The self and analytic technique

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THE SELF AND ANALYTIC TECHNIQUE
Frank Summers
Chicago, Illinois

ABSTRACT

As psychoanalytic theory has evolved from the language of ego and drives to the growth and development of the self, the theory of technique has not shifted accordingly. This article begins with a historical survey of the theoretical movement leading to the current emphasis on the self. The argument is thenadvanced that this theoretical shift requires a correlative change in technique. A theory of psychoanalytic technique is then described that emanates from the analytic goal of restructuring the self. The centerpiece of the proposed technical approach is the application of Winnicott's concept of potential space to the analytic process. The argument is that Winnicott's notion provides psychoanalytictherapy with a theory of technique devised specifically for the creation of new aspects of the self.

Keywords: potential space, self creation, authentic self expression, new self organization, analyst's vision
Psychoanalytic therapy began as a technique for the uncovering of repressed psychological material, originally memories, later wishes and fantasies. Irrespective of how the repressedcontent was conceptualized, the purpose of the technique, free association and interpretation, was to bring the material to consciousness so that its influence could be diminished. To achieve this goal, transference analysis was emphasized as the best means to attack the influence of the unconscious. This model of the analytic process was a logical derivative of the extant theory of neurosis as theproduct of unconscious conflict. According to this theory, symptoms resulted from unconscious affects, so that their elevation to consciousness was thought to be sufficient to eliminate them.
In the early phase of the theory of psychoanalytic technique, the structure of the personality was not regarded as an analytic issue and, therefore, was not a target of the process. However, that state ofaffairs began to change as ego-psychological theory flourished. If conflict is ubiquitous and only some conflicts result in symptoms, a defect in the ego's ability to manage competing psychological pressures must be responsible for symptom outbreak. Therefore, ego-psychological theorists such as Anna Freud (1936), Hartmann (1939), and Rapaport (1957) contended that pathological symptoms were due asmuch to problems in the ego's ability to master competing tensions as to the drive pressure itself. Fenichel (1945), a stellar spokesman for this viewpoint, drew the conclusion that to explain symptoms, one must posit “some failure in the normal ego control apparatus.” That is to say, the logic of ego psychology required the concept of an ego defect to account for symptomatic outbreak. At thisjuncture in psychoanalytic history, a turn was made away from conceptualizing symptoms exclusively in terms of the symbolic meaning of repressed contents to an equal emphasis on the ego's capacities for coping with the pressure for drive discharge.
As a result, the theory of technique became focused as much on the defenses as on what was being defended against (A. Freud, 1936). As the analyst nowhad to work at changing the structure of the ego, the aims of psychoanalytic therapy shifted to include psychological structure. Although this conclusion followed logically from the use of the structural model, it did not change the technical emphasis on the interpretation of psychic conflict. The major technical implication, then, of the ego-psychological formulation of psychopathology was theinclusion of the defenses and superego as targets of analytic interpretation. Analysts geared their interpretive efforts as much to the motivations and types of defenses and the origins of guilt as to the content of unconscious wishes. The ego-psychological theory of technique never wavered from the time-honored analytic commitment to insight as the tool of the psychoanalytic process; it simply...