[This material - three chapters of a book in preparation - has been sent by Paul Wachtel as background for the discussion of his paper presented on June 12, 2004, at the Annual Meeting of the Rapaport-Klein Study Group] Go to: Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3
We have seen that two-person theorists’ views of how we understand another person stress the inevitable (and inevitably powerful) influence of our own needs, proclivities, and active participation with the person we are trying to understand. There is no "immaculate perception" whereby we may simply see the person as he or she "is," divorced from our own role in the investigative process and our own point of view. This is no mere ivory-tower abstraction; it has profound implications for how we actually proceed clinically. At the very least, it implies that the transference does not simply "unfold" or "emerge" for us to observe it in its pristine purity, that there is no single "real" or "true" transference that will be revealed if only we stay out of the way and do not muddy it. The transference, as well as everything else we observe about the patient, is drenched in our participation in the events we are observing, two-person theorists tell us, and failure to appreciate this impoverishes our understanding and misleads us in significant and problematic ways. It is important to recognize, however, that how fundamentally or comprehensively any given therapist modifies the traditional stance of the relatively "neutral," anonymous, or minimally interactive therapist is not necessarily predictable from the position he or she takes on the epistemological questions that have occupied us thus far. There are therapists whose endorsement of the "two-person" epistemological position described in the last chapter is associated with an approach to clinical practice that departs quite substantially from traditional models, and there are therapists whose endorsement of such a position feels to them quite consistent with a mode of daily practice that {c} in its basic structure or stance is barely distinguishable from the way therapists proceeded fifty or sixty years ago.[1] This diversity of practice modes among therapists who identify as relational or two-person in their point of view is a source of considerable potential confusion, especially for new therapists trying to learn how to work relationally, or even to decide whether or not the relational perspective is one they wish to explore further. A related source of confusion is the view, held by many who are unfamiliar with relational thinking, that a relational perspective requires the therapist to self-disclose frequently, to be active and explicitly interactional as the primary stance in the therapy, and in other ways to depart from the mode of practice that has characterized exploratory or depth-oriented psychotherapy almost from its inception. As we shall see, this is a misunderstanding of the therapeutic implications of a relational point of view. What relational thinking does, most of all, is question the requirement that the therapist not engage in these "departures." Saying that one may engage in any particular activity and saying that one must are quite different. It is the very elements of choice, variability, and sensitivity to the specifics of the patient and what the patient is seeking (cf. Bacal, 19xx) that most centrally characterize relational practice, and it is a central aim of this book to explore and clarify the implications of [this perspective]. Two-Person Epistemology, One-Person Theory? A key reason for the perhaps surprising lack of linkage between the holding of a one- or two-person epistemological position and the [stance] the therapist takes in clinical practice lies in differences in the substantive theories that the practitioner holds. As I hope to make clear in this chapter, it is not uncommon for therapists who manifest a two-person perspective with regard to the epistemological questions of how and what we actually know about another person and how our own participation influences what we observe, and who, partly because of this, identify themselves as relational in orientation, nonetheless to manifest largely one-person thinking in their understanding of the actual foundations of personality - the dynamics, the developmental origins, the role of past and present influences, the key motives, needs, conflicts it is important to address, and how these all fit together. There is, of course, much overlap between a theorist’s or therapist’s epistemological views and what I am here referring to, in contrast, as theoretical. Sullivan’s notion of participant-observation, for example, might be seen as the epistemological dimension of his theoretical view that personality is "the relatively enduring pattern of recurrent interpersonal situations which characterize a human life." (Sullivan, 1953).[2] There are, nonetheless, real and important differences between what constitutes a two-person epistemology and a two-person theory, and understanding these differences can enable us better to understand the basis for differences in therapists’ approaches to clinical practice. Appreciating the ways in which some relational approaches have more of a "one-person" than a "two-person" character is perhaps best approached by beginning at the other end of the spectrum - with the theoretical perspectives from which relational thinkers have attempted to differentiate themselves and which they have tended to label as "one-person" theories. In doing so, we can see better how relational thinkers have, not infrequently, incorporated key structural features of the very models they were explicitly attempting to replace and transcend. By and large, the theorizing that is best characterized as one-person in nature [in structure] is theory that stresses {that is especially highly focused on} the "internal" structures of the personality and depicts them as being relatively uninfluenced by current interpersonal or relational events. In Freud’s own theorizing, for example, one of the key characteristics of the id, in contrast to the ego, is that it is relatively impervious to new input from reality. When Freud (1923) defines the ego as the part of the personality that "starts out from perception" and that "has been modified by the direct influence of the external world," he is implicitly - and with clear intent - defining the id as not influenced by the external world, not linked very closely or directly with perception. Put differently, the id, for Freud, functions as a kind of free agent in the psyche, influencing the ego and our actions in the real world but not in turn being influenced by them, except insofar as its inclinations are blocked or diverted by the actions of defenses or further aroused by new stimulation. Id desires and fantasies, then, can be stirred or triggered by current experiences, can be at least partially constrained or inhibited by the dictates of reality as mediated by the ego, but they cannot be significantly changed by new experience, they cannot grow up. Only the ego can evolve and adapt in response to new experiences. The id remains "infantile," "primitive," "archaic," and "timeless." It is not surprising that this way of thinking {c} was continued in those later theories which followed most closely the line of development of "orthodox" psychoanalysis - the so-called "classical" approach and its further elaboration as ego psychology. More noteworthy is that it is evident as well in some threads of theory development that are quite commonly viewed as important elements in the contemporary relational point of view. Object relations theories and self psychology introduce many new ideas, and their views about the wellsprings of our motivational and fantasy life differ in significant ways from Freud’s original formulations.[3] But in their theoretical structure they do not depart as sharply. As a consequence, many of the ideas that are widely viewed as part of the relational synthesis, are, in the crude terminology of "one" and "two" person theories (a terminology I will be examining more closely at the end of this chapter) more one-person theories than two-person theories. This is a source of considerable potential confusion in attempting to sort out the implications of these theories. Central to what I mean by the "one-person" structure of some putatively relational theories is their reliance, either explicitly or implicitly, on concepts of fixation or developmental arrest and their tendency to view key elements in the psyche as "early" (especially "preoedipal"), "archaic," or "primitive." The concepts of fixation and arrest reflect the assumption (much like that held by Freud) that early experiences, fantasies, desires, or representations are preserved in their original form (and, in most of these conceptualizations, preserved in their original intensity as well). They imply as well that the fixated or arrested psychological structure is largely impervious [unsusceptible] to modification by new experiences - or at least by any experience other than the unique experience of psychoanalysis itself, which is seen as fostering a "regression" to the early fault, flaw, fixation, point of arrest, or primitive or archaic layer of the psyche. In much theoretical writing in the object relations and self psychological traditions, no less than in earlier Freudian accounts, crucial parts of the psyche are viewed as frozen in time, unable to grow up as the more familiar and accessible reaches of the psyche do, unable to adapt to new circumstances. This is why these theories so regularly refer to psychological problems and psychological structures as being "early," or "pre-oedipal," or a problem rooted in experiences at age one or two or three. The assumption is that the depths of the psyche retain the characteristics of how they were when the [sluice gates went down], when the psyche fatefully split and some parts remained tragically divided from the highly adaptive, creative creature we ordinarily believe human beings to be (and which, indeed, we must also be to have survived with our relatively mediocre physical equipment while the magnificently armed saber-toothed tiger and the seemingly impregnable mastodon fell by the wayside). Psychopathology, then, in many psychoanalytic accounts - including many putatively "relational" accounts - is a function of when we got stuck. The more severe the pathology, the "earlier" our point of fixation or developmental arrest must be. And hence, as we shall see in later chapters [in Part Two], the need for "regression" is central in many relational accounts (e.g., Winnicott, 19xx; Maroda, 19xx; xxxxx)[4] in order for meaningful therapeutic gain to be achieved. We must go back, recreate the circumstances of the early mother-infant bond or recreate the intensity and primitive quality of our earliest affect-fused representations in order to repair the "deepest" damage and achieve the most profound change (on the metaphor of depth and the ways it skews our thinking, often without our awareness, see Wachtel, 2003). These "one-person" conceptualizations in the midst of much relational theorizing also lend themselves, at least implicitly [if not always intentionally and wittingly], to the imagery of "emerging" and "unfolding" that I referred to in Chapter One. That is, although they view the content of our key psychological structures as relational in nature, they view those structures as part of an "inner world" that is largely sealed off from the rest of the psyche and from the new experiences which might otherwise modify them. There is thus a [potential] warrant, from the vantage point of these object relational and self psychological theories to practice much like the one-person observer of the patient’s psyche that the analyst is in more classical approaches < - that is, to sit, wait, listen [hide], and interpret>. In contrast, where a two-person epistemology is integrated with a full-blooded [thoroughgoing] two-person theory (see below), the therapist is more likely to view the contents of the patient’s psyche not as simply emerging or unfolding from within, but as reflecting a continually evolving psychological organization and framework of experience that responds acutely and sensitively, not only to the specifics of what is transpiring in the room with the therapist but to the ongoing flow of events and circumstances in the rest of the patient’s life as well. As I shall discuss in more detail below, this perspective does not imply a rejection of or lack of interest in the [deeper layers of the] patient’s unique subjectivity but an understanding of that subjectivity as contextual, multifaceted, and continually evolving. Moreover, as I shall also elaborate in detail in chapter 3, this attention to our responsiveness to ongoing events is not [is in no way] incompatible with attention to the ways in which we [in which our characteristic modes of experiencing] can be slow to change, "sticky," or idiosyncratic. Understanding of the simultaneous operation of assimilation and accommodation in the schemas that guide our experience of these events enable us to [understand how stability and even problematic adherence to older ways of experiencing can be consistent with - and can even operate through - our simultaneous [sensitivity to changing circumstances] (see Wachtel, 1980). Of course, to identify some common features of relational theorizing as one-person in character does not in itself mean they are incorrect. Evaluating their validity or utility requires a different kind of inquiry, one which I shall address later. But it does help us to elucidate some important [and often unappreciated] differences among the various approaches joined under the [rather catholic] rubric of "relational." The aim of relational synthesis pursued by Mitchell and other leading figures in the relational movement has had a valuable generative effect on the field and has illuminated points of convergence between different theories that had been obscured by differing vocabularies and by the politics and sociology of our field. But a synthesis is different from [must be more than] a coalition. When there are significant incompatibilities or clashes between elements of a putative synthesis, it is essential to elucidate them if we are to achieve a synthesis that is genuinely workable and that sharpens rather than blurs our understanding. What Should a Two-Person Theory Look Like? In contending that many putatively relational theories are more one-person theories than two, what am I suggesting a two-person theory should look like? To begin with, instead of positing an intrapsychic realm that is sealed off from and largely uninfluenced by what happens in daily life (in the "outside" world as it is sometimes described), a satisfactory two-person account would attend to all the experiences and observations that gave rise to the one-person accounts, but would contextualize them. This influence of context and interaction is generally acknowledged (and even emphasized) by relational theorists in the epistemological realm. The material emerging in the session is seen not as an unmediated or uncontaminated expression of the patient’s inner world, but as an experience that is co-constructed by patient and analyst, a mutual product that cannot be properly understood without taking into account the continuing, minute-by-minute contribution of the analyst. Similarly, it is often acknowledged (and again even emphasized) in relational accounts of the process of early development. The continuous mutual impact of mother and child on each other’s behavior and experience is highlighted both in relational theoretical writings and in [accumulating] empirical research (see, for example, Beebe, Lachmann, Stern, Tronick refs.). In conceptualizing the day to day and moment to moment functioning of adults, however, and where the context of concern is their daily world of work, family, and friends rather than the relationship with the analyst, the import of mutuality and the continuing ongoing impact of context is less fully appreciated. Rather, much relational theorizing is characterized by the language of "internalization," "internalized objects," "primitive and archaic representations," fixations, developmental arrests, and "pre-oedipal" levels of experiencing. But just as the patient’s experiences are assumed by most relational theorists to be co-determined by the presence, characteristics, and mode of interaction of the therapist (including that mode of interaction we call sitting and silently listening), and as the psyche of the baby is widely viewed these days as reflecting real features of the mother-child interaction, so too, in a thoroughgoing two-person account, is all of development and all of personality functioning and dynamics - throughout the life cycle and outside as well as within the therapeutic session - viewed in relation to the ongoing relationships, interactions, and circumstances of the person’s life. This position is easily misunderstood. Critics of relational theorizing have at times suggested that it implies that the person is a mere slave to stimuli, a product of the environment with no personal core, no distinct personality or personal uniqueness, no subjectivity or agency. Many of the criticisms have focused particularly on the version of relational theory put forth by Mitchell (see, for example, Masling, 2003 [include other refs in Masling such as Eagle and Meissner]), and thus are not directly relevant to the positions taken in this book. But since similar criticisms are not infrequently advanced regarding relational theorizing more generally, it seems important to address their relevance to the conceptualizations offered here [offered in this book]. " fully two-person theory of the sort I am here outlining in no way excludes - or even minimizes - consideration of personal uniqueness or of what is usually referred to as the intrapsychic.[5] Rather, what a thoroughgoing two-person theoretical structure entails is an understanding of the person’s longstanding characteristics and proclivities that contextualizes them. In so doing, such an account is able to provide a more complete account of how those structures - of thought, fantasy, affect, motivation, identity, etc. - are linked to each other and to the ongoing experiences of the person’s life. A two-person theory of intrapsychic structure is rooted both in the many observations that point to the stubborn persistence of certain modes of thought, affect, and desire and in the observations - also obvious and compelling if one is not constrained by theory to minimize them - that indicate how strikingly variable our behavior and experience are from day to day, moment to moment, situation to situation, companion to companion, mood to mood. This variability, this flux - proceeding hand in hand with the maintenance of a consistent [persisting] and self-coherent structure - is a quintessential feature of all living systems and especially of human personality.[6] There is a consistency to people’s behavior and experience that enables us to "understand" the person sitting opposite us in the therapy room, to perceive him or her as a coherent - if also conflicted - personality. But that consistency cannot be accurately characterized without taking into account how it is built upon and pulls together the enormous diversity in the person’s way of thinking, feeling, and behaving in different circumstances, mood states, and states of desire, how the individual negotiates the constantly changing world of interpersonal transactions he or she encounters both in the therapy and outside of it, how he or she responds differentially to the myriad shadings of tone, affect, message, and demand that characterize every moment of our lives with other people. This is an insight reflected in Sullivan’s (1953) conceptualization of the boundaries of personality dynamisms as an "envelope of insignificant differences," in Erickson’s (19xx) discussions of identity as a sense of sameness in difference, in Bromberg’s (1996) discussions of alternating self-states, and even in David Rapaport’s (19xx) ego-psychological conception of psychological structures as "processes at a slow rate of change," a conception embedded in what is largely a "one-person" theory of ego attributes and functions.[7] As I shall discuss in more detail in the next chapter, these observations and conceptualizations do not fit with [sit easily with] the idea that people are fixated or arrested at a particular "developmental level." {c} Two-Person Theory for the Early Years of Life, One-Person Theory for Later {c} Some of the confusion that arises in distinguishing between one-person and two-person theories arises because much theorizing in the self-psychological and object relations traditions offers essentially a two-person account of the very earliest years of life, but a one-person conceptualization of what happens in all the subsequent years. That is, the depiction of how internal structures are laid down is very much a relational one. Early object and selfobject representations [representations of self and other] are viewed by many theorists in those traditions as quite significantly influenced by the actual ways the developing infant is treated by significant others. But those accounts turn into largely one-person accounts as these early interactions are presumed to be "internalized." In the years of later childhood and adulthood, these "internal" representations are discussed as essentially autonomous forces in the psyche, imposing themselves on experience but not themselves being modified to any significant degree by later events or relationships. They are rooted in relational experiences, and hence relational in content; but ultimately they are described as functioning in very much the same way that intrapsychic contents were described in psychoanalytic theorizing prior to the advent of these newer theories. One way to better understand the way in which these putatively relational theories remain preponderantly intrapsychic [one-person]} is by way of a metaphor used by both Erik Erikson and David Shapiro to illuminate [the underlying structure] [a key dimension of the underlying structure] of the Freudian drive theory. Erikson (1963), in discussing the libido theory, cautioned that, "While we must continue to study the life cycles of individuals by delineating the possible vicissitudes of their libido, we must become sensitive to the danger of forcing living persons into the role of marionettes of a mythical ErosBto the gain of neither therapy nor theory" (p. 64). Shapiro, referring at several points to Erikson’s marionette metaphor, notes that, "The conception of an unconscious agent of behavior, an anomalous and irrational intruder into adult attitudes, rescued neurosis for scientific understanding and the possibility of treatment. But at the same time and apparently unavoidably, it clouded the individual’s responsibility for his own behavior, seeming to make him a mere passive - or even unwilling - witness of it." Shapiro, 1989, p. 19) In a similar vein, Shapiro notes that the way in which the concept of unconscious forces in the psyche evolved in psychoanalytic thought "unrealistically reduced the role of the individual’s consciousness to that of a compliant and innocuous bystander." Now, it happens that both of these writers are focusing their critique on the libido theory which shaped the "classical" or "Freudian" tradition.[8] At first blush it thus might seem that their comments would be [quite congenial to] object relations thinking. Object relations theories, after all, also cast a critical eye on the theory of the drives. A closer look at Erikson’s and Shapiro’s critiques, however, should make it clear that they pertain just as much to a great swath of object relations thinking. Both Erikson and Shapiro framed their critique in relation to the libido theory because it (and its ego psychological descendant) was the framework in which they were brought up, and it remained the frame of reference in relation to which their work evolved and the perspective that characterized the community of colleagues who formed their reference group. Closer attention to how "internalized objects" are written about and understood by object relations theorists, however, makes it clear that in much object relations thinking too the adult patient is cast as a marionette, tossed hither and yon by libidinal and anti-libidinal egos, internalized bad objects, and the like, internal demons that are the true drivers of the psyche In a play on Freud’s account of how therapeutic transformation is achieved - "where id was, there ego shall be" - one might well say that for object relations theorists, the slogan depicting their theoretical transformation might be, "Where drive was, there object shall be." In practice, however, what appeared was less a transformation than a substitution, a plugging of the "internalized object" concept into an existing theoretical structure to serve precisely the same function as the drive concept did in the earlier theory. In replacing the role of drives with the role of object relations, the marionette conception of the relation between conscious and unconscious remained intact. As in the old joke about Soviet style communism - before communism, society was marked by the oppression of man by man; now it is just the reverse - so too in the relation of drive theory and object relations theory, the apparent reversal leaves the underlying structure the same. A new driver is driving the psyche; drives are driven out, and internalized objects rush in to fill the theoretical void. But the relation of the hidden puller of the strings to the self-deceiving marionette [who falsely believes that the actual events of his life really matter] remains intact. The "inner world" of "internal objects" [drives the boat], not the actual events of daily life that the person merely[(and self-deceivingly)] thinks he is responding to [The "inner world" of "internal objects" is in the driver’s seat, and the actual events of his life that the person thinks he is responding to are merely the triggers or screens that release or rationalize the real pullers of the string]. There are numerous reasons for the persistence of such formulations, even among [many] relational thinkers who are at the same time critics [keen critics] of more traditional [older] psychoanalytic ideas [assumptions]. Some of them [almost certainly] have to do with the nature of training in psychoanalysis - the tradition of institutes outside the [leavening context] of the university; the emphasis on the training analysis, which, as essential as it is, was often conducted in a context that regarded questioning of received ideas as "resistance;" the requirement in many institutes that the candidate be certified by his or her analyst before analytic cases could be seen, a format that undermined the confidentiality so central to the [legitimacy of the] psychoanalytic process and that monitored ideological conformity through scrutiny of the candidate’s most unguarded [associations]. Relational analysts were in large measure rebelling against these traditions, and indeed have [often] been in the vanguard of reforming these institutional anomalies. Today, psychoanalytic training is undertaken in many institutes in a quite different atmosphere. But the [nature of] both the American and the international psychoanalytic community was shaped by these practices and traditions, and those who wished to be members in good standing of this community could question only so much and still be regarded as true [respected] members of the [group]. <<One [means for maintaining membership] [that has been insufficiently appreciated as a factor shaping the evolution of psychoanalytic theorizing is what might be called the fetishization of language. Certain terms became membership cards, in effect, used frequently by analysts almost like a secret handshake. {{Say "container," "potential space," etc. often enough and it becomes harder to say you are not "really" an analyst.}}>> But there is another source as well, one we must take more seriously. {There is another source as well to the [ongoing] one-person structure of much relational theorizing, one that is perhaps more continuingly compelling to psychoanalytic thinkers [observers] and that is particularly in need of [examination and deconstruction]}. Part of what led analysts [even many relational analysts] [even many relational analysts with a strong object relations orientation] to frame their theorizing in terms of qualities in the person’s thought and affect that were "primitive," "archaic" [and other such designations] was that much of what their patients did, reported, or experienced looked primitive and archaic. The psychological contents and modes of thought that became apparent in the course of the psychoanalytic process had [often had] an intensity and a quality of affect and thought organization that seemed to compel a vision of them as "primitive." {c} In the ways that analysts have addressed these observations, however, there has frequently been a confusion between observations and the concepts employed to understand those observations. Analysts rightly do not want to ignore the descriptively primitive quality of the fantasies and urges they see in the course of their work - the unusual intensity, the voracious hungers and desperate needs, the oddly skewed visions and [peculiarly distorted ideas] that become apparent in otherwise quite rational individuals [in the course of an analysis] [under the scrutiny of the psychoanalytic method]. But in addressing these phenomena, there has seemed to be an assumption that such "primitive" psychological manifestations must reflect aspects of [elements in] the psyche that are literally "early," "archaic," or "pre-oedipal," that they are expressions of an "inner world" that is very largely cut off from everyday experience, an inner world frozen at the developmental level of early childhood. It is as if the observation [of primitiveness], in and of itself, is sufficient to validate the theory that is designed to [supposed to] explain that observation. The relevant question, however, is not whether people can act, feel, or fantasize the way, say, that Kleinians claim they do - they can; Kleinians do see the phenomena they discuss - but why they do, what it means that they do, and how to reconcile that observation with the many other observations from everyday life that do not fit very well with the depiction of human psychology that emanates from the British object relations tradition, which has tended to dominate, and even for many to define, what is meant by "object relations." (See, in this connection, Wachtel, 2003, Westen, 1988. Zeanah, et al, 1989) The coexistence, as it were, of one and two-person modes of thought in much relational thinking does not, of course, in itself bespeak incoherence or theoretical inadequacy. The burden of demonstrating the superiority of a more thoroughgoing two-person perspective lies with the critic, and it is a burden I will take up as this book proceeds.{c} Central to that burden [task] is demonstrating that a thoroughgoing two-person model does not ignore what is addressed by one-person or intrapsychic perspectives but rather includes them in a more contextualized understanding of them. The mixing of one-person and two-person models I have been referring to is of interest, however, in at least two ways. First, it is a [fact] [characteristic] [widespread characteristic] of psychoanalytic theorizing that is frequently not recognized or appreciated; proponents of this mixed model are often referred to (and refer to themselves) as two-person theorists when they are not, {creating confusion for [those who wish to understand and employ these theoretical perspectives] [who wish to understand better just what a two-person perspective is}. Second, the appearance of this uneasy mixture is a useful sign, a marker suggesting we look more closely because something odd may be happening conceptually that is worth taking a second look at. {Indeed, later in this chapter I will suggest that the problem lies in the very terms "one-person" and "two-person" theory, and that greater [considerably greater] clarity and theoretical coherence can be obtained with a somewhat different conceptual scheme for distinguishing between theoretical approaches.} {last sentence in a footnote instead? Among the fruits of this reexamination, I will suggest later in this chapter, is a reconsideration of [one more spur to reconsider] the very notions of one- and two-person psychologies [models]. Lost in the Session? Further understanding of how therapists who hold to a two-person epistemology and identify with the relational point of view can nonetheless maintain a one-person theory of everyday psychological functioning is aided by attending to a much-overlooked restriction in where and how two-person thinking tends to be applied. More often than is commonly appreciated by relational theorists, the "two-person" quality of their formulations is largely restricted to the circumstances of the consulting room. Their focus is on the nature of the interaction between patient and analyst, and their aim is to demystify and deconstruct what Mitchell has called "the overly formal, mechanical, and ultimately deeply disingenuous analytic stance" that derives from practice based on the one-person point of view. (Mitchell, 1995, p. 86) Greater scrutiny of the realities of the therapeutic situation and reexamination of how patient and therapist gain their impressions of each other and develop their affective experiences of each other were important fruits of the evolving two-person point of view; I shall have considerable occasion throughout Part Two of this book to elaborate in detail on the implications for clinical practice of these conceptual advances. But the possibilities for creatively utilizing this evolution in our understanding are also constrained by the ways in which it has, in essence, been restricted to what happens within the four walls of the therapist’s office. There is - or should be - more to two-person thinking than just a reconsideration of what happens between patient and therapist. A more thorough and penetrating application of the two-person point of view brings to light the two-person nature of all human interactions, and indeed, of all human experience.[9] The Excluded Middle [B Heading] The frequently limited range of application of two-person thinking may be obscured by the fact that two-person theorists usually do apply their two-person point of view in one other context outside of the therapist-patient interaction - the interplay between mother and infant. This can make it appear, without closer scrutiny, as if the two-person point of view is applied more broadly and thoroughly than it is. Mitchell, for example, comments that the most significant feature of post-Kleinian British object relations theorizing is "the importance it places on the environment - on the crucial significance of the interactions between the infant and caretakers and the crucial significance of the interactions ... between the analysand and the analyst." (1995, p. 78). Note here that Mitchell does not mention the interactions between the analysand and the other crucial people in his life. Like many two-person theorists, Mitchell, though referring to the importance of "the environment," in essence leapfrogs over the vast stretch between the mother-infant transaction and that between patient and analyst. The expanse between infancy and analysis becomes, in essence, an "excluded middle," seemingly addressed by a theory that stresses relationships and "the environment," but in fact largely neglected, except as the realm in which the patient’s symptoms and other psychological problems are manifested and as the playground for already existing internalizations. {That is, the rest of the person’s life is, of course discussed and attended to, but it is mainly understand as the context for revealing or expressing what is already "inside," rather than as a realm in which mutuality, co-construction, and reciprocal causation is the focus of concern.} Include this material as well? In a similar vein, we may note the following statement by Aron (1996): "Central to a relational, two-person model is the idea that the seemingly infantile wishes and conflicts revealed in a patient’s associations are not only or mainly remnants from the past, artificially imposed on the therapeutic field, but are, rather, reflections of the actual interactions and encounters with the unique, individual analyst, with all of his or her idiosyncratic, particularistic features." (p. 50). Here we can see a statement that converges strikingly in certain respects with my own cyclical psychodynamic point of view (see chapter 3). In my own writing, for example, I have stated that, "The key to the cyclical psychodynamic reconceptualization of the phenomena observed by earlier generations of analysts lies in examining the connection between the seemingly out of touch fantasies, wishes, or images of self and other and the actuality of the person's present way of life. Through the lens of a cyclical psychodynamic analysis, the apparently archaic processes and structures are revealed as not nearly as anachronistic as they are depicted in most psychoanalytic accounts. Rather, they can be recognized as both symbolizations and consequences of that very way of life." (TC, chapter 2). Note, however, that in Aron’s version the emphasis is on the unique, individual analyst. To choose but one more example of what I am calling attention to here, in this instance focusing on the other end of the excluded middle, Maroda (1997), in setting the stage for her discussion of clinical work from a relational standpoint, states that, "As the two-person psychologies take hold, with their emphasis on early mother-child formative interaction, analysis struggles to redefine itself."(p. 2) Note here the almost casual equating of two-person psychology and early mother-child interaction. The structure of the sentence reflects that Maroda doesn’t even feel she needs to make a case for two-person psychology being one that emphasizes the mother-infant interaction. It is treated as a given, as a defining sine qua non. In turn, as her book proceeds, Maroda also attends in valuable ways to the two-person, mutually constructed experience between patient and analyst. [Again,] What is not attended to in the same way is the two-person nature of the realm in between these two endpoints [anchor points].[10] [Thus] Whereas the mother-infant relationship and that between patient and analyst are thoroughly probed for bi-directional processes of mutual influence and mutual construction of experience, the ways in which such processes characterize all of life are [often] far less thoroughly explored [far less thoroughly explored by two-person theorists] [far less thoroughly explored even by two-person theorists]. Rather, concepts such as internalization, developmental level, and developmental arrest direct attention inward, to tendencies that are implicitly treated as more or less context-free properties of the single individual. The difference between the acute attention paid to mutuality and co-construction of experience in the analytic session and the relative neglect of these same processes in considering the patient’s behavior and experience outside the sessions is evident not only in the readiness to ascribe to people "pre-oedipal levels of personality organization" (cf. Westen, 1988), but in the contrast between the relatively sparse theorizing about the interactions of everyday life in the psychoanalytic literature and the intense focus on daily interactions with others in the literature [in the theory and practice] of family therapy. For family therapists, any individual’s experience [and, indeed, even the "developmental level" he or she manifests] can only be properly understood in context, in the way that that individual participates in a larger system with others, who shape and are shaped by his behavior. This is, in essence, how relational analysts [too] view the individual [view people] in relation to their participation in the analytic relationship itself, but not in their theorizing about what amount to rather fixed (and context-free) "internalized objects."[11] This is particularly unfortunate because the psychoanalytic perspective [the relational psychoanalytic perspective] provides [an acute sensitivity to and a detailed articulation of the conscious and unconscious dimensions of subjectivity] that is usually not equaled in the family therapy literature. The combined strength of the two perspectives thus offers an especially powerful and comprehensive vision - a vision, I am most of all trying to show, that is perfectly consistent with the most important root structures of relational thinking, qualities of thought and understanding that are manifested with great [sensitivity] [perceptiveness] in the understanding of what transpires in the psychoanalytic session itself. Now Mitchell, in particular, {Now both Mitchell and Aron} I know from personal conversations, did not mean to explicitly reject the two-person nature of the rest of life’s experiences and transactions. {if reference to Aron and Maroda are also included, place footnote here indicating that unlike with Mitchell and Aron, I have not had the opportunity to discuss these issues with Maroda, who I know only from her writings.} Having been trained first as an interpersonalist, knowing the field-theoretical dimension of Sullivan’s thinking, he understood [Mitchell understood] that all of our experiences are two-person [contextual] in nature. But at the same time, he felt that interpersonal thinking had neglected the enduring structures and attachments that serve as a keel for [to] the personality, keeping it from being completely adrift in the prevailing [(and constantly changing)] winds of the particular momentary interaction. And in addressing this perceived gap, he was drawn to theories that stressed processes of internalization and conceptualizations of internalized objects. [These theories, he failed to note sufficiently, I believe,] [These theories, however,] were "leapfrogging" theories, theories in which "excluded middle" conceptualizations were both pervasive and unrecognized [unacknowledged]. For many other two-person theorists, less attentive to theoretical complexities than Mitchell [than the writers I have cited], passage over the gulf between infancy and analysis could proceed without even a qualm or ripple of concern. The excluded middle [as we will see] was almost completely obscured by [the rhetoric of "internalization"]. Present at the Creation: Balint, Rickman, and the Introduction of the Two-Person Point of View [B-Heading] <This narrow construction of the two-person point of view (and especially its preponderant focus on the [microcosm] {on the world in miniature} [on the enclosed world] of the psychotherapy session)> was, we might say, present at the creation. In a paper that is commonly viewed as the first explicit introduction into the literature of the contrast between a one-person and a two-person point of view,[12] Michael Balint (1950) argued, in setting the context for his discussion, that "our true field of study is the psycho-analytical situation." (p. 120) And indeed, in the way that Balint structures this key foundation document of the two-person point of view, the events and transactions of the psychoanalytic situation clearly occupy center stage. In introducing into the literature what we would now call the two-person perspective, Balint borrowed his language from an unpublished presentation by John Rickman. Quoting Rickman, Balint stated that, "The whole region of psychology may be divided into areas of research according to the number of persons concerned. Thus we may speak of One-Body Psychology, Two-Body, Three-Body, Four-Body and Multi-Body Psychology." But although Rickman referred to the "whole region of psychology," in fact his formulation took on significance specifically within psychoanalysis, and even more specifically, in the understanding of what transpires in the psychoanalytic session per se. Balint used Rickman’s formulation to argue that the psychoanalytic situation, in which two people sit in the same room, is a two-body experience and that therefore classical psychoanalytic theory, which is a one-body theory, is insufficient to understand what transpires there. As Balint put it, "almost all our terms and concepts [that is, the terms of and concepts of classical psychoanalysis] were derived from studying pathological forms hardly going beyond the domain of the One-Body Psychology[13]....That is why they can give only a clumsy, approximate description of what happens in the psycho-analytical situation which is essentially a Two-Body Situation." (p. 124. italics added) Here it seems, Balint’s criterion for whether a one-person or a two-person model is required comes down to counting bodies in the room. Because two people are interacting, even if one may be largely silent, a two-body psychology is required. As a consequence, Balint, like various others over the years (e.g., Ghent, 19xx, Modell, 19xx) argues that psychoanalysis needs both a one-person and a two-person psychology. Such an argument, I believe, is linked to a limited conception of what a "two-person" theory {a meaningful two-person theory} might entail. If we need a one-person psychology when someone is alone, a two-person psychology when another person enters the room, a three-person psychology when still another walks in, and so forth, then we are left with an approach to theory that is both absurd and superficial. It is not because two people are in the room that a one-person psychology is insufficient to understand what transpires in the consulting room . It is because the nature of human psychology, no matter how many people are in the room, is fundamentally responsive to context {has a structure that is responsive to context}. A "two-person" version of psychoanalytic thought, or of any psychological theory for that matter, is not about the number of people in the room but about how each of them is psychologically organized. What made classical analysis a "one-person" theory was not simply its denial of the pervasive influence of the analyst on what transpires in the consulting room, but its conceptualization of personality dynamics more generally - its view of the relevant factors determining our behavior and experience as residing in the internalized recesses of the mind, sealed off from the influence of ongoing relational events [that is, the very influences that are the essence of a two-person point of view}. <<The reason that the classical analyst was taught to sit back and let the transference [and other relevant analytic material] emerge or unfold was because it was understood as inside and needing to come to the surface. {Only the "surface" was presumed to be in touch with ongoing experiences and events (cf. Wachtel, 2003).}>> In further considering the limitations associated with identifying the two-person point of view too exclusively with the transactions between patient and therapist, it is useful to note that Balint himself seemed clearly to recognize that a distinction rooted in the number of people in the room was inadequate [was problematically superficial] [misconstrued the critical issue] Elsewhere in his paper, Balint formulated the distinction between one- and two-person psychology in a less concrete way. In this alternative version of his argument, he suggests that psychoanalytic theory evolved as a one-body psychology because its construction was founded on observations of only a subset of patients, those in whom "all conflicts and mental processes are internalized." (p. 119) In contrast, Balint argues, psychoanalytic technique evolved in response to a different set of patients for whom "objects are of paramount importance," and hence for them, and for the technique applied to them, a two-body psychology is required. This conceptualization avoids the superficiality of defining the relevant theoretical perspective by the number of people in the room. But it has its own problems. In this version of Balint’s argument, a one-person point of view remains adequate for understanding a significant portion of the patient population - he cites in this regard those diagnosed with obsessional neuroses, melancholia, and schizoid or paranoid states. Thus, in lieu of relegating two-person thinking to situations in which others are actually physically present, this version restricts it to individuals who are [deemed] capable of involvement with objects. This second criterion, it turns out, is even more restrictive, for it implies that for some individuals, even when they are in the presence of others, they remain best understood by a one-person psychology. It is certainly true that in the years since Balint’s paper appeared , we have learned much more about people who seem "not to relate to objects." More contemporary understandings of transference include as one very real and very powerful transference response the very noninvolvement (or seeming noninvolvement) of the patient. Noninvolvement, we now appreciate, is the patient’s way of being involved, his way of relating to us as he relates to other significant figures in his life, and that noninvolvement is not passive and easy but rather takes work, is resolute and painstaking, if not necessarily conscious in its effortfulness. Whether we think of Sullivan’s concept of "malevolent transformation," Gill’s (e.g. 1979, 1984) discussions of "resistance to the awareness of transference," or any of the variety of other ways in which such people can be seen as engaged in conflict and struggle, not just absence and closure - Horney’s (1945) concept of the moving away neurotic trend is certainly also relevant here - the idea that they are simply "in their own world," uninfluenced by what is transpiring in the room, seems odd and quaint today. Most likely, even Balint did not really mean to imply this. He simply did not have the conceptual tools to articulate the issue more satisfactorily. He was handicapped, as I believe many later theorists have been, by the received version of object relational thinking he was working with and attempting further to develop, a framework inherited from Melanie Klein’s rather confused and concretistic mode of theorizing and a theoretical vocabulary employed, in significant ways, even by object relations thinkers who aimed to challenge some of Klein’s key assumptions. I will discuss this matter [Klein’s unfortunate influence on later object relations thinking] further in chapter 4. For now we may merely note that the confusions on which the one-person - two-person distinction are [were originally] grounded remain continuingly relevant. They reflect in important ways a continuing thread in much "two-person" thinking - in which the "excluded middle" remains a noteworthy absence and in which sensitive attention to the back and forth experiences of patient and analyst can coexist with a view of the person in his daily life outside the sessions that scarcely differs from that of "one-person" theory [of the "one-person" theorists that many relationalists are aiming to transcend]. {c} What Does it Mean to Be "Alone?": {Implications of a Relational View} [A Heading] Further clarification of some of the misunderstandings about the two-person theoretical perspective - and further understanding of how it transcends counting the number of "bodies" in the room - is provided by consideration of what it means to be alone. Aloneness is a topic of particular interest and importance for a number of reasons. To begin with, of course, aloneness is the physical representation of the "one-body" situation. Thus, clarification of the continuing applicability - and even necessity - of a "two-person" perspective in the situation of aloneness is the most direct way of showing [the irrelevance] [the superficiality] [the inappropriateness] of counting bodies in the room. In addition, attention to the meaning of aloneness clarifies the nature of the psychotherapeutic [psychoanalytic] situation itself, and especially the implications of its directing the person’s attention to reverie, memory, fantasy, free association, and "inner" thoughts and feelings. Finally, consideration of aloneness is important because some critics of interpersonal and relational perspectives have argued that these perspectives are too focused on the direct interactions between people and therefore leave no room for attention to or the value of solitude, spirituality, creativity, or the inner life. To begin with aloneness as a kind of "one-body" test case for a two-person psychology, several considerations are pertinent. First, it is important to be clear that even when we are alone, we are responding to the fact that we are alone (that is, that aloneness itself is a context). In a variety of ways, we behave and experience things differently when we are alone than when we are with others, an indication that we register ourselves as being in a different context, one with different situational demands, different constraints and pulls. A variety of behaviors, often self-touching behaviors such as picking one’s nose or scratching oneself in certain areas of the body, are common when people are alone but edited and inhibited when others are present. Similarly, our postures and body positions are likely to be different when we are alone from what they are when we are with others. We sit (or slouch) differently when we are alone. We may assume postures that might appear lewd or provocative if another were present but can be quite "natural" and unselfconsciously comfortable when we are alone. We may engage in rhythmic self-stimulating movements such as rocking back and forth or shaking our legs, behaviors that might seem almost autistic if they were engaged in with any regularity in the presence of others. We may yawn in an undisguised or unmodulated way that would be inhibited as rude if another were present. And we are more likely when alone to engage in reverie, to daydream, to quietly "think," although at times we may engage in any of these with another person present as well. Thus, in a variety of ways, we clearly register that we are in a different [situational context], one in which "alone behavior" is appropriate. These differences in behavior and experience are, of course, noticed by one-person theorists too. What is often not appreciated [recognized], however, is that behavior when we are alone is not behavior in the absence of context, behavior generated simply from "within," but is, rather, behavior that reflects our perception and appreciation that we are in a different context from the one in which we are with other people, a context in which different behavior is appropriate.[14] Being alone has meaning for each of us, whether that meaning be one of loneliness, rejection, or anxiety or whether it be relief, opportunity to think and reflect, or a welcome time out from a rewarding, if demanding, round of interactions with others. These meanings will vary from person to person, some people primarily finding aloneness a frightening or negative experience, others experiencing it as positive and welcome much of the time. They are also likely to vary for any given individual from one instance of being alone to another, and this further variability is still another example (and extension) of the contextuality of experience. The meaning of the context of aloneness for any of us at any given moment depends itself on still a larger context - what has been going on, what desires or fantasies have been aroused and are operative, etc. A formulation that states, say, that John gets anxious when he is alone or Mary enjoys being alone and feels it affords her the opportunity to "regroup" is almost certain to be insufficient to capture the considerable variability of John’s or Mary’s experience of solitude, even if there are also clear and consistent differences between people in their average or modal experience of aloneness (or of anything else). Aloneness and "Internal Presences" [B-Heading] The "one-body" situation of being alone is not a "one-person" situation in a theoretical sense for other reasons as well, besides the fact that aloneness is itself a context. A second major consideration is that even when alone, we are orienting ourselves with regard to other people. Most readily acknowledged by traditional theorists is that the meanings we give to experiences, the affective tone we feel, the aims and structures that guide our behavior are rooted in our prior experiences with others and in what has been called the "internalization" of various prior figures in our lives, especially parental figures. For some writers, this dimension of our experience is central to their understanding of the two-person point of view and to what they mean when they say that human experience is pervasively relational. Mitchell’s (1988) sensitive renderings of the "internal presences" that pervade our lives and give them meaning and affective richness (though also at times a good deal of agita) is a good example. For other writers, however, the same phenomenon is an indication that a one-person viewpoint is essential to complement a two-person perspective, since the person has now "internalized" the other and is thus influenced by voices from "within." Such a view is evident not only among "classical" thinkers but among relational and object relational thinkers as well (e.g., Ghent, 1989; Modell, 1984). It is, I think, a misunderstanding, or at the very least an underestimation, of the implications of a two-person {relational} point of view. The "internal" representations, as I shall discuss further below, are not static entities stamped into the psyche and operating completely independently of what transpires in our lives. "Who" gets called up from "inside," and what qualities [and directives] that representation manifests in any given instance of aloneness (or of actually being with another person) depends on what has been happening in the person’s life and what kind of aloneness is being experienced (ranging from a momentary break from a pleasant round of social interactions, to hard concentrated work on a project - which may be going well or poorly, to solitary confinement in a prisoner of war camp. When there is overreliance on the concept of "internalizaton" to represent [conceptualikze] the impact of experiences with others, the two-person nature of aloneness is flattened into a one-person vision. The crucial representations of our ongoing transactions with others, both literal and imagined, are now viewed as simply "inside," and we need no longer look so closely at what is actually transpiring in the person’s life. "loneness and the context of therapeutic exploration [B-Heading] In the evolution of psychoanalytic technique, a key feature was the creation of a context in which the patient was, in a certain sense, both alone and with another person. It is in the contested territory between these two contradictory realities, in the simultaneous participation in the differing pulls of each, that psychoanalytic work finds its energy and its roots. On the one hand, the standard accouterments of traditional psychoanalytic practice can be seen as attempting to leave the patient "alone" with himself and his thoughts as much as possible. Sitting behind the patient on the couch, saying relatively little, revealing little of one’s personal views or one’s own reactions to what the patient is saying are all ways of trying [all ways traditional analysts have tried] to make room for what is within the patient, to reduce the pulls and the distractions that ordinarily operate when we are with another person. These clinical guidelines are also designed to bring us into closer touch with who we really are, to reduce the distortions and accommodations, the "false selves" that we must put forth when we are with others. In addition, in replicating a version of the state of aloneness, even while the patient is simultaneously in the presence of another person, the aim is to capitalize on a difference that is frequently apparent between the nature of thought and experience when we are with another person and that which is manifested when we are alone. When alone, we are more likely to engage in reverie and in thought that is more loosely associative. The difference is only a comparative one, of course; we sometimes engage in reverie (often to our chagrin) even as we are in the midst of a conversation with others, and - precisely because aloneness is in fact a state in which we generally remain powerfully in the presence of what is frequently called our internalized objects - the "false self" is not so easily or thoroughly left aside just because we are alone. The psychoanalytic approach, indeed, is very much centered on the impossibility of fully casting off the automatic defensive efforts that constrict and misrepresent our experience. Free association is never really "free," and our tailoring of our experience to the context of actual people present and (usually unconsciously) of our imagined parental and emotional judges is difficult to relinquish. The psychoanalytic process is based not on free association, but at best on free-er association; a crucial focus of the analyst’s attention is on how the patient - inevitably - falls short of real free association. Nonetheless, the (inevitably only partly successful) task of free association is neither irrelevant or, really, a failure. The opportunity for patient and analyst to see that departure from real free association (and especially to discern the conflict that generates it) is at the very center of the psychoanalytic enterprise, and it is crucially dependent on the patient’s associations being at least marginally freer than they are in ordinary discourse. This alteration of the discourse is a central feature, in essence, of almost every approach to psychotherapy. In the traditional psychoanalytic understanding of the altered balance between expression and control - an altered balance that is at its heart - it is very largely the analyst’s diminished presence (or, put differently, the patient’s increased aloneness) that is the medium that makes it possible. Hence the physical structure of sitting behind the patient, remaining relatively silent, and so forth that for so long characterized the mainstream of psychoanalytic practice. Put differently, in this vision of the therapeutic process, it is the approximation to a "one-person" situation that enables the therapeutic shift. In contrast, I will suggest in Part II that there is a much more compelling factor promoting the relative freeing of the patient’s associations (and the corollary access to previously disavowed aspects of self-experience) - the diminished anxiety that a well-conducted therapy creates. This alternative perspective derives from Freud’s (1926) own perceptive critique of some of the central premises of psychoanalytic thought, and it acknowledges the ways in which standard psychoanalytic practice too creates what Schafer (1983) has called conditions of safety. As I shall try to show in Part II, however, it points as well to ways in which some of the standard features of traditional psychoanalytic practice can actually diminish the experience of safety and hence run counter to {what is really the central source of the altered expression-defense balance}. "loneness and the Pursuit of Private Experience [B-Heading] There is one more matter [issue] that is important to consider in further clarifying the nature of a "two-person" point of view. An objection that is sometimes offered to relational thinking - and especially to a thoroughgoing two-person model, in contrast to a one-person, two-person complementarity of the sort advocated by Ghent or Modell - is that it is exclusively a "social" psychology (see for example, Aron, 1992; Gill, 1993; Goldberg, 1996; Mitchell, 1988b)). According to this critique (in which the term social [social psychology] is used invidiously), such an approach lacks depth, fails to address our individuality or inner world, loses any sense of a personal core. It also, according to some critics, ignores that for many people being alone is an essential need - alone with one’s thoughts, one’s creativity, one’s spirituality. Meditation, painting, listening to music, reading, or just sitting and reflecting, the critics rightly point out, are as important a part of the full life as interacting with people. This critique, however, is based on a significant misunderstanding of relational or two-person theory. There is nothing in the two-person viewpoint that values interaction with other people over time engaged in more solitary activities. Nor does a two-person perspective pay any less attention to the depth and subtlety of experience, the complexity of personal predisposition and identification, or any other structures of subjectivity or of conflict. Rather, what makes an account of such phenomena a two-person rather than a one-person account is the simultaneous attention to how such experiences respond to and vary with context, how they can symbolize prior and ongoing experiences with others even when we are alone, how the particulars of our attention to {the spiritual, the ineffable, the unique, the phantasmagoric} reflect simultaneously our unique individuality and our experience of the world around us {our unique individuality and the specifics of the events, relationships, and circumstances we have encountered in the course of our lives and in the more recent past [recent context] as well} A two-person psychology is indeed a social psychology, in the sense that it is not an asocial psychology. Indeed, it has been a failing of psychoanalysis that it has failed to capitalize on a huge body of research in social psychology that potentially has direct bearing on the questions that psychoanalysis too is concerned about (see, for example, Westen, Bowers, Weinberger, etc.). But a two-person psychoanalytic perspective is not a social" psychology in any sense that implies we are mere [artifacts] of social forces or that [there is no there there]. Rather, it is a social psychology in very much the sense that Freud [suggested] The contrast between individual psychology and social or group psychology, which at first glance seems to be full of significance, loses a great deal of its sharpness when it is examined more closely. It is true that individual psychology is concerned with the individual man and explores the paths by which he seeks to find satisfaction for his instinctual impulses; but only rarely and under certain exceptional conditions is individual psychology in a position to disregard the relations of this individual to others. In the individual’s mental life someone else is invariably involved, as a model, as an object, as a helper, as an opponent; and so from the very first individual psychology, in this extended but entirely justifiable sense of the words, is at the same time social psychology as well. (Freud, 1921, p. 69) The Limits of the One-Person versus Two-Person Distinction {Beyond "One-Person" and "Two-Person" Psychologies: The Issue of Context} In the discussion thus far, I have tried to take the widely employed distinction between a one-person and a two-person psychology as far as it will go. In many ways, it has been a valuable distinction, illuminating differences between theoretical approaches as well as phenomena that had previously been overlooked or confusingly discussed. It has also been at the very heart of the conceptualization of a broad relational movement, thereby helping to highlight similarities among seemingly disparate theories as well as differences. At the same time, however, the one-person - two-person distinction has brought its own confusions and contradictions [has been associated with a number of confusions and contradictions in its own right]. As we have seen, theorists who discuss one- and two-person theory often conflate epistemological and developmental/dynamic considerations; in many instances they confine the applicability of the two-person point of view to the analytic session [to the two parties in the analytic consulting room]; they often leave out the crucial "two-person" nature of all human experiences, leapfrogging from the mother-infant interaction to the therapist-patient interaction without noticing that there has been an "excluded middle." As a consequence, some two-person theorists propose that we need both a one-person and a two-person theory in order to be comprehensive <, a position I have already raised questions about>. (Indeed, as we will see, they also at times propose introducing a "third" and a "fourth" [adding still further confusion and obfuscation].) Many of the confusions associated with the one-person - two-person distinction were previously manifested in discussions and critiques of the interpersonal point of view. Misunderstanding the meaning of interpersonal (at least in its most advances and sophisticated forms) in much the same way that later critics misunderstood the meaning [the full possibilities] of a two-person perspective, many writers treated interpersonal and intrapsychic as opposing terms, designating either competing theories or entirely different realms. Just as the claim is now frequently made that we need both one-person and two-person theory [theories], so too was the claim made (and indeed still is) that we need both interpersonal and intrapsychic theories. In each instance, such a way of thinking misrepresents what a two-person model or an interpersonal model is. That is, the two-person model is not only about what happens [between] two people, with what happens within them a separate matter altogether. It is most fundamentally about the {fact} that what happens within each of them is itself a two-person process, that is, that our insides are not a realm separate from our outsides or our interactions, that attending to the relational is not an alternative or complement to attending to the intrapsychic; it is a different way of attending to the intrapsychic, a way of understanding the deepest, most private, least conscious aspects of our experience as inseparable from the relational matrix in which we have evolved as individuals and in which we continue to evolve and express our individuality. {c}{c} From "Two-Person" to Contextual {A heading or B heading?} By now, the terminology of one-person and two-person theory is pervasive enough [so widespread] that it will be impossible to proceed with this book without referring to it [falling back on it] {with some regularity}. But it is nonetheless sufficiently problematic that I wish to introduce a different [hopefully clarifiying] term to capture what I believe to be the most important contribution of the two-person idea. What two-person theorists are most importantly pointing to, I believe, is the contextual nature of human psychology, and in large measure what they are criticizing in what they are calling one-person theories is the largely acontextual nature of those theories, the way in which they describe individuals out of context, as separate monads whose properties are thoroughly "internal" ["internalized"] and hence carried around essentially unchanged from context to context. It is for this reason that such theories do not take sufficient note of the way the therapist’s qualities and his or her behavior in the session contribute to [co-create] the experiences observed in the session, and it is for this reason that these theories also fail to appreciate - as do a range of purportedly "two-person" theories as well - the way in which context shapes our experience in every facet of our lives. Conceptualizing the issue as contextual vs. acontextual rather than one-person versus two-person helps avoid a number of potential confusions. To begin with, {{whereas the two-person label has lent itself to the misunderstanding that [has been construed as] [has been able to be construed as] we are rudderless reactors to the input of others, lacking core structures or enduring qualities and commitments (cf., Masling, Meissner, Eagle)}}, the emphasis on contextual understanding does not. Rather, it suggests that the very nature of those structures and commitments is contextual. It reconciles the compelling observations of how responsive we are to the events around us and the behavior of others - whether in the psychotherapy session or in any other context in our lives - with the equally compelling observations, usually stressed particularly by "one-person" theorists, of how stubbornly persistent we may be in old ways that seem not to work well for us, how much we experience the present through a template from the past, how consistently we do manage to behave and to experience things in our characteristic ways from situation to situation. As I shall elaborate further in chapter 3 [in the following chapters], appreciation of the contextual nature of the psychological structures that guide our behavior and experience does not lead us into the false dichotomies which can characterize discussions of one-person and two-person theories. It also does not call forth the [false and] facile ecumenicism - a little bit of this, a little bit of thatB that has yielded confusion in the conceptual terrain of "one-person" versus "two-person" theory. We do not, in order to be comprehensive, have to create, side by side, contextual and acontextual theories. If we appreciate what contextualism is about [what contextualism implies], we can see how it provides a foundation not only for understanding the facts of variability and continuity alike, of responsiveness and stubborn heedlessness, but also for understanding when and why one or the other tendency comes to the fore. Thinking in terms of contextual understanding [contextuality] introduces clarity as well into our understanding of the role of biology and of the body, realms where the one-person - two-person distinction has created confusion. For example, in discussing Mitchell’s theorizing, Aron (1996) states the following: [E]ven Mitchell acknowledges that interpersonal experience inevitably has its impact on a child, who brings to the interaction his or her own temperament and constitutional endowment, and therefore the interpersonal is always filtered through the individual’s particular capacities to take in experience. In this sense, Mitchell’s two-person psychology includes within itself an implicit recognition of a one-person psychology. (p. 60, italics added) Here, it seems, Aron is defining as a "one-person" viewpoint any acknowledgment that the individual enters interactions with already formed characteristics and proclivities (whether they be genetically inherited or derived from the interaction of that initial genetic heritage with earlier experiences). This is not, however, because temperament or constitutional endowment are necessarily or inherently "one-person" concepts Aron here subtly [unwittingly] narrows the zone of "two-person" theory, creating room for a "one-person" approach as a complementary perspective, not through logical necessity but via definition. If we define attention to temperament or biology as a "one-person" point of view, then there is indeed a need for "one-person" thinking unless one is willing to ignore the body altogether. If the criterion for whether a theory [perspective] is a "one-person" or a "two-person" perspective comes down to [an external] physical criterion, then, as with counting the number of "bodies" in the room, temperament would seem to be a "one-person" phenomenon; it is a property of a single physical body. But taking as one’s starting point instead the psychological criteria for one-person or two-person theorizing that I have been stressing - particularly the issue of whether psychological structures and inclinations are understood as acontextual attributes that are essentially independent of and unmodified by the context in which the individual is immersed [is operating] or whether they are contextual by their very nature, inclinations that are real, that are indeed distinctive to and emblematic of a particular individual, but that are manifested differently, have different implications and meanings in one context or another - then one can readily conceive of temperament or constitutional endowment as "two-person" phenomena. We also, however, encounter in questions such as this some more of the limitations and ambiguities in the one-person - two-person distinction. The very terminology makes it confusing to apply a "two-person" perspective to something that seems, in a concrete perceptual sense, to reside inside one person. If one approaches the issue from the vantage point of contextualism, however, the confusions and ambiguities are greatly reduced. There are always psychological structures (as well as physical bodies) involved in any experience [any interaction]. If there were not, there would not be people involved. But at the same time, those structures are always contextual structures, structures primed to process and respond to events [geared toward processing and responding to events], variously elicited and made relevant by particular events, changing - and selecting - those events, etc. Recognition of structure and recognition of context are not two different points of view. They are essential - equally essential - components of a single point of view. A situation is not a psychological situation unless there are psychological structures to apprehend it; and those structures [are not human psychological structures] [ are not living psychological structures] if they are not structures oriented to their surrounds, capable of and inclined toward the perception of changing contingencies, demands, and opportunities, even as they seek as well to preserve themselves in the face of those changing contingencies. Even physical properties and structures of the body, which are indeed "inside," and which, most of the time, do their thing from context to context reliably and consistently, are not immune from the influence of context. The heart is most obviously such an organ, which is perhaps one of the reasons it serves so often as a metaphor for the passions. Both physical circumstances such as altitude or a steep incline and emotional and symbolic events can alter its rate, its efficiency, its rhythms, and so forth. More "mundane" organs such as the lungs or the kidneys may seem more "sluggish" in terms of their responsiveness to context, but clearly they too respond, both in short term and long term ways, to environmental [contextual] {phenomena} {forces} {influences} such as smoke or other pollutants, food and drink that have diuretic properties, etc. More interesting from a psychological vantage point might be [body parts] such as arms or legs. These more "external" or surface parts of the body have very clear psychological import. Legs that permit a person to run fast, or arms that are perceived as strong and muscular can have quite considerable impact on how the person is experienced by others or on one’s self-regard and self-representations. But these properties take on changing psychological meaning even when they remain "the same" physically. An athlete who has been "strong and muscular" in college may have to deal with being "smallish and needing to be stronger" when he becomes a professional or with being experienced as a "dumb jock" in a different context. And, of course, both the process of aging and the presence or absence of time and inclination to work out can modify even the physical properties, which then vary with those contextual factors. Temperament, the bodily/biological variable about which Aron explicitly states that attention to it entails "an implicit recognition of a one-person psychology" is an especially interesting case with regard to contextualism. An acontextual perspective might view the person’s temperament as a property of "the individual," something more or less invariant that he brings with him from situation to situation. But temperament, as much as Freudian drives, is a borderland phenomenon between mind and body. It takes on psychological meaning and consequences only as it is perceived and experienced by self and other. Is the biological dimension of a child’s temperament "wild" and "out of control" or "energetic" and "enthusiastic"? That depends quite significantly on what the mother is set to perceive, what she is comfortable with, what she nurtures, how she (and the child) defines what the child’s nature is, etc. Ultimately what it "actually becomes" in a psychologically meaningful sense is to a significant degree co-created by the mother and other significant figures in the person’s life. Temperament, we might say, is contextual down to its very core. And, it is important to note, it is contextual at the same time as it is, equally, a structural fact about the person. That is, again, a contextual view is not an anti-structural view. But it conceives of structure very differently than does a [view that fails to take context sufficiently into account]. In similar fashion, drive-related wishes or "internalized" psychological influences] [psychological structures] such as internal objects, representations, internal working models, and the like are better understood as contextual than as fixed [as fixed and "inside"]. Describing people as characterized by a particular developmental level, as preoedipal, as passive-aggressive or orally fixated fails to ask when they manifest whatever is being attributed to them. Implicitly, in many accounts, the times when the proposed characteristic is not manifested are treated as times when they are defended against or denied. And although it is certainly true that in many instances they are being defended against, in many others what we are seeing is, rather, {the very real variability that characterizes all human beings, the manifestations of other inclinations and characteristics that emerge in different contexts and are just as real properties of the person as are the more pathocentric qualities that are usually [often] emphasized in psychoanalytic accounts. {{Indeed, as I shall discuss in detail in Part Two, attention to these [alternative and healthier] ways of being [ - and examination of when they do and do not appear; that is, of their contextual nature - ] is a crucial part of good clinical work.}} After wrestling with the question of whether one-person and two-person perspectives are complementary or contradictory, Aron (1996) ultimately concludes that, "The major difficulty in attempting to sort out the contradictory versus complementary nature of one- and two-person psychologies is that the referents for these terms remain unclear....[They] have been used so broadly, to cover so much conceptual ground, that it is hard to know what anyone means by advocating a position that requires only one or both perspectives." (p. 61-62) Aron further goes on, still in a vein with which I strongly agree, that, "dividing up the world into the innate and the experiential or the intrapsychic and the interpersonal is certainly simplistic, since each of these terms contains, organizes, and defines the other." (p. 62) To return to a theme discussed earlier, Part of the confusion at the root of the one-person and two-person distinction (and part of its limitation) derives from its origins in addressing the specific psychological situation of the psychoanalytic session. In that realm it did offer an important corrective for a view that was once extremely prominent . The influence of the therapist [of the analyst] on everything that "emerges" or "unfolds" in the session is palpable, and yet had been rendered invisible by an ideological filter. But the framing of insight into the problem with this outlook [the framing of the alternative to this unsatisfactory conceptualization] in terms of "two-person" theory was an artifact of the psychoanalytic situation. In the ordinary course of psychoanalytic practice, the only direct observation of the impact of another person on the patient’s experience [inner experience] ["inner" experience] is with the analyst. The idea of "two-person" theory seemed to capture what the critical psychoanalytic perspective was introducing, especially since this new perspective also highlighted [illuminated] that the traditional psychoanalytic epistemology proceeded as if what was being observed were psychological phenomena pertaining to only one of the people in the room - the patient. (Recall, however, the discussion in chapter one suggesting that even in "one-person" and "two-person" terms, the competing perspectives were probably more accurately depicted as "one and a quarter" person theories and "one and three quarter" person theories.) Family therapists, in contrast, saw the processes of mutual influence and co-construction very differently because of the observational field to which they were exposed in their work. They were able to observe directly the mutual influences on each other’s psychological experiences of more than just themselves and one other person. As a consequence, they did not frame the contrast between their perspective and that of traditional psychoanalytic views as one between one-person and "two"-person theories, since "two" seemed both arbitrary and insufficient. Their critiques were more likely to take the form of "linear" versus "circular" or "individual" versus "systemic" (see Wachtel & Wachtel, 1986), and their equivalent of the relational psychoanalytic "two-person" critique that the analyst is a co-participant in what transpires in the room was that the therapist inevitably becomes part of the system that he or she is observing. {c} Put differently, a key problem with the one-person - two-person distinction is that it is largely a perspective focused on the psychoanalytic session rather than all of the patient’s life. Outside the session, "one" and "two" are by no means the only possibilities. Rickman (1957), one of the originators of the two-person concep,t did acknowledge this, referring as well to three-body, four-body, and multi-body situations. But in the application of this [frame of reference] within psychoanalytic discourse, two usually meant two - the twosome together in the analyst’s office. Ultimately, there is nothing magical about the number two. Although it makes a certain amount of sense to say that classical psychoanalytic theory is a "one-person" psychology,[15] it is not really a "two-person" psychology that should replace it, but a contextual psychology. Footnotes [1] Arnold Modell, for example, one of the psychoanalytic authors who has written most extensively about the one-person versus two-person distinction, states quite explicitly that his version of object relations thinking Adoes not lead to any modification of basic technique." (Modell, 1988, p. 578) [2] Participant observation could also, of course, be seen as Sullivan’s view of the actual therapeutic stance that the therapist takes (that is, as referring to the third dimension along which one-person and two-person approaches differ, the dimension of practice). But although Sullivan is often viewed as having introduced a thoroughgoing two-person model, I will argue below that in fact Sullivan’s actual clinical approach has many features of the one-person model. {See Aron (1996), p. 57; also Hoffman, 1983; Hirsch, 1987; Mitchell, 1995)} [3] As I shall discuss below, for many relational thinkers, the central distinction that defines the relational point of view is one of motivational content or primacy - that is, the question of whether our need for and ties to other people are built secondarily around primary biological and reproductive needs or whether relational needs instead constitute fundamental building blocks of personality in their own right and are not just derivatives of more primary drives - as Fairbairn (1952) put it, whether libido is pleasure seeking or object seeking. I shall discuss in chapter 3 a different set of criteria for defining a relational point of view and the implications for clinical practice of this alternative vision of relationality. [4] I am citing here only writers whose work I generally admire so as not to create a straw man (or woman) but rather to address certain issues that are common even among the most creative and valuable thinkers in the relational tradition. [5] One early source of confusion, contributing to an enduring misperception that interpersonal [interpersonal] theories were incompatible with or dismissive of attention to the intrapsychic, was Sullivan’s overly provocative and [sloppily conceptualized] [sloppily stated] reference to the Aillusion of unique individuality" (Sullivan, 19xx). [6] This could be inserted instead at the end of the paragraph (originally was that way). It is also, as we shall see, a phenomenon that is at the heart of what enables us to do good psychotherapy. If there were no occasions in the patient’s daily life when he did not evince some version, some approximation, of the more fulfilling way of being to which he aspires, [there would be little foundation on which to build the process of change and little likelihood the process of therapy could succeed]. [7] What makes for the Arate of change," even if slow, is that we do respond to the varying circumstances we encounter; what makes that rate of change slow is that we also strive to persist in our old ways and our old self-identity even in the face of quite considerable variations in the circumstances in which they are manifested. [8] Erikson, it should be noted, was not criticizing the libido theory per se; he was too loyal to Freud to do that. He framed his critique in terms of how the libido theory could be used, implying that such a use was a misuse. It remains to his readers to judge if Erikson was politely calling attention to what he believed was a more fundamental theoretical difficulty. [9] I will suggest below that referring to the contextual nature of human behavior and experience is a better and more accurate way of putting it. For now, however, we are still exploring the uses of (and confusions surrounding) the concepts of one-person and two-person theory, a distinction that, although quite imperfect, is so pervasive and influential that it is important to explore to its limits [to explore in full]. [10] In order not to be dealing with straw men or women, in each of the preceding examples, I have chosen writers I greatly admire, and whose clinical and theoretical positions overlap with my own in many respects. [11] I shall discuss in a later chapter some formulations by Ogden (1997) {c} [and others] that seem to [go beyond] this context-free way of thinking, but [I will also show that] overall the absence of concern with context in thinking about internalized objects and other representational concepts is more striking than is any systematic attention to their contextual nature. [12] Sullivan introduced a clear two-person perspective well before Balint or Rickman, but to the best of my knowledge he never put his ideas into the language of Aone-person" and Atwo-person" perspectives. Ferenczi, who was the analyst of both Balint and Rickman, also introduced many ideas that today we would readily label as Atwo-person" thinking, but again, to the best of my knowledge he did not employ that vocabulary. [13] Interestingly, Rickman himself, when his comments were later published in slightly modified form (Rickman, 1957), stated that anyone who employs the theories and finding of psychoanalysis Ais not strictly speaking a one-person psychologist any more." He reserves that realm for Athe academic psychology of introspection, sensation, perception, learning, memory, and the like." (p. 222) Rickman’s formulations of three, four, and multi-body psychology also clearly point to the relevance of family systems conceptualizations and to the role of the larger social context, both matters that I will discuss later in this book. [14] As I shall discuss below, this emphasis on context does not mean that we are mere slaves to stimuli, responding to the cues and demands of the situation rather than to our own inner promptings. Rather, whether alone or with others, our behavior reflects our sense (usually only very partly in consciousness) of how we can best express those very promptings in that particular context. [15] As I have noted, however, the term Aone-person" psychology, although it is designed to point to some very real characteristics - and limitations - of the traditional psychoanalytic point of view [epistemology] is at the same time a bit of rhetorical excess [not quite accurate].
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