What is Modern Psychoanalysis?

Modern psychoanalysis has its roots in the work of Hyman Spotnitz, who, starting in the 1950s, sought to extend psychoanalytic theory and technique to the treatment of patients with preoedipal disorders, such as borderline and narcissistic conditions and psychosis.  Freud had been frustrated by his attempts at working therapeutically with these kinds of patients:  He believed that in their self-absorption they were unable to form transferences to the analyst, a necessary precondition for analytic work.  Spotnitz discovered that preoedipal patients did indeed form analyzable transferences, but that these were narcissistic, as opposed to object, transferences.  In other words, the patients experienced transferences in which the analyst was viewed not as a distinct, separate person, but as an extension or mirror image of the self.

Spotnitz’s study of preoedipal patients led to several discoveries about the development of mental structures during infancy.  A hallmark of disturbed early development is the infant’s propensity to turn the aggressive impulses felt toward the inadequately attuned parent back against its own ego, with resultant damage to its sense of reality and executive functions.  The self-attacking infant becomes confused and depressed; successful treatment entails building the patient’s ability to tolerate and manage these impulses in ways that are not damaging to the self.

The discovery of the importance of the narcissistic transference led to the development of treatment approaches for engaging the preoedipal patient in a productive analysis.  Central to these approaches was the need to protect the patient’s fragile ego as it develops the capacity tomentalize its thoughts and feelings.  Because the patient’s ego weaknesses and maladaptive defenses came into being prior to the onset of language and conceptual thought, interventions must be emotionally based until the ego has gained sufficient strength to profit from traditional interpretive interventions.

Since its founding in 1971, the Center for Modern Psychoanalytic Studies has trained practitioners to treat patients with the full range of psychopathology.  Analysts-in-training are taught to recognize the particularity of each analysand and to adapt theirtreatment approach to the maturational needs of that person.  Modern psychoanalysis is in dialogue with other schools of psychoanalysis, including classical Freudian, Kleinian, relational, self-psychological, and Lacanian, and is an open field of inquiry into the alleviation of human suffering and the ongoing work of every human being, emotional growth.