Self and Other. Robert Rogers L.
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as referring to the movement of goal-directed systems toward decisions. The process is measured by and expressed in terms of information. Thus is the once-mysterious psyche taken out of the realm of the supernatural to join science, the search for order in nature” (1988, 58).
While alternative models of self will doubdess continue to be formulated, it seems almost inevitable that the more valuable ones will incorpo rate systemic perspectives. If systems models of self become increasingly accepted in psychoanalysis, one consequence will be the total abandonment of libido theory and ego psychology, and sexuality will probably play a more modest role, as in Lichtenberg’s formulation. To a considerable extent the systemic model renders null the criticism, emanating from people like Lacan, of the idea of a highly coherent, specialized, centered self. For Lacan, self, at the mirror stage, is but the reflection of an alienated other (1977, 2-6); at a later stage (the Symbolic) self, or “subject,” is a subjectivity dispersed in language and culture. In contrast, the systemic model, which represents selfhood as an operational whole in spite of the number and diversity of its systemically located “parts,” preserves the possibility of virtual unity in functioning individuals without delimiting the complexity with which larger environments (culture) can be represented within the self system. Barratt (1984), who quotes Adorno as saying that identity is the primal form of ideology (251), mocks the notion of “a unified, albeit multifaceted, subject,” (139), or self, or ego, especially as favored by neo-Freudians and object relations theorists, but his own ur-Freudian model of man as fundamentally alienated and irreparably conflicted refuses recognition of the possibility of functionally unified selfhood such as may be said to be epitomized, in the vision of W. B. Yeats, by the dancer who cannot be distinguished from the dance. In any case, one can claim the existence of room in the systemic model for virtually unlimited complexity of the representation of self, other, and culture.
One can also claim that the systemic model accommodates both self-oriented and other-oriented perspectives on object relations theory. Stern declares that he places sense of self at the center of his inquiry (1985, 5), yet he manages to pursue his study with full recognition of the extent to which the other (mother) influences the development of selfhood in infants. In contrast to Stern, Lichtenstein’s other-oriented version of object relations theory may be thought to undersell infant individuality and potential for autonomy by defining identity strictly in terms of instrumentality (self as an instrument of an all-influential other). He writes, “Even as an adult, I believe, man cannot ever experience his identity except in terms of an organic instrumentality within the variations of a symbiotically structured Umwelt” (1961, 202), identity being experienced unconsciously by adults as variations on themes “imprinted” on them as infants by their mothers (208). In point of fact, Lichtenstein’s theory of selfhood, as identity theory, focuses as much on self as on other. As for the implication that self theory appears by its very name to favor self over other, what matters in the present context is that self theory models not foreclose in any way on the representation of other.
As a general rule, the idea that the development of self results in large part, though not exclusively, from the interaction of self with other appears to be beyond controversy. Object relations theorists have always been interested in what has come to be referred to as “intersubjectivity” (Atwood and Stolorow, 1984). Winnicott explains in a famous passage how a mother’s face, functioning as a mirror, allows the child to begin to experience itself as a self (1971, 111-18), and throughout his discussion of transitional phenomena he emphasizes that transitional objects are subjective objects. Kohut may be thought of as having extended the concept of the subjectivity of the object through his use of the term selfobject. Stern (1985) throws an abundance of light on the topic of intersubjectivity. As part of his articulation of the dynamics of the infant-mother dialogue, Stern speaks of attachment as self-experience (102); he illuminates the importance of “peek-a-boo” and “Fm gonna getcha” as games constituting “we-experience,” a self-other phenomenon (101-2); and he points to the way in which being with others promotes the beginnings of psychological self-regulation (75). In keeping with his declaration that “the sharing of affective states is the most pervasive and clinically germaine feature of intersubjective relatedness” (138), Stern develops at length the concept of “affect attunement,” which he defines as “the performance of [complex interactional] behaviors that express the quality of feeling of a shared affect state without imitating the exact behavioral expression of the inner state” (142). Rich and detailed, the rigorous accounts of the observation of infant-mother interaction of Stern, Beebe (1986), and others hold forth great promise for the better understanding of adult object-relations behavior.
INTERNALIZATION
In a footnote Schafer remarks that when he was writing Aspects of Internalization (1968) he had not yet realized “the extent to which the very idea of internalization was part of a major problem in psychoanalytic theorizing” (1976, 177). For Schafer the problem concerns what he regards as the illicit use of pseudospatial terms such as “internal objects.” When analysts employ the term internalization, he writes, “we refer not to a fantasy but to a psychological process, and we are saying that a shift of event, action, or situation in an inward direction or to an inner locale has occurred” (155). The question is, he asks, “inside what?” He then proceeds to develop his perfecdy legitimate claim, mentioned earlier, that there are no mental places, or spaces. Apart from what we now know about the localization of various functions in the brain, Schafer’s claim seems undeniable except that in his efforts to get the language of psychoanalysis straightened out he has forgotten that people think as-ifly, with models, and express themselves as-thoughly, through language, especially when they speak of matters, such as relationships, that cannot be weighed, measured, or located in space. In language, mental places do exist. Even unicorns exist in language! Schafer, who appreciates the danger of reifying abstractions, fails to realize the pointiessness of deliberately literalizing conceptual metaphors, that is, of setting metaphoric models up as straw men by attributing literal reality to what, in context, are consensually understood to be conceptual abstractions expressed through more or less concrete metaphoric language—as in the phrase “internal objects.”
For Meissner “the issue of internalization lies at the very heart of contemporary psychoanalytic concerns” (1981, ix). He makes this statement in the context of the emergence of “a more articulated theory of object relations,” one that “emphasizes the importance of relationships with significant objects both in development and in current adaptive functioning,” on the one hand, and the rise of “a psychology of self” on the other (ix). It does not require much of an argument, says Meissner, to show that the concept of internalization “is central to the dialectic between object and self, and that it provides the conceptual bridge between an object relations theory and a concept of self” (ix). For Meissner, then, what is at stake is not the legitimacy but the centrality of the concept of internalization.
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