Representations in Action

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Notes

In this context it is important to point out the attachment paradigm in mainstream academic psychology. The “internal working models of relationships” originally envisioned by Bowlby (1969, 1973, 1980) have made a major impact on research on internalization and interpersonal relationships. Attachment theory and research is also highly consistent with the notion that people shape their own environment (cf. Muir, 1995). However, although this paradigm is now extensively cited by leading psychoanalytic theories (cf. Fonagy, Steele, Steele, Higgitt, & Target, 1994), the lack of elaboration of unconscious and defensive functioning can be seen as an impediment to this paradigm’s integration with psychoanalytic theory (cf. Slade, 1999; Fonagy, 1999; Holmes, 2001).

Harry Stack Sullivan and Paul Wachtel were important exceptions to this point of view, for instance, in Sullivan’s notion of the importance of chumship in late latency and early adolescence (Sullivan, 1953) and in Wachtel’s rejection of what he called “the woolly mammoth” notion of the unconscious (Wachtel, 1977, 1997). Loewald also insisted that “The unconscious is capable of change and, as Freud says, is ‘accessible to the impressions of life’” (Loewald, 1960, p. 57). Additionally, authors integrating object relations theory with family therapy perspectives (e.g., Scharff & Scharff, 1987) are also attuned to the effect of the social (i.e., family) context on mental representations.

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Notes on contributors

Golan Shahar

Golan Shahar is Assistant Professor, Departments of Psychiatry and Psychology, and the Program on Recovery and Community Health, Yale University. Lisa W. Cross is Clinical Assistant Professor, Department of Psychiatry, Yale University School of Medicine. Christopher C. Henrich is Assistant Professor, Department of Psychology, Georgia State University.