A Conversation With Arnold Modell

Plater: I want to start by going back to the sixties and early seventies, when you began shaping and writing on the concept of the two-person analytic relationship. There are ideas from these writings that we take for granted, for instance the elaboration of the concept of the holding environment, that marked the beginning of a sea change in the way we picture the analytic relationship. I am interested in the different strands in your own development that led you into this inquiry about conceptualizing the analytic relationship as a two-person relationship.

Modell: Let me see if I can reconstruct that period. The beginning of these ideas really came from my work with the so-called narcissistic patient.

I became interested in the question of the noncommunication of affect. It was early in the period of the expanded study of countertransference. I wondered about the idea of being in a room with another person who wasn't there, so I formulated an explanation of the patient's insulation from the analyst—that it was a defense against dependency, or the illusion of self-sufficiency, and so forth.

This was, I think, quite a different way of thinking—that defenses come not just from intrapsychic sources, but that there are defenses against relating. At this period I was very influenced by Winnicott, and he said something similar. But he didn't try to put it in a systematic way. That wasn't his style.

So in a sense this is what I tried to do. But at the same time I am somewhat conservative, in the sense that I was trained in classical analysis. I am still very much influenced by Freud, despite the current anti-Freud fashion, and Freud's position was pretty much intrapsychic. What I hoped to do, and tried to do, in that period was to preserve both paradigms, and to think of one as complementary to the other. But it turns out that doesn't work very well.

Plater: Why do you think it doesn't work well?

Modell: Well, I think that classical analysis needs to be reformulated. What has happened, to my thinking, and to many people's thinking, is the recognition that instinct theory—the foundation of the concept of classical analysis—is controversial. It doesn't work; at least it doesn't work for me. But I totally believe that Freud did the best he could at the time. He was misled by his conception of biology, however, which turned out to be wrong. This is central. It's a very serious problem, because Freud's theory of instinct lay at the center of his whole theoretical edifice. So in some ways I don't think classical theory can be preserved in the form that it once was.

Plater: So at that early point you were thinking that Freud's instinct–drive theory could be complemented by a object relations approach?

Modell: Yes, I thought that instinct theory could be preserved—that in some situations one could look at it from one point of view, and in another situation one could look at it from another point of view. I no longer think, however, that it's possible to preserve the classical paradigm.

Plater: You were at the Boston Psychoanalytic as a candidate and later as a member. You must have had cases that were turning out to be narcissistic disorders, and your supervisors probably didn't perceive these patients in the same way you did.

Modell: Yes, I think the whole way of dealing with narcissism is very modern. People just didn't know how to deal with narcissism, in the technical sense. At that time everything was dominated by the Oedipus complex. It still is. I'm trying now to think of my control cases. All of them could have profited had I been more sophisticated about narcissistic pathology. My recognition of my own countertransference put me onto it, and I guess I sensed that I was onto something very important.

Plater: But at that time countertransference would have been seen very differently by your supervisors.

Modell: Yes. It was seen as one's own neurosis.

Plater: So you were training as a classical analyst, though you were having thoughts about countertransference affect. How did you stay with your own views?

Modell: I guess I began to think that if you're in the presence of somebody who is not relating to you, you naturally react to it, and this is not neurotic. I soon realized that this reaction was not idiosyncratic to me. But when I was in supervision as a candidate, I think what I did in those days was pretty much subvert myself. I did things their way, which in some cases left me with consequences that were unfortunate. I had a case in supervision with Felix Deutsch. The supervision was a disaster, and the treatment was a disaster, because I did things his way, and he was interested in fantasy alone. The analysis had no sense of relationship. I still feel badly for that patient. I was inexperienced.

Plater: Once I asked you if, once you were on your own as an analyst, you had ever thought in terms of structural theory, defenses, etc. You paused, and said, “I can't remember. I don't think so.” I'm interested in the process you went through in changing how you treated patients from the classical model.

Modell: When I work with a patient I certainly think about theory and different levels of theory. I think if you ask me now, however, I would probably say no, I never entirely believed structural theory, or the classical defenses.

Plater: Instead it is affect that is a primary orienting factor for you with a patient. You are very quick to read the patient's level of relating.

Modell: Yes, I am sensitive to this aspect. This is the noncommunication aspect.

Plater: I'd like to get to the question of your views of Freud's concept of biology, because this is where you began to formulate possible alternatives to instinct theory.

Modell: Well, let's talk about that. First of all, Freud believed in a Lamarckian theory of evolution, which wasn't unusual in those days; many other people believed it, too. His explanation for the origin of the Oedipus complex, therefore, was that

there were actual historical experiences that came to be inherited genetically. That certainly was one problem.

The other problem was that he mistakenly thought that evolutionary processes occurred within a group process, rather than through individuals. According to what we now know of evolutionary theory, evolution really has to do with the adaptation of the individual, not the adaptation of the group.

The third, and perhaps the most important, problem is that he was looking for psychological elements as if they would be analogous to the molecules or atoms sought by physicists, and he came to think that one of those bedrock elements was instinct. Freud's scientific inquiry was part of the structure of his time. Freud got off on the wrong track, however, thinking of instinct as an entity. This, I think, is a very fundamental error, because there was and is no biological evidence for it.

Today we would instead think in terms of affect. There's a lot of evidence that the brain reacts very differently to different affects.

Plater: To Freud, affects came from instincts.

Modell: Yes. But there is no biologist today that still talks about instincts. We need and use the term “instinct” as part of our everyday language, but there is no evidence that instincts are inherited, and that challenges his whole theoretical structure. On the other hand, looking at intrapsychic processes and inner realities was also Freud's innovation, and is still our business.

Plater: The concept of Nachtraglichkeit fits here, and this has been an important theoretical inquiry for you.

Modell: I am still working with it. Just today in fact. Nachtraglichkeit is a very relevant insight, for it has to do with the processing of time. It is very, very important. Strachey had called it “deferred action.” I don't really read German, but I discussed this with Helmut Thoma, a German analyst, who recognized that the phrase was faultily translated by Strachey. Thoma was interested in this concept and helped me with the original. I was thinking of the question of time at that point. The thing that really got me excited about this idea is that this notion of Nachtraglichkeit is almost the same as the neurobiological concept of memory. This is Edelman's work.

Edelman wasn't aware of Freud's concept of Nachtraglichkeit, but his ideas were almost identical to it. Freud's idea was that memories are constantly being transcribed during an individual's subsequent development. So memories are never quite fixed. Freud used the notion, but then in a sense gave it up. He didn't completely give it up, but he let it be overshadowed by his instinct theory. This is a very clear example of where he had a brilliant idea. It was in 1896 that he first came upon it, and he lost it. It was lost because he was so obsessed with instinct theory. To get to memory, he explained the repetition compulsion in terms of, as you know, the death instinct. But had he stuck with this notion of Nachtraglichkeit and explained the repetition compulsion in terms of memory—the act of seeking memory to retranscribe the experience—he would have been very much in line with what has been learned in neurobiology, but he took a wrong turn. I think he turned toward instinct theory trying to put psychoanalysis on a more scientific footing. He hoped to bring it in line with Darwinian biology. His motivations to ground psychoanalysis were the best, but not his biology.

What I think is unfortunate is that many people today don't want to read Freud. It is a peculiar stage of our culture. People should know what they are talking about, and you don't learn Freud unless you study him. Actually, though, I think there is something positive in the Freudbashing, because in a sense we needed to de-idealize him. When I grew up in this field he was such an over-towering figure. Some things, of course, were questioned, but one could hardly approach him; everybody wished to identify with him. So it's a good thing that today we don't have to idealize him, and can get some distance from him.

Plater: Why do you think we are in this peculiar stage?

Modell: I don't know if I understand it at all. It's part of the culture now. In literature people are attacking the so-called canons, and what people believed was great literature twenty years ago, they don't want to read anymore. People launch such fundamental criticisms about everything, including Freud. Everything is questioned, including science. I'm part of a study group that meets at M.I.T., an interdisciplinary group consisting of scientists, philosophers, music professors, and so forth. What I hear from them is that in some academic quarters people don't believe in science anymore. They think it is all socially constructed, politically motivated, and irrelevant; there is no such thing as scientific truth. Everything is up for grabs.