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Elsewhere (Kriegman, 1988; Slavin, 1985; Slavin and Kriegman, 1988a, b) we have tried to demonstrate that an evolutionary biological analysis yields a unique perspective on some of the central controversies in psychoanalytic theory. In this paper we will extend our evolutionary biological approach directly to the clinical situation.
Many analysts, especially self psychologists, have difficulty with biological approaches to psychoanalysis, because our associations to the term “biology” are unnecessarily narrow. Biology in the narrow sense conveys the somatic, the physiological, the biochemical—the study of the physical substrate of life phenomena. Kohut (1982) was correct in saying that psychoanalysis ought to be a “psychology through and through,” true to the data of vicarious introspection, not derivative of psychophysiological concepts. As the science of complex mental states, it should divorce itself from biology in the narrow sense. However, biology in the broad sense embraces all that the scientific study of life entails. In this sense, psychoanalysis lies within the domain of biology. It thus becomes a matter of whether we are informed and explicit about our biological assumptions, or