Self and Other. Robert Rogers L.
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way: “Whenever I spoke of either of my parents, what I said was, for her, phantasy, and any reference to the realities was taking refuge from it. So I was doubly caught in the ‘spider’s web’; I was the crazy one, not my mother; she [Sharpe] was the one who ‘knew,’ as my mother, not I, had always known; while my recognition of my own and my mother’s psychosis was dismissed as phantasy” (16). After an interim period with Marion Milner, Little began an analysis with Winnicott. He was able to provide a long-term, empathic environment that allowed Little to “work” at her own pace. He evidendy succeeded in providing for Little the kind of potential space she required in order to become a person in her own right—with a corresponding relief from her psychotic anxieties. “In the words of an old friend from before analysis, I was ‘not recognizable as the same person’” (37). While Little’s experiences do not provide a perfecdy clear-cut, uncomplicated illustration because of the presence of other issues, such as the differing developmental levels Sharpe and Winnicott chose to address, plus the fact that Litde’s work with Sharpe was by no means without object relational elements, certainly not without very early ones, Little’s account may nevertheless be regarded as highlighting some of the differences between drive-oriented and person-oriented approaches. Extensive case material in chapters 3 and 4 will serve as further illustration of such differences.
Given the amount and seriousness of the criticism of drive theory in psychoanalysis, the comparative absence of significant countering responses, and the extent to which so many figures important in the history of object relations psychology have shifted toward a person oriented position, the amount of profession wide reluctance to give up drive theory is surprising. One instance can be located in the fence-straddling position, mentioned earlier, of Greenberg and Mitchell: their claim that we shall have to live with two incompatible theories of human behavior, one drive oriented and one person oriented. Late in their book—an extraordinarily valuable compendium of information about object relations theory remarkable for the degree of attentiveness, discrimination, and detachment they exhibit in describing, usually with great fidelity and thoroughness, the differing viewpoints at issue—they speak of the two object relational orientations as being based on incompatible but equally meaningful philosophical positions, one being that humans are inescapably individual creatures and the other that they are unavoidably social creatures (1983, 403). Claiming further that “model mixing is unstable” (403), they argue 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 phenomena” (404). They even go so far as to declare that “the evaluation of psychoanalytic theories is a matter of personal choice” (407)! Yet Greenberg and Mitchell appear to drop their stance of rhetorical neutrality at that point in the book where they associate themselves with Jacobson’s position: “Jacob-son’s work overall constitutes what we consider the most satisfying drive/structure model theory after Freud’s” (306; italics added). Here they seem to associate themselves with her position even though they recognize her accommodations to an object-relational view to be an instance of model mixing, a practice they elsewhere decry. If the position they adopt here constitutes a departure from their customary neutrality, perhaps it accounts for why they fail to do justice to the critiques of drive theory by Guntrip, G. S. Klein, Gill, Holt, and Schafer which they cite. One cannot, after all, take these critiques seriously while at the same time maintaining that explanatory parity exists between the drive-oriented and person-oriented positions. An alternative possibility is that the appearance of fence-straddling created by the pose of detached objectivity in Greenberg and Mitchell does not mask any lingering allegiance to drive theory but, on the contrary, disguises their unfettered commitment to more progressive views, views they may have avoided espousing directly as a way of circumventing the arousal of counter productive antagonism that might further polarize the opposing camps instead of encouraging a potentially productive exchange of ideas. Whatever his strategy in 1983, five years later Mitchell unequivocally endorses “a purely relational mode perspective, unmixed with drive-model premises” (1988, 54). He also says that work in preparation by Greenberg takes a similar position (135). It matters little whether the radical shift in their position was real or virtual; what I am calling attention to is the fact that in giving the appearance of countenancing drive-oriented object relations theory as still being intellectually respectable in 1983, the enormously influential, authoritative study of Greenberg and Mitchell may have had the effect of deterring rather than spurring a desirable evolution of views in the profession.
Another and more obvious instance of the present unsatisfactory state of affairs in psychoanalysis appears in the form of the polemical aggressiveness of Edelson’s recent book, Psychoanalysis: A Theory in Crisis (1988), especially that portion of the work focusing on the theory of sexuality. We have but to weed the garden of psychoanalysis of its stagnating, choking overgrowth, believes Edelson, for the distinctive contributions of psychoanalysis to emerge “sharp, clear, in bold relieP” (xvi). For him this means giving primacy, among other things, to “the causal force of the quest for sexual pleasure over that of the quest for the object. . . and the causal force of sexual wishes over that of aggressive (and non-sexual) wishes” (xxi). Edelson believes the psychoanalytic theory of sexuality “to be in danger of dilution and displacement to the periphery by current preoccupation with ‘the self,’ ‘identity,’ ‘object-relations,’ ‘interpersonal interactions,’ ‘the importance of the mother-infant relation and the pre-oedipal experiences of the very young infant,’ and ‘aggression’” (xxvii). What he wants to do is to restore sexuality to the glory of its former centrality in psychoanalysis. He asks, “Do object-relations theories involve rather a redefinition of just what phenomena are of interest to psychoanalysis?” (224) He admits, “I don’t know,” yet that admission of ignorance does not deter him for a moment from asserting that “the inevitable slide away from the mind’s workings to interpersonal interactions directly contradicts”—as far as he is concerned—” what is most distinctive about psychoanalysis” (225). If he believes “the slide” to be “inevitable,” one wonders why Edelson insists on adopting the heroic posture of fighting fate by positioning himself directly in opposition to it. The point of mentioning Edelson’s position on drive theory, one that many may find starkly reactionary, is that his viewpoint—that of a psychoanalyst of some eminence—is far from being unshared by others, and must be taken seriously, if only for the distinctness with which it describes a perspective currently in question.
The position espoused in this chapter, and further discussed in chapter 2, amounts very nearly to a mirror-opposite of the one defended by Edelson. It assumes that attachment behavior, which will be treated as a special branch of object relations behavior, is instinctive, like sexual behavior, at least in its beginnings. It further assumes that sexual behavior needs to be regarded, especially in terms of its potential for producing conflict, as intermingled with, but subordinate to, object-relations behavior. The concept of psychic energy has no place in this explanatory framework. Sexual behavior, whatever its degree of instinctiveness, reflects but one of many human needs whose priority at any given moment varies according to circumstances, that is, to the urgency of other priorities, but which over long periods of time does not ordinarily take precedence over the need of human beings for emotionally significant personal attachments, including not only the initial and highly instinctive attachment of child to parent but also those taking the form of endless possible permutations of the primal one such as those we encounter in the form of fantasy in the realm of art. The problem of the relationship of self to other in this scheme of things constitutes a separate but related issue.
2. TOWARD A UNIFIED THEORY OF OBJECT RELATIONS
One of the tasks facing anyone discussing object relations theory is that of mapping the terrain. What is to be included in the territory? To what extent is the field of object relations congruent with the domain of psychoanalysis as a whole? Pine treats object relations as just one of what he calls the four psychologies of psychoanalysis: “the psychologies of drive, ego, object relations, and self” (1988, 571). Pine’s discussion of these realms of theory makes no effort to reconcile their incompatibilities. He ignores the massive case against drive theory. He also ignores