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It was Alexis de Tocqueville who, over 100 years ago, commented on American optimism and practicality. His observations still hold. Goldbart and Wallin have written a transparently optimistic book about the vicissitudes of love relationships, their probable causes, and their solutions. Commendable. Yet, as I read this work, I felt that something essential had been omitted(more about this shortly).
The authors posit six developmental capacities essential for any successful relationship. They are the capacities for 1) erotic involvement, 2) merging, 3) idealization, 4) integration, 5) refinding, and 6) self-transcendence. Using the image of the “internal map” as a descriptive guide for unconscious processes, the authors succeed in making an abstract concept something most people can both understand and feel as personally relevant. In this vein, their popularizing of many psychoanalytic concepts—for example, the resolution of neurotic narcissism spoken of in terms of a capacity for self-transcendence—is helpful and successful. So is their discussion of projective identification, which they spell our clearly: “in this form of self-protection, we induce others to identify with the images we project onto them” (p. 170). And finally, their discussion of “collusion” of pathological patterns resulting in “collision” is perceptive. Repeatedly approaching most of the issues they discuss through these categories, they manage to convey the power of transference in approachable terms. Thus they write, “If collusions involving refinding allow us to avoid the problems of our past, collisions compel us to relive them. Both ensure that our energies in love are largely absorbed in keeping the past in place.” Nicely done! And then the resolution: “Only collaboration can enable us to work through these problems, diminishing their destructive impact and permitting love to deepen” (p. 223).
Each of the earlier enumerated six capacities is given a separate chapter containing seemingly end