Paper Session C

14. Integrating Case Material to
Illustrate the Use of Organizing Principles
Within the Clinical Setting

Self Psychology Page | 21th Conference Program

Summary

The intent of this paper is to clarify some of the complexities and misunderstandings of the concept "organizing principles" and to illustrate its clinical usage. Organizing principles are invariant thematized patterns which emerge only within a system of human relatedness and therefore are never products of an isolated mind. Their beginnings take place within the early infant/caregiver system and are developed and sustained by multiple repetitive experiences with the caretaking surround. Over time, these rigidly formed and enduring patterns of organizing self and other concretize into beliefs--authentic "truths"--something inherently deficient and loathsome about oneself, and lose the intersubjective context in which they had emerged. Organizing principles operate unconsciously and will automatically organize, shape and give meaning to all present and future experiences of self and other.

Often, the most crushing organizing principles derive from misattunement or the absence of responsiveness to the child's affective states resulting in the belief that one's feelings are shameful and disgusting and must be disavowed. Such a central and pervasive sense of defectiveness floods the patient with a general sense of loathsomeness or inner "badness."

Treatment consists of taking these firmly entrenched beliefs back to the intersubjective context in which they emerged. Here they are "deconstructed" from concretized "truths" about one's inherent defectiveness to subjective feelings which were given life as an accommodation to the caregiver's needs and requirements. This allows for the emergence of alternative self views which are strengthened and reinforced within the patient/analyst relationship.

Self Psychology Page | 21th Conference Program