Recovery and Adaptation

Recovery and Adaptation are Presented Somewhat Autobiographically in this paper, which utilizes personal observations, interventions, and psychoanalytic experiences in formulating a view of what works for the individual child and adult. The theoretical orientation reflects an attraction to Hartmann's ideas of autonomous ego functions, conflict-free capacities, and the liberating power of maturational and developmental forces (Hartmann, 1958). The momentum of these forces, libidinal and aggressive drive derivatives, is confronted by the regulatory and mediational compromises mobilized by ego and superego functions. In this frame of reference, developmental processes associated with adaptational defensive compromises are more or less costly in the patient's psychic economy, as can be observed in psychoanalytic treatment. As Anna Freud stated:

[c]onflicts in the human being and in the child are inevitable; they are expressions of the structure of the personality. Do not aim at having a child without conflict, do not aim to spare the child conflict. Equally, frustrations are inevitable. Wish fulfillment on demand does not lead to a development from the pleasure principle to the reality principle, something which distinguishes human beings from animals.

Sterling Professor Emeritus of Pediatrics and Psychiatry and senior research scientist at Yale University School of Medicine and Child Study Center; commissioner, Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services, State of Connecticut.

This chapter is an edited version of the 1997 Hartmann Scholar Lecture delivered on October 28, 1997.

The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child 55, ed. Albert J. Solnit, Peter B. Neubauer, Samuel Abrams, and A. Scott Dowling (Yale University press, copyright © 2000 by Albert J. Solnit, Peter B. Neubauer, Samuel Abrams, and A. Scott Dowling).

Page 252

What a study of the defense mechanisms would show you is that it is not the absence and presence of a conflict but, rather, the ways and means u