The Psychoanalyst as a New Old Object, an Old New Object, and a Brand New Object: Reflections on Loewald's Ideas about the Role of Internalization in Life and in Psychoanalytic Treatment

Hans Loewald is one of the most important contributors whom the field of psychoanalysis has had. In a relatively soft-spoken way, he has been a seminal voice in effecting the transition that has taken place —away from the authoritarian, complacent, overly certain, theoretically narrow, and reductionistic form in which psychoanalysis tended to be understood and practiced during the first half century of its existence, and toward the increasingly open, egalitarian, fallibilistic nature of psychoanalytic art and science that has characterized it during the past fifty years.

What has made Loewald's contribution all the more remarkable is that he never succumbed to the temptation to belittle or scoff at the achievements of his predecessors in order to elevate himself to a position of preeminence or superiority. Unlike those who move from apotheosis to apostasy, he always remained appreciative of and respectful toward the pioneers who established the foundations of our discipline, while he allowed his patients to educate him and his colleagues to inform him from the vantage