What's a Good Object to Do? - PsyBC

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42 Neil J. Skolnick ⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯ them depending on an array of contextual or internal factors. This issue provides a good segue into the point with which I take issue in Frankel’s discussion. To state the last line first, I believe it is time for analysts to reconsider an understanding of the term “regression.” When considering the movement between dynamic identifications, Kleinian positions, Davies’s multiple shifting diagnoses, Bromberg’s multiple states, or Frankel’s diagnoses-of-the-moment, any movement can best be describe as circular, with no point considered forward or back to another. This is markedly different from the back and forth of a regression model, which decidedly locates a regressed point back from or lower down than a nonregressed state of being. There are a number of advantages to this circular model, two of which I’ll put forth here. As I see it, redefining the concept of “regression” can allow us to de-pathologize the organizational state a patient is in. I have frequently noted that some patients, when existing in the abstractless shattered slivers of a part-object world, can garner actual advantage from the perceptions of their state. Oftentimes it can herald the construction of a more integrated whole object world. Winnicott (1954) regarded “regression” as a forward-seeking trend aimed at seeking more benevolent conditions and objects in a patient’s world so that “true self” functioning may resume. Also, redefining regression might allow analysts to be empathic for the current organization of the patient’s psyche, particularly a paranoid-schizoid state. Analysts will more easily identify with a patient’s depressive position functioning. By contrast a patient in a paranoid/schizoid organization will be regarded as regressed, or primitive, or too disturbed to identify with. This allows the analyst to remain a safe distance from the patient’s now objectified “pathology.” To consider different organizations of state as dialectically constructed (Ogden, 1986), and existing in tension (Benjamin, 1992), allows the analyst to more freely identify, and be empathic with, all organizations of a patient’s psyche without the stigma that identifying with a state called “regressed” could bring (though I must remark that paranoid-schizoid is probably even worse. Once again, our language begs revision). As noted in my article, apprehending a patient’s position in the here and now can guide intervention. The issue of reconsidering regression is obviously a more extensive and complex issue and task that needs greater time and voice than this response to a response allows.
Reply to Commentary 43 ⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯ Frankel ends his response to my article by extending the question of, “What’s a good object to do” to, “What’s a good object to do for this particular patient at this particular moment and how do we come to that conclusion” That my ideas raise more questions than they answer is high praise. REFERENCES Benjamin, J. (1992), Recognition and destruction: An outline of intersubjectivity. In: Relational Perspectives in Psychoanalysis, ed. N. J. Skolnick & S. C. Warshaw. Hillsdale, NJ: The Analytic Press, pp. 43–60. Bromberg, P. M. (1998), Standing in the Spaces. Hillsdale, NJ: The Analytic Press. Davies, J. M. (2004), Reply to commentaries. Psychoanal. Dial., 14:755–767. Fairbairn, W. R. D. (1946), Object relationships and dynamic structure. In: Psychoanal. Studies of the Personality. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1952, pp. 137–152. Klein, M. (1935), A contribution to the psychogenesis of manic-depressive states. In: Love, Guilt and Reparation and Other Works, 1921–1945. New York: Free Press, 1975, pp. 262–290. Kohut, H. (1977), The Restoration of the Self. New York: International Universies Press. ⎯⎯⎯ (1984), How Does Analysis Cure ed. A. Goldberg & P. Stepansky. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Mitchell, S. (1993), Hope and Dread in Psychoanalysis. New York: Basic Books Ogden, T. H. (1986), The Matrix of the Mind. Northvale, NJ: Aronson. Rubens, R. L. (1994), Fairbairn’s structural theory. In: Fairbairn and the Origins of Object Relations, ed. J. S. Grotstein & D. B. Rinsley. New York: Guilford Press. Winnicott, D. W. (1954), Metapsychological and clinical aspects of regression in the psycho-analytical set-up. In: Through Paediatrics to Psycho-Analysis: Collected Papers. New York: Basic Books, 1975, pp. 270–295.
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