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The American Impact on Psychoanalysis

  • This paper addresses the postmodern critique of unified-self theories that argues that the self is not unified but multiple, not a static entity but in constant flux, not a separate center of initiative but intersubjectively constituted. The author proposes that there are two kinds of division in self-experience: the dissociative divisions of multiple-self theory, and a division, akin to the divisions between Freud's structural agencies, between what are here termed the >intersubjective self< and >primary subjective experience.< In contrast to dissociated self-states, which occur in different moments in time, these two dimensions of self-experience occur simultaneously indeed, what is most important about them is their relationship. The author suggests that it is this intrapsychic relationship, as it occurs in a given psychological moment, that determines the qualities of self-experience that are emphasized in unified-self theories: such qualities as cohesiveness versus fragmentation authenticity vs. falseness vitality versus depletion optimal versus nonoptimal self-regulation and agency versus feeling one is at the mercy of others. Furthermore, a major organizer of the intersubjective self is early identifications, especially >identifications with the other's response to the self.< The implications of these concepts for therapeutic action are discussed and illustrated with an extended account of an analytic case.

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Metadaten
Author:Steven Stern
Parent Title (English):Psychoanalytic Dialogues Vol. 12 (2002), pp. 693-714.
Document Type:Articles
Language:English
Year of first Publication:2002
Release Date:2017/11/20
Format:xerox upon request / Fotokopie auf Anfrage
IdNo:Stern_S_2002
Erich Fromm's Library and Erich Fromm Archive:Articles / Artikel
Licence (German):
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