Whole Object Relations

This post is going to get a bit personal, but I keep seeing news headlines that make me think it might create a worthy discussion.

I hired a therapist for the first time in my life earlier this year. I had a few things going on that I wanted help with. I didn’t think my mom had long (she didn’t); and I had some unfinished issues. And, I had rebooted a relationship that had been important for most of decade, but I wasn’t certain it was my best life decision. Her name is Elinor Greenberg. I found her initially on quora, read her book, read her articles on psychology today, and finally after about of year of following her words, reached out to her and she agreed to work with me via Skype. Side note: my experience with Elinor was amazing and she helped me with both of my issues, but that’s not what this post is about. Not really. In my younger days I saw the world in stark black and white. I now live with a lot more grey. It’s not always comfortable or easy, but it’s more real, to me at least.

It’s through her words, that I learned about a concept called “whole object relations” which is from a fairly specialized body of knowledge in psychology.

Whole Object Relations (WOR): This is the capacity to integrate the liked and disliked parts of a person into a single, realistic, stable picture—as opposed to alternating between seeing the person as either all-good or all-bad.

Object Constancy (OC): This is the ability to maintain your positive emotional tie to someone while you are feeling angry, frustrated, hurt or disappointed with the person.

These are both normal developmental achievements that are generally developed during the course of childhood when the child is raised by parents who themselves have these abilities.

Not everybody is raised in a family situation that models these behaviors sufficiently to help the child attain them.

This skill seems almost lost in our current political and media environment. The recent outrage that Ellen DeGeneres sat at a game with George and Laura Bush, and might call them “friends” was stunning. It’s amazing that Ellen had to publicly say (I am paraphrasing here) that while she might not be aligned on every issue, they can still be friends, and good people, all of them.

Let me sum up – this is by definition – as I understand it as a lay person – Whole Object Relations and Object Constancy.

I was reminded of this when I saw an article about Bill Gates distancing himself from Jeffrey Epstein. I don’t know these people. And there seems to be a body of evidence that Jeffrey Epstein was a predator to at risk pretty young teenage girls. But, he also seems to have been a successful business man and generous philanthropist to institutions of higher education and other causes. Where are the people willing to say he was good at X and deeply flawed at Y?

I’m not a big President Obama fan, but his recent perspective on “woke culture” is worth a read. This bit “The world is messy. There are ambiguities. People who do really good stuff have flaws. People who you are fighting may love their kids and share certain things with you.” resonated with me. It’s complicated. People are complicated. Situations are complicated.

Are you looking at all of the facets and nuances while you pass judgment?