Paper Session A

12. Overcoming the Odds:
Affirmation of Meaning and Worth in a
Dialectical-Constructivist View
of the Psychoanalytic Process

Workshop: Social Constructivism and Self Psychology

Self Psychology Page | 23rd Conference Program

Overview

In this paper the major principles of Hoffman’s "dialectical-constructivist" view of the psychoanalytic process are outlined. According to this perspective, a world of constructed meaning and mutual influence emerges in the context of the irreducible ambiguity of human experience. It is argued that contemporary theories, including self psychology, have, for the most part, perpetuated the objectivist aspects of Freudian theory. Such objectivism goes hand in hand with "dichotomous thinking" in which, for example, sharp lines are seen as separating what comes from the patient and what comes from the analyst. The alternative is "dialectical thinking" in which many apparent opposites (ritual and spontaneity, construction and discovery, repetition and new experience) are seen as complementary and interdependent. Every moment in the analytic process is pregnant with infinite possibilities that are ambiguous and indeterminate and among which the participants are continually choosing, consciously and unconsciously. The human effort to establish meaning and worth must proceed against the backdrop, not only of existential uncertainty, but also of awareness of mortality which threatens that project at the same time that it makes it urgent. The indifference of the universe has an echo in the "dark side" of the analytic situation which lends itself to the patient feeling exploited for the sake of the analyst’s monetary or narcissistic gain. In order for the special affirming potential of the analyst to be realized, and in order for the analyst’s authority to do battle with damaging influences absorbed in critical periods of childhood, the undermining potentials of the human condition in general and of the analytic situation in particular must be overcome. With regard to therapeutic action, as Hoffman puts it at the end of chapter 8 of his book: "Analysts, through their capacity to uphold both sides of multiple polarities, can combat the basis for new experience. Thinking dialectically can be a powerful expression, in itself, of the analyst’s struggle to come to grips with the complexity and ambiguity of the patient’s multiple aims and potentials as they interface with the analyst’s own. Potentiated by the ritually-based mystique and authority of the analyst’s role, that struggle assumes a position that is at the heart of therapeutic action in the psychoanalytic process.

Self Psychology Page | 23rd Conference Program