ABSTRACT
Interference with object love, results in heightened narcissism, and interference with object-directed anger increases masochism. The assumption that clinical narcissism and masochism are in part a return to a prior state allows for conceptualization of variations in the "internal pull" of such states-in addition to and interacting with the "external push" of frustrating experiences. The difference is that superego introjections occur at the end and at the height of the period of infantile sexuality and aggression. Therefore represents a reaction to loss-in this case of the "omnipotent parents"-and psycho-economically. It is massive introjections in adaptation to that loss, which leads to the establishment of a whole, cohesive, internal "personality": the superego. Ego introjections are not reactions to massive loss but to frustrating and frightening behavior on the part of parents; psycho-economically, they are smaller, part identifications with particular aspects of the frustrating parents' personalities. Parents who respond to the child's aggression with counter-aggression mobilize the child's aggressions outward, at least.
