One-person Psychology Research Articles

Response to Commentaries by Coburn, Gardner and Teicholz on “The Emerging Paradigm of Relational Self Psychology: An Historical Perspective”

ABSTRACT We express our deep appreciation to our three commentators, William Coburn, Jill Gardner, and Judy Teicholz, recognizing the value we gained by each of them reading our paper closely and respectfully, and responding accordingly. We begin with William Coburn, who saw our efforts as the latest move in the evolution of the complex system we call Self Psychology. We feel he appreciated our account of how Self Psychology has developed and changed both within Kohut’s lifetime and since his death, moving from a one-person to a two-person psychology, in part in response to interaction with infant research, Intersubjectivity theory, and other relational theories. We then move to Jill Gardner, who raises questions about just how differently we view the nature of the self and transference and asks if there are predetermined aspects of each that are not relationally co-created in the analysis. Finally, we turn to Judy Teicholz, for whom Kohut has always been a relational Self Psychologist. We feel this is an ahistorical view that fails to enter into the classical one-person psychology milieu in which Kohut was trained and initially worked, and obscures the significant changes in Self Psychology that emerged both in his lifetime and through the efforts of subsequent theorists. All in all, we are grateful for the time and effort all three of our commentators devoted to what we wrote.

Relational Self Psychology: Could There Be Any Other Kind? A Discussion of Magid, Fosshage & Shane’s Paper, The Emerging Paradigm of Relational Self Psychology: A Historical Perspective

ABSTRACT In this paper I discuss Magid, Fosshage and Shane’s impressive overview of the contributions to Relational Self Psychology in the psychoanalytic literature, contributions they see as having emerged for the most part after Kohut’s death and therefore as having been carried out almost entirely by Kohut’s followers. But while the authors see Kohut’s work as having hewed closely to a one-person psychology, I use my discussion to highlight what I see as the two-person themes in Kohut’s own writings, suggesting that he may have been more relational in his thinking than initially meets the eye.

A New Conceptualization of the Conscience.

With the transition from a one-person psychology of instinctual needs to a two-person psychology of relational needs, the metapsychological focus tends to shift from instinct theory to emotion motivation and systems theory, and, accordingly, familiar concepts have to be rethought. In this article, the superego is reconceptualized as a psychic regulation system for self-evaluation, comprising the capacity for empathy, the proneness to experience self-conscious emotions, such as shame, pride, and guilt, and the capacity for moral reasoning. This new conceptualization provides useful tools for addressing the actual functioning of the conscience in clinical psychoanalysis. Affective neuropsychoanalysis can make important contributions to this rethinking of the superego. It also brings clinical practice and psychoanalytic metapsychology closer to empirical research beyond the scope of clinical psychoanalysis. The new model offers ample opportunities for integrating affective neuroscience into the functioning of the conscience.

Relational Lacunae: Gaps in the Relational Literature and Clinical Practice? Commentary on Paper by Paul Wachtel

I question whether Wachtel’s assertion that there are gaps in the relational literature and residues of a one-person psychology is little more than a reflection of the relational tradition, which encompasses a multiplicity of perspectives. This notwithstanding, his paper helpfully addresses a neglected dimension of clinical practice and provides the opportunity to explore the evolution of Stephen Mitchell’s thinking about the baby as a psychoanalytic metaphor. In doing so, I briefly, if somewhat tangentially, discuss the structure of the inner world, the role of memory in psychoanalysis, the nature of transference, and the extent to which early experiences with caregivers influence adult intimate relationships. To further illuminate Wachtel’s theoretical and therapeutic model, I summarize Mitchell’s (2000) case study of Connie, focusing on his detailed inquiry into her everyday relationship with her husband.

Relational Group Analysis. A Response to R. Billow: Relational Group Psychotherapy: An Overview: Part II: Relational Models of Group Process, June 2017

The simultaneous existence and evolvement of the intra-psychic and the interpersonal is the basis of the term ‘relational’. Group analysis seems to have the same convictions about the essence of the human mind, the interconnection of minds and the need to refresh our psychotherapeutic concepts. Referring to Billow’s article, I suggest that the clearest connection between his ideas, the relational point of view and group analysis is his view about the meaning of nodes as an active (rather than passive) processing communication. However, contemporary relational thinking requires some self-report of the therapist’s counter-transference as a manifestation of relational attitude. From this point of view, some parts of Billow’s article are written from an orthodox, one-person psychology perspective. It seems that Foulkes’ suggestion that the conductor is also a participant and is subject to the same group processes is an essential connection between group analysis and relational thinking. Recognizing and understanding the conductor’s participation in the group may be relevant and rewarding to our professional elaboration in relational terms.

The evolution of psychoanalytic thought: a brief view through the lens of Western art and history: Freud and beyond.

The aim of this paper is to explore the diversity and progress in psychoanalysis and psychotherapy post-Sigmund Freud from the perspective of Western art. Since 1900 the shift from one-person psychology to the more contemporary two-person psychology is reflected in the creativity of artists, particularly in their depiction of the mother-infant relationship. An alternative perspective in understanding the evolution of Man's nature can be drawn from a discourse between art, history and psychoanalytic thought. Using art as evidence that reflects concurrent changes in psychoanalytic thought is a stimulating way to engage trainee psychiatrists and psychiatrists in their exploration of human nature.

Intersubjectivity and the Ego

Intersubjective analysts have made an important contribution to our current thinking regarding analyst-patient interaction and intersubjectivity has become a major influence in current American psychoanalysis. However, intersubjective and relational phenomena have not been integrated into the personality theory of psychoanalysis, as reflected currently in the structural theory/ ego psychology. Freud's theory of personality, as it has evolved into ego psychology, includes variables relating to the identical phenomena of human experience addressed by the relational and intersubjective analysts. The critiques of Freudian theory by these analysts evidence significant misperceptions about ego psychology. Intersubjective and relational processes are ego functions that can be subsumed within ego psychology without doing violence to their import. Intersubjectivity is the subjective experience of an interpersonal interaction that becomes part of intrapsychic structure. It is a component of the mentalization of interpersonal experience by the ego. The analyst variously experiences the self and the patient as both subject and object, virtually simultaneously, due to the intersubjective nature of clinical interaction. There is only a one-person psychology: the mind of each of analyst and patient represents within itself the mind of the other. A “two-person psychology” is an intrapsychic creation and is contained separately, albeit simultaneously, within the minds of each of the two people. This approach is described in relation to the drives and objects, the interpersonal, the intrapsychic and internal representation; and the nature of the experience within the clinical dyad.

When Parenting Becomes Unthinkable: Intervening With Traumatized Parents and Their Toddlers

Intervention with infants, preschoolers, and their families requires that the child and adolescent psychiatrist shift perspective from a one-person psychology to a multiperson or “relational” psychology. Assessment and intervention with children younger than 5 years therefore necessitate that the clinician pay close attention to the unique characteristics of the parent–child relationship. These characteristics include adaptation to each other's temperaments, developmental capacities, and biological and psychological needs and desires, and to the demands of the particular environment with which the parent–child relationship contends.

P.L. Wachtel: Relational Theory and the Practice of Psychotherapy

Paul Wachtel is well known for his earlier work integrating behavioral interventions into a psychoanalytic perspective. In this book, he takes on relational psychoanalytic theory. He does so, however, from his own unique perspective. The perspective, which he calls a ‘‘cyclical psychodynamic’’ perspective, emphasizes the vicious circles by which one’s experience of self in relationships becomes established and perpetuated. He also describes the provision in psychotherapy of mutative relationship experiences. Always the integrator, Wachtel demonstrates a remarkably comprehensive, nuanced understanding not only of psychoanalytic theories, but also of behavioral, family systems and narrative theories; he integrates all of these into his approach. The perspective exemplifies Wachtel’s transition from a psychoanalyst trained in the classical drive and ego tradition to an embrace of current relational trends in psychoanalytic theory and training. Wachtel begins with a critique of the classical model. Following in the tradition of relational theorists including Mitchell, Bromberg and Aron, he addresses problems in one-person psychology, critiques which have persisted against psychoanalytic theory and practice since Freud. He points out that Freud saw development as driven by internal forces and impacted by the environment, but subsequent theorists evolved a different understanding of the interaction of ‘‘inner’ and ‘‘outer’’ influences. Relational theorists regard development as evolving from reciprocally influenced relationships. Freud used the archeology metaphor to describe the psychoanalyst as an objective observer uncovering layers of defenses to reveal the patient’s conflicts. Increasingly, contemporary theorists have embraced a two-person, contextual practice theory, which recognizes that the psychotherapist’s participation necessarily involves reciprocally influencing or co-constructed experience and the meaning given to that experience. Wachtel points out that Freud’s concern with the scientific community’s acceptance of his theories led him to emphasize objectivity and eschew suggestion in his formulation of a treatment model. Wachtel asserts that certain principles of classical technique are designed to promote objectivity, but sometimes have the unintended effect of interfering with the provision of a more collaborative and accepting relationship experience. Among these are techniques such as avoiding selfdisclosure and regarding the patient’s statements with suspicion as to their ‘‘real’’ meaning. Of particular interest to clinicians are Wachtel’s observations concerning what he playfully terms ‘‘one-and-aquarter person theories and one-and-three-quarter person theories’’ (Wachtel 2008, p. 11). These represent a partial integration of relational theory and its practice implications. For example, Wachtel points out that some see relational perspectives as relevant to the psychotherapy relationship and to infant development, but not later development. He notes also that some embrace relational theory, but continue to practice in ways that are more consistent with a classical, one-person perspective. Wachtel points out that this is due in part to the persistence of classical influences in the culture of the psychoanalytic community. One of the factors that sets Wachtel’s perspective apart from other relational perspectives is his elaboration of the ‘‘cyclical psychodynamic approach’’ (Wachtel, p. 103). He describes the role of ‘‘vicious circles’’ (Wachtel, p. 221) in which the patient’s relationship experiences lead her to act J. C. Williams (&) School of Social Work, The University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC, USA e-mail: jaycwilliams@nc.rr.com

The Violation of Expectancies

ABSTRACT The term “violation of expectancies” is derived from empirical studies of early development by Beebe and Lachmann. It referred, in their lexicon, to the interaction of mother and infant, organized by disruptions and efforts to resolve these breaches. This article expands the term's meaning to include a broad range of disruptive experiences, occurring not only in infancy but throughout the life cycle. The author's premise is that a developmental continuity exists between infant states and adult psychopathological states. This requires that we look in infancy for beginnings of states that we recognize as existing later on. The author provides a detailed review of infancy research, so as to give credence and support to the significance of the concept of violation of expectancy, and how these violations play a dominant role in the thematic and nuanced reverberations of our lives and in the intersubjective context of our experience. The concept of trauma derives from a one-person psychology, and is connected to unconscious fantasy, conflict and compromise formation, whereas “violation of expectancy” is a relational concept, based on mother-child interactions and originating within an intersubjective context. The author provides three case examples of violation of expectancy and their reverberations: The first involves early and repeated disruption in infancy, the second occurs in a relatively intact child, and the third derives from an autobiographical character.

The Coparticipant Field: Commentary on a Paper by Juan Tubert-Oklander

Psychoanalytic field theory is integral to relational praxis. In his study of the analytic field and its interpersonal complexities and relational intricacies, Tubert-Oklander emphasizes its clinical promise. Tubert-Oklander's field orientation, however, is a conservative and limited one. This commentary proposes a new, more radical coparticipant theory of analytic praxis. As a unique form of clinical participation, coparticipant inquiry is marked by an emphasis on patients' and analysts' relational mutuality, coequal analytic authority, and dyadic uniqueness. Coparticipant inquiry represents both a one-person and two-person psychology—an integral of classical individualism and the social emphasis of the interpersonal/relational viewpoint. Coparticipant analysis calls for a new, multidimensional concept of the self that reconciles the seeming paradox that we are simultaneously communal and individual beings—from birth embedded in a series of social field, yet always uniquely individual. This psychoanalytic dialectic between personal, nonrelational selfic “I” processes and an interpersonal “me” pattern brings into relational play such concepts as will, self-determination, and agency. Coparticipation promotesatechnically freer, more self-expressive, and spontaneous inquiryandemphasizesthecurativeimmediacyofnewrelationalexperience. I have believed for a long time that human nature is a reciprocity of what is inside the skin and what is outside; that it is definitely not “rolled up inside us” but our way of being one with our fellows and our world. I call this field theory. —Gardner Murphy

Termination, Terminable and Interminable: Commentary on Paper by Jody Messler Davies

The termination process begins while the analytic couple is preparing together to end treatment. Mourning the loss and binding the edges of the analytic relationship proceed within each participant after they no longer meet. Many of our common termination practices, however, undermine the patient's leave taking and endanger the positive internal object relationship that we hope our patient will carry into the future. Traditional teachings about how to practice termination, based on one-person psychology and classical principles of anonymity, abstinence, and neutrality, must change to reflect newer ideas about how analysis works. I propose that we think of termination as both a death and a graduation. I suggest ways in which the analyst might engage with the patient in mourning together. I stress the critical importance of follow-up sessions in which unanticipated negative reactions to the termination might be examined before the analytic tapestry has a chance to unravel.

Facilitating Analysis With Implicit and Explicit Self-Disclosures

I propose to get beyond the false stereotypes that have divided contemporary Freudian and relational psychoanalysts with regard to self-disclosure. Understanding self-disclosures made by analysts of all persuasions in the course of their everyday work requires a relational and intersubjective perspective, but not a paradigm shift. Disclosures of everyday analytic work are based on a two-person relationship in which two subjectivities are devoted to the “one-person psychology” of the patient. Three extensive clinical illustrations compare and contrast inevitable self-disclosures that are part and parcel of psychoanalytic treatment with those that are more explicit, conscious, and deliberate and serve a specific aim of treatment. Disclosures and interactions, as understood within this framework, are intended to demonstrate mutuality but not necessarily symmetry and equality of authority in the analytic relationship. The analyst's self-disclosures, although undoubtedly informed by countertransferences and other very personal reactions, are meant to facilitate and deepen a process in which the patient's psychic life is at the center.

Changes in the Psychiatric Landscape

Changes in the Psychiatric Landscape

I, Thou, and Us: Relationality and the Interpretive Process in Clinical Practice

Relational analysis does not imply bypassing the study of unconscious mental processes. Rather, the logic of such processes seems to require a bipersonal approach. The fact that the primary process does not recognize the subject-object differentiation determines an interweaving of the patient's and the analyst's mentations, thus fostering the inception and evolution of an impersonal psychoanalytic process, which does not have a subject. The analytic setting and the analyst's interventions steer this process toward a greater and deeper awareness, by both parties, of the mutual interaction that underlies their experience of being together, doing psychoanalysis. This evolution, referred to as the interpretive process, includes both parties and is not fully controllable by either of them. Most accounts of mutual generation of clinical data correspond to the analysis of severely disturbed patients. This is so because such treatments impose the consideration of interpersonal processes, even if the analyst adheres to a one-person psychology. There is, therefore, a need for clinical illustrations showing such mutual data generation in ordinary analyses. I present an extensive vignette from two sessions of one such treatment, in which mutual data generation is apparent.

Understanding Dissidence and Controversy in the History of Psychoanalysis

Understanding Dissidence and Controversy in the History of Psychoanalysis

The Persistence of Layering Logic

Even those who reject drive theory have had their thinking shaped by its conception of walled-off content. This inevitably generates a one-person psychology, despite the belief that working from a two-person psychology is a matter of choice. Drive logic, with its conception of fixed layers, is so intuitively compelling that it has obscured the way the (misnamed) structural theory conclusively invalidated it by conceiving of defense and defended-against as reversible, even as “in motion.” The revision requires a continuing differential diagnosis to determine what is defense and what is defended-against at any given time, one that rests on the patient's response and therefore is, of necessity, a two-person psychology.My argument proceeds from early vignettes, followed by two contemporary case reports that can demonstrate the unrecognized continuing influence of layering logic in the understanding of dynamics and in inviting unyielding reliance on an interpretation, despite a patient's protests, the sine qua non of one-person analysis.

Random Thoughts on Couple Therapy in a Postmodern Society

The postmodern period in psychoanalysis has had a considerable impact and influence on the psychotherapeutic process in both psychoanalysis and psychotherapy. The paradigm shift, reflected in the work of the intersubjectivists, rationalists, and social constructivists, has shifted emphasis from a one-person psychology to a two-person psychology. Implications for treatment are numerous. The change in emphasis affects not only how individual treatment is conducted but also couple therapy and group therapy. In considering the impact of these recent changes, the author notes the wide range of influences that inform her couple and group therapy. Although the current paradigm shift offers much, it seems to be an extension of earlier influences from self psychology, motivational systems, and attachment theory and of findings from neuropsychology. The author concludes that her couple work has also been intuitively informed by the implicit experience of the intersubjective field of group therapy.

The Nondirective Attitude in Client-Centered Therapy: A Response to Kahn

This article rebuts Ed Kahn’s views of person-centered psychotherapy in his Journal of Humanistic Psychology article “A Critique of Nondirectivity in the Person-Centered Approach” published in Fall 1999. Kahn’s arguments are shown to be based on distortions and misunderstandings. The article shows that person-centered psychotherapists recognize the influence and thus “directivity” of all therapy and that nondirectivity in client-centered therapy refers to the therapist’s attitude and not technique. Kahn’s idea of a “one-person psychology” contradicts client-centered theory, and the basis for nondirectivity in Rogers’s theory is discussed. The article discusses a range of responses in client-centered work and shows the psycho-analytical premises in Kahn’s critique to be irrelevant to clientcentered nondirectivity. It discusses the humility of the therapist in relying on clients’ perceptions of their experiences and meanings as the basis for understanding. A segment from a person-centered session is presented as an illustration of nondirective process.

Teaching and the Dynamics of Recognition

1. Conversation Concrete 2. Education 3. Friendship Teaching and Recognition 300 P H I L O S O P H Y O F E D U C A T I O N 2 0 0 2 Buber uses these two distinctions, abstract–concrete and one-sided–mutual, to generate three forms of dialogue. If there is a “pure” form of dialogue, then, it would seem to be friendship, which lacks neither concreteness nor mutuality. As if saving the best for last, Buber concludes his typology with friendship, which he calls the “the true inclusion.” That Buber sees abstraction and one-sidedness as defects, even if non-fatal ones, is further supported by the fact that he does not even bother to name and consider the type of inclusion/dialogue that is abstract and one-sided. Buber argues that teaching involves a lofty asceticism because teachers cultivate an atmosphere in which their wills and desires are constantly checked by their experience of the other side. To manipulate or enjoy one’s students, Buber reasons, involves a “falsification” of one’s role, besides which “all quackery appears peripheral” (ED, 95). In hoping that teachers do not use or abuse their students, Buber says nothing very controversial. At the same time, we must wonder whether a teacher can truly rejoice in her communion with students if she never feels acknowledged by them in return? Buber knows very well that it is not only the child who longs for communion “in face of the lonely night” (ED, 88). Today’s teachers are yesterday’s children, longing not only for communion, but confirmation, in who they are and what they do. Does Buber imagine this asceticism as a price of maturity? Is the need for confirmation one of those “childish things” that we must “put away” once we become adults and offer our help to the next generation? Is this something that an adult can renounce? Is teaching under such conditions sustainable? These questions take on a new meaning and force when we turn from the work of Buber to that of a later intersubjective theorist, Jessica Benjamin. MUTUAL RECOGNITION IN ASYMMETRICAL RELATIONSHIPS In The Bonds of Love, Benjamin sets out to think Hegel and Freud together and to go beyond both. In particular, she wants to join Hegel’s dialectical, intersubjective account of human consciousness to Freud’s insight that the infant does not initially know where it ends and its mother or the world begins. According to Benjamin object relations theory from Freud to Mahler is governed by the “assumption that we grow out of relationships rather than becoming more active and sovereign within them, that we start in a state of dual oneness and end in a state of singular oneness” (ED, 18). Such theories may understand the infant’s individuation as a relational process, but they remain one-person psychology, neglecting both the child’s interest in the world of others, and the role of the mother’s subjectivity in the process of individuation. Drawing on the work of Daniel Stern and D.W. Winnicott, Benjamin sets out to construct a genuinely intersubjective account of human development. In such a view, Benjamin writes, “the issue is not only how we separate from oneness, but also how we connect to and recognize others; the issue is not how we become free of the other, but how we actively engage and make ourselves known in relation to the other” (BL, 18). For Benjamin, this need to be known by the other, what she calls recognition, “is so central to human existence as to escape notice.” (BL, 15). Comparing human development to photosynthesis, she says that recognition is akin to the sunlight fueling the process (BL, 22). Recognition is a constant and crucial presence in human interactions, though it can take many forms: “to recognize is to affirm, validate,