An Unspoken Conversation

From the first time I met Marian Tolpin at a self psychology conference in the mid-1990s, I admired Marian's passion, excitement, and the energy with which she taught Kohut's ideas and her own elaboration of those ideas, especially her notion of forward edge interpretations (Tolpin, 2002; 2007). Her teaching and writing always held clinical relevance for me; and from the time we met, I felt included by Marian, an unusual capacity, I thought, given that we did not know each other very well.

When Marian Tolpin (2007) discussed a case I presented at the 2001 conference in San Francisco along with eight other discussants from different perspectives, I had the opportunity to think in detail about Marian's idea of the forward edge alongside other explanatory perspectives in relation to case process that I knew intimately. It was a marvelous opportunity to consider how the trajectory of treatment might have emerged differently given Marian Tolpin's views of therapeutic action and her proposed interventions with my patient, Ann.

Marian Tolpin aptly described in experience-near language the quality of selfobject connectedness that Ann experienced with me as a “kinship/twinship/altruistic-joining-in/adversarial/self-delineating” selfobject transference. Marian believed that this quality of selfobject connection drew on and strengthened Ann's nascent experiences, what Marian often called tendrils of health. Using Ann's metaphors, infused with her own, Marian offered

a detailed, beautifully elaborated, and accessible discussion of her forward edge perspective that I continue to appreciate years later.

An example of one of Ann's forward edge “growing edge tendrils” (Tolpin, 2007, pp. 51–54) that Marian Tolpin delineated was Ann's capacity for protest that emerged in our therapeutic relationship. Marian saw Ann's growing edge in her capacity to insist on her own reality instead of deferring to my version (her more typical organization), especially at those times when