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.
t's a pity about this book's title, because behind its bland and obscure phrasing lie exciting and creative ideas. Newirth is an American neo-Kleinian, yet his book is a unique comparative and integrative study of present-day psychoanalytic theory and technique.
What makes Newirth's contribution unique is what he emphasizes and how he articulates his vision of the main goals of psychoanalysis. His theory building has a very pragmatic purpose: he proposes that we need new ways of working more efectively with certain types of analysands, specifically those whom we variously describe as narcissistic, schizoid, or borderline. The core pathology of these patients, Newirth argues, consists of a failure in the development of subjectivity. The analytic goal, therefore, is to help these individuals develop a capacity to create meaning in their lives.
Although no single contemporary analytic school defines the person as “subject” (as distinct from concepts of ego or self), Ogden (1992) maintains that such a definition is implied in Kleinian theory and in Winnicott's writings. These perspectives “define psychic structure as a dialectic between two potentially parallel, cohesive, separate organizations of experience … a fundamental and inevitable dichotomy of being an object, a thing in an alienated, deadened state; or a subject, feeling alive and present” (p. 40). Inherent in the development of subjectivity is the capacity for symbolic thought.
Newirth develops his thesis by integrating the theories of Klein (along with Bion's important extensions) and Winnicott, as mentioned above, as well as Blanco. Who is Blanco? Many North American analysts have only a vague awareness of this man and his theories, but since Newirth draws heavily on his ideas, I will digress briefly here to offer a summary of his work. I rely on Rayner (1995), who gives the most accessible distillation and “translation” of Blanco's writings.
Ignacio Matte Blanco (1908-1995) was a Chilean psychoanalyst who train