Excerpt from Chapter 4--Conflict and Negative Countertransference

This excerpt from Chapter 4 of my new book, The Analyst’s Vulnerability: Impact on theory and practice, discusses the evolving positions regarding the importance of conflict in analytic treatment.?More important to the thesis of this book, this chapter builds on the insight regarding our own personal needs to avoid conflict described by Harold Searles:

?“The fact that the patient’s desires are deeply ambivalent desires makes it inevitable that he will make us feel, over and over again, that we are failing him, that we are unsatisfactory, that we are not giving him what he wants and needs.?Hence, instead of remaining immersed in our guilt, we should be pointing out to him the presence of his conflict.?Here, our guilt reveals our own clinging to the omnipotent fantasy that life can be wholly gratifying and conflict-free.”

Searles (1966, p. 33)

?Psychoanalysts today still look for unconsciously-determined events and still place great emphasis on self-awareness. However, the twin notions of conflict and the analyst’s role as knowledgeable facilitator of that conflict have faded into the background. ?Dent and Christian (2019) reported that within the pages of the Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, the word conflict appeared with the greatest frequency in 1987 and has suffered a steady decline since.?Do psychoanalysts no longer believe in conflict as an essential aspect of human experience??Is it truly no longer the centerpiece of analytic treatment??I think the answer to these questions is complicated.?

?While references to conflict have undeniably decreased, I think it likely that similar research on the word “enactment” would reveal a corresponding increase in usage over the same period of time.?Enactment is conflict personified, but it is heavily weighted toward the interpersonal rather than the intrapsychic.?And, perhaps more importantly, co-experiencing it with the patient is increasingly seen as the “accidental encounter”—unplanned and nondeliberate.?It is not part of any formal theory of conflict resolution nor therapeutic action.

?In line with the overall thesis of this book, to what extent has conflict also been de-emphasized in favor of the concept of becoming the “good enough” object? And to what extent have we, once again, taken slices of different theoretical approaches and combined them, not just to integrate the best of what each has to offer, but also to conform to our preferred personal style and overall psychological make-up??What both classical and two-person theories have in common is the analyst’s reluctance to admit to mutual influence and the inevitable conflicts that ensue. The above quote from Searles illustrates the ambivalent desires stirred in both analyst and patient….

?…Interestingly, Mitchell’s (1988) own declarations regarding the place of conflict in Relational theory are infrequently discussed. Contrary to popular opinion, he saw conflict as central to his theory.?He felt that assigning conflict to drive theory alone was an error and did not represent his relational theory and its clinical applications.?He wanted analysts to understand that even though his theoretical take on conflict differed from classical theory, he remained committed to a model that included it.?Rather than sexual and aggressive drives as the basis for conflict, he saw the fear of losing important relationships as primary.

?In what I see as a relational take on what Freud labeled the Oedipal conflict, Mitchell (1988) says our conflicts emanate from familial relationships and the fear of losing them: “[T]he universality of conflicts between and among different relationships and identifications; ties and loyalties to one parent are, to some extent, inevitably experienced as (and in reality, may very well be) a threat to ties and loyalties to the other” (p. 160).?He also made it clear that he saw conflict as universal and ubiquitous, stating that “…conflict is inherent in relatedness” (p. 160).

?Thus Mitchell establishes that relationships, from the very beginning, are a source of both needed emotional supplies and of conflict.?He specifically references the developing child’s awareness that what might please one parent may not please another. So who is the patient to be when in their joint presence? And is he or she being disloyal when feeling more aligned with one parent over the other??I would add to this early constellation the much-neglected early conflicts imbedded in sibling rivalry.?Wanting to defeat one’s siblings, but not harm them, provides fertile ground for years of both internal and external conflict.?Mitchell was well aware of these universal conflicts and wanted relational theory and practice to incorporate them.

?So why has Mitchell’s important contributions on conflict been so overlooked??Perhaps, in part, because of the popularity of Winnicott’s work, which is at odds with Mitchell’s stance. Winnicott has been lionized over the last 25 years to the point that the accuracy of his views is rarely challenged.??If Winnicott said it, it must be true. But to what extent is the idealization of Winnicott based on the shared early experience of analysts?

?