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.
This is the third paper in which Ryle challenges the Kleinian view of defensive organizations in the borderline personality, the first two having addressed the works of Steiner and Joseph. Ryle states that his aim is ‘to challenge the ideas and orthodoxies’ which the three papers represent, and not ‘to attack the particular protagonists who have been prepared to offer their work for examination’.
Fair enough, except that I would firstly question the possibility of such a neat division in psychoanalytic debate. It is not easy to challenge the abstract content of a paper without in some way implicating the artistry that is revealed in the practice. Because clinical papers are particular examples of artistry, they may not offer fixed prescriptions that transfer readily from one clinical situation to another. Rather, they are partly valuable for their evocative power and our ability, through issues that they illuminate, to glimpse new clinical possibilities.
This does not preclude a rigorous examination of the author's framework. However, it is, by now, broadly accepted that patients improve with practitioners who hold different theoretical frameworks. This suggests that ‘either’ ‘or’ outlooks that emphasize only the virtues of one theoretical system at the expense of another might be missing the point.
It is with such thoughts in mind that I wish to respond more particularly to Ryle's criticism. Ryle's aim of ‘joint work’ with the patient that seeks to offer ‘an experience of a thoughtful collaborative relationship’ is no doubt one that O'Shaughnessy would applaud. The difficulty lies in the degree of anxiety and illness which made it impossible for her patient to engage in such a relationship for many years.
Generally speaking, the borderline patient might well be struggling unsuccessfully to connect self states across shifts within the session, and could in this sense legitimately be described as trying out restricted and unsatisfactory modes of relating in the transfere