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Foundations and competing beginnings · Chapter 6
Development, identity and revisions from within the tradition
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Chapter contents
- The missing middle between Freud and contemporary practice
- Identity is more than a collection of adjectives
- Self and object representations
- Separation–individuation and object constancy
- Loewald: the relationship helps reorganize experience
- Conflict theory continued to develop
- Blatt: relatedness and self-definition
- Bringing development into an ordinary session
- Source and reading notes
The missing middle between Freud and contemporary practice
Histories sometimes leap from Freud directly to Klein or modern relational work. That leap loses developments in identity, representation, autonomy and therapeutic action. Heinz Hartmann, Ernst Kris, Rudolph Loewenstein, David Rapaport, Robert Waelder, Edith Jacobson, Margaret Mahler, Erik Erikson, Hans Loewald, Charles Brenner and Jacob Arlow did not all advance one thesis. Their work belongs to overlapping efforts to explain how conflict, development and mental organization relate. Wallerstein’s historical account is a useful entry point; the primary books and papers require separate reading. [48]
In plain English: the mind has difficulties not only because it wants forbidden things, but also because remembering, regulating, imagining, evaluating and maintaining a sense of self can work differently under different conditions.
This chapter introduces contributions that remain useful to distinguish. It does not treat every original developmental stage or causal claim as established by contemporary infant research.
Identity is more than a collection of adjectives
Erikson expanded psychoanalytic development into psychosocial questions across the lifespan: trust, autonomy, initiative, identity, intimacy, generativity and the experience of one’s life as a whole. A stage is best used here as a question about the person’s current task, not a timetable that everyone must pass in the same way. A career transition can reorganize identity; retirement can expose the loss of a valued role; becoming a caregiver can renew conflicts about dependence and responsibility. [48] [98]
In plain English: “Who am I now?” may be the central problem even when the person knows exactly what happened in childhood.
A clinician hearing, “I used to be the person everybody called,” might explore the loss of usefulness, recognition and purpose rather than immediately interpreting a wish to control others. Developmental thinking can make a present transition visible without reducing it to age or diagnosing a failed stage.
Self and object representations
Edith Jacobson’s work helped connect ego psychology with an account of self and object representations, affect and the development of internal standards. A self-representation is a way of experiencing oneself; an object representation is a way of experiencing a significant other. Neither is a photograph stored unchanged in the mind. Kernberg’s later work gives these affectively organized relationships a central place. [90] [95]
In plain English: feeling like “the unwanted child with the dismissive adult” is more than thinking one negative sentence. It is a whole arrangement of self, other, feeling and expected response.
A person may occupy the child position in one moment and become the dismissive adult in the next. Recognizing that change in positions can be more useful than debating whether the person is fundamentally submissive or domineering.
Separation–individuation and object constancy
Mahler’s developmental language drew attention to becoming separate while remaining connected. Object constancy, in its psychoanalytic use, concerns maintaining an emotionally durable relationship to a person despite absence, frustration or anger. It is not simply knowing that a hidden object still exists. [96] [90]
In plain English: I can be angry with you and still retain some felt knowledge that you care about me. I can miss you without experiencing the whole relationship as gone.
That capacity can vary by relationship and stress level. A client may understand intellectually that the therapist will return from leave yet feel abandoned in a way that temporarily eclipses previous care. The therapist needs to work with the difference between remembered information and usable emotional continuity.
Mahler’s historical references to a “normal autistic phase” must not be presented as a current account of autism or as established neonatal development. Infant research requires a more differentiated account of early social engagement. This pathway retains clinically useful questions about separateness while rejecting the inference that autistic people failed to emerge from an imagined universal phase. [125] [116]
Loewald: the relationship helps reorganize experience
Hans Loewald is important precisely because a theorist working within Freudian language could alter the account of therapeutic action. His 1960 paper gives the analytic relationship a developmental role. Chodorow’s close reading emphasizes the complexity of his analytic stance, rather than portraying the paper as a list of new techniques. [84] [85]
In plain English: the therapist does not merely discover an old organization of experience; the encounter may help a different organization become possible.
For instance, a person who can only describe grief as logistics might begin to put feeling and language together in a relationship that neither mocks feeling nor dismisses competence. The new capacity is not reducible to remembering one event. It can involve how emotion, memory, words and relationship are linked.
This is one reason the opposition between “classical interpretation” and “modern relationship” is historically too clean. The revisions were already happening within ostensibly classical frameworks.
Conflict theory continued to develop
Brenner and Arlow maintained and revised an emphasis on conflict and compromise rather than accepting that every difficulty should be explained primarily as developmental deficit. The clinical question remains whether a symptom or character pattern performs several functions at once. That perspective can challenge an overly simple assumption that apparent emptiness proves missing structure rather than an actively organized way of avoiding danger. [48]
In plain English: “Something never developed” and “something becomes unavailable because it feels dangerous” are different possibilities. A clinician may need both, but should not quietly substitute one for the other.
The distinction is not a contest over whether a person deserves compassion. Either formulation can be used empathically or harshly. Its value lies in what it predicts about timing, support, interpretation and change.
Blatt: relatedness and self-definition
Sidney Blatt’s two-polarities model describes a lifelong interplay between relatedness and self-definition. One person’s suffering may center on abandonment and loss of connection; another’s on failure, guilt and self-criticism. The model has an associated research program, but its polarities are not exhaustive personality categories or automatic treatment prescriptions. [126]
In plain English: one person mainly fears being left; another mainly fears being inadequate. Both may be depressed, and both may also struggle with the other concern.
In a fictional pair of cases, praise feels helpful to one person and increases pressure for another. Reassurance about continued contact comforts the first but feels infantilizing to the second. The point is not to assign a label and select a stock intervention. It is to understand which threat is active and how the therapist’s response is being interpreted.
Bringing development into an ordinary session
Elena: When you ask what I want, I freeze. There must be an answer, but I do not find it.
Therapist: Are you afraid of the answer, or does it not feel formed enough to know?
Elena: The second. Then I imagine what would sound sensible.
Therapist: We may need time to let a preference take shape, not pressure to reveal something you are hiding.
This is a developmental distinction expressed without diagnosing a deficit. A different answer—“I know, but you will think badly of me”—would point more immediately toward conflict. The history is clinically useful because it teaches the therapist to ask that difference rather than assume it.
Source and reading notes
Independent educational synthesis. Fictional conversations illustrate reasoning. Review scopes describe the material consulted; they do not certify all clinical claims.
The growth and transformation of American ego psychology (opens in a new tab)
Abstract checked
Abstract or official summary reviewed. Full paper not appraised.
Authored historical account; abstract checked for Freud, Anna Freud, Hartmann and postwar American developments. Full paper not read.
Recorded check: 2026-10-15. Source used for this record (opens in a new tab)
Pathway source review: carried forward
abstract: Authored historical account; abstract checked for Freud, Anna Freud, Hartmann and postwar American developments. Full paper not read.
carried-forward; not independently rechecked in finishing pass · Recorded date: 2026-10-15
Scope concerns what was consulted; it is not approval of every claim or author endorsement.
Further reading for psychodynamic history, theory and practice.
Access depends on the destination; saving a link does not unlock paid material.
Psychoanalytic Case Formulation (opens in a new tab)
Selected sections checked
Selected accessible chapters or article sections reviewed for the cited concepts. This does not indicate a full-book review.
Selected primary text inspected for the current teaching revision: https://www.guilford.com/excerpts/mcwilli2.pdf?t=1 . Introduction selected passages on subjective/empathic understanding and communicating a person's particular psychology and therapeutic requirements in ordinary language; selected discussion of self-correcting clinical work. This is the8-page introductory excerpt, not a reading of the book's full case-formulation chapters. Do not mark every detailed dimensional personality assertion as verified from this introduction. Earlier source record: Publisher listing reviewed (title, date, ISBN). Not read.
Recorded check: 2026-10-13. Source used for this record (opens in a new tab)
Pathway source review: carried forward
excerpt: Selected primary text inspected for the current teaching revision: https://www.guilford.com/excerpts/mcwilli2.pdf?t=1 . Introduction selected passages on subjective/empathic understanding and communicating a person's particular psychology and therapeutic requirements in ordinary language; selected discussion of self-correcting clinical work. This is the8-page introductory excerpt, not a reading of the book's full case-formulation chapters. Do not mark every detailed dimensional personality assertion as verified from this introduction. Earlier source record: Publisher listing reviewed (title, date, ISBN). Not read.
carried-forward from earlier Learn library; not a new full-text review
Scope concerns what was consulted; it is not approval of every claim or author endorsement.
A practical companion to Psychoanalytic Diagnosis focused on building an individualized understanding of a person rather than a category.
formulation, assessment, temperament, identity, relationships
Purchase or library access.
An object relations model of borderline pathology (opens in a new tab)
Review scope recorded
See the pathway review note for the exact material consulted.
Developer-authored model account, not independent proof of all developmental assumptions.
Recorded check: 2026-10-15. Source used for this record (opens in a new tab)
Pathway source review: carried forward
article-record-and-abstract: Developer-authored model account, not independent proof of all developmental assumptions.
carried-forward; not independently rechecked in finishing pass · Recorded date: 2026-10-15
Scope concerns what was consulted; it is not approval of every claim or author endorsement.
Further reading for psychodynamic history, theory and practice.
Access depends on the destination; saving a link does not unlock paid material.
Psychodynamic Therapy for Personality Pathology: Treating Self and Interpersonal Functioning (opens in a new tab)
Review scope recorded
See the pathway review note for the exact material consulted.
Identity and scope verified from NLM catalog; full clinical manual not read.
Recorded check: 2026-10-15. Source used for this record (opens in a new tab)
Pathway source review: carried forward
bibliographic-record-and-contents: Identity and scope verified from NLM catalog; full clinical manual not read.
carried-forward; not independently rechecked in finishing pass · Recorded date: 2026-10-15
Scope concerns what was consulted; it is not approval of every claim or author endorsement.
Further reading for psychodynamic history, theory and practice.
Access depends on the destination; saving a link does not unlock paid material.
Psychoanalytic Diagnosis: Understanding Personality Structure in the Clinical Process, 2nd ed. (opens in a new tab)
Review scope recorded
See the pathway review note for the exact material consulted.
Contents checked for levels, defenses and character styles. 2020 paperback is not a new edition.
Recorded check: 2026-10-15. Source used for this record (opens in a new tab)
Pathway source review: carried forward
publisher-contents: Contents checked for levels, defenses and character styles. 2020 paperback is not a new edition.
carried-forward; not independently rechecked in finishing pass · Recorded date: 2026-10-15
Scope concerns what was consulted; it is not approval of every claim or author endorsement.
Further reading for psychodynamic history, theory and practice.
Access depends on the destination; saving a link does not unlock paid material.
Autism and symbiosis, two extreme disturbances of identity (opens in a new tab)
Review scope recorded
See the pathway review note for the exact material consulted.
Historical primary paper located; no abstract. Its terminology is not a contemporary account of autism and is not endorsed as causal evidence.
Recorded check: 2026-10-15. Source used for this record (opens in a new tab)
Pathway source review: carried forward
bibliographic-record: Historical primary paper located; no abstract. Its terminology is not a contemporary account of autism and is not endorsed as causal evidence.
carried-forward; not independently rechecked in finishing pass · Recorded date: 2026-10-15
Scope concerns what was consulted; it is not approval of every claim or author endorsement.
Further reading for psychodynamic history, theory and practice.
Access depends on the destination; saving a link does not unlock paid material.
The origins of 12-month attachment: a microanalysis of 4-month mother–infant interaction (opens in a new tab)
Review scope recorded
See the pathway review note for the exact material consulted.
84-dyad observational study; association/prediction, not proof that adult therapy should reproduce infant caregiving. More contingency was not uniformly better.
Recorded check: 2026-10-15. Source used for this record (opens in a new tab)
Pathway source review: carried forward
research-abstract: 84-dyad observational study; association/prediction, not proof that adult therapy should reproduce infant caregiving. More contingency was not uniformly better.
carried-forward; not independently rechecked in finishing pass · Recorded date: 2026-10-15
Scope concerns what was consulted; it is not approval of every claim or author endorsement.
Further reading for psychodynamic history, theory and practice.
Access depends on the destination; saving a link does not unlock paid material.
On the therapeutic action of psycho-analysis (opens in a new tab)
Review scope recorded
See the pathway review note for the exact material consulted.
No abstract available. Primary reading route, not a claim that the paper was read.
Recorded check: 2026-10-15. Source used for this record (opens in a new tab)
Pathway source review: carried forward
bibliographic-record: No abstract available. Primary reading route, not a claim that the paper was read.
carried-forward; not independently rechecked in finishing pass · Recorded date: 2026-10-15
Scope concerns what was consulted; it is not approval of every claim or author endorsement.
Further reading for psychodynamic history, theory and practice.
Access depends on the destination; saving a link does not unlock paid material.
A different universe: reading Loewald through On the therapeutic action of psychoanalysis (opens in a new tab)
Abstract checked
Abstract or official summary reviewed. Full paper not appraised.
Original interpretive essay; abstract checked for therapeutic relationship and epistemology. Not an outcome study.
Recorded check: 2026-10-15. Source used for this record (opens in a new tab)
Pathway source review: carried forward
abstract: Original interpretive essay; abstract checked for therapeutic relationship and epistemology. Not an outcome study.
carried-forward; not independently rechecked in finishing pass · Recorded date: 2026-10-15
Scope concerns what was consulted; it is not approval of every claim or author endorsement.
Further reading for psychodynamic history, theory and practice.
Access depends on the destination; saving a link does not unlock paid material.
Interpersonal relatedness and self-definition in normal and disrupted personality development: retrospect and prospect (opens in a new tab)
Abstract checked
Abstract or official summary reviewed. Full paper not appraised.
Author synthesis of relatedness and self-definition; abstract reviewed, not every cited empirical study.
Recorded check: 2026-10-15. Source used for this record (opens in a new tab)
Pathway source review: carried forward
abstract: Author synthesis of relatedness and self-definition; abstract reviewed, not every cited empirical study.
carried-forward; not independently rechecked in finishing pass · Recorded date: 2026-10-15
Scope concerns what was consulted; it is not approval of every claim or author endorsement.
Further reading for psychodynamic history, theory and practice.
Access depends on the destination; saving a link does not unlock paid material.