Lichtenberg's Theory of Therapy

Ienjoyed reading psychoanalysis and motivation. It is thoughtful, interesting, and carefully reasoned. The therapist who reads Lichtenberg's account of the maturation and expression of the five motivational systems in infancy and early childhood will acquire a heightened sense of his or her patient's varied motivations. By his careful delineation of these systems, Lichtenberg has broadened the developmental concepts on which self psychologists and other therapists may draw in their attempts to understand the motives of their patients.

In my discussion of Lichtenberg's (1989) Psychoanalysis and Motivation, I focus on his theory of therapy. I attempt to illuminate his theory by comparing it with a theory of therapy that I developed and that the Mount Zion Research Group (now known as the San Francisco Psychotherapy Research Group), which I co-direct with Harold Sampson, has investigated by formal research studies (Weiss, Sampson, and the Mt. Zion Psychotherapy Research Group, 1986).

Having worked for the last 25 years on developing my own understanding of the therapeutic process, I have no choice but to perceive Lichtenberg's theory through the lens of my own concepts. Also, I inevitably must discuss Lichtenberg's theory from the vantage point of an outsider. As I know from my own experience, a person on the outside can never understand a theory of therapy in the same way as someone who uses it in the daily work with his or her patients.

Lichtenberg's theory and mine have much in common. They are closer to each other than either is, for example, to the theory of therapy