You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
To identify this presentation with the label “developmentalist” is to attempt to indicate some significant difference from “non-developmentalists.” I would like to start, however, by outlining what I feel to be similarities between this developmentalist's understanding of psychoanalytic cure and that of the vast majority of psychoanalysts, including those who do not label themselves “developmentalists.”
The psychoanalytic process is shaped not by our theories, but by the nature of the human mind. How psychoanalysts understand the human mind determines, therefore, how they understand the psychoanalytic process. There are a set of basic psychoanalytic hypotheses concerning the mind that are shared by almost all psychoanalysts, which is associated with a shared view of the psychoanalytic process. These hypotheses hold that there are unconscious forces that determine human behavior, specifically symptomatic behavior; that these forces are dynamic, that is, symptoms exist for a purpose, to maintain psychological equilibrium and to minimize psychological pain; that they are related to formative experiences in childhood; and that intrapsychic forces require people to repeat certain patterns of thinking, feeling, and behaving, which are displaced from childhood relationships