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Our knowledge about the infant's and young child's psychic development and organization over time has been continually enhanced by theoretical and methodological advances in related fields, such as developmental psychology, nonlinear system theory, affect theory, and neuroscience. Because we are all dealing with the same organism, and each approach explores some part of the terrain, ideally we can all benefit from an open dialogue. Therefore, these advances offer a challenge to our efforts to construct viable theories that are in accord with new knowledge representing current scientific consensus about human origins and functioning. Beginning with an earlier essay in this journal (Demos, 1989a), I have offered several attempts to integrate new findings from other human sciences with an intrapsychic perspective (see Demos, 1992, 2001, 2007) so as to broaden the dialogue. This essay represents a further elaboration and integration of those efforts.
I am also motivated by the belief, which has only grown stronger through my intensive work with residential patients at the Austen Riggs Center, that we have much to learn if we are to help our patients overcome powerful defensive and potentially lethal psychic organizations. As Galatzer-Levy (2004) suggests, the risk of rigidifying our theories is that phenomena that cannot be incorporated in a theory become effectively invisible. We cannot afford to be blind, as were the proverbial men examining the elephant. Our best chance is to work with as fully informed an understanding of human functioning as possible. In turn, our increasing understanding of our patients from an intrapsychic perspective is unique and can offer its own contributions to this ongoing dialogue.