Discussion of Richard P. Alexander's Article, Omnipotence and the Avoidance of Pleasure: A Contribution to the Problem of Separation Anxiety

Although I have not attempted a detailed discussion of Dr. Alexander's paper, I have read it with particular attention first to its general soundness as an analytic contribution, and then to the relevance of specific Kleinian propositions to its basic argument.

The paper says little about the separation anxiety of phobic patients which could not be explained by references to the traditional literature; Helene Deutsch's contributions certainly point to the primitive sources of this type of anxiety in severely phobic patients.

I feel the Kleinian interpretations were brought in more for polemic reasons than for their special relevance to this patient. I would regard his symptom neurosis as a regressive response to the death of his mother which undermined his earlier counter-phobic character structure. There was little in the analytical material, other than the analyst's interpretations, which made Kleinian reconstructions

placing oedipal conflicts “on the level of part objects” helpful or enlightening.

I do not think this paper merits the amount of discussion necessary to elucidate the weakness of its theoretical formulation. The bibliography is inadequate, even in respect to Kleinian literature. There is no reference to recent work of analysts such as Greenacre, Schur, Gitelson (and this writer) who have attempted to correlate different forms of anxiety with different levels of psychic development.

I am deeply interested in attempting to clarify possible areas of overlap and agreement between the contributions of Melanie Klein and the more traditional psychoanalytic theory. In general, these areas concern the significance of object relations to the analytic situation. Papers such as Dr. Alexander's, which utilize Kleinian reconstructions in the interpretations of material derived from the analysis of a straightforward neurotic, are in my opinion more likely to highlight differences. I believe this tends to impede rather than to further mutual understanding.