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Between 1994 and 1995 the New York Freudian Society asked a series of speakers to address the issue of omnipotence; this book is a compilation of most of the papers that resulted. As with most such collections, the quality and originality of the papers vary, but there is no question as to the breadth of the viewpoints presented.
Richard Almond leads off with a clinically useful review of the concept of omnipotence and its transferential manifestations. Almond stresses that it is the attempt to use power that can be observed interactively, whereas omnipotent fantasies involve a subjective state that is inferred by the observer. He reviews the contributions of Freud, Adler, Winnicott, Robert White, and Kohut, noting that “while omnipotence plays a limited role in Freud's metapsychology, it is carried to the other extreme in Adler's and Kohut's theories, where, through the omnipotence implicit in the striving for power or the need for the functions of the selfobject, it is everywhere. Winnicott is somewhere between these two …”(p. 10).
The heart of Almond's contribution is his clinical illustrations of omnipotent thinking through control over the other, control over the self, timelessness, omnipotence through thought, masochism, and drivenness. He closes with a review of development, positing that the sense of power begins very early in life and continues to be elaborated throughout the life cycle.
The paper by Jack and Kerry Kelly Novick stands in stark contrast to the others here. The Novicks continue their focus on sadomasochism as an integral aspect of all psychopathology and point to omnipotent functioning as the sign of a sadomasochistic solution to conflict. They do not find omnipotence to play a role in normal development; rather, its presence is the result of real failures, particularly in parental care. They distinguish and describe in rich detail the development of two systems of self-esteem regulation, the omnipotent and the competent, along the way taking