I've posted a few times about Lacan's concept of foreclosure, or the idea that the transcription of power from the maternal imago to the paternal imago can be reversed.
A patient seemed to reprocess foreclosure in the form of a relationship with a borderline partner who had lied, cheated, was able to have her question reality, etc. at an incredibly deep level. Following the idea of codependency, his borderline traits must have matched up to something borderline in her, even if he was the much more conspicuous one.
She had a very harsh father who she felt to be angry with her and critical but he was "honorable" or at least she felt him to be so, and there was a hope to win some approval from such a figure. She was able to differentiate her partner from him because he wasn't honorable and there was a "blackhole" in him that threatened to both "suck you in" and "ooze." He "wasn't a person really."
The transference she had towards her father had gone to her partner and she registered the two in a similar way, but to see him as 'not a whole person' is part of the imago of Death which she left behind for the paternal.
Interestingly, Klein had the 'good (internal) object' in contrast with the 'bad (internal) object' and doesn't register foreclosure formally. She has examples of restoring a dead object, but never connects it formally to the good object.
Dead object > good object
I'm still struggling to name the same operation in the egoist. It could be simple, and the bad object identified with perfection could, in transcription, become a good object too. However, I want to keep the phenomenology distinct. The goodness of the altruist isn't the same as the goodness of the egoist. Maybe it's better to say
perfect/bad object > "the fair object"
... or maybe it's too early for me to be trying to think through this...
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