What's a Good Object to Do? - PsyBC

What’s a Good Object to Do 3
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Good objects, but not great objects. And therein lies the essence of
this article. Good objects are not perfect, neither flawless nor hopelessly
flawed, neither ultimate nor ideal. Whether volunteering to contribute
in the multitude of ways recent crises have required, or simply getting
back to work, these good objects are everyday people expressing an
elementary but pervasive life-affirming given of their core selves to
support the existence of life, their own and others’, within the context
of social connections.
Psychoanalytic technique has periodically been modified to reflect
historical and theoretical shifts (Lipton, 1983). Over the course of
the last 25 years, the psychoanalytic landscape has changed to reflect
the mounting importance accorded to context in the structuring of
our developmental and motivational selves. The relational evolution
has ushered in mind-numbing changes to psychoanalytic theory and
technique. Shibboleths of classical or ego-based approaches to
technique can appear almost unrecognizable today. Consider the last
time you referred to a patient’s loving affects as neutralized libido, or
a regression in the service of the ego, or evidence of a developing
transference neurosis. This was the language on which I cut my
psychoanalytic teeth. At the same time, mainstays of our contemporary
technique that were relegated to the heretical just a few years ago are
regarded as standard fare today. Witness the debates on the efficacy
of the self-revealing analyst (Burke, 1992; Davies, 1994; Hirsch, 1994;
Tansey, 1994; Greenberg, 1995) or the use of enactments to further
the goals of treatment (Davies, 1994). Increasingly, contemporary
models of psychic functioning and organization (Bromberg, 1998) are
informing emergent twists and turns of technique.
The practice of psychoanalysis during its infancy contained informal
customs that appear to have violated the dictates of classical technique
as it came to be. Freud at one time or another acted as a moneylender,
dinner host, and matchmaker to his patients. These seeming lapses
become more forgivable when we consider them within the context of
what was a new, evolving science. Freud and his associates were
experimenting with new forms of technique that had a way to go before
being codified into a set of standard practices and, by implication,
prohibited transgressions. Their “mistakes” awaited future contextual
models before they could be defined as mistakes.
It is my impression that a similar situation exists today. We have
ventured into new realms of technique with alternating gusto and
caution. The jury is out, I caution, as to whether these newer