For
example, middle school Object-Relations analysts
tend to conceptualize many of their patients as developmentally deficient or
“egoless,” creating an analytic model that situates the analyst in the role of
a good enough mother, repairing and compensating for the damage done by the
original parents. I view this as an essentially pediatric model that
situates analysts as developed adults and patients as underdeveloped babies.
Analysts who stick closely to the traditional Self-Psychological model
also tend to view patients as deficient—not fully developed and internally
lacking something very fundamental. Through the provision of optimal empathy, a
quality viewed as insufficient during development, patients may incorporate
being known by their adult and sufficient analysts and, in the context of these
supplies, are more likely to recharge a stunted development. I believe that
this configuration bears close resemblance to the hierarchical parent–child
or adult–child or sufficient therapist–deficient patient model
described above.
In contrast, the Interpersonal tradition is
biased toward viewing adult patients as adults, independent
of how well or poorly they are functioning in the world. No one is viewed as
lacking any semblance of a self or as developmentally deficient, egoless, or
lacking a mind. Fundamentally, people are seen as adapting to their life
circumstances and making the unconsciously driven pragmatic compromises
necessary to best survive in their universe. One may see these compromises less
as weaknesses than as adaptive strengths—a stable way to survive and to make
the best of any adverse interpersonal history that one has been dealt. In this
context patients may be seen less as deficient than as sufficient and resilient
in an effort to make the best life possible in the context of perhaps difficult
exogenous personal and cultural life circumstances.
Further Developments in Interpersonal Psychoanalysis,
1980s-2010s: Evolving Interest in the Analyst’s Subjectivity (Psychoanalysis in
a New Key Book Series) (pp. 6-7). Taylor and Francis. 2018, Kindle edition.