Introduction to “Malevolent Transformation: Some Clinical and Developmental Notes” by David E. Schecter

Perhaps because of its brevity and its unassuming title, this article by David E. Schecter has been largely overlooked. The ideas in it are just some “notes” touching on many ideas that could easily be elaborated. If Schecter had lived longer, he might have developed them further. As it stands, the article speaks to his pragmatic capacity to take useful ideas from wherever he found them, without concern for their provenance. As Robert Shapiro noted in an admiring 2010 address to the William Alanson White Society, Schecter did not limit his thinking by adhering to a rigid theoretical position. He recognized valuable ideas when he found them and did not get involved in labeling his thinking as interpersonal, object relational, or Freudian.

PEP-Web (p-e-p.org) reveals that only once has this article been cited in the psychoanalytic literature: Philip Bromberg (1995) included a passing reference in a discussion on dissociation. I asked Bromberg if he wished to revisit what he sees as valuable in this article of Schecter's. His response, it seems to me, reflects how seminal David's thinking was:

With regard to Sullivan's concept of Malevolent Transformation, I think that David's brief reflection on the topic is a gem and I find it especially useful to

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think about it in the context of a self-state view of mental functioning. That is, a context in which one looks at the phenomenon described by Sullivan as the product of an internal war between dissociated aspects of self that are in an adversarial relationship to one another. From this vantage point, the phenomenon is not truly a “transformation,” but rather an anticipatory hijacking of the mind by a self-state already present and always on-alert to protect the person from trusting genuine relatedness from another human being and inevitable betrayal. Schecter's discussion presciently makes the link to the issue of relational trauma being central to Sullivan's concept even though, ironically, Sullivan does not