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Dr. Brickman is Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, University of California at Los Angeles School of Medicine, and Training and Supervising Analyst, Southern California Psychoanalytic Institute.
The state of “common unhappiness”presumably regarded by Freud as the end point of the psychoanalytic cure is examined as an ontological conviction reflected in a still-prevailing view of the self as ideally autonomous and fully demarcated from its surround. More recent contributors have envisioned individuation as relationally contingent rather than as essentially solitary. Yet, although more contemporary, most seem to embody a concept of social relatedness in the service of ultimately unidirectional self-demarcation. An argument is offered that attainment of a fully and inflexibly demarcated self regardless of social contingency, leads to a state of discomfort, which I have termed self-encapsulation. This form of malaise is comparable to the disquietude addressed by Zen Buddhist meditation, and by some contemplative practices in Middle Eastern and Western religion. An altered ontological perspective on evolving psychoanalytic developmental theory comprehensively elaborated by Loewald and also found in the writings of Winnicott, Balint, and others, illuminates a healthy need for a generic decapsulation or depolarization of self boundaries, including, but not limited to, boundaries with the social surround. Examples of decapsulation in daily life are provided. This outlook, illustrated by case material, is discussed as an improvement both on current maturational theory and on the theory of technique.