Freud and Beyond: A History of Modern Psychoanalytic Thought

498 Pages·1996·3.638 MB·English

by  Stephen A. Mitchell, Margaret J. Black

FREUD
AND
BEYOND
OTHER BOOKS BY STEPHEN A. MITCHELL
Hope and Dread in Psychoanalysis (1993)
Relational Concepts in Psychoanalysis:
An Integration (1988)
Object Relations in Psychoanalytic Theory
(with jay Greenberg, 1983)
FREUD
AND
A History of Modern

Psychoanalytic Thought
STEPHEN A. MITCHELL
MARGARET J. BLACK
For Caitlin and Samantha
Those who know ghosts tell us that they long
to be released from their ghost life and led to
rest as ancestors. As ancestors they live forth
in the present generation, while as ghosts
they are compelled to haunt the present
generation with their shadow life.
-Hans Loewald
CON1[NIS
1: SIGMUND FREUD AND THE CLASSICAL PSYCHOANALYTIC
TRADITION
1
2: EGO PSYCHOLOGY
23
4: MELANIE KLEIN AND CONTEMPORARY KLEINIAN THEORY
85
6: PSYCHOLOGIES OF IDENTITY AND SELF: ERIK ERIKSON
AND HEINZ KOHUT
139
Acknowledgments ix
Preface xv 5: THE BRITISH OBJECT RELATIONS SCHOOL: W.
R. D. FAIRBAIRN AND D. W. WINNICOTT
112
3: HARRY STACK SULLIVAN AND INTERPERSONAL
PSYCHOANALYSIS
60
7: CONTEMPORARY FREUDIAN REVISIONISTS: OTTO
KERNBERG, ROY SCHAFER, HANS LOEWALD, AND
JACQUES LACAN
170
8: CONTROVERSIES IN THEORY
206
9: CONTROVERSIES IN TECHNIQUE
229
Notes 255
References 267
Name Index 283
Subject Index 287
ACKNOWLE.DGMFNTS
Tis book grew out of our shared excitement about the
teaching of psychoanalytic ideas, a process that has
involved us for over twenty-five years: first as students
and supervisees, then as teachers, supervisers, and
consultants and educational administrators. We have
seen psychoanalytic concepts taught well, and we have
seen them taught poorly. "Everything you do," declared
an early teacher to start his course, "is determined by
forces inside you of which you are totally unaware." This
kind of approach makes psychoanalytic ideas seem
esoteric and alien, the claims made by psychoanalytic
theorists arrogant and ominous. When taught well,
psychoanalytic concepts have the capacity to enrich
rather than deplete, to empower rather than diminish, to
deepen experience rather than haunt it. It is with this
ideal in mind that we have approached the writing of this
book, hoping that the reader will find the concepts
contained in it stimulating, challenging, and
fundamentally graspable.
Our subject matter is vast. Only a portion of all the
existing concepts could be presented, and only a portion
of the relationships among them explored. We were
regularly confronted with impossible choices: whether to
fill out and make accessible a particularly difficult
concept, or whether to use the space to discuss the work
of one more person we felt had made a valuable
contribution to psychoanalytic understanding. We know
that we will never be fully reconciled to all the choices
we made, but console our selves with the hope that if we
succeeded in presenting what we could include in an
engaging enough manner, the book could provide for the
reader an entree into the psychoanalytic literature
(where everything is available).
Many colleagues read and commented on various
portions of various versions of this manuscript. This is not
to imply that they agree with all we have written. The
selection and the manner of presentation were,
ultimately, our choices. We are very grateful for the
imput of: Neil Altman, Lewis Aron, Diane Barth, Anthony
Bass, Martha Bernth, Phillip Bromberg, Jody Davies, Sally
Donaldson, James Fosshage, Kenneth Frank, Jay
Greenberg, Adrienne Harris, Irwin Z. Hoffman, Frank
Lachmann, Clem Loew, Susan McConnaughy, John Muller,
Sheila Ronsen, and Charles Spezzano.
Those to whose generosity we are most indebted are our
patients, whose willingness to allow us to explore their
lives with them is the foundation for all the thoughts and
concepts developed here. It is a great irony indeed that,
because of confidentiality, patients can never be thanked
by name. We are also deeply grateful to our many
supervisees whose openness and generosity with their
own work, both in moments of despair and in moments
of mastery, have allowed us to better illustrate the
constructive impact of psychoanalytic theory on the
clinical process.
We both also feel extremely fortunate to have had the
opportunity to teach psychoanalytic ideas to interested
students in many settings. The selection of concepts
presented here and the way they are developed were
honed by the reactions and challenges of our students. It
is no secret that the best way to learn anything is to
muster the temerity to teach it, and we are grateful to