Toward a Definition of Terms

Dr. Terman

I am pleased to have the opportunity to discuss Dr. Newsome's chapter. Dr. Newsome has made a real contribution to our ability to conceptualize and then manipulate our ideas about the nature and process of what we all loosely—poetically, if you will—call structure formation. She carries

further my own contention that we have spent far too much time and effort trying to understand the process of structure formation by using a theoretical model that centers on phenomena we have called frustration and neglects—worse, shuns—anything that seems to be satisfying (Terman, 1988). We have labeled much of the latter “gratification,” but that term is neither accurate nor descriptive enough to cover a vast array of phenomena in the analytic field. In fact, we have to invent a vocabulary to describe these aspects of our process: that is what Dr. Newsome has helped us begin.

It has been so difficult for us to think about what is satisfying in the therapeutic process because we have been so suspicious of responding to the patient's initiatives. We have been highly dubious of what feels good to the patient and have been certain that responding in ways that the patient experiences as enhancing well-being will be destructive for the patient and/or the process. Though we might acknowledge that the patient experiences some kind of temporary relief, we have been convinced that it has been in the service of a lesser good or truth. This position has been solidly buttressed with theoretical concepts such as resistance, defense, transference cure, flight into health. “Better” is often deemed detrimental to “best” and more likely will lead to “worse.”

I still don't quite understand why we, as a group, have subscribed so wholeheartedly to this rather Calvinist, mean-spirited view of the human condition. Perhaps it is a function of the period in history in which these ideas took hold; that is, they had originated as a reaction to the sentimentality and hypocrisy of the late