Correspondence: Susan Kavaler-Adler, Ph.D., ABPP, 115 East 9th Street, 12P, New York, NY 10003 or 41 Central Park West, 1C, New York, NY 10023. e-mail: suska674@aol.com

¹ABPP, Ph.D., Founder and Executive Director of the Object Relations Institute for Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis, NYC. Training and Supervising Analyst, Faculty, Supervisor NIP. Member: Division 39 (APA), Section I, III, V, VII.

Abstract

This study of the modern film version of "Phantom of the Opera" employs a mythic theme to illustrate how women can involve themselves with charismatic and eroticized narcissistic men, who are unavailable for true relationship within the conscious world of societal connection. How can the healthy-heroic woman extricate herself from the seductive web of such men, men who seek to own the women—not through sexual relations—but through ownership and control of the women's creative talents? What are the developmental, internal world, dynamics that spell out the muse turned demon/lover theme in British and American Object Relations terms? Similar to the mythic vampire who entrances women to suck their blood, the male muse haunts the female artist to possess her talents. The "demon lover" creates himself to woo the unsuspecting female with potential but yet unrealized creative talents. He woos through entrancement, like so many psychologically wounded narcissistic characters who require mirroring to have any sense of existence!