Tradition and Change in Psychoanalysis

Abstract

RoY SCHAFER: and Change in Psychoanalysis. International Universities Press, Madison, CT, 1997, xvi + 271 pp., $42.50, ISBN 0-8236-6632-8. It is always a pleasure to read and review anything published under Roy Schafer's name. The present collection might have been better entitled Tradition and Change in Roy since it predominantly consists of essays published by him during the last decade or so. All the familiar elements are here to delight Schafer buffs-the easy style, the thoughtful balancing of ideas, the complexity of perspective and, above all, the careful probing of controversial frontiers of analytic exploration. The material is divided into three parts. The first extends Schafer's longstanding and ambivalent debate with Hartmann regarding conceptualizing clinical facts, aspects of gender, and more. The second is more clinical, focusing on humiliation and mortification, blocked introjection, enactment and countertransference, and the third offers an extended reflection on issues related to authority, morality, and their reverberations in therapeutic technique. Much of the discussion revolves around familiar themes-the role of narrative as encompassing the range of clinical content and, along the same line, theories as forms of master narratives. One is reminded in this regard of Wittgenstein's approach to language games. There is also the strain of relativism in terms of which narratives, following Spence's now classic distinction between narrative and historical truth, are evaluated more in terms of their coherence and subjective appeal than objective truth. There is also Schafer's more recent assimilation of current Kleinian persuasions, particularly the emphasis on total countertransference. Schafer makes his case on all three counts, as he always has, persuasively. Schafer buffs will find much to savor, but as a skeptical reviewer, I find much to question. The narrative approach is salient and, without question, the analytic endeavor can be meaningfully cast in such terms. And there is no argument that there is no one narration that carries all the weight. But Schafer seems to neglect the narrator behind the narration who should, I would think, claim our primary attention regardless of the narration. Further, I would insist that only that narrative will do that encompasses the patient's experience, the analyst's experience (especially in comprehending the patient) and the relevant and knowable facts. Rather than simple narrative, there is tension between the evolving narrative process of the analysis and some asymptotic endpoint-perhaps never reached or known, but nonetheless relevant. There is a similar tension in the realm of theory-not only between the analyst's theory or theories and the patient's theory (the patient does have a theory), but between the analytic theories themselves. Again, consistent with Schafer's perspective, there is no single theory that encompasses everything-they all have a piece of the action. …