critique of Freud’s theory of sexuality contends that the meta-psychology brings together “two powerful, conventional trends: the belief that theory should have a physicalist-mechanist form and the belief that sexuality is basically a harmful activity” (1981, 67). This contention is an extension of Breger’s thesis that sexuality gets treated within psychoanalytic theory in inconsistent ways, reflecting Freud’s “unfinished journey, the incomplete transition from a conventional to a critical world view” (51). Breger, who addresses the problems of Freud’s theory of sexuality as a whole as distinct from just libido theory, concludes that “a theory which attempts to explain so many human actions and feelings solely in terms of sexuality creates more problems than it solves” (65). The real question, of course, lies not in the degree of Freud’s reductionism, that is, the comparative economy of his explanation of so many things in terms of one principle; the more pressing question has to do with whether he latched onto the right explanatory principle in the first place.
One measure of the bankruptcy of Freudian drive theory may be taken in terms of the presumed efficacy of orthodox sexual (usually oedipal) interpretations in psychoanalysis. If Guntrip can bear witness, Winnicott’s empathic, person-oriented responses were far more helpful than Fair-bairn’s detached, oedipal-libidinal interpretations (1975). At one point in the record he kept of his first training analysis, Guntrip wrote,
This is one of the points at which I now feel that Fairbairn’s constant reiteration of interpretations in terms of penises was a survival of classic Freudian sexology that his theory had moved beyond. I feel that kept me stationary, whereas interpretations in which mother did her best to restrict and dominate would have felt to me much more realistic. In effect, his analysis was a “penis-analysis,” not an “ego-analysis.” (in J. Hughes 1989, 111)
A rather similar instance of comparisons between the conventional sexual interpretations of one analyst and the person-oriented interpretations of another can be found in Margaret Little’s account of her treatment (1985), first and superficially with a Jungian, then from 1940-47 with Ella Freeman Sharpe, and finally for seven years with Winnicott. Little, who characterizes her anxieties as psychotic, pictures her analysis with Sharpe as one of constant struggle between them, Sharpe “insisting on interpreting what I said as due to intrapsychic conflict [having] to do with infantile sexuality, and I trying to convey to her that my real problems were matters of existence and identity” (15). Little continues: “I did not know what ‘myself’ was; sexuality (even if known) was totally irrele vant and meaningless unless existence and survival could be taken for granted, and personal identity established” (15). Little explains her dilemma this way: “Whenever I spoke of either of my parents, what I said was, for her, phantasy, and any reference to the realities was taking refuge from it. So I was doubly caught in the ‘spider’s web’; I was the crazy one, not my mother; she [Sharpe] was the one who ‘knew,’ as my mother, not I, had always known; while my recognition of my own and my mother’s psychosis was dismissed as phantasy” (16). After an interim period with Marion Milner, Little began an analysis with Winnicott. He was able to provide a long-term, empathic environment that allowed Little to “work” at her own pace. He evidendy succeeded in providing for Little the kind of potential space she required in order to become a person in her own right—with a corresponding relief from her psychotic anxieties. “In the words of an old friend from before analysis, I was ‘not recognizable as the same person’” (37). While Little’s experiences do not provide a perfecdy clear-cut, uncomplicated illustration because of the presence of other issues, such as the differing developmental levels Sharpe and Winnicott chose to address, plus the fact that Litde’s work with Sharpe was by no means without object relational elements, certainly not without very early ones, Little’s account may nevertheless be regarded as highlighting some of the differences between drive-oriented and person-oriented approaches. Extensive case material in chapters 3 and 4 will serve as further illustration of such differences.
Given the amount and seriousness of the criticism of drive theory in psychoanalysis, the comparative absence of significant countering responses, and the extent to which so many figures important in the history of object relations psychology have shifted toward a person oriented position, the amount of profession wide reluctance to give up drive theory is surprising. One instance can be located in the fence-straddling position, mentioned earlier, of Greenberg and Mitchell: their claim that we shall have to live with two incompatible theories of human behavior, one drive oriented and one person oriented. Late in their book—an extraordinarily valuable compendium of information about object relations theory remarkable for the degree of attentiveness, discrimination, and detachment they exhibit in describing, usually with great fidelity and thoroughness, the differing viewpoints at issue—they speak of the two object relational orientations as being based on incompatible but equally meaningful philosophical positions, one being that humans are inescapably individual creatures and the other that they are unavoidably social creatures (1983, 403). Claiming further that “model mixing is unstable” (403), they argue that “it is neither useful nor appropriate to question whether either psychoanalytic model is ‘right’ or ‘wrong.’ Each is complex, elegant, and resilient enough to account for all phenomena” (404). They even go so far as to declare that “the evaluation of psychoanalytic theories is a matter of personal choice” (407)! Yet Greenberg and Mitchell appear to drop their stance of rhetorical neutrality at that point in the book where they associate themselves with Jacobson’s position: “Jacob-son’s work overall constitutes what we consider the most satisfying drive/structure model theory after Freud’s” (306; italics added). Here they seem to associate themselves with her position even though they recognize her accommodations to an object-relational view to be an instance of model mixing, a practice they elsewhere decry. If the position they adopt here constitutes a departure from their customary neutrality, perhaps it accounts for why they fail to do justice to the critiques of drive theory by Guntrip, G. S. Klein, Gill, Holt, and Schafer which they cite. One cannot, after all, take these critiques seriously while at the same time maintaining that explanatory parity exists between the drive-oriented and person-oriented positions. An alternative possibility is that the appearance of fence-straddling created by the pose of detached objectivity in Greenberg and Mitchell does not mask any lingering allegiance to drive theory but, on the contrary, disguises their unfettered commitment to more progressive views, views they may have avoided espousing directly as a way of circumventing the arousal of counter productive antagonism that might further polarize the opposing camps instead of encouraging a potentially productive exchange of ideas. Whatever his strategy in 1983, five years later Mitchell unequivocally endorses “a purely relational mode perspective, unmixed with drive-model premises” (1988, 54). He also says that work in preparation by Greenberg takes a similar position (135). It matters little whether the radical shift in their position was real or virtual; what I am calling attention to is the fact that in giving the appearance of countenancing drive-oriented object relations theory as still being intellectually respectable in 1983, the enormously influential, authoritative study of Greenberg and Mitchell may have had the effect of deterring rather than spurring a desirable evolution of views in the profession.
Another and more obvious instance of the present unsatisfactory state of affairs in psychoanalysis appears in the form of the polemical aggressiveness of Edelson’s recent book, Psychoanalysis: A Theory in Crisis (1988), especially that portion of the work focusing on the theory of sexuality. We have but to weed the garden of psychoanalysis of its stagnating, choking overgrowth, believes Edelson, for the distinctive contributions of psychoanalysis to emerge “sharp, clear, in bold relieP” (xvi). For him this means giving primacy, among other things, to “the causal force of the quest for sexual pleasure over that of the quest for the object. . . and the causal force of sexual wishes over that of aggressive (and non-sexual) wishes” (xxi). Edelson believes the psychoanalytic theory of sexuality “to be in danger of dilution and displacement to the periphery by current preoccupation with ‘the self,’ ‘identity,’ ‘object-relations,’ ‘interpersonal interactions,’ ‘the importance of the mother-infant relation and the pre-oedipal experiences of the very young infant,’ and ‘aggression’” (xxvii). What he wants to do is to restore sexuality to the glory of its former centrality in psychoanalysis. He
