[This material - three chapters of a book in preparation - has been sent by Paul Wachtel as background for the discussion of his paper presented on June 12, 2004, at the Annual Meeting of the Rapaport-Klein Study Group] Go to: Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3
As we have already seen, there is no single criterion that definitively identifies a point of view as relational. Thinkers who identify themselves as relational characterize what they regard as the essence of relational thinking in a variety of different ways, and it is one of the characteristics of the contemporary relational movement that it takes in a broad range of positions and viewpoints. Nonetheless, there are clearly some conceptual innovations and critiques that are more widely shared and strongly held among relational thinkers than others. In the last two chapters, we have explored one of those core issues - the distinction between one-person and two-person theory - and have found it illuminating but also potentially confusing and misleading. In this chapter, I wish to examine a perhaps even more prominent distinction in most discussions and formulations of relational thinking - personality as ultimately rooted in the vicissitudes of the drives versus personality as fundamentally derived from relationships. Here too we will find much that is clarifying and insightful but also ways in which confusions and conceptual stumbling blocks are introduced. After examining these limitations, I will then explore, in the second half of the chapter, two other conceptual alternatives that I believe provide a sounder and more useful foundation for a relational point of view - one, the distinction between contextual and acontextual thinking introduced in the last chapter, the other the distinction between what I will call archaeological and cyclical models of personality. My aim in introducing these alternative foundations for relational thinking is not to reject the one-person - two-person distinction or the drive-relationship distinction, both of which remain valuable conceptual tools. Rather, it is partly to supplement these two perspectives and partly to integrate them into a broader conceptual structure in which their potentially problematic features are less of an impediment [to developing an approach to theory and therapy that is grounded in the widest range of observations of human behavior and experience]. The Most Significant Tension in the History of Psychoanalytic Ideas? In the volume that might be said to have launched the relational movement in psychoanalysis, Greenberg and Mitchell (1983) state, "The most significant tension in the history of psychoanalytic ideas has been the dialectic between the original Freudian mode, which takes as its starting point the instinctual drive, and an alternative comprehensive model initiated in the work of Fairbairn and Sullivan, which evolves structure solely from the individual’s relations with other people." (p. 20) This is a very strong statement; calling any issue the most significant in the entire history of a field is no mealy-mouthed claim. Yet it is also very largely accurate, at least as a description of the intensity of controversy and the dominant lines of cleavage in the field. There are certainly other important issues and controversies that divide psychoanalytic thinkers. Some of these other questions, which I shall take up as we proceed, bear not only on the specifics of clinical practice but on the question of whether psychoanalytic ideas can be framed in a way that they can be seen to have value by therapists who are not immersed in the sometimes arcane world of psychoanalytic discourse - or who are even rather skeptical about the value of psychoanalytic ideas altogether. We have already considered the distinction between one-person and two-person psychologies as an another prominent line of demarcation, and we will further encounter others that are of considerable clinical importance and that generate a great deal of controversy and affect in their own right - the role of insight versus new relational experience, the propriety or impropriety of self-disclosure, and the differing meanings and usages of concepts such as support, neutrality, empathy, and interpretation to name a few. But it is nonetheless almost certainly true that no single conceptual issue more centrally defines the shared identification of therapists who consider themselves to be relational in orientation than the one highlighted by Greenberg and Mitchell. As but a few examples, Skolnick & Warshaw (1992), in their introduction to the book, Relational Perspectives in Psychoanalysis, state that although there is no one single relational model or theory, all relationalists "have a common concern with the centrality of relationship in the development and structure of personality" ( p. xxiv). Ghent, in the same volume, asks, "How does one recognize a relational psychoanalyst?" and answers as follows: "There is no such thing as a relational analyst; there are only analysts whose backgrounds may vary considerably, but who share a broad outlook in which human relations - specific, unique human relations - play a superordinate role in the genesis of character and of psychopathology, as well as in the practice of psychoanalytic therapeutics (p. xviii). Aron (1996), in another influential work in the relational literature, states that, "relational theory is essentially a contemporary eclectic theory anchored in the idea that it is relationships (internal and external, real and imagined) that are central (p. 18). And Mitchell, in his 1988 volume, Relational Concepts in Psychoanalysis, portrays the fundamental distinction between Freudian and relational models as one in which we are portrayed, in Freudian thought, as "a conglomeration of asocial, physical tensions represented in the mind by urgent sexual and aggressive wishes pushing for expression" and in which we "live in the clash between these wishes and the secondary, more superficial claims of social reality," (Mitchell, 1988, p. 2, italics added) versus the quintessential relational view that we are "fundamentally dyadic and interactive, above all else" and that "psychic organization and structures are built from the patterns which shape those interactions." (pp. 3-4) As these quotations from a variety of leading relational thinkers indicate, the distinction between a view of personality as built upon and organized by drives and one in which relationships are the central foundation is very much at the heart of the relational point of view, an idea that unites the disparate branches of the relational movement in a meaningful way. It is, indeed, a conceptualization that will in various ways echo throughout this book as well. At the same time, however, as I will explore in this chapter, the "drive versus relationship" distinction has also been associated with conceptual shortcomings that have created what might be described as a "soft foundation" for relational thinking in certain respects. It has frequently, for example, led to dichotomies being drawn too sharply, impeding and even actively discouraging efforts to integrate the strengths and observations of competing psychoanalytic approaches (see below). Additionally, its very centrality in how relational theorists define the core of their paradigm has in certain ways distracted attention from other potentially more fruitful issues and distinctions that, eventually, will be the focus of this chapter. These alternative conceptualizations provide a basis for a relational point of view that is rooted less in the distinction between drive and relationship as the fundamental building block and more in the way in which relationships and patterns of behavior and experience get structured in the course of development. As we proceed, I will attempt to show that notwithstanding the prominence of ideas about mutual and reciprocal influence and co-construction of psychological reality in the writings of relational theorists, these ideas are actually insufficiently integrated into the overall structure of much relational theorizing, which has absorbed more assumptions from the classical point of view than is commonly appreciated. Competing Theories or Competing Visions? Some of the difficulties in the drive-relational distinction can be traced to the seminal influence of Greenberg and Mitchell’s (1983) formulations of this distinction in Object Relations in Psychoanalytic Theory. Perhaps no other single work has so contributed to the coalescing of a self-consciously relational point of view, and both the unique strengths of their analysis and some of its conceptual idiosyncracies have been powerfully woven into the subsequent evolution of contemporary relational thinking. One feature of their analysis that exhibits both in good measure is their examination of the parallels between the competing drive and relational models and the broader and more longstanding debates that have characterized Western thought for centuries. It is one of the valuable and distinctive features of their analysis that, in contrast to most writing in psychology or psychoanalysis, they are keenly aware of the larger cultural and philosophical context of the issues they are addressing. They explicitly situate their discussion of the drive-relational debate within the larger context of two competing traditions within Western philosophy which, in one form or another, have contended for centuries. One school of thought, they write, "finding its fullest expression in British eighteenth-century philosophy...takes as its premise that human satisfactions and goals are fundamentally personal and individual. Human beings pursue their own separate aims ... and these atomistic, discordant pursuits are likely to interfere with each other....Meaning in human life resides in individual fulfillment." (pp. 400-401). The second school of thought, "with roots going back to Aristotle, {c}... takes as its premise that human satisfactions and goals are realizable only within a community....The state of nature within this approach is quite different from that envisioned by the British philosophers....Human nature is felt to contain feelings of natural affiliation and mutual concern....It is only in recognition by and participation with his fellows that man becomes fully human." (pp. 401-402) {c} Relating this debate in the larger sphere of philosophical and social thought to the specific distinction between the drive and relational models, they state, "The drive/structure model and the relational/structure model embody these two major traditions within Western philosophy in the relatively recently developed intellectual area of psychoanalytic ideas." Like the first tradition, the drive model "takes as its fundamental premise that the individual mind, the psychic apparatus, is the most meaningful and useful unit for the study of mental functioning. That individual unit, for Freud as for Hobbes, is dominated by desires for personal pleasures and power, for private gratification." (p. 402) In contrast, the relational/structure model, "takes as its fundamental premise the principle that human existence cannot be meaningfully understood on individual terms, that, as Sullivan puts it, man is not capable of >definitive description in isolation’....the very nature of being human draws the individual into relations with others, and it is only in these relations that man becomes anything like what we regard as human. ... [T]he pervasive presence of others, real and imaginary, past and present, in every moment of our lives, ... can never be adequately encompassed by a theory in which object relations are a function of primitive instinctual drives. ... For clinicians and theorists who think in relational/structural terms, to say that pleasure seeking is at the root of all relations with others is to skew the data - it is simply too reductionistic. (p. 403-405) I am presenting Greenberg & Mitchell’s account in some detail both because I admire it and because it is at the same time potentially problematic. I admire it, among other reasons, because it is one of the relatively few accounts in either the psychoanalytic literature or the larger literature on psychotherapy that pays real and sophisticated attention to the crucial role of the larger social, historical, and intellectual context. The frequent omission of that context is a source of shallowness in much of the literature of our field, and the failure to understand how powerful a role social and historical forces play in influencing who we are and how we see things is, in addition, a substantive omission in much theorizing (an omission that is in some ways at the very heart of Greenberg and Mitchell’s critique of the "drive/structural" point of view).[1] But as much as I value Greenberg and Mitchell’s effort to place their theoretical analysis within the context of the history of ideas, I believe that in this instance there is also confusion introduced by their linking the drive-relational debate to the philosophical controversies that have characterized Western political thought. Drawing on the philosophical writings of Isaiah Berlin (1958), Greenberg and Mitchell, argue that the competing psychoanalytic models, "like political philosophies, are based on a vision by which we are consciously or unconsciously guided of what constitutes a fulfilled human life." (p. 403) Treating Berlin’s account of the key divide in Western political philosophy as quite directly relevant to the clash between drive and relational views in psychoanalysis, they quote Berlin’s comment that the competing philosophical visions are "two profoundly divergent and irreconcilable attitudes to the ends of life....each of them makes absolute claims (Berlin, 1958, p. 55)" Then, asserting that the drive and relational models in psychoanalysis occupy similar conceptual terrain, they contend that, "It is neither useful nor appropriate to question whether either psychoanalytic model is >right’ or >wrong.’ Each is complex, elegant, and resilient enough to account for all the phenomena." (p. 404) Summing up this argument, Greenberg and Mitchell assert that, "The drive model and relational model are complete and comprehensive accounts of the human experience. The premises upon which they rest constitute two incompatible visions of life." Most problematically, they add that, "these premises are not subject to empirical verification." Instead, the "superordinate" criterion for evaluating these competing theories comes down to "a matter of personal choice. The theory stands or falls on how compelling it appears to be, on its underlying vision of human life. Does the theory speak to you? Does it seem to account for your deepest needs, longings, fears?" (pp. 406-407) Such a position [unfortunately] provides a tempting rationale for evading the responsibility of reconciling one’s theoretical claims with empirical observation. Not only is systematic controlled research apparently ruled out as a relevant procedure for evaluating these two theoretical positions, but even clinical observation is reduced to the means by which we persuade ourselves, not a means by which we can actually, at least some of the time, revise our assumptions or reorganize them to include observations they had not sufficiently taken into account. {Put differently, the assumption seems to be that we can - and will? - assimilate all new observations into the Procrustean framework of either relational or classical "visions;" little room is left for the possibility of accommodating those visions to new observations.} It may well be that the nuances of subjective experience or, more generally, the ideas and phenomena most of interest to dynamically oriented therapists are difficult to capture in the typical laboratory experiment in academic psychology; but that does not leave us with no alternative but how different theories "feel" to us. The advent of audio and video recording, for example, provides a basis for detailed observation of the fine points of interaction between people and of the subtle and shifting expressions of affect, conflict, and warded off subjective experience. Even more importantly, it offers other observers an opportunity to check on the therapist’s own observations and describe sequences and coherences that the therapist may not have noticed or reported. Similarly, a variety of advances in the sophistication of infant and mother-infant research, attachment studies, and other developmental paradigms, along with advances in methodological and statistical approaches to the study of personality and social interaction and new developments in studying brain processes in the live, responding brain, open doors to making meaningful and differential assessments of the adequacy of various formulations that go well beyond leaving us simply with the choice of assimilating everything about human behavior and experience into one or the other "vision" that Greenberg and Mitchell offer us. At a time when the possibilities of clinically meaningful research are stronger than they have ever been, a metatheoretical position that puts the therapist’s imperial interpretation of events back in the driver’s seat is a step backward. Importantly, it is also in no way a position that is intrinsic to relational thinking. To be sure, Greenberg and Mitchell partly cite these deep philosophical influences on commitment to one or the other theory to account for the difficulties in communication between proponents of drive-centered and relationally centered approaches. Here they are probably quite correct. To the degree that theorists or therapists base their commitment to one or the other approach on the factors that Greenberg and Mitchell cite - and almost all of us do, to at least some degree - their account helps us understand those failures of communication. But to the degree that Greenberg and Mitchell endorse the "retreat to vision," to the degree that they reject empirical evaluation of the competing claims as fruitless, they contribute both to the decline of the reputation of psychoanalysis outside the psychoanalytic world and to vitiating the intellectual vitality of psychoanalysis itself. The "beyond empirical inquiry" depiction that Greenberg and Mitchell borrow from Berlin’s discussion of political philosophies is appropriate in the realm Berlin is addressing because philosophies do represent a vision, a way of interpreting that is, at its core, non-empirical. Indeed, even the idea that there are precisely two visions, two competing, comprehensive, overarching visions, is itself a vision. It is a way of organizing and interpreting the emphases of competing theoretical positions that prioritizes particular choices regarding what goes with what to come to a conclusion that is aesthetically satisfying to the observer. One could, with different predilections as to lumping and splitting, look at the landscape of competing theoretical claims and conclude that there are basically three broad types of theory, or four, or five. How many basic visions account for the wide range of specific theoretical propositions is itself largely a non-empirical matter, a way of organizing the data that depends on a priori assumptions about which differences to highlight and which to gloss over. Empirical methods such as factor analysis may play some role in guiding one’s conclusions (see, for example, Gillman and Wachtel, 20xx), but ultimately, in realms such as "how many basic visions are there?" we must fall back on the "what feels right" criterion that Greenberg and Mitchell advocate. In contrast, however, the theories that guide the practice of psychotherapy need to be guided by more than just a vision. I say more than "just" a vision because the practice of psychotherapy is most certainly not divorced from or devoid of a vision - both in the sense that choices and values are always very strongly operative, and because, in this realm as well, the authority of "data" can be illusory; data are needed, but they are unlikely ever to be sufficient. Data must be interpreted, and the interpretations, especially in the ambiguous and affect-laden human spheres that are at the heart of psychotherapy, are bound to be at least partly shaped by philosophical preconceptions, whether recognized or not. But a vision alone is insufficient and, from the point of view of the suffering patient, irresponsible. Although postmodern cautions about [the objectivity of] data are well taken, when those cautions merge [morph] into a disinterest or even dismissal of data, they become problematic and inappropriate evasions. The drive model and the relational model make claims about how things are, not just about how one prefers them to be or what feels right to the interpreter. Relationalists are quick to cite - and appropriately so - the latest findings in infant research or attachment research to bolster their views, and they cite these findings because they do bear on which assumptions about the way personality evolves are correct. Maintaining a "Vision" through Observational Tunnel Vision As audacious as Greenberg and Mitchell’s claims are regarding the fundamental importance of the drive- relational distinction (recall their characterization of it as "the most significant tension in the history of psychoanalytic ideas"), in certain respects their [approach] is insufficiently sweeping and ambitious. In the process of overstating the parallels between the competing theoretical paradigms in psychoanalysis and the broad philosophical "visions" discussed by Berlin, Greenberg and Mitchell concede too much to the position their relational perspective is designed to challenge. In their account, the classical drive theory can account for every observation that the relational perspective can; which one chooses is a matter of taste. In fact, however, that is not the case. Neither the classical drive theory nor the relational paradigm as depicted by Greenberg and Mitchell explain all the data sufficiently. They each focus their attention on somewhat different data, and they retain their adherents not just through "interpretation" and "taste," but through tunnel vision. They ignore palpable and important observations that might require them to change. Include any of this single-space stuff? If so, here or elsewhere? Let us take, for example, one very central issue that is at the heart of Greenberg and Mitchell’s contention that we are dealing with competing "visions" that do not admit of empirical adjudication. {Let us begin consideration of this issue where Greenberg and Mitchell themselves begin}. They begin their probing of what they regard as the irreconcilable chasm between the drive and relational models - and then repeat a few pages later (p. 403) that this is the starting point of their discussion - with the observation that, To be sure, this is a very fundamental tension. [As have others (e.g., Bakan, Blatt, etc.)] I have emphasized in my own writings as well the key duality of our simultaneously being separate creatures - born separately, dying separately, feeling pain separately - and being in constant and continuous contact with others in a way that shapes and even creates our very being as humans (e.g., Wachtel, 1983, 1995, in press). But this duality is not only philosophical; it is empirical as well. It is an empirical fact that each of us will die, that we inhabit separate bodies with separate fates. And it is equally an empirical fact that in virtually every facet of our consciousness, our communion with others, our immersion in a social order which conveys values, assumptions, and expectations so pervasively that we cannot possibly be conscious of it all, is a central shaping force. These are not just separate "visions." A view that takes either as its starting point and says, in effect, this is all I need to consider in order to have a "complete" psychology (even if it acknowledges - or posits, really, since it is an acknowledgment based on false assumptions - that others may create an equally complete psychology from the other vantage point) - such a view is wrong. A view that is built entirely on our interconnectedness and does not take into account our separateness is not complete, cannot be complete, and the same is true for a view that is built entirely on our separateness. Greenberg and Mitchell’s dissatisfactions with the specific efforts of Kohut, Mahler, Kernberg, and a number of other theorists to integrate drive and relational elements in their theories (e.g., pp. xxxxxxx) are based on a sophisticated probing of theoretical assumptions. But somewhere along the line, these critiques become inappropriately extended to a critique of the integrative aim itself,[2] creating a falsely impermeable barrier between approaches that are rooted in attention to human beings as separate and individual biological creatures and approaches rooted in attention to our lifelong communion with others. One way this happens has already been noted {One way in which drive and relational perspectives have remained largely separate discourse realms - in this respect, as I have noted, Greenberg and Mitchell are largely correct - is via a blindered approach to theory construction that has already been alluded to}. By directing their attention too exclusively to the events in the session, many analysts render their theories impervious to findings [observations] from other realms that could (and should) modify their theories. Indeed, this focus [this fetishization of the experience in the session] [the particular way in which the events of the session are attended to in contemporary psychoanalytic practice] often excludes or {at least} pushes to the margins observations that are gathered in the session but are not primarily about the session - that is, the patient’s references to the events of his ongoing daily life. Attention to those events makes it abundantly clear that we are in constant communication with and constantly influenced by the experiences we encounter, even if, as psychoanalysis correctly emphasizes, each person’s particular interpretation and experience of those events is at least somewhat - and often enormously - different. From the vantage point of the cyclical-contextual perspective I will be elaborating in the rest of this chapter, neither the intrapsychic formulations of classical psychoanalysis (or, for that matter, of Kleinian or other object relations approaches - see chapter 4), nor any version of interpersonalism that excludes the intrapsychic are comprehensive. <<The classical model does not sufficiently account for the enormous variability of our behavior and experience from context to context; the radically interpersonal model (often, it must be stated, a straw man that was created by classical critics of interpersonal theory) does not sufficiently account for what might be called the "stickiness," of our experience, the ways in which our responsiveness to context is often dulled and impeded [slow and xxxx], the tendency to assimilate new experiences to old schemas to a problematic degree.>> <<No psychological theory is viable that does not address [include] the empirically demonstrable [the readily demonstrable] impact of context, the ways that people (and the intrapsychic structures seemingly revealed in analysis) vary - vary enormously - from situation to situation>> As we will see as we proceed [as this chapter proceeds], theories that depict people as fixated or arrested at a particular developmental level or that characterize unconscious psychological structures and tendencies as sealed off from the influence of new experience, as "timeless" and more or less direct repetitions and expressions of early states of mind impervious to the events of later life, are not just an alternative "taste" or preference or "vision". They are wrong. What Do Practicing Therapists Actually Listen For?: Abstract Theorizing and Clinical Reality Finally, there is still another difficulty with conceptualizing the distinction between drive and relational perspectives as fundamental and irreconcilable and, in the process, grounding the relational approach in its opposition to drive theory. {c} This distinction is at a level of abstraction that is actually rather far removed from {the differences that make a difference in} daily clinical practice. There are obviously important differences among therapists in the way they listen, understand, and respond. But those differences are not well captured by the question that many relationalists, following Mitchell, view as the key issue - whether drives or relations with others constitute the "basic stuff of mental life." (Mitchell, 1988, p. 2) That is very largely an issue of origins, not of the categories through which practicing clinicians make sense of the potentially bewildering diversity of things that patients say, think, and feel during the course of the therapeutic work. Indeed, it is not even really a question of origins in the everyday clinical sense - that is, what earlier experiences were the forerunners or causes of the experiences the patient is now reporting [of the troubling patterns in the patient’s life that the therapy is directed toward changing]. Rather, it is a question of abstract fundamentals, a philosophical and somewhat a priori question rather than one that is about what comes before what. {As such, it is not really an issue that bears all that much on clinical practice.} The reason [I say this] is that the supposedly opposing vision of drive theory, especially of drive theory as it is employed by most contemporary analytic therapists who identify with that point of view, really also conceives of human relations as utterly central to what is listened for when listening to patients. Analysts virtually never listen for "drives." Even when they employ that conceptual terminology or keep that conceptual framework in their consciousness when they are listening, they are listening for drives as they are attached to objects. The Oedipus complex, for example, so close to the heart of Freudian theory, has at its very core that it is not the mere occurrence of sexual desire that is the problem, but sexual desire toward a particular object. When broader inhibitions or distortions in the patient’s love life or sexual life are understood as a result of oedipal conflicts, it is not because sexuality per se is assumed to be threatening, but because, through this lens, there is assumed to be an unconscious confusion between the contemporary object of sexual desire and the earlier forbidden object. Similarly, the "oral" wish to bite or spit out, the "anal" wish to expel or shit upon, and so forth also tend to be understood by most analysts who use these concepts as reflecting a structure of relatedness, a particular way of experiencing and interacting with the significant others in one’s life rather than an abstract exercise of a bodily function divorced from a relational context. This is especially true of those Freudian analysts who have absorbed the ego psychological formulations of [writers such as] Erikson (e.g., 1963), but it is evident in the daily clinical work of almost all analysts. There are certainly real and important differences between traditional Freudian and relational points of view; much of this book, indeed, is devoted to articulating and clarifying those differences. But they do not constitute the sharp dichotomy of competing "visions" except in the realm of abstract theory {in the most abstract realms of what might be called theoretical fundamentalism}. Metapsychology may be central to the identities and group identifications of "drive" theorists, {and it is has important implications for our understanding of the fundamental origins of human behavior and experience - and thus, ultimately, for our ideas about social organization, ideals of mental health, the prospects for improvement in the human condition, and other highly important topics}, but it is unlikely to be the stuff of daily clinical practice <or to be a reliable guide to the ways that therapists differ in their approach to the therapeutic task and the therapeutic relationship>. There are indeed large and consequential differences in the ways that different therapists work, and there are very likely even ways in which those differences correlate rather significantly with the self-identification as, say, contemporary Freudian or relational in orientation. But, as I will elaborate further below, the most significant foundation of those differences lies less in the question of whether drives or relationships are the fundamental building blocks of personality than it does in another question which I will take up next. [Include sl like this anywhere in this section?] I believe that good theory is essential to good clinical practice, but I have also been struck by how often theory either remains in a realm of its own or, alternatively, does influence practice but in ways that are ironic in light of the premises that the theorist presumes to hold. Often, what might be called abstract theory (the modern residue, even in relational theories, of what used to be called metapsychology) takes precedence over, and is largely divorced from, the theory of therapy or of change. The Archaeological and Cyclical/Contextual Models{c} Both the distinction between one-person and two-person models and that between drive and relational foundations to personality are relevant to [have contributed in important ways to] the point of view that is at the heart of this book. But it is rooted even more centrally in another conceptual distinction - one which has enormous implications for the practice of psychotherapy [for therapeutic practice] {rooted even more centrally in another conceptual distinction which I believe has at least as crucial and consequential implications for the practice of psychotherapy}. The distinction to which I am referring is between the "archaeological" model that underlies much of psychoanalytic thought and what I will call the cyclical/contextual model. The cyclical/contextual model, I intend to show, addresses [calls our attention to] [integrates] a wider range of observations and points us toward modes of clinical activity and clinical responsiveness that more effectively harness the therapeutic potential [therapeutic power] of the psychoanalytic point of view while opening up possibilities to integrate its unique strengths with the complementary contributions of other approaches that have evolved from different premises and different starting points. In contrast to Greenberg and Mitchell’s emphasis on competing "visions" that cannot be [empirically adjudicated], the distinction between the archaeological and the cyclical/contextual models of personality can be examined by observing the way human beings actually behave, think, and feel. And, I believe, it is possible to make a strong case that the cyclical/contextual model does account for a fuller range of observations [ - from the most private and personal individual experiences to the dynamics of families, friendships, and small groups, to the larger influence of social and historical forces on the individual psyche B] and provides a sounder basis both for constructing theory and for conducting therapy. The cyclical/contextual model I will outline here evolved out of a critique of what might be called the standard or received psychoanalytic model. We will see, however, that the critique applies to a number of common features in contemporary relational theorizing as well, which have incorporated significant elements of the archaeological vision that was at the heart of Freud’s theory construction. This dual quality of being both an instance of relational theorizing and a critique of (at least some aspects of) relational theorizing has several sources. Cyclical psychodynamics, as I have called this theoretical perspective (see, for example, Wachtel, 1977, 1993, 1997, Wachtel & Wachtel, 1986) evolved largely independently of the relational conceptualizations of Mitchell and his colleagues. Cyclical psychodynamics was aimed at integrating psychoanalytic thought with observations and methods from outside the psychoanalytic movement, whereas the relational movement was largely an integrative method within psychoanalysis,. In important ways, these two theoretical programs, and the critiques they embodied, converged. Over time, as the convergences became clearer, I became a member of the relational faculty in the NYU postdoctoral program in psychoanalysis and psychotherapy, one of the key homes for relational thinking, and a member and advisory board participant in the IARPP. But while there are important parallels between cyclical psychodynamics and other relational approaches, there are also important differences, and the examination of the problems and weaknesses in the archaeological vision applies to a significant portion [subset] of relational theorizing as well.. [Trace parallels, e.g., between Magnusson volume paper on "seemingly infantile" and Aron on similar idea, Mitchell on "developmental tilt" etc.?]- maybe move some of this to preface Numerous commentators have observed both Freud’s keen and enduring interest in archaeology - an interest difficult to miss by anyone who has seen pictures of Freud’s office, filled as it was with treasured objects from antiquity - and the ways in which metaphors rooted in archaeology form a key foundation for psychoanalytic thought in general. {By and large, however, the significance of the distinction between archaeological and contextual models as perhaps the most fundamental divide in conceptualizing personality dynamics and development has not been recognized [appreciated]}. Among the key features of this archaeological mode of thought are the urge to probe for deeper and deeper layers that are more and more cut off from the surface, the idea of personality as organized according to development "levels," and the assumption that earlier is deeper (Wachtel, 2003). In accord with this view of personality, psychotherapy was viewed very largely as a process of uncovering, recovering, and reconstructing the past, of digging through successive layers to get at the "archaic" material that lies below. Some of the most important and influential discussions of the archaeological imagery underlying Freud’s thinking [underlying psychoanalytic thought] have centered on the epistemological implications. Perhaps the most thorough and extensive discussion of the epistemological implications of the archaeological model is that of Spence, who repeatedly examines the archaeological metaphor in his influential book, Narrative Truth and Historical Truth (Spence, 1982). Throughout the book, Spence repeatedly probes the ways that Freud’s fondness for the archaeological metaphor helped him to keep certain doubts at bay, to persuade himself - and attempt to persuade others - that he was not engaged in an alternative form of suggestion but was making literal "discoveries" of things that were there, lying in wait all the time for their discoverer to uncover them. "If ambiguity is everywhere," Spence asks, "then how do we escape?" Freud, he suggests, tried to escape through archaeology. If we are uncovering actual pieces of the patient’s past - early memories, infantile wishes, and the like - and if these pieces, following the archaeological model, can be fitted into singular patterns, then we come very close to having created a literal statement that speaks for itself, outside of any context. We have seen how the archaeological, because of its appeal to hard fact, protected him from the charge of suggestion. If he could claim that his method would allow him to make contact with the actual past, he could defend himself against the charge of supplying some of the answers. Suggestion is ruled out; on the contrary, the analyst simply allows the evidence to emerge. (Spence, 1982, p. 265)[3] Referring to Spence’s critique of the archaeological metaphor, Mitchell (1988b), similarly focuses on what the analyst can know and to the problems with Freud’s assumption "that the fragments of the patient's inner life are exposed in the free associations, intact, just as they were experienced, rather than selected and composed in the context of the transference relationship with the particular analyst at any given time." (p. 484) Elsewhere (Mitchell, 1992, p. 279), similarly focusing on the epistemological dimension, Mitchell challenges what he views as the objectivist or positivist premises of traditional psychoanalytic conceptualizations, and argues that, "The analytic method is not archaeological, analyzing and reconstructing; it does not simply expose what is there. The analytic method is constructive and synthetic; it organizes whatever is there into patterns supplied by the method itself." Similar concerns have been expressed [even] from a more classical or Freudian view. Blum (1999), for example, has noted that, "Infantile amnesia does not always lift with analytic work, and the retrieval of intact memories does not automatically follow the analysis of defense and resistance. The beautiful archaeological model was oversimplified, and did not do justice to the complexity of memory modification and validation, or to the need to establish or restore meaningful connections and context." These critiques of the archaeological metaphor are certainly important and useful. Epistemologically, psychoanalysis is not a science of "found objects," and the "discoveries" of psychoanalysis were, interestingly, more dynamic in their nature than the "psychodynamic" tradition has acknowledged. This, of course, is one of the central concerns of the "two-person" model discussed in previous chapters. But the problems with the archaeological metaphor and the psychoanalytic model constructed on its basis go beyond the epistemological [the mischief created by the archaeological metaphor is not limited to the epistemological dimension]. Apart from contributing to a misleading sense of certainty about the historical accuracy of the constructed past, it also is the foundation for serious misunderstandings about the way that the past influences the present. These misunderstandings {as we shall see} distort theory, misrepresent the nature of the psychological conflicts with which the patient struggles and the ways in which the patient’s past and present intersect in those struggles, and perpetuate a limited and problematic understanding of the sources of therapeutic gain and the experiences necessary for its attainment. Central to the archaeological model is an image of personality as consisting of sedimental layers from earlier eras, progressively more cut off from the influence of everyday experience the "deeper" they are. And since, in congruence with the archaeological image [And since, when the imagination is shaped by archaeological imagery], these psychological strata are viewed as laid down in a sequence corresponding to time, "deeper" and "earlier" become equivalent, and conceptions of theoretical "profundity" become confounded with how early, archaic, or primitive a hypothesized psychological influence or structure is and how cut off from contact with daily experience (Wachtel, 2003). Personality is thus seen as most fundamentally organized, most "deeply" influenced by the most archaic depths of the "inner" world, while the "surface" manifestations, the ways in which we seem to be responding to what is actually going on "outside," are relegated to the realm of the "superficial" (again, see Wachtel, 2003). This model, in all it various manifestations - whether they be Freudian, Kleinian, Winnicottian, Fairbairnian, Kohutian, or what have you - posits an "inner world" that is, in significant and fateful ways, hermetically sealed off from everyday experience. But unlike the layered remains that confront the archaeologist, these strata - perhaps equivalent, if the layering imagery were to borrow from geology instead of archaeology, to intensely hot and potentially explosive magma - exert powerful eruptive forces upon the surface. The archaeological model leads as well to viewing subjectivity as residing largely "inside." One can know or understand someone "superficially" by paying attention to the words they say or their daily behavior. But to know them "deeply," one must enter their "inner world." And that inner world, largely consisting of archaic drives, fantasies, or objects, is a world apart. Put differently, the archaeological model is a model rooted in ideas of fixation and developmental arrest. While the surface of the personality grows and changes with new experiences, the deeper levels remain essentially unchanged - infantile, primitive, archaic, timeless, and unresponsive to "external" reality. As we will see in Part II, this model - whether explicitly avowed by the therapist herself or guiding her practice more implicitly and unstatedly, perhaps through the mediating influence of former supervisors or therapists who held to it more explicitly - has yielded a variety of therapeutic guidelines that limit and impede the progress of the therapeutic work. Equally important, the archaeological model, with its corollary assumptions - whether explicit or implicit - of fixation or arrest and the hermetic sealing off of parts of the psyche from the influence of contemporary events - is contradicted by a wide variety of observations, both from the realm of everyday life and from the findings of systematic research. There are a variety of forms of phrasings that are common in our discourse that introduce unappreciated ambiguity - a particular pattern or problem has its origins in a certain developmental period, originates in that period, has its roots in that period, derives from that period. Discuss idea of developmental "levels" In certain ways, a similar critique and similar alternative conceptual structure is offered by Mitchell, whose ideas, as I noted in the preface, developed somewhat in parallel to my own [to those of the cyclical psychodynamic model]. Thus, Mitchell’s (1988) critique of the "developmental tilt" in psychoanalytic thought and his discussions of the metaphor of the baby parallel in many ways the ideas discussed in this chapter and in my own earlier work (e.g., Wachtel, 1977a, 1977b, 1980 [schema] 1982, 1987, 1993, 1994). Summary section: Pulling these various strands together, and placing them in a larger context aimed at integrating the full range of theories that have illuminated our understanding of personality development and dynamics and of the sources of therapeutic change (see, for example, Wachtel, 1997), we may understand the dynamics of personality as both cyclical and contextual... Footnotes [1]
By no means, however, is there an automatic and inevitable link
between attention to the larger social context and whether a
theorist is a Adrive-structure"
theorist or a Arelational-structure"
theorist. Freud, who was broadly educated in the main currents
of Western thought, made repeated efforts to apply his analyses
to the understanding of social phenomena and the larger social
context. And many relational authors are as inattentive to this
dimension as any Adrive
structure" theorist. They devote attention to the immediate
social world of mother and child or patient and analyst but
little beyond that (cite P of A and RMA?) [2]
To be sure, Greenberg and Mitchell’s volume, as much of
Mitchell’s continuing work thereafter, was [rooted in an
integrative aim]. But their integrative efforts were bounded,
pulling together, in creative and valuable ways, theories that
had previously been regarded as divergent and competitive or
incompatible, but simultaneously placing limits on what
could be integrated. This both contributed to perpetuating false
and problematic dichotomies and, as I have noted, [impeded the
pursuit of empirical resolution of the seeming
contradictions] [impeded consideration of how paying fuller
attention to the widest range of observations could lead
to the creation of more adequate formulations that transcended
the seeming contradictions]. [3]
On the rhetoric of Aemerging"
and Aunfolding,"
see Wachtel (1982). Web Editor: Paolo Migone. For suggestions or corrections, please e-mail to: migone@unipr.it
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