Relationalizing Self Psychology:Commentary on Magid, Fosshage and Shane’s The Emerging Paradigm of Relational Self Psychology: An Historical Perspective

ABSTRACT

This commentary aims at reflecting upon and contextualizing the emergence of relational self psychology and considers how it continues to transform our theoretical and clinical landscapes. It underscores, first, the phenomena of self organization and emergence (of new perspectives and sensibilities) witnessed in our field in general, given that the arena of psychoanalytic self psychology has always been a complex system in its own right. It then addresses the concept of the self, which is rendered increasingly ephemeral, fluid, dynamic, and non-entity-like. And finally, it explores the relationalizing of self psychology, including not only accepting the personhood of the analyst and the bidirectionality of the two analytic participants, but relying upon them as central to therapeutic action.

KEYWORDS:

• Relational
• self psychology
• intersubjectivity
• complexity
• selfhood

Notes

¹ Shane and Shane (1993) concluded at the time: “As for the question we raise—one self psychology or many?—it is clear that the authors we have discussed are original contributors, dedicated to their own unique perspectives, less interested in sounding like one another, or Kohut, than in clearly defining and putting forth their own views. As the situation stands today, we would have to conclude that there are many self psychologies, not just one, reflecting not only the state of psychoanalysis in general, but also the vigor and ferment that constitutes health in any growing and changing science” (p. 795). See also Strozier (2001) for a thorough explication of the early Kohut circle’s interpersonal dynamics, and also Stolorow (1995) vis-à-vis the distinction between the “loyalists” and the “expansionists.”

² In his introduction to Kohut (1984) How Does Analysis Cure? Goldberg reminds us of the prophecy of William James, one that had been conveyed to Kohut in regard to his The Analysis of the Self (1971), that, about an idea, “First they will say it is all wrong, then that it is unimportant and trivial, and finally that they knew it all along” (p.xi).

³ Derrida writes: “To have a friend, to look at him, to follow him with your eyes, to admire him in friendship, is to know in a more intense way, already injured, always insistent, and more and more unforgettable, that one of the two of you will inevitably see the other die. One of us, each says to himself, the day will come when one of the two of us will see himself no longer seeing the other … ” (2001, p. 107).

⁴ Elsewhere I had commented that “ … any specific self-state I may experience in my patient or in myself is not really in anything but rather distributed across a broader relational context of which my patient and I are adaptive constituents. This preconception highlights the crucial distinction between how and what we experience and that which gives rise to the experience, a distinction of necessity if we are to avoid the conceptual confusion inherent in many of our theoretical and clinical dialogues. I refer here to the distinction between what is experienced, on a variety of levels of consciousness (Stern, 1997), and the dynamic, unpredictable interplay of the multitude of interpenetrating adaptive relational systems that give rise to such experience. … it is useful to know on what level of discourse we are speaking from one moment to the next … the phenomenological or the explanatory. Explanatorily speaking, I understand a ‘self-state’ to be a dimension of experience that is emergent and always of a context and that it is always a product and a property of a larger relational/historical system” (2006, p. 604).

⁵ See Maduro (2019) for an in-depth exploration of the ramifications of relationality and embeddedness in the evolution of individual selfhood.

⁶ There are continuing disagreements on use of language pertaining to the term self. For example, see Baker (2021) less than charitable response to Stolorow and Atwood’s oeuvre vis-à-vis the self, and Stolorow and Atwood (2021) on why language actually matters, underscoring the vital distinction between the designative and the constitutive perspectives on use of language. See also Stolorow & Atwood (2020) Bewitching Oxymorons and Illusions of Harmony.

⁷ As a cautionary note, I am reminded of Orange’s admonition (2017, p. 93): “ … we too may commit violence and exclusion against those we refuse to hear, calling them non-psychoanalytic or not-relational-enough, further fragmenting the psychoanalytic community, and engendering more unburied ghosts.”

⁸ See Stolorow (1999) response to Alan Kindler (1999) The Case of Joanna Churchill.

⁹ See Lothane for how relational Freud actually was: “The advocates of the relational approach in psychoanalysis will be surprised to hear that Freud was a Sullivanian, even though—like the proverbial M. Jourdain who never heard the word prose—he never heard of the word interpersonal” (Lothane, 2003, p. 609).

¹⁰ Alice Balint and Michael Balint were onto this as early as 1939.

¹¹ Bacal writes: “The frustration of my invitation to Kohut to join me in exploring the commonalities between self psychology and relational theory was not optimal but, fortunately, not disruptive of our therapeutic relationship. I did, however, hold to my view that self psychology and some relational theories not only had a good deal in common but also had much to offer each other” (Bacal, 2017, p. 16).

¹² Kohut (1978) once wrote: “I believe that psychoanalysis will in the not too distant future examine itself afresh, will reorganize its basic stance, will transmute its inheritance into new creative initiatives” (p.685)

Additional information

Notes on contributors

William J. Coburn

William J. Coburn, Ph.D., Psy.D. is Founding Editor Emeritus of Psychoanalysis, Self and Context (formerly the International Journal of Psychoanalytic Self Psychology), Associate Editor of Psychoanalytic Dialogues, and an Editorial Board Member of Psychoanalytic Inquiry. He is a Faculty Member and Training and Supervising Analyst at the Institute of Contemporary Psychoanalysis in Los Angeles.