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New perspectives offer opportunities to refine our understanding of
clinical situations and theoretical ideas. The 30th international
conference on the Psychology of the Self offered an opportunity to
compare self psychological and non-linear dynamic systems (complexity)
perspectives on the process of change. In light of those discussions, I
wondered how complexity theory might inform our understanding of the
role of disruption and repair in the process of change. Who and what is
"disrupted?" What does it mean to "repair" a disruption? Who does what
to whom?
Kohut's delineation of the empathic stance changed our awareness of
the relational context in which disruptions and repairs occur. He
argued that the analyst's ability to empathically grasp and convey
understanding of the patient's inner world facilitates the establishment
of a selfobject transference (Kohut, 1971). When this transference is
disrupted, the patient's internal dynamics, objects, and conflicts are
not the sole focus of investigation; the impact of the analyst's
inevitable "empathic failures" must also be considered. Consequently,
empathic failure plays a role in ruptures just as empathic attunement
facilitates repair. From this perspective, once ruptures are
empathically understood and repaired, the selfobject tie is "restored"
and the patient's developmental process "resumes." This formulation
implies that the repair reinstates the former relationship and
selfobject transference. Clinical experience suggests, however, that
the nature of the relationship itself may change; the process ushers in
new relational possibilities. Describing what emerges as simply the
restoration and resumption of the selfobject transference minimizes the
significance of this shift.
Kohut also recognized that something changes as a result of the
disruption and repair process. He argued that optimal frustration
promotes the internalization of the analyst's function; that is, if the
frustration created by the empathic lapse is "tolerable," then the
rupture and repair process supports the acquisition of psychic structure
(Kohut, 1984). Although Kohut's conceptualization of transmuting
internalization suggests that something changes when ruptures are
repaired, his focus on psychic structure does not address the systemic
nature of the shift.
Infant research further elaborates the dyadic quality of rupture and
repair sequences. Beebe and Lachmann (2002) and Stern (1985)
demonstrate that ongoing regulations create "expectancies" which
organize relational experiences. When the coordination of regulation is
disrupted, the dyad tends to return to a coordinated state within a
matter of seconds (Beebe & Lachmann, 2002). This research implies that
disruptions and repairs are systemically mediated, a point I will
revisit. Tronick (1989) suggested that sequences of disjunction, repair,
and return to coordinated regulation restore regulation as well as
establish repair as a possibility. Ongoing, coordinated regulations and
moments of mismatch, disjunction, and repair teach an infant "how to be"
with another; thus, both processes serve as a basis for "implicit
relational knowing" (Stern et. al., 1998). Stern and his colleagues
also propose that "moments of meeting," described as "nodal experiences
of authentic person to person connection" (1998, p. 904), alter the
intersubjective context, thereby changing the "shared implicit
relationship." I submit that the disruption and repair process gives
rise to "moments of meeting" which change the "shared implicit
relationship" while also facilitating reconnection.
Complexity theory also embraces a model of interactive regulation.
It further suggests that disruptions are systemic events which affect
both members of the dyad and their interactions. Relational
expectancies are brought to life and ruptured in a systemic context; the
patient's expectancies are not the only ones disturbed—the analyst's
are as well. Each influences and "perturbs" (systems language for
disruption) the other's relational expectations, affecting the
relational patterning and shared implicit relationship. Just as "you
can't hold one individual responsible for the sometimes excruciating
repetitiveness of relational expectancies and patterns" (Coburn, in
press), you can't hold one individual responsible for perturbation. The
disruption affects both participants as well as their relationship even
though the meaning that it holds will be uniquely contoured by each
person's relational history and expectancies.
Also, just as the system bears the effects of disruption, so too it
bears responsibility for repair. Even when ruptures seem to be easily
repaired, the repair requires coordination. The mutually determined
ability of patient and analyst to work collaboratively facilitates and
supports the repair—neither can realize it alone. From a complexity
perspective, the repair is greater than either could create in
isolation.
This brings us to the role of disruption and repair processes in
change. Thelen and Smith (1994) argue that development occurs in a
context of "stabilization and destabilization" (p. 61). Stolorow (1997)
emphasizes that this conception of change "posits that change
requires disorganization of the developing system. It is the loss
of stability and coherence that provides the bumps that allow the system
to discover its new stable patterns. ..." (p. 342). Systemic repairs
require the patient and analyst to "reconfigure themselves in relation
to one another in creative and novel ways" (Coburn, 2002). Thus,
complexity theory implies that in the wake of a disruption and repair
process, the system does not resume its former relational patterning.
The joint participation in the repair process, whether explicitly
discussed or implicitly experienced, alters the relational expectancies
and "shared implicit relationship," thereby allowing the system to
discover new ways to be together. I suggest that part of what emerges
is novel possibilities for formulating meaning and dialogic relatedness
with an other (Sucharov, 2007).
Rupture and repair sequences may restore a selfobject tie and
facilitate the selfobject transference, as self psychology argues, and
create new relational expectancies, as infant research suggests. But
neither formulation fully accounts for the clinical perception that
something more emerges from the process. Complexity theory emphasizes
that the system is changed, and that change is distributed throughout
and supported by the entire system. Thus, disruptions destabilize the
system, perturbing the understanding each person has of himself, the
other, and the way that they interact. The repair process reorganizes
the relational experience and expectancies. Taken together, rupture and
repair sequences change the system's ability to tolerate, understand,
and reorganize in the wake of perturbation, thereby repositioning the
system at a new "tipping point" ready for further change to emerge.
References
Beebe, B. & Lachmann, F. (2002), Infant research and adult
treatment: Co-constructing interactions, Hillsdale, NJ: The Analytic
Press.
Coburn, W. (2002), A world of systems: The role of systemic patterns
of experience in the therapeutic process. Psychoanalytic Inquiry,
Vol. 22 (5), p. 655-677.
Coburn, W. (2007), Psychoanalytic complexity: Pouring new wine
directly into one's mouth. New developments in self psychology
practice (Buirski & Kottler, Eds.), In press.
Kohut, H. (1971), The analysis of the self. Madison, CT:
International Universities Press.
Kohut, H. (1984), How does analysis cure? (A. Goldberg & P.
Stephansky, Eds.) Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Stern, D. (1985), The interpersonal world of the infant. New
York: Basic Books.
Stern, D., Sander, L., Nahum, J., Harrison, Al, Bruschweiler-Stern,
N. & Tronick, E. (1998), Non-interpretative mechanisms in psychoanalytic
therapy. International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 79: 903-921.
Stolorow, R.D. (1997), Dynamic, dyadic, intersubjective systems: An
evolving paradigm for psychoanalysis. Psychoanalytic Psychology,
14: 337-346.
Sucharov, M. (2007), Kafka's window and Kohut's mirror: A dialogic
journey to the center of traumatic worlds. New Developments in Self
Psychology Ed. Buirski and Kottler, In press.
Thelen, E. & Smith, L. (1994), A dynamic systems approach to the
development of cognition and action. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Tronick, E. (1989), Emotions and emotional communication in infants,
American Psychologist, 44: 112-119.
Margaret Sperry, Psy.D., M.F.T., is a Supervising and
Training Analyst and faculty member at the Institute of Contemporary
Psychoanalysis, Los Angeles, and an adjunct faculty member at Antioch
University, Los Angeles. She has a private practice in Los Angeles,
CA.
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