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Donnel Stern’s On Coming Into Possession of Oneself is a collection of recent articles from a seasoned psychoanalyst whose ideas are deeply rooted in the interpersonal tradition. Stern’s work continues the interpersonal tradition of encouraging the psychoanalytic establishment to expand toward a broader, more relationally oriented scope of thinking and practice. While
some analysts may find themselves at odds with Stern’s theoretical premises, others will find his perspective to be a compelling extension of their own analytic values—particularly those grounded in an earnest, mutual, egalitarian stance where the foundational elements of the therapeutic relationship remain in continuous suspense.
The author’s core arguments include:
The psychoanalytic process is based fundamentally in the interaction between patient and analyst, rather than in the intrapsychic life of the patient.
Dissociation, rather than repression, is the primary denominator of defense.
There aren’t really psychic remnants of the unconscious pushing up from within our patients, because this unconscious material wasn’t ever formed in the first place.
The aim of analysis is to liberate both patient and analyst into new ways of relating; insight is secondary to this.
The analyst’s own capacity to emerge from rigid interpersonal positions is central to therapeutic change. In this way, the analyst is the patient and the patient is the analyst.
Importantly, Stern disputes the repression model and with it all conflict-based defensive processes in general. He devotes a chapter to the argument that repression is not theoretically tenable within his framework (p. 216). He makes the case that psychic contents emerge from vagueness to clarity, and that psychological suffering arises from constraints in that process of formulation, specifically in one’s set of opportunities to formulate. Thus, defense is reconceived as “an unconscious refusal to formulate experience or as the unconsciously motivated refusal to be