Self Psychology is Not What You Think It Is

“[W]e must believe in order to understand and [we must] understand in order to believe” [Ricoeur, 1970, p. 525].

The Richards' presentation has an impressive design: It examines the relationship of their preferred “modern conflict theory” to their psychoanalytic technique, which is in itself a worthwhile undertaking. In addition, they also set out to make a contribution to comparative psychoanalysis and they do this in an innovative fashion. They present a summary overview and a particular segment of the analysis (conducted by Arlene Richards) of a woman patient, illustrating how modern conflict theory informed her analytic approach. The authors' exegesis of the technique, and their portrayal of the essential elements of the theory that guided it, serve as the fixed backdrop (well nigh the Rosetta Stone),1 with the aid of which they examine what they understand to be the essential elements of four other contemporary, alternative psychoanalytic theories: self psychology, the relational/intersubjective schools, modern Kleinian theory, and American object relations theory. It is from the vantage point of their own view of what constitutes the essence of these other theories that the Richards imagine how the various analysts, guided by their respective theories, would have responded to the patient.

There is on first sight something appealing in the effort to have the authors themselves, who know their patient and the microscopic details of the ongoing analytic process well, try on technical principles