The Wheel and the Ladder: Freudian and Loewaldian Accounts of Individuation.

In this paper, I use comparisons of Freud, Loewald, and Plato to explore what it means to individuate and to desire in a world of frustration, pain, and loss. The metaphors of the "wheel" versus the "ladder" present basic images for Freud's tragic conception of a person's emerging into a world of pain, transience and loss, in contrast to Loewald's sense of individuation as an increasing attainment of individual ego and world enrichment, constructed from metabolized grieved objects. I then argue that Plato's Symposium offers comparable visions of the possibilities of love, and that the juxtaposition of Freud and Loewald can be connected to ancient philosophical considerations.