(224) He admits, “I don’t know,” yet that admission of ignorance does not deter him for a moment from asserting that “the inevitable slide away from the mind’s workings to interpersonal interactions directly contradicts”—as far as he is concerned—” what is most distinctive about psychoanalysis” (225). If he believes “the slide” to be “inevitable,” one wonders why Edelson insists on adopting the heroic posture of fighting fate by positioning himself directly in opposition to it. The point of mentioning Edelson’s position on drive theory, one that many may find starkly reactionary, is that his viewpoint—that of a psychoanalyst of some eminence—is far from being unshared by others, and must be taken seriously, if only for the distinctness with which it describes a perspective currently in question.
The position espoused in this chapter, and further discussed in chapter 2, amounts very nearly to a mirror-opposite of the one defended by Edelson. It assumes that attachment behavior, which will be treated as a special branch of object relations behavior, is instinctive, like sexual behavior, at least in its beginnings. It further assumes that sexual behavior needs to be regarded, especially in terms of its potential for producing conflict, as intermingled with, but subordinate to, object-relations behavior. The concept of psychic energy has no place in this explanatory framework. Sexual behavior, whatever its degree of instinctiveness, reflects but one of many human needs whose priority at any given moment varies according to circumstances, that is, to the urgency of other priorities, but which over long periods of time does not ordinarily take precedence over the need of human beings for emotionally significant personal attachments, including not only the initial and highly instinctive attachment of child to parent but also those taking the form of endless possible permutations of the primal one such as those we encounter in the form of fantasy in the realm of art. The problem of the relationship of self to other in this scheme of things constitutes a separate but related issue.
2. TOWARD A UNIFIED THEORY OF OBJECT RELATIONS
One of the tasks facing anyone discussing object relations theory is that of mapping the terrain. What is to be included in the territory? To what extent is the field of object relations congruent with the domain of psychoanalysis as a whole? Pine treats object relations as just one of what he calls the four psychologies of psychoanalysis: “the psychologies of drive, ego, object relations, and self” (1988, 571). Pine’s discussion of these realms of theory makes no effort to reconcile their incompatibilities. He ignores the massive case against drive theory. He also ignores the possibility that ego psychology, self psychology, and object relations have much in common, whatever their differences. Pine’s uncritical eclecticism may be contrasted to Gedo’s cautious holism. Gedo, who laments the failure of psychoanalysis “to produce a theoretical consensus with regard to the proper place of object relations in our conceptual armamentarium” (1979, 362), questions Kohut’s claim that scientific disciplines may legitimately utilize uncoordinated fragments of theory: “If we have a choice, a unitary theory is preferable to a patchwork, the components of which bear no discernible relation to each other” (364).
According to the perspective assumed in this chapter, the deficiencies of drive theory and ego psychology have long since overwhelmed their former usefulness. The functions they sought to explain, such as unconscious motivation and conflict, can be better understood along different lines. As for what is left of Pine’s four psychologies, object relations theory and what I call self theory (as distinguished from Kohut’s self psychology) overlap so much as to make their concerns virtually insepa rable within the territory of psychoanalysis, provided, of course, that one assumes that psychoanalysis is a special psychology, limited in scope, which entertains no ambitions to be a general psychology. When I say that the concerns of self theory and object relations theory are virtually inseparable, I naturally do not mean they are indistinguishable from each other as fields of investigation. As definable areas of knowledge they reflect different perspectives and priorities. The crucial task is to explore the overlap of these distinguishable realms of attention without becoming confused by the differences. One aspect of the problem is terminological. For example, use of the terms “self” and “object” propagates a measure of confusion by tending to reify abstract categories in a way that blurs the existential inseparability of self and other, a conceptual problem addressed by Winnicotfs famous dictum (1952, 97-100) that there is no such thing as a baby (in that babies never appear except as parts of the “nursing couple” dyad). Mitchell speaks to the same issue, the impossibility of dealing with self and other separately, when he writes, “To assign priority to sense of self, object ties, or patterns of interaction is like trying to decide whether it is the skin, the bones, or the musculature that preserves the body farm. . . . The intrapsychic and the interpersonal are continually interpenetrating realms, each with its own set of processes, mechanisms, and concerns” (1988, 35).
For the practical purposes of ordinary discussion, therefore, the present work handles self theory as an aspect of object relations theory, object relations theory as an aspect of self theory, and attachment theory as a special branch of both. The possibilities for consolidation seem endless. One has only to think, for instance, of Bowlby’s emphasis on children’s sense of security in the presence of attachment figures in conjunction with the attention Winnicott and Mahler give to children’s ability to play in the presence of their mothers to get a sense of how much attachment theory has in common with object relations theory. An instructive instance of a particular analyst whose work successfully utilizes the combined perspectives of classical psychoanalysis, object relations theory, attachment theory, interactionalist views (Bower, Brazelton), and self theory without ignoring the differences can be found in V. Hamilton’s Narcissus and Oedipus (1982). Stern speaks of his version of self theory as having much in common with psychoanalysis and attachment theory, though it differs from them in treating a subjective sense of self as its primary organizing principle (1985, 25). Eagle (1984) aligns his views of object relations theory with attachment theory. Though other examples of par rial integration of these theories could be mentioned, the task of systematically combining the most meaningful parts of the various perspectives in question (in a way that would meet Gedo’s standards for a unitary theory) remains so formidable as to be far beyond the scope of the present chapter, which aspires to do no more than peek through certain windows of opportunity in order to see what a unified theory of object relations might look like when seen from a contemporary vantage point.
POSITIONING ATTACHMENT THEORY
What should be the place of attachment theory in a person-oriented theory of object relations? The beginning of an answer can be glimpsed in the anecdote Guntrip relates concerning a question Fairbairn poses to a child whose mother has cruelly thrashed her: “Would you like me to find you a new, kind Mummy?” The child answers, “No. I want my own Mummy” (Guntrip 1975, 146). In the context of attachment theory, one can say that the strength of the child’s tie to a particular mother—however harsh she may be—infinitely outweighs the possible desirability of any substitute figure. As Guntrip glosses the situation, “The devil you know is better than the devil you do not, and better than no devil at all.” One can also say of this tie that it is instinctive, primary (not based on any secondary drive, such as the need for food), and, in Bowlby’s cybernetic terminology, the child’s behavior (in this instance, her answer to Fairbairn) “is a product of the activity of a number of behavioural systems that have proximity to mother as a predictable outcome” (1969, 179), so that in the presence of anxiety or difficulty (being thrashed) the child paradoxically needs the attacking object more than ever!
Attachment theory can be regarded as the cornerstone of a person oriented theory of object relations in part because it provides a meaningful substitute, as Bowlby intended it should, for the drive theory of human motivation. It has the potential for modeling both conflictful and harmonious (growth-inducing) relationships. It does not pretend to be a universal theory explaining all forms of human behavior, such as the kind denominated by Lichtenberg (1989) as “exploratory assertive,” but it does offer a suitable framework
