Reply

I APPRECIATE AND RESPECT WHAT Dr. Bromberg has to say and see hardly any point with which I would seriously dissent. There are perhaps a few which I should like to clarify. In the main, I shall refrain from any defense about my conduct of the case since this is a very abbreviated version of an intense experience, and all of the suggestions about alternate interpretations and/or countertransference issues are well taken.

Self psychology struggles hard not to be an interpersonal psychology not only because it wishes to avoid the social psychological connotations of the phrase but also because it wishes to minimize the input of the analyst into the mix. We certainly see that this is unavoidable and thus constantly strive to scrutinize our input. It is not minimized merely to keep the field pure so much as to allow a thwarted development to unfold. Since self psychology is so preeminently a developmental psychology, it is based on the idea of a developmental program (one that may be innate or pre-wired if you wish) that will reconstitute itself under certain conditions. Now the conditions will vary, and thus the results will not be uniform, but the program remains one determined and directed by the patient. The analyst serves as selfobject to the patient and interprets these heterogeneous functions rather than the patient serving as selfobject to the analyst and thus substituting action for interpretation.

There are times in every treatment when the analyst wishes to