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The Thirtieth Annual International Conference on the Psychoanalytic
Psychology of the Self was entitled "Self and Systems in Psychoanalysis."
Four panels were held over a span of two days, comprising seven
original, complex, and theoretically wide-ranging papers[1], four
evocative case presentations, and three discussions of these papers
exploring the concepts of Self and Systems.
I presented a concluding essay: Making Sense of Self and Systems in
Psychoanalysis. Here I present a few highlights of my summation. I noted
similarities and distinctions, more than sharp differences, across the
presentations that considered psychoanalysis as an open system, and I
offered two conceptual paradigms for the reader/listener to utilize to
make his/her own sense of these two concepts, Self and Systems, within
psychoanalytic theory and practice.
Each of the presentations emphasized and developed different aspects
of systems theory. Robert Galatzer-Levy emphasized Emergence. Howard
Bacal developed Specificity of process in psychoanalytic practice. Bill
Coburn offered a cogent summery of the key concepts of systems theory to
inform our clinical sensibility. Frank Lachmann presented a dyadic
systems view, which places mutually regulated nonverbal exchanges into
the foreground and dynamic conceptualizations in the background of
clinical practice. Joe Lichtenberg emphasized that systems thinking
alters the aim of psychoanalytic treatment to the process itself,
requiring the focus of analytic inquiry to shift from content to
process.
While each of the presentations emphasized different aspects and
applications of systems theory, there were noted similarities
across the presentations.
- Each draws our attention more to the unknown, what we can never
know, to the subjective, creative, novel, and unexpected in our work.
- Each acknowledges that minds and minds in interaction with other
minds become organized in apparently stable structures or patterns, but
such organizations are only apparently stable and never immutable.
- Each emphasizes that the parts of a system are inextricably
intertwined, never separable, but continuously influenced and
influencing all other parts in the system, and other systems, both
adjacent and distant.
- Each contends that systems theory challenges the assumptions that
undergird our more traditional psychoanalytic theories.
Each of the elaborations of systems theory offered different
systems-based psychoanalytic theories. However, these theories are not
distinct one from the other in the same way that, for example, classical
analysis might be distinguished from self psychology. We are challenged
to devise new comparative paradigms within which to discern similarities
and differences among these new systems-informed theories, their view of
therapeutic action and impact upon clinical practice. Conceptual
paradigms are needed with which to appraise the relative utility of
concepts such as self and systems to organize our clinical thinking.
In my summary essay I develop two conceptual paradigms. The first
paradigm organizes theory by its purpose, whether its purpose is
to (1) describe our subjective felt experience, such as the self
as cohesive and vigorous (the experiential level), or whether its
purpose is to (2) explain the conditions that give rise to that
experience, such as explaining emotional trauma as arising from
malattunement from caregivers (the explanatory level).
The second paradigm organizes theory by is mode of explanation:
whether a given concept is premised upon mind as structure (such
as self) or whether a concept is premised upon mind as process
(such as systems theories). Self and systems are concepts of a different
order of explanation. This is a distinction with a profound consequence
for the utility and application of the theory at the explanatory level.
Structure concepts and process concepts perform different functions at
the explanatory level. If the definitional presentation of these two
paradigms intrigues you, you may access their conceptual
development in the full text of my Summary Essay, which will be
available in a future issue of the International Journal of
Psychoanalytic Self Psychology.
Endnotes
1. The presentations by Robert Stolorow and
Malcolm Slavin considered the existentiality of human trauma, and were
not primarily devoted to concepts of self and systems. Thus, given the
limited space allotted, these two papers presented during Panel Four are
not considered within this brief summary. The reader is referred to the
papers themselves and to the full summary essay. [Return to text]
Lucyann Carlton, JD, Psy.D., is a supervising and
training analyst with the Institute of Contemporary Psychoanalysis in
Los Angeles. She has a private practice in Irvine, California.
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