7. Addressing the Core Conflict:
The Legacy of an Archaic Attachment
Presenter:
Judy Supkoff-Stern, PhD
Chair:
Amanda E. Kottler, MA, MS
This presentation describes a thirty-eight year old woman’s attempt to free herself from an enmeshment that has kept her from having a life of her own. Her struggle, the legacy of an archaic attachment, is the embodiment of her core conflict; that in order to maintain relationships, she has to compromise her sense of self. That belief and the underlying separation anxiety connected to it, has kept her trapped. The analysis became a "secure base from which to explore" the depths of her inner relational world and her external life. Moreover, incorporating a nonintrusive investigative stance, and encouraging self-reflection, continue to help her develop not only a secure sense of self, but an authentic sense of self based on self-respect rather than self-blame or self-denial.
In its conceptual and theoretical underpinnings, this case ties Brandchaft’s "pathological accommodation" that has historical roots in the compliance concept, with two over-arching contemporary psychoanalytic theories. These are; Kohut’s contributions as expanded by Stolorow, Atwood, and Brandchaft’s intersubjectivity theory, and Bowlby’s seminal ideas about an attachment behavioral system that functions for survival. That survival mechanism lends an imperative quality and an intensity of affect to the need for compliance that emerges in the case material.