Malcolm Owen Slavin

Why the analyst needs to change: Toward a theory of conflict, negotiation, and mutual influence in the therapeutic process

Why the analyst needs to change: Toward a theory of conflict, negotiation, and mutual influence in the therapeutic process Malcolm Owen Slavin Ph.D. a b & Daniel Kriegman Ph.D. c a President of the Massachusetts Institute for Psychoanalysis, 112 Lakeview Avenue, Cambridge, MA, 02138 E-mail: b Director of Training, Tufts University Counseling Center c faculty member of the Massachusetts Institute for Psychoanalysis, 112 Lakeview Avenue, Cambridge, MA, 02138 Published online: 02 Nov 2009.

Meaning, Mortality, and the Search for Realness and Reciprocity: An Evolutionary/Existential Perspective on Hoffman's Dialectical Constructivism

This paper illustrates how I have incorporated and translated Hoffmans dialectical constructivism within my own theoretical and clinical framework—a broader context that combines our shared existential thinking with my own evolutionary perspective generating a view of analysis as a highly reciprocal process of mutual change. The clinical story of Sarah and her son, Noah, illustrates how Hoffmans dialectical, clinical sensibility operates in the existential context of a childs mortal terror, parental love, self-love, deception, and self-deception in the ordinary good-enough family. Hoffmans dialectical tensions and constructivist process are seen as universal features of the human condition—adaptations that may have evolved, precisely, to regulate the inherent ambiguity and self–other conflict embedded in culture and human relating. The fallible “probing” for deep, reciprocal connection in Noah and Sarahs developmental interaction is viewed as a fundamental human capacity that operates in the treatment relationship and shapes the therapeutic action. In this larger existential-adaptive context, dialectical constructivism is seen as calling us to a kind of radical empathy: a sometimes painful, challenging openness to being seen for who we are as we re-enter our own struggle to make meaning around the same universal, human issues that torment our patients.

Review Essay: Constructivism with a Human Face

Irwin Hoffmans book Ritual and Spontaneity includes, but goes well beyond, his series of seminal papers—written over the past several decades—developing a psychoanalytic, constructivist perspective. A new, existential framework depicts what Hoffman calls the “psychobiological bedrock” at the core of the human process of constructing meaning—the lifelong effort to create a livable, subjective world in face of our ever present sense of loss, suffering, and, ultimately, mortality. This review describes Hoffmans encompassing, existential perspective and discusses how, within this framework, he uses his dialectical sensibility to frame our understanding of both parenting and analysis as “semisacred” activities. The “dialectic of ritual and spontaneity”—the vital clash between disciplined adherence to the analytic frame and personally expressive deviations from it—represents the creative tension between the “magical” dimension of analytic authority and the healing influence of a genuinely expressive human relationship. Hoffmans perspective on the self-interested, “dark side” of the analytic relationship is compared with Winnicotts views on the vital, therapeutic role of “hate” and the paradoxical process by which the patient comes to “use” the analyst. Unlike most postmodernist “constructivists,” Hoffman openly reveals his underlying belief in certain “transcultural, transhistorical universals”—his “psychobiological bedrock.” In acknowledging these “essentials” (assumptions about human nature) that in some form are integral, yet often hidden, elements of any system of thought, Hoffman saves his own dialectical constructivism from falling into dichotomous (constructivist vs. essentialist) thinking.

Relational Psychoanalysis and the Tragic-Existential Aspect of the Human Condition

I suggest we may benefit by opening relational thinking to a certain aspect of a classical psychoanalytic worldview. Opening to what we can call the tragic and existential dimensions of the human condition: the universal experience of a certain inner dividedness, hiddenness, and self-deception—a strangeness within the “otherness” that constitutes ordinary, good-enough human environment; as well as the equally universal experience of impermanence—lack, inevitable loss, and finitude. Such openness entails listening to themes we hear in many critiques of relational thinking—critiques that often devolve into caricaturing relationality as avoiding the dark, internally divided side of our nature. It entails listening well enough to these universal themes in ourselves and in our patients so that we can radically reframe them—without recourse drives—in expanded, relational terms. As in Mitchell’s words, “dialectical tensions not taken as polarities … but rather as interpenetrating and, in some sense, as mutually creating each other.”

Tanya and the Adaptive Dialectic of Romantic Passion and Secure Attachment

My analytic work with Tanya illustrated one unique, heightened, individual version of a pervasive human conflict: the way in which erotic passion can be experienced as inherently conflicting with other relational bonds and broader values. In virtually every culture throughout human history, we find expressions of this tension between passionate Eros and other forms of love. My clinical approach entails an openness to multiple analytic perspectives, including Mitchells posthumous views in Can Love Last. In addition, I make use of a sensibility informed by evolutionary biology as a vantage point for understanding the individual struggle of patients like Tanya, as well as illuminating some of the larger issues about Eros and attachment. I suggest that romantic aspects of Eros may have evolved as part of a complex psychological system designed to deal with specifically human existential vulnerabilities and anxieties, as well as a way of challenging the inherent human tendency to over-accommodate to the subjective world of the other. Dr. Slavin has written extensively about the ways that contemporary evolutionary biology can be used to illuminate, critique, and reframe many theoretical and clinical issues and attitudes in psychoanalysis. His book, The Adaptive Design of the Human Psyche: Psychoanalysis, Evolutionary Biology and the Therapeutic Process, and recent papers explore the implications of working clinically from the vantage point of an evolutionary-adaptive perspective on human nature. Dr. Slavin is on the Board of Directors of the International Association for Relational Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy (IARPP) and the International Council for Psychoanalytic Self Psychology. He is a Contributing Editor for Psychoanalytic Dialogues and is on the Editorial Boards of Gender and Psychoanalysis and The International Journal of the Psychology of the Self.