Chapter 2 Commentaries: Self Psychology and the Transference

Drs. Lachmann and Beebe have presented us with a very interesting clinical case illustrating a point that is well taken. Lachmann has often emphasized in these forums that, to use his words, “the jump from the cradle to the couch” is an unwarranted one. We cannot assume that whatever the patient is struggling with in the analysis simply repeats a significant trauma of the patient's early mother–infant relationship.

The first impact, and perhaps one of the most important, that Kohut's (1971) clinical discoveries had on our practice was to undo the certainty that ultimately it was the analysis and interpretation of the oedipal conflict that was both definitive and curative for whatever the patient complained of or was suffering from. Lachmann and Beebe call attention to the fact that if we now were to simply assume and interpret a linear connection between what the patient tells us and the selfobject failures in his early development, we would only be repeating the same fallacy of constructing a theory that is much too narrow to accommodate all that happens in our consulting room.

Lachmann's case illustrates that the crucial developmental issues around which the patient's defenses against the transference were organized were those of the patient's puberty. I would say this emphasis on the continuity of development is very much in keeping