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I am appreciative to Eric Mendelsohn for responding to my work with such depth and insight. He uses the material to expound on a very important topic: How does theory shape technique? Or, to quote Mendelsohn: “What opportunities for analytic engagement are facilitated and foreclosed by favoring a particular participatory observing mode?” I experienced Mendelsohn's discussion of my paper as both expanding and exciting. It certainly helped me think about my case, as well as about theory in general, in fresh and illuminating ways. His discussion also encouraged me to deepen my focus on this case and to articulate more fully my thoughts about it. So, as Mendelsohn was kind enough to say to me, I now say to him: my regard for Mendelsohn's ideas is considerable, even as my disagreements will be apparent.
Mendelsohn states that his ideas emerge from an interpersonal, relational tradition, based on the foundations of Ferenczi, Sullivan, Thompson, and Fromm, and their elaborations in the work of Searles, Levenson, Wolstein, Hirsch, Hoffman, Mitchell, Davies, and Maroda, among others. These more current authors are generally referred to as the “postmoderns.” My work emerges out of the traditions of self psychology, based on the work of Kohut and his elaborators, such as Wolf, Anna and Paul Ornstein, Bacal, Lachman, Lichtenberg, Stolorow, and Fosshage, among others.
Kohut and Mitchell and other “postmoderns” speak to the goal of richness and authenticity of the self, and believe that self emerges through an individual's relational experiences. The differences between Kohut's and Mitchell's viewpoints lie primarily in divergent conceptualizations of what contributes to richness and authenticity and of what is essentially curative in relationships. Mitchell and other “postmoderns” see an important role for the analyst in mobilizing the patient's relational patterns in the transference and helping him or her to move beyond them. To this end, they tend to emphasize interpersonal eng