What does psychoanalysis have to say about the trend of cutting ties with one’s family? Can it be constructive psychologically?
I wonder how this can be conceptualized from a psychoanalytic perspective? Is it, for example, from a Kleinian perspective, merely a manic reparation, or could there be creative, constructive potential in it—such as moving toward health and life, becoming a separate person, or perhaps gaining a certain strength that the caregiver failed to provide by identifying with a group of people who have severed ties with their families? Something like symbolically killing one’s father so that one can become a father oneself?
However, it seems that associations with revenge or triumph over the object immediately arise, which makes this unconstructive/immature. Here I also have a problem with Melanie Klein, because she believes that guilt and the desire for reparation are prerequisites for the depressive position, but what if, say, the object is “objectively” bad, as in abusive relationships, for example—should the subject then also strive for reconciliation with such an object, or is it more that the object doesn’t specifically mean a parent but rather one’s attitude toward the world and people, and, for example, a person who has experienced violence from their parents might make reparation in a different way, such as through work, friendship, or love in a relationship? Could someone shed some light on these nuances?
I get the impression that in this everyday discourse, there is a perception that a therapist is someone who simply listens objectively to the bad/tragic events that have befallen someone, and in one way or another tries to heal that person; it is spoken of as a battle, where external factors are something that has disrupted the normal psychological process.
In practice, of course, it is more complicated; in fact, it seems that psychotherapists rarely advocate cutting oneself off from one’s family—do you share this view, and if so, why is that? Is it because such a severance might be superficial and fail to bring about real change, or because it would mostly result in the person remaining in a paranoid state?
If so, does psychoanalysis not ignore external, “real” factors affecting the subject too much? Is there not a certain fantasy of omnipotence in this—that there might exist a subject independent of the environment who, during analysis, observes their own fantasies and attitudes, and there is no Other in this, no “externality,” it is “only in their head,” which gives a sense of control because it is easier to control something inside us than in our surroundings; if I cannot change something in my surroundings, I can always go to a psychoanalyst, discover that what was causing suffering was actually my neurosis, and then that external factor over which I had no control loses its power.
Can these categories be applied to trends observed in society, or are these too sensitive issues that should only be addressed in a clinical setting?