Pine Fred - Drive, Ego, Object, And Self: A Synthesis For Clinical Work

THE PHENOMENA OF clinical work, as they are conceptualized today, are often seen as falling into four broad domains. We are accustomed to referring to these domains as those of drive, ego, object relations, and self. Our theories ought to fit with these observations and to suggest how things got that way. My aim in this book is to propose a view along those lines.

Whatever original contribution there is herein, it is not intended to be in the groupings of the phenomena themselves, nor in the broad conceptual languages used to describe them. There I shall simply work with our familiar terms: drive, ego, object relations, self. I recognize that these are loose and overlapping groupings, and that the phenomena could be grouped in other ways; but they are familiar, and I am used to rediscovering them continually in clinical work, and so I shall stay with them here. I wish to emphasize at the outset that I will be focusing on the phenomena, not formal theories regarding themthus self, but not Self Psychology; object relations, but not the views of any one theorist; and drive and ego, but not only in the ways they have been addressed in classical psychoanalysis.

As phenomena, they have been part of the data of observation ever since the way of thinking that we call psychoanalysis came into being in Freuds writings. Certainly drive concepts were central in his workin his varying dual instinct theories and in the continuing centrality he accorded to sexuality, broadly conceived. An ego concept was present from the start, alternately referred to under the broad heading of defense or the narrower one of repression. This is certainly familiar. But object relations and self were also important in Freuds writings. He gave recognition to the significance of the object in couching the stages of core anxiety in the language of separationloss of the object, and loss of the love of the object, his first two stages, most notably; and transference and the oedipal constellation are as much object relations concepts as they are drive concepts. As for self, though he put it in quasi-libidinal/instinctual terms, Freuds struggles with the concept of narcissism were efforts to deal with the experience of self, the persons relation to the self as object. It seems that drive, ego, object relations, and self are the phenomena of mental life, or are at least central among them, and we rediscover them again and again.

My own contribution is intended to be in the attempt at some synthesis of these phenomena (actually a clinical demonstration that they are synthesized in individual persons) and a developmental argument regarding how they got that way. Since in itself this is, I recognize, an ambitious attempt, I hasten to add what the views to be presented do not attempt to do. They do not represent a formal theory; there is no metatheory here, no basic postulates that serve as firm anchor points. Rather, I step into the developmental and clinical processes in midstream and try to make some sense of them. And I skirt the issue of hermeneutics versus science that is currently actively argued in the psychoanalytic literature, recognizing that my arguments can be drawn into either position.

My own statement is offered in three main parts: a theoretical section where the point of view is developed; a clinical section where it is illustrated; and an applied section where I utilize the ideas, along with further clinical examples, to attempt some clarification of various current issues in the psychoanalytic literature.

Among the broad set of ideas presented here, I introduced some in my earlier book, Developmental Theory and Clinical Process (1985); but I rapidly came to the opinion that that was only an introductionthat there was a lot more to be said about them. Hence the fuller statement with clinical illustrations in the present book.