Pleasure and Frustration

Dear Mr Hayley,

I would like to respond to Dr Samuel E. Rubin's review of my book, Pleasure and Frustration: A Resynthesis of Clinical and Theoretical Psychoanalysis, which appeared in The International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 67: 527–528, 1986.

Dr Rubin wrote a predominantly favorable

review and recognized the main thrust of my ideas. Some of his disagreements were, however, unclear and appeared to be based on a misreading of my intentions. For example, he wrote, in reply to my emphasis on gratification as the basis of normal childhood development, 'However, I believe, as do many analysts, that frustration is more important than gratification in pathological development'. This statement implies disagreement with my thesis, although it is not.

In his paragraph regarding my views on 'therapeutic rapport' Dr Rubin wrote, 'I would prefer a view of the treatment as the interpretation of defence and resistance which then lead to a decrease in conflict and the return of rapport'. I did emphasize the crucial importance of defence-resistance interpretation and its role in the maintenance of rapport.

I cannot follow Dr Rubin's logic in his objection to my preference for the term 'personal relationship' over 'object relationship'. He asked whether, to me, an object relationship does not contain a personal relationship? That is what I am referring to, that the term personal relationship is a better one for the concept. I believe that much of our theoretical literature connotes an impersonal response to our patients. No transference interpretation is impersonal.

The following paragraph appears to contain a typographical error which I think must obscure its meaning. After a statement apparently in agreement with my discussion of the analyst's use of silence, Dr Rubin wrote, 'He shows a sensitivity, which if uninterpreted, would threaten the basic attachment'. I don't understand this sentence.

In the next paragraph, referring to my discussion of Lipton's wor