Self and Other. Robert Rogers L.

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ model, self can be conceptualized as a set or system of indwelling interrelated governing functions of the whole person, a superordinate system incorporating innumerable subsystems, both physical ones with bodily organs such as lungs (the respiratory system), and others with less palpable, ponderable elements, such as memory systems, value systems, and sets of self-and-object representations. There is no need for any homunculus-like ego, a regulatory self within the self. Regulation can be thought of, metaphorically, as built in, or wired in. From a cybernetics point of view, the system is self-regulating, the function of control being systemically located, feedback-operated, and subject to the heirarchical constraints of a range of well-established priorities. A systemic view of selfhood conceptualizes awareness in terms of systemic monitoring, and lack of awareness (unconsciousness) as absence of access to specific behavioral programs. Inherently dynamic in conception (process-oriented), the systemic model accounts for both normal and neurotic conflict, the latter (less than optimal self-regulation) resulting from the activation of incompatible programs (see Schafer 1983, 82-95 regarding conflict as paradoxical action). A systemic model accounts for motivation as goal-oriented behavior (not necessarily conscious), the categorization of principal goals in the version of Rosenblatt and Thickstun (1977, 298-99) being the maintenance of positive affective relationships with significant others (attachment behavior), the satisfaction of basic (mostly physical) needs, and the goal of defending against the threat of any form of injury.

      Though Stern remarks with plausible common sense that “no one can agree on exactly what the self is” (1985, 5), he himself may be numbered among the many psychoanalysts whose theory is compatible with a systemic view of self. (The extent to which analysts explicitly subscribe to a systemic model appears to be a function of the degree of their familiarity with general systems theory.) Well before the advent of systems theory, Sullivan wrote about what he called “the self system,” which for him is essentially “an organization of educative experience called into being by the necessity to avoid or to minimize incidents of anxiety” (1953, 165). The father of systems theory, Ludwig von Bertalanffy, insists that modern views of man have in common the principle “to take man not as a reactive automaton or robot but as an active personality system” (1968, 207), meaning, among other things, an open (as distinguished from closed), information-processing, dynamically self-regulating system. Peterfreund, whose application of systems theory to psychoanalysis remains the most comprehensive and valuable treatment, writes that “self, object, and superego representations are highly interrelated and interdependent; they form a vast system, and each part constandy feeds back information to every other part” (1971, 159). Rosenblatt and Thickstun say that the self system “can be conceptualized as the superordinate system, or the organism itself, encompassing all of the systems operating within the organism”(1977, 300). Bowlby, who embraces systems theory, tends to think in terms of groups of individuals rather than isolated ones, and he seems to be uncomfortable with person-oriented terms. He discusses the concept of self (1980, 59-64), yet makes litde use of it; there is, nevertheless, litde or nothing in his writing that conflicts with a systemic view of selfhood. Although Stern’s book on self theory (1985) does not explicidy refer to systems theory, nothing in his focus on epigenesis appears to be at odds with the systems model. Lichtenberg (1989), whose work derives partly from Stern and partly from self psychology, makes extensive use of the concept of system even though, methodologically, he does not appear to rely much on general systems theory as such. Lichtenberg, who defines “the self as an independent center for initiating, organizing, and integrating” (12), generates a schema of five distinct yet interactive motivational systems: a system regulating physiological requirements, an attachment-affiliation system, and exploratory-assertive system, an aversive system, and a sensual-sexual system. “As each system self-organizes and self-stabilizes, the needs that constitute the system’s core are met or fail to be met” (275). Basch represents the case for a systemic view of selfhood well when he writes, “The modern term psychodynamics can be understood as referring to the movement of goal-directed systems toward decisions. The process is measured by and expressed in terms of information. Thus is the once-mysterious psyche taken out of the realm of the supernatural to join science, the search for order in nature” (1988, 58).

      While alternative models of self will doubdess continue to be formulated, it seems almost inevitable that the more valuable ones will incorpo rate systemic perspectives. If systems models of self become increasingly accepted in psychoanalysis, one consequence will be the total abandonment of libido theory and ego psychology, and sexuality will probably play a more modest role, as in Lichtenberg’s formulation. To a considerable extent the systemic model renders null the criticism, emanating from people like Lacan, of the idea of a highly coherent, specialized, centered self. For Lacan, self, at the mirror stage, is but the reflection of an alienated other (1977, 2-6); at a later stage (the Symbolic) self, or “subject,” is a subjectivity dispersed in language and culture. In contrast, the systemic model, which represents selfhood as an operational whole in spite of the number and diversity of its systemically located “parts,” preserves the possibility of virtual unity in functioning individuals without delimiting the complexity with which larger environments (culture) can be represented within the self system. Barratt (1984), who quotes Adorno as saying that identity is the primal form of ideology (251), mocks the notion of “a unified, albeit multifaceted, subject,” (139), or self, or ego, especially as favored by neo-Freudians and object relations theorists, but his own ur-Freudian model of man as fundamentally alienated and irreparably conflicted refuses recognition of the possibility of functionally unified selfhood such as may be said to be epitomized, in the vision of W. B. Yeats, by the dancer who cannot be distinguished from the dance. In any case, one can claim the existence of room in the systemic model for virtually unlimited complexity of the representation of self, other, and culture.

      One can also claim that the systemic model accommodates both self-oriented and other-oriented perspectives on object relations theory. Stern declares that he places sense of self at the center of his inquiry (1985, 5), yet he manages to pursue his study with full recognition of the extent to which the other (mother) influences the development of selfhood in infants. In contrast to Stern, Lichtenstein’s other-oriented version of object relations theory may be thought to undersell infant individuality and potential for autonomy by defining identity strictly in terms of instrumentality (self as an instrument of an all-influential other). He writes, “Even as an adult, I believe, man cannot ever experience his identity except in terms of an organic instrumentality within the variations of a symbiotically structured Umwelt” (1961, 202), identity being experienced unconsciously by adults as variations on themes “imprinted” on them as infants by their mothers (208). In point of fact, Lichtenstein’s theory of selfhood, as identity theory, focuses as much on self as on other. As for the implication that self theory appears by its very name to favor self over other, what matters in the present context is that self theory models not foreclose in any way on the representation of other.

      As a general rule, the idea that the development of self results in large part, though not exclusively, from the interaction of self with other appears to be beyond controversy. Object relations theorists have always been interested in what has come to be referred to as “intersubjectivity” (Atwood and Stolorow, 1984). Winnicott explains in a famous passage how a mother’s face, functioning as a mirror, allows the child to begin to experience itself as a self (1971, 111-18), and throughout his discussion of transitional phenomena he emphasizes that transitional objects are subjective objects. Kohut may be thought of as having extended the concept of the subjectivity of the object through his use of the term selfobject. Stern (1985) throws an abundance of light on the topic of intersubjectivity. As part of his articulation of the dynamics of the infant-mother dialogue, Stern speaks of attachment as self-experience (102); he illuminates the importance of “peek-a-boo” and “Fm gonna getcha” as games constituting “we-experience,” a self-other phenomenon (101-2); and he points to the way in which being with others promotes the beginnings of psychological self-regulation (75). In keeping with his declaration that “the sharing of affective states is the most pervasive and clinically germaine feature of intersubjective relatedness” (138), Stern develops at length the concept of “affect attunement,” which he defines as “the performance of [complex interactional] behaviors that express the quality of СКАЧАТЬ