Paranoid-schizoid anxiety, triangulation, and oedipal trauma

The interaction of strong aggressive and libidinal drives, various primitive intrapsychic fantasies linking somatic sensations, body parts, ego, object, and the effects of early environmental stress and trauma all produce a potential crisis in the paranoid-schizoid period of development. Certain innate methods of understanding somatic experiences as well as the interaction between internal and external reality lead to an unconscious triangulation of part objects. A frustrating, stimulating, or punitive "third" that blocks, nullifies, or overgratifies certain wishes then emerges as a pivotal object in the internal landscape. During the paranoid-schizoid, triadic process, there is a fluctuation between separation/individuation and de-differentiation/fusion. If the early triangulation process has been either exceedingly frustrating or overly stimulating in regards to "reaching the third" or "warding off the third," the infantile ego is fixed by aggressive and libidinal forces to de-differentiation experiences rather than to more separate and individuated ways of relating. Therefore, the later oedipal stage will be colored by excessive oral and anal conflicts and will be weighted on the side of primitive maneuvering based on splitting, projection, and introjection. When the child (and later the adult) becomes involved in oedipal situations marked by stimulation or frustration of triadic drives, there can be a regression to the earlier paranoid-schizoid triadic period. A case study was presented in which a patient struggled with a partial working through of these conditions in dreams and in the transference. This pulled her more in the direction of a differentiated Oedipal conflict and whole object functioning.