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Goldberg, A. (Ed.) (2000). Errant Selves: A Casebook of Misbehavior. Hillsdale, NJ: The Analytic Press, 222 pp., $45.00.
Goldberg, A. (2007). Moral Stealth: How “Correct Behavior” Insinuates Itself into Psychotherapeutic Practice. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 150 pp., $32.00.
Arnold Goldberg, an internationally renowned self psychologist, has become increasingly interested in the clinical challenges posed by treating patients suffering from what he calls “narcissistic behavior disorders.” In 1995, Goldberg published The Problem of Perversion, in which he comprehensively formulated his conceptualization of a sexualized vertical split underlying a variety of so-called “perverse” behaviors. Subsequently, he further delineated the clinical problems in working with all patients exhibiting narcissistic behavior disorders, including patients with substance abuse problems (Goldberg, 1999). The following year, Goldberg edited Errant Selves, which presents a variety of analytic treatments of patients with narcissistic behavior disorders, with emphasis on the analyst's countertransference. Moral Stealth, published seven years later, represents yet another effort to approach these thorny clinical problems. However, it does so by exploring the meaning and impact of the analyst's internalization of the seemingly sacrosanct “rules” of psychoanalysis.
Taken together, Errant Selves and Moral Stealth can be said to address the issue of correct versus incorrect behavior for both patients and analysts. They highlight the twin dangers of either acting out our countertransference responses to vertical splits in narcissistically impaired patients or adhering rigidly to our unquestioned analytic “values” in treating such patients. However, they differ greatly, in that Errant Selves is heavily clinical, whereas Moral Stealth is a collection of somewhat abstract philosophical essays, despite frequent references to cases presented in the earlier volume.
Furthermore, both Goldberg