To the Editor

Dr. Jeffrey Rubin's editorial, “Psychoanalytic Identity” (Am. J. Psychoanal., 46: 283-288, 1986), recommends a reexamination of the place of developmental theory in psychoanalysis. Rubin shows us how we risk error in imputing to an outcome some preordained design which leads to thinking in terms of predetermined stages of growth rather than in the direction of healthy development. This caution is well taken. Rubin is wise to point out how we may idealize a developmental schema. But to discard developmental paradigms in favor of unique individual growth is also risky. Models of development are necessary and helpful when not misused. We need to know what's average and expectable in order to attune to what may be pathological. The parent whose child has not begun to walk or talk in line with broad developmental milestones is cued to recognize a possible problem and deal with it.

Rubin tells us that we may simply be wrong in basing our understanding of normal development on the hypotheses we've made from studying disturbed adults and children. Of course, he is right. Still, despite our uncertainty about what's true, it can be useful to think in developmental terms. The concepts that have sprung from developmental psychoanalysis have enabled us to more wholeheartedly appreciate, empathize with, and therefore tolerate and psychoanalytically treat a severely disturbed patient population. Our acceptance of the considerable difficulties that come with such treatment situations is facilitated through our understanding and we are more hopeful. When we perceive a split of good and bad self and object representations as a normal phase gone awry, we see our task as addressing the need for the split and working toward the integration of these representations of experience. The model from which this derives attributes to all human beings the capacity to develop self representations that own both goodness and badness and object representations that do the same. It, like Horney's mode