To the Editor:
At the request of Dr. Phyllis Greenacre, I want to make a correction of my discussion of a paper written by her and published in 1971. Her paper was entitled “The Influence and Contribution of Ego Psychology to the Practice of Psychoanalysis.” My discussion was in my article entitled “Discussion of ‘Psychoanalytic Theories of the Self: An Integration,‘ by Morton and Estelle Shane,” which was published recently in Advances in Self Psychology, Ed. A. Goldberg, 1980, I.U.P., pp. 47-68.
I regret that my paper contains an important oversight. In my condensation of what Dr. Greenacre said, I did not make it clear that I was presenting what J understood to be the broad meaning of her clinical account of unsatisfactory analytic results, the broad meaning of her questions about these results in relation to the separation-individuation and ego psychology framework, and the broad meaning of her call for clinical-developmental investigations which go beyond the borders of the metapsychology of psychoneurosis.
Dr. Greenacre feels that my reading of her paper was incorrect, and that it has created the impression that she believes that the recent work of Dr. Margaret Mahler and her associates and others had failed therapeutically for the patients in question, and had proved ineffective as had the analytic work of the past. Dr. Greenacre assures me that this was not her intention. In fact, she considers that the work of Dr. Mahler and her associates, as well as that of many others, gives insights that are valuable in the progress of analytic theory and practice, especially in a number of atypical cases that do not fit neatly into metapsychological theory.
I hope this corrective statement clarifies Dr. Greenacre's views. Dr. Greenacre's paper was published in a volume entitled Essays in Honor of Margaret S. Mahler, eds. J. B. McDevitt and C. F. Settlage, 1971, I.U.P., pp. 171-200.
Marian Tolpin, M.D.
Chicago