as much as everyone alive knows something of the meaning of
satisfaction and pleasure, but the awareness of desire, if the nonsurviving
object colours the internal landscape, will be negated,
repressed or split off. Recently I suggested that terror is at the core of the
non-surviving object, so that becoming aware of one’s desire then, will
feel terrifying because the subject cannot believe that the other will
survive if they reach out for what they desire—due to the attack from
inside as well as the feared retaliation. (Abram, 2007b) This has to occur
in the après coup of the transference-resistance.
An aspect of Lacan’s theory of desire focuses on the treatment and
the articulation of desire into words and he writes that, ‘what’s important
is to teach the subject to name, to articulate, to bring this desire into
existence’. Lacan says that for the patient in analysis the ‘efficacious
action of analysis is to recognise and name his desire … but it is not
recognition of something that is given … In naming it, the subject creates,
brings forth, a new presence in the world’ (quoted in Evans, 1996, p. 36).
This resonates with Winnicott’s first theoretical feed in which the baby
creates the object through the paradox of finding what is needed and

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what was there ‘waiting to be found’ (Winnicott, 1988).

From this condensed account perhaps it is possible to summarise an

emerging developmental sequence that leads to the capacity for desire:
1. The newborn is in a state of physical need.
2. The consequence of the infant’s need being met by a m/other in a state
of primary maternal preoccupation, brings about a sense of
satisfaction/pleasure.
3. The next time the need arises, (depending on the effect of an
accumulation of needs being met), the baby will have internalised a sense
of satisfaction (Freud’s mnemic trace), and this will instigate desire, i.e.
the urge to repeat the sense of satisfaction.
4. Desire emanates from the experience of satisfaction, which is
pleasurable, and it is located in the body. The feeling of desire is object
related in that the satisfaction has come about (or not) through the
m/other’s ability to meet the need.
5. The psyche evolves in relation to the infant-parent relationship and the
baby experiences both survival and non-survival of the object
interpsychically. This leads to intrapsychic surviving and non-surviving
objects that are in the process of establishing themselves with meaning.
This is what Winnicott refers to as the first theoretical feed, which depicts
the threshold of the capacity to symbolise.
6. The quality and quantity of desire is related to an intrapsychic surviving
and non-surviving object.
7. Following Winnicott’s notion of the first theoretical feed I have
suggested that there are a series of subsequent theoretical feeds at each
developmental stage from birth. At the threshold of adulthood (which is
emotional rather than actual) the subject is in the process of reaching

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what I have called a ‘final theoretical feed’. This last symbolic feed is
related to negotiating the tasks of adolescence when a whole intrapsychic
surviving object can be internalised—depending on the survival of the
object previously and during this final crucial phase. This constitutes the
establishment of the capacity to symbolise and move into a mature
mode of being. The surviving and non surviving objects will continue to
impact on the psyche and sense of self and will develop at each
subsequent stage of development equipping the self with a capacity to
process the vagaries of existence.
Thus, if we take this proposed model, desire has two possible trajectories
influenced either by the surviving object or the non-surviving object.
Where the surviving object dominates, desire will evolve and grow
feeding the development of the capacity for concern and love (Winnicott,
1963). In contrast, where the non-surviving object dominates the internal
world, desire will be cut off (either denied, disavowed, repressed or split
off) and in an unconscious domain it will feed hate, contempt, and
especially envy. Therefore, the developing awareness of desire for the
analysand may be terrifying because at the core of the non-surviving
object is terror. While this sense of terror has its roots in the infant’s
experience of non-survival of the object, by this time it belongs to the
subject, i.e. it is the internalisation of non-survival of the object that
distorts development.
Psychoanalytic treatment offers a new opportunity for the stunted
surviving object to develop. Everything that the analyst has to offer the
analysand—the setting, holding, containing, interpretation, continuity,
listening, reliability—constitutes psychic survival of the object, so that in
the transference and the après coup of the analytic relationship the

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analysand’s surviving object has the potential to be fed and to grow in a

new way, thus catching up, as it were, with its non-development. This will
lead to a significant mitigation of the superego’s corrosive inner attacks
on the self and an increasing capacity to reach out for what is desired.
While satisfaction is necessary, related to the illusion of omnipotence,
disillusion is also necessarily a crucial aspect of maturity (Winnicott, 1971;
Abram, 2007a, pp. 200–212).
The clinical picture
The above formulations can apply to all patients and the fear of analysis
is related to the fear of investigating the inner world. During a particular
phase with an hysteric the themes were represented through dreams and
associations over the course of several weeks, which showed me the
extent of her struggle to disidentify from a maternal imago who
prohibited her development and her desire to become a woman. The
content of the sessions illustrated these themes and the work in the
transference-resistance showed how difficult it was for her to experience
the analysis as a different and new situation in which she could grow. The
illustration is one example of how the analytic action in the context of
analysis offers a ‘final theoretical feed’, which leads to the capacity for
discernment and love.
In my discussion I reflect on the patient’s transference and the
element of some recent theories on ‘performance’ as set out by
Danckwardt & Wegner (2007, p. 1121), as well as the relevance of female
sexuality and sibling rivalry as explored by Juliet Mitchell and Rosemary
Davies (Mitchell, 2000, 2003; Davies, 2007).

Summary
Instigated by a particular phase in work with a patient whose fear of

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analysis revealed a fear of desire, I examined the notion of desire. The

foundation of this examination lay in Freud’s discoveries related to the
hysteric’s repressed ‘Wunsch’ at the core of the Oedipus complex. I
reflected on Strachey’s translation of ‘Wunsch’ to ‘wish’ and how the
crucial conceptualising of infantile sexuality was often by-passed
particularly in the Anglo-Saxon psychoanalytic literature. I returned to
Freud’s discovery of the hysteric’s transference-resistance and how its
oedipal core dominated the hysteric’s desire. I linked this with Winnicott’s
paradox that early satisfaction can be a fobbing off.
Following Freud’s late preoccupations with the patient’s resistance
and Winnicott’s alternative theory to the death instinct, I have tried to
develop my proposed extension of Winnicott’s notion of the ‘first
theoretical feed’. I suggested that this notion, if we include Winnicott’s
later conceptualising in ‘the use of an object’, infers a dual conception of
an intrapsychic surviving and non-surviving object both emanating from
the m/other’s oscillating psychic survival and non-survival. The good
enough mother survives a large (enough) percentage of the time as it is
not possible to survive all the time.
I suggest here that desire is inevitable in everybody who is alive,
because it emerges out of the experience of satisfaction. Depending on
the quality and quantity of satisfaction, related to the m/other’s capacities,
desire in the subject will be connected to both the surviving object and
non-surviving object. The subject’s desire related to non-survival
produces a pathological malice, envy and jealousy. The corollary is a
desire related to a surviving object that has potential to grow and blossom
because the fear of reprisal is significantly mitigated. In other words the
ego becomes more powerful than the crushing superego and

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unconscious envy.
In a phase of clinical work her phantasies and dreams showed that
she had serious inhibitions related to her desired object. These scenes
inevitably illustrated the oedipal constellations and her struggle to
become a woman and work through her Oedipus complex associated
with her psychosexual history. Like Dora, my patient was also
overwhelmed with an unconscious desire for the mother she’d never had
and this was played out in the transference-resistance. Dora was
convinced that her primary passion had annihilated her m/other. The
multi-layers of early non-survival of the object are blurred in the hysteric’s
psyche due to powerful forces of repression where desire—the death
wish and to be part of the primal scene at that level—is terrifying. This
terror comes about because the infantile wishes and attacks towards the
m/other have not been survived at the earliest and subsequent stages of
development, which means that terror of the object is at the core of a nonsurviving
intrapsychic object. Dora’s longing for her mother/Frau K.
related to her overwhelming non-surviving object, which is why it had to
be repressed. It is the non-surviving object that is at the core of the
transference-resistance.
Throughout the course of analysis, the analyst’s capacity to tolerate
and understand the vicissitudes of infantile sexuality and murderous
passion associated with desire in each patient, can incrementally lead to
the development of a surviving object which, depending on the analytic
setting, may start to eclipse the non-surviving object. Every single aspect
of analysis—the holding (i.e. general setting and frame [see Bleger, 1967])
and the interpretation—contributes to the patient’s internalising of an
object that is alive and able to survive, i.e. remain intact despite the

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aggressive and passionate onslaughts from the patient.

Gradually, the patient’s internal landscape can shift and the apprehension
of the repressed aspects of unconscious desire moves to pre-
conscious and subsequently conscious desire. Due to the increasing
strength of the intrapsychic surviving object, which has come about due
to the analyst’s interpsychic survival of the attacks, the analysand is able
to separate out the death wish and infantile sexuality from the adult
position. This in turn diminishes the fear of moving into the adult world
in which the capacity to give life, through survival of one’s own primitive
desires, offers a sense of freedom and satisfaction. This would indicate
that the adolescent’s psychic tasks are complete by the ‘final theoretical
feed’ (Abram, 2007b, p. 209).
A sense of satisfaction is achieved through the first and subsequent
theoretical feeds that have led to the final theoretical feed. This is the
beginning of working through the Oedipus complex. In maturity, once a
whole surviving object has established itself, the subsequent part of the
journey towards maturity is that of disillusionment. The paradox is that
the object of desire can be attained—in a good theoretical feed and ego
orgasm—but it follows that it cannot last in reality. Thus the sense of
satisfaction, physically and emotionally, is dictated by the reality principle
in which a process of mourning and working through must occur. These
processes will enrich the inner surviving object leading to further growth.
In mature love this must be accompanied by the acknowledgement and
toleration of the paradox—that the capacity to become aware of one’s
own desire will simultaneously carry a realisation that unconscious desire
involves a combination of the erotic longing for the unattainable mother
alongside the necessary murder of the father. The hope embedded in this

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terrible realisation is that the process of mourning and working through

can begin (Perelberg, 2009, p. 729). And this is what will lead to
discernment of the other and the capacity to love.

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