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ARTICLE HISTORY Received 20 March 2022; Accepted 20 March 2022
It is an honor and a privilege to comment on Dr. Kernberg’s landmark article. I met Dr. Kernberg personally 45 years ago as a senior medical student when he gave a visiting lecture. I greeted him afterwards and told him that I had a long-standing friendship with a close friend and colleague of his, the now late William Grossman. We shared a moment of connectedness through Bill that I have not forgotten, and I felt elevated by making a real connection with someone who was already a leading figure in the field. I share this anecdote to illustrate that I know Kernberg to be a legendary leader in psychoanalysis for over a half a century, someone who may arguably be the foremost authority on borderline personality disorder in the world. From that perspective, evaluating Kernberg’s contribution, including its pros and cons, feels somehow inappropriate. Who am I to pass evaluative judgement on the most recent thinking of a legend?
This brings to mind the question of how advances in psychoanalytic theory take place. Psychoanalytic treatment is a unique context for observing and exploring the nature of the human mind, including its conscious and unconscious elements. The field of neuropsychoanalysis aims to realize Freud’s vision of understanding the mind based on its neural underpinnings. And yet in order to be considered knowledgeable enough to comment on the nature of the mind in psychoanalysis from a neural perspective, one must ideally have vast experience as a psychoanalytic practitioner. Following from the long tradition of Freud as the ultimate authority in the field, I believe the field only takes seriously highly experienced, blue-ribbon psychoanalysts as suitably knowledgeable to propose changes in psychoanalytic theory.
It is for that reason that Kernberg’s article proposing fundamental changes in our conceptualization of drives and the dynamic unconscious based on neuroscience is to be so warmly welcome