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In any dialogue in a forum such as we are using, it is necessary to highlight the major points of controversy, often slighting areas of agreement as well as points where we might build bridges. In responding to the previous chapters I have selected some of the issues that need further elaboration in order to improve future exchanges.
Dr. Basch, in his illuminating and thought-provoking chapter, refers to my review (Curtis, 1983) of The Search for the Self (Ornstein, 1978) in which I wonder whether the ties between psychoanalysis and self psychology can be sustained if the latter theory moves away from certain concepts long considered basic in psychoanalysis. Basch infers that I am referring here solely to Freud's theory of instinctual motivation. He also refers to my concern that self psychology's focus on empathic failure and responsiveness might sacrifice the exploration of intrapsychic drive elaborated fantasies. His answer to these questions is, first, that the “instinct theory of motivation, as put forward by Freud, was jettisoned some time ago” (p. 20) and, second, that far from moving away from the intrapsychic toward the environmental, Kohut reverses that very trend for which Melanie Klein and Heinz Hartmann are to blame (p. 20).
Depending on one's definition of drive motivation, it may or may not have been jettisioned. Certainly psychoanalysis, following Freud, has distinguished between drive (a not completely satisfactory translation of the German Trieb, which is a psychological concept with clinical referrents such as impulses toward goal-directed behavior, persistence and plasticity, discharge phenomena, compelling vis-à-tergo qualities. etc.) and instinct (in German Instinkt, referring to inherited, unchangeable patterns of behavior). In addition, psychoanalysis has refined its views of drive development to include such concepts as the organization