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sel f - - the non-verbal hemisphere---is active.

Educational, testing and general learning theory should receive modifi- cation and extention based on the double-mind theory. I question how many untapped ingenious qualities of the intellect could be manifested if teaching methods were aimed more toward the non-verbal personality. Un- derachievers and some mental retar- dates may suffer from lack of transfer from the non-verbal to verbal side and so remain unable to perform acquired knowledge.

Is there a normal non-verbal person- ality; an individual that functions within our society but with a different hemispheric dominance? Are there possibly individuals diagnosed as schizophrenic who are just primarily non-verbal with a different but equally logical reality, as opposed to schi- zophrenics with a distorted orienta- tion? Does electric shock re-establish transfer or verbal dominance through the corpus collosum? Is there a chemi- cal or EEG difference in dominance, autonomy or integration between hemispheres? Are there individuals that have too much verbal dominance, and how do they function?

This article has related Bateson's theory to current physiological knowl- edge and has outlined a double-mind theory. If we can better understand this process, it may lead to a greater awareness of the logic behind the irra- tional behavior of the mentally ill and give a direction to future medical approaches that wil l modify or help the functioning of those that are ,emo- tionally troubled. This theory attempts to prove the existence of Freud's un- conscious and make its understanding more concrete. Finally, the beginnings of how a generalized personality theory could evolve from the double-

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mind concept was also discussed.

LESLIE FEHER, M.A.

Messianic projects and early object-relations

A N interesting cl inical problem is posed by a type of patient whose

relationships are dominated by a repet- itive need to act out dramatic object- rescuing messianic projects. Intrinsic to this type of character formation (which we believe cuts across diag- nostic categories) is that the messianic project must inevitably come to grief. What follows are some speculations as to the origins of this characterological pattern in the vicissitudes of early object-relations.

We have found in the childhood his- tory of such patients a profound disap- pointment by a love object with whom there had been a strong positive tie. Such a disappointment may be oc- casioned by any circumstance which signifies to the child a radical and per- manent disruption of the original posi- tive relationship (e.g., a loved parent dies or deserts the child, or abruptly assumes rejective attitudes toward the child, etc.). In the face of such a traumatic disappointment the child at- tempts to preserve the lost positive tie in fantasy, by splitt ing off and repressing the disappointing aspects of the object and maintaining an in- ternalized relationship with the now idealized object. Despairing over his loss, the child experiences the idealized object of his fantasy as his only salvation and hence the object becomes endowed with rescuing qualities. A fantasy relationship of this kind however is an unstable structure

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since the idealized object is painfully absent in reality. The loss is f inal ly res- tituted by means of an identification process in which the qualit ies of the idealized object are assimilated into the child's ego and become permanent features of his character structure. This produces a tendency in the pa- tient to seek relationships in which he can play the role of the rescuing idealized object. An exchange of posi- tions has taken place wherein the pa- tient has acquired the grandeur of the object while his feelings of help- lessness and despair which were generated by the loss are projected into other persons in the environment. In their extreme, such dynamics form a point of origin for dramatic salvation fantasies and messianic projects in which the patient believes it is his mis- sion to come to the rescue of the lost and helpless.

The inevitable failure of the mes- sianic project derives from the vicissi- tudes of the split-off and repressed disappointing object. Parallel to what is described above, another identifica- tion process takes place in which the qualities of the disappointing object also become permanent features of the character structure. These latter negative qualit ies are more deeply un- conscious, since they derive from rela- tions with a split-off repressed object. However, these unconscious trends show themselves in the way in which the patient invariably breaks his mes- sianic promises. A reversal of posi- tions has again taken place in which the patient plays the role in relation to others of the disappointing object, thereby acquiring its destructive power and perhaps indirectly taking revenge.

We have been struck by the degree to which the above dynamics are symbolized in the Christian myth.

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Taking Jesus as an example of the messianic character structure, his role as savior can be seen as arising from an identification with an idealized parental object personified in the image of God. The split-off repressed abandoning object breaks through in Jesus' cry from the cross, "Father, why hast thou forsaken me!" In failing to fulf i l l the messianic promise of a sec- ond coming, Jesus takes on in relation to humanity the role of the split-off abandoning parental object.

At the onset of her treatment, Jane, who was 29 years old, believed that she.was a part of the Holy Trinity and was preoccupied with finding ways to reduce human suffering in the world. During her childhood, her mother was a distant figure and Jane depended for primary emotional sustenance on her father, with whom she maintained an intense and predominantly positive relationship. Jane's father killed him- self when she was 10, and her mother did not fi l l the vacuum left by his death. Following her father's suicide, she seemed to idealize him in that her conscious memories of their rela- tionship were restricted primarily to in- cidents in which he comforted her when she was lonely or frightened, rescued her when she was bullied by peers, etc. Beginning at the age of 12 and throughout her adolescence, Jane formed a number of friendships with crippled and terminally ill children whom she sought to comfort and help. When she was 19 she entered a con- vent to become a nun, believing that a life of devotion to Jesus, whose sec- ond coming she eagerly awaited, was her destiny. She also had a strong fan- tasy of becoming a missionary and helping unfortunate people throughout the world. The pattern of her friendships and her plans to become a missionary il lustrate clearly her iden-

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tification with the idealized rescuing father. However it is noteworthy that in each relationship with the suffering children who came to depend on her, Jane inevitably grew tired of the situa- tion and abandoned it. Moreover, after one year in the convent she aban- doned her plan to become a nun and a missionary. For every messianic prom- ise made there was a messianic prom- ise broken, and in this latter pattern we see her unconscious identification with the disappointing father who had deserted her by committing suicide. During the ensuing years Jane con- tinued to embark upon and abandon messianic projects with various lonely and miserable persons of her ac- quaintance, but her condition wor- sened to such an extent that by the time she entered psychotherapy she had been hospitalized several times for psychotic breakdowns.

The messianic dynamics of this case became clearly manifest in transfer- ence phenomena during the early phases of psychotherapy. She rapidly formed a deeply dependent rela- tionship in which she projected the image of the idealized rescuing father onto the therapist, However the idealizing transference was frequently disturbed by images of the deserting father which broke through in fears that the therapist would abandon her. The patient also manifested identifica- tions with both aspects of the split ob- ject in the transference. She reversed roles with the idealized father when she occasionally imagined that her therapist was suffering and attempted to comfort him. A parallel reversal of roles with the deserting father ap- peared in recurrent fantasies of abruptly terminating psychotherapy. As the therapeutic relationship gra- dually solidified into a primarily posi- tive one, mixed feelings of grief and

deep anger at her actual father's suicide began to emerge. Having found a good real object in her thera- pist, Jane could permit the image of the abandoning father and the as- sociated negative affects to emerge from repression. As these feelings were gradually worked through, her rela- tionships outside of the therapy became far less colored by the need to alleviate suffering and loneliness in other persons. The strength of her messianic strivings diminished as the no longer repressed image of the deserting father could become in- tegrated with and temper the image of the idealized rescuing father. The identifications which had mirrored the original split object thereby became correspondingly integrated and tem- pe red.

ROBERT D. STOLOROW, Ph.D. GEORGE E. ATWOOD, Ph.D.

From emotional childhood to adolescence through self-analysis

K AREN Horney, in discussing the "Feasibility and Desirability of

Self-Analysis," addresses herself to the danger that the self-analysand might gain insights that will increase rather than diminish self-destructive and disturbing tendencies, causing the patient to harm himself or otherwise regress. In dismissing this prospect from being a matter that should preclude encouraging self-analysis, Dr. Horney pointed out that although her experience revealed really alarming self-destructive disturbances in psychoanalysis did occur, they hap- pened for the most part because in- terpretation in the analytical situation

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