Review Robert F. Bornstein and Joseph M. Masling (Eds.): Empirical Studies of the Therapeutic Hour
(2002)
There has been little or no research on the establishment of infant moods or the mechanisms underlying them. One reason may be our difficulty in entertaining the idea that there are affective processes in infants that have long-lasting organizing continuous effects. It is this possibility that is considered in this paper. I attempt to address the questions of how moods are created and what some of their functions are. My model of moods is that infants have long-lasting (e.g., hours, days, and even longer) mood states. Mood states are dynamically changing yet distinct assemblages of affective behaviors. Mood control processes are modified by affective input from others. Thus moods are cocreated by the interplay of active, self-organized, biorhythmic affective control processes in the infant and the effect of the emotions expressed by others on mood control processes. In recognition of the importance of Sander's thinking to this work, I have named one of these processes the Sanderian Affective Wave. Mood states organize behavior and experience over time. Critically, moods serve an anticipatory representational function by providing directionality to an infant's behavior as he >moves< into the future. Thus they provide continuity to infants' experiential life. Furthermore, moods fulfill the Janus principle of bringing the past into the future for the infant, but as a noncognitive/symbolic/linguistic process – that is, as a purely affective–memorial process. Moreover, I believe that consideration of the development of moods opens the way for thinking about dynamic conflictual emotional processes in infants. Lastly, thinking about moods has important implications for understanding the development of pathology and for therapy.
Louis Sander's bold and ambitious theoretical synthesis deserves careful attention from psychoanalysts of all persuasions. Sander's cutting-edge approach draws on infant observation research, nonlinear dynamic systems theories, and current biology, physics, and other >hard< sciences. He is rethinking the psychoanalytic approach to psychic structure, motivation, and therapeutic action. In so doing, he updates Freud's project of linking psychoanalysis with scientific paradigms, but without reductionism, epistemological naivete, or an implicit antipsychological attitude. Sander emphasizes the dynamic relationships between elements in systems. His method draws parallels between the different levels of the functioning of natural systems, starting with the basic >biological< level of cells and organs and moving toward the psychic and interpersonal phenomena that are of greatest interest to psychoanalysts. In this way, he opens a window for a broad and inclusive >relational metapsychology.<
As a way of integrating emerging knowledge of biological systems, developmental process, and therapeutic process, we identify principles in the process of exchange between organism and its context of life support that are present at all levels of complexity in living systems, from the cellular to the organization of consciousness. These principles range from specificity, rhythmicity, recurrence, and pattern to coherence, wholeness, and a relative unity in the organization of component parts. By proposing that these principles are also governing the exchange between mother and infant as they negotiate a sequence of essential tasks of adaptation, or >fitting-together< between them over the first years of life, the author suggests that the biological level becomes integrated with the developmental. A sequence of adaptive tasks extends from specificity of recognition in the newborn state, to recognition of inner awareness, purpose, and intention – shaping conscious organization. The bridge to the therapeutic level is constructed as therapist and patient build increasingly inclusive and coherent moments of recognition between themselves at the level of conscious organization, which act as corrective experiences, bringing the patient's own senses of >true self< and of >agency-to-initiate< to new levels of validity and competence.
Review Anna Hurry (Ed.): Psychoanalytic Monographs No. 3. Psychoanalysis and Developmental Therapy
(2002)
This paper emphasizes the clinical relevance of Sander's work and links it to the contemporary relational turn in psychoanalytic thought. Similarities to the original work of Sullivan and Fairbairn are noted, and broader commonalities with the new psychoanalytic developments are then developed. From this vantage point, two specific clinical advantages of Sander's approach are discussed. First, it focuses on interpersonal behavior, that is, on what people actually do with each other. Second, it explores a series of dialectics that are central to psychoanalytic process. These include those between complexity and unity, differences and continuity, and change and recurrence. Finally, a clinical vignette is presented, in which a shift in the tone of the supervisory interaction had a direct effect on the therapist – patient interaction and thus on the outcome of the therapy.