You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
Psychoanalytic praxis has evolved since Freud first established the basic tenets of standard technique in his Technical Papers (1912), as clinicians applied analytic concepts in their work with patients but were challenged by more regressed patients who were non-responsive to standard technique. Whereas patients with a core neurotic personality structure readily responded to the standard approach, those who formed narcissistic transferences (schizophrenias, autistic spectrum disorders, psychoses, moderate to severe personality disorders, and PTSD) were not considered amenable to analytic technique. Yet given the great demand for finding effective treatment modalities for the latter group, psychoanalytic researchers (Eissler, 1953; Ferenczi, 1930; Kernberg, 1976; Kohut, 1977; Stone, 1954) have proposed variations of standard technique that may be useful in working with this more regressed patient population. As technical advances in analytic practice made analytically informed treatment more available to more regressed patients, analysts have expanded their theoretical research and have proposed conceptual revisions of the metapsychology underlying the psychopathology they witness in their clinical work. In this context, the impact of environmental trauma on self development and its significance in developmental arrests and resulting psychopathology continue to be of interest.
As psychoanalytic praxis has moved increasingly in recent years from a metapsychology of content to a metapsychology of process (Roussillon, 2016), the impact of environmental impingements on psychic development