Object Relations

• Accelerated Learning and Positive Templates by Francine Shapiro, 8/4/97
  
  

Dr. Shapiro raises a very difficult and important question when she asks how EMDR installation of positive templates can be used to "teach object constancy, ability to trust self-perception, ability to bond, love, etc." She also welcomes suggestions of how "transference experiences could be deliberately elicited by the clinician and EMDR applied in order to enhance them, help in their integration, and allow the positive effects to be generalized to real life."

My experience and that of many of my colleagues is that the potential for using EMDR to facilitate the process of improving self esteem and object relations is great and our clinical skills in doing this are ever expanding. In normal psychodynamic psychotherapy, the clinician is watchful for indications that the client is reacting in a transferencial way that the therapist can help the client process. Rather than attempt to deliberately elicit transference reactions, I think that the way to use EMDR to expedite the processing of transference is to process therapist-client transference that arises naturally during the course of treatment and clients' transference reactions to friends, family, and partners (with the exception of narcissistic disorders).

When I began using EMDR with clients with personality disorders, I found that cognitive interweaves were often ineffective unless I was able to help the client call to mind a loving and supportive object image who would lend a benign adult perspective to the client's traumatic memory. I have come to think of this as analogous to the client borrowing the therapist's perspective to help structure a painful and chaotic memory. Since some clients have never had a real person with such qualities in their lives, I began helping them to find or construct such a person, either from historical figures, the mass media or from fantasy. I believe that my original idea for doing this came from a conference talk given by Landry Wildwind. It has now become a standard part of my EMDR preparation of a client, after establishing and installing a safe place, to establish and install a loving object.

Since making the installation of a loving object a standard part of EMDR preparation I have changed my attitude somewhat about the significance of this process. Not only is it a useful tool for future cognitive interweaves and a helpful diagnostic indicator, but the installation of a loving object is of major significance for a client with a personality disorder in developing a positive self image. The self and object representations go hand in hand. How can a person feel loveable when they are unable to experience an internal object as loving? How can a person feel like a "bad" person without experiencing an internal object who is devaluing, critical or rejecting. When someone with a personality disorder splits, the positive part-self-representation is coupled with the positive part-object representation, as are the corresponding negative part-self and part-object representations coupled to each other. If one can relate to an internal object that is loving and accepting, it is very difficult to perceive one's self as bad or unlovable.

David Grand's 8/5 response to Dr. Shapiro's 8/4 posting describes his success with many techniques that he and his colleagues have developed for constructing or installing positive self representations using EMDR. An alternative approach is to construct or install positive object representations.

A case example comes to mind of a man I worked with approximately three years ago who came to me depressed and devoid of meaningful relationships. He didn't talk to people because he didn't believe anyone could be interested in what he might have to say. As a child he had felt valued by his parents only for his ability to perform athletically and scholastically so that they could feel proud. When I attempted to elicit a memory of a person from his past by whom he felt loved or even accepted, he could not find one. I asked him if he was a religious man. Yes, he was quite religious. When I asked whether he believed God loved him, he paused and said, "I believe that for some reason I don't understand God is punishing me." His life was devoid of joy. I wondered privately if his religious faith was keeping him live.

I was able to use the example of myself in a cognitive interweave to effectively challenge his belief that nobody could be interested in what he had to say, but his belief that he was unlovable was much more tenacious. We talked about pastors, movie characters, and historical figures who might serve as models for a positive object representation. Finally it occurred to him that a man he had seen on T.V. several times, Leo Basgalia, seemed indeed to be a loving man. I asked my client to picture Mr. Basgalia and we did several sets of eye movements. Among my client's comments during these sets were that he imagined that Mr. Basgalia truly was loving and accepting of himself and his family as well. I asked, "Do you think that if Mr. Basgalia knew you he might be accepting of you as well?" My client indicated he could entertain that possibility and I installed it with some more eye movements. We did some more sets with him imagining how it might feel to be known and accepted by Leo Basgalia. Two weeks later my client came to his session and talked about finding a book written by a woman who had failed at a suicide attempt and then found meaning to her life through her religious faith. He'd read it twice. There was a pause after he told me about this and then he said to me with obvious emotion, "I do believe God loves me."

This was a turning point in his treatment. He soon began to experiment with relationships. He had several relationships with coworkers that he described as superficial and meaningless. After exploring with him the basis for that belief, I encouraged him to take a risk by sharing one personal opinion with one of them and observing the response. The following week he came in and reported that he had shared a personal opinion and his friend had asked a question about it and they had gotten into a discussion that my client found very satisfying. Subsequently he experimented further with his relationships and gradually became closer to these friends as he felt freer to share himself. My client's depression lifted partly and he began to experience some moments of pleasure in his day to day life.

The primary transference relationship that was being processed here was first between my client and Leo Basgalia and later between my client and his friends. He was exploring his projections and processing them with EMDR; then we would plan a structured way in which he could reality test his beliefs using his real relationships. In the following sessions, we could process distortions that resulted from these experiences using EMDR and plan his next real life experiment. From an object relations perspective, I thought of each of these processing sessions as healing a little bit of the split, putting a little more gray into the originally black and white picture.

• primary transference by Janice Nardi, MFCC, 2/5/98