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Hate, Self-Interest, and “Good-Enough” Relating: AnEvolutionary–Adaptive PerspectiveDr. Malcolm Owen Slavin Ph.D. a ba Massachusetts Institute for Psychoanalysisb Tufts University Counseling CenterPublished online: 01 Jul 2008.

To cite this article: Dr. Malcolm Owen Slavin Ph.D. (2000) Hate, Self-Interest, and “Good-Enough” Relating: AnEvolutionary–Adaptive Perspective, Psychoanalytic Inquiry: A Topical Journal for Mental Health Professionals, 20:3, 441-461,DOI: 10.1080/07351692009348899

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/07351692009348899

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Dr. Slavin is President, Chair of the Board of Directors, and Supervising Analyst,

Massachusetts Institute for Psychoanalysis; Director of Training, Tufts UniversityCounseling Center.

NE OF WINNICOTT’S (1945) MOST COMPELLING yet ultimatelyOenigmatic observations was the suggestion that:

The patient requires of his analyst the understanding that theanalyst’s work is to some extent his effort to cope with his own[the analyst’s] . . . guilt and grief resultant from the destructiveelements in his own [the analyst’s] love. The patient . . . needshis analyst to be able to see the analyst’s undisplaced and co-incident love and hate of him. . . . The end of the hour, the endof the analysis, the rules and regulations, these all come in asimportant expressions of hate, just as the good interpretationsare expressions of love, and symbolical of good food and care”[p. 146; italics added].

In the spirit of Winnicott’s further remark that “this theme, couldbe developed extensively and usefully,” I am going to develop thetheme by making use of an analytic perspective that is inspired bythe work my colleagues and I have been doing using aspects of

Hate, Self-Interest, and“Good-Enough” Relating:An Evolutionary–Adaptive Perspective

M A L C O L M O W E N S L A V I N, Ph.D.

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contemporary evolutionary biology as a vantage point to examineand critique psychoanalytic concepts.1

What does it mean to suggest, in Winnicott’s sense, that: (a) hateis an inevitable constituent of the therapeutic frame itself and (b) adeliberate effort at nondeceptive communication about the analyst’sinevitable hate is a crucial aspect of therapeutic relating?

First, what does Winnicott actually mean by hate? As I see it,Winnicott’s allusion to the inevitable hate in the therapeutic situationinvites us to think about a dimension of the analytic relationship andframe that goes well beyond what is captured by the usual notions ofcountertransference—beyond anything in the subjectivities of aparticular analyst and patient, beyond the clashes and enactmentsthat may be a function of their individual personalities. The “hate”expressed at the “end of the hour,” and in the “rules and regulations”of the analytic frame seems to refer to something that is far broaderthan the specific affect of hate per se. It signifies something broader,more basic than simply the analyst’s personal, disguised, enactedaggression and fantasy.

I would like us to consider that the “destructive elements in theanalyst’s love” essentially refers to universal tensions and clashingaims present in any complex, intimate relationship. The analyst’scommitment to the culture of the analytic situation and the norms ofthe frame is designed ultimately to foster the patient’s interests, yetthe “rules” of the frame, the asymmetry in the “endings,” isinextricably interwoven with the analyst’s identity as a self-interestedother. The analyst’s role and frame powerfully and undeniably conveythat the analyst has a life of his or her own. Might it be that the sensein which the “endings, rules and regulations” become “destructiveelements” that express “hate” derives from some of the universalmeanings of this often painful reality of the analyst’s “otherness”?

This perspective gains support from a consideration of Winnicott’slater (1950) extension of the metaphor of hate. He remarks that “themother hates her infant from the word go,” observing that:

1 My approach draws upon the ways in which contemporary evolutionary

(Darwinian) thinking has been used to construct a new perspective on psychoanalyticissues, especially the role of self-deception and deception in communication andthe negotiation of conflict and paradox in human development and the therapeuticrelationship (see Slavin and Kriegman, 1992, 1998a, b; Slavin, 1996b).

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The baby is a danger to her body in pregnancy and at birth. Toa greater or lesser extent [she] feels that her own motherdemands a baby, so that her own baby is produced to placateher mother. He tries to hurt her, periodically bites her, all inlove. He shows disillusionment about her . . . [After] havinggotten what he wants he throws her away like an orange peel.He is suspicious, refuses her good food, and makes her doubtherself, but eats well with his aunt [p. 73].

Winnicott’s mother, who hates her infant “from the word go,” wasnot a bad or less-than-adequate mother. He was talking about all“good-enough,” devoted mothers. Again, as in his references to theanalyst and patient, he sounds a bit “off” in some sense (thoughawfully evocative) in calling it “hate.” Certainly the affect is oftenthere (consciously and unconsciously) in many parents (and manyanalysts). Yet we sense that there is a larger issue at stake here—anissue that is signified by hate yet places hate in a broader adaptivecontext: namely, the absolutely inescapable conflicts of interest,conflicts of identities, that exist in the background between even thetwo individuals who share in the closest, most mutualistic relationshipon earth: mother and newborn child, parent and child. As Benjamin(1995) suggests, what is often at issue is the breadth and normalmultiplicity in the mother’s subjectivity—her full range of needs andinterests—work, love, other children (future children), other lifegoals, this is to say her active needs—her otherness—as they differfrom (even clash to some degree with) the needs of the child. In thissense “hate” in both mother and analyst refers to something active intheir pursuit of their interests, the expressions of their separateidentities, that goes beyond the effort to protect themselves frompresumed threats or aversive behavior in the child and the patient.

In all influential, intimate relationships throughout the life cyclesome version of this hate usually signals the existence of conflictand paradoxical binds that must be negotiated by both parties. I shalltry to illustrate how understanding hate in this broader, adaptivecontext—the context of conflicting interests and identities—mayenable us to communicate somewhat less deceptively (and self-deceptively) in these negotiations and to shed broader theoreticallight on our understanding of the role of conflict and deception inthe therapeutic relationship.

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Sam and Dad at Ten Months

I decided I must let my son, Sam, cry it out when he was around 10months old. He had been waking us up frequently all night long. Foryears—actually, I think, long before he was born—I had beendreading the moment when I might need to just listen to him cry. Ihad a deep conviction (from my evolutionary work) that—contraryto the received, pediatric wisdom (Ferber, 1986)—it is fundamentallyunnatural to expect an infant to sleep alone in a quiet, dark room.This arrangement, I believe, stretches human adaptive limits wellbeyond what, over essentially millions of years, we evolved to expectof our early environment—the close, warm sleeping arrangement towhich we are designed most readily to adapt (Konner, 1982).

Be that as it may, that night—after 10 months of it—I had becomeso furious at Sam, so filled with a disturbing hatred, that I wasdetermined to let him cry it out. He became quiet after 20 minutes orso; and I crept from our room to see what had happened. I wasimmensely relieved to see him asleep, not dead. I was horribly guiltyto see him asleep sitting up, holding tenaciously in his sleep onto thebars of his crib. I carefully scrutinized him for the next several days.Was he damaged in some barely detectable way? Did he now hateme?

Was this scene about a Winnicottean hate? Sure it was. I know. Ifelt it. It was also about aggression and assertion and a great love—and a sad identification with the frustration and pain I knew my sonwould have to face throughout his life. But it encompassed all ofthese motives and affects in the context of a very primal struggle (Ithink the oedipal struggle is a later derivative of it): a struggle betweenour interests, our needs—me and my cherished son—a struggle (anda taking of risks) that is part of all of our lives.

In regard to my own motives, I believe I was not simply “protectingmyself,” like a mother who stops the biting of her nipple. My angryassertion and the hate it entailed was part of something much morepro-active, if you will. I was looking out for myself (and a bit for mywife), for my own needs, for our life, for my writing, the work Iwanted to do the next day. A certain kind of self-serving aggressionarose within me in this context. It was a signal, vital, active, capacity:more than a reaction to threat or frustration (as aggression is typicallycharacterized in most relational and self psychological models). Atthe same time it was certainly not a drive in the usual classical sense

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of an inchoate, bodily based force (Slavin and Kriegman, 1992;Mitchell; 1993). It was a fundamental, evolved human form of aggressionlinked to the vital assertion of my own identity as it inevitably clashedto some degree with my son’s self (albeit in great inner conflict withmy love for him and with an appreciation of his separateness).

The father and the evolutionist in me says these motives and affectsput me in touch with my own self, my own interests, needs, identityas they differed from Sam’s. They compelled me to assert mysubjectivity in a way that challenged my son’s powerful assertion ofhis own wishes. I demanded that he adapt to me, to the parentalframe—not unlike Winnicott’s analyst who demands that his patientadapt to the “end of the hour, the end of the analysis and the rulesand regulations.” I demanded that Sam adapt to the rules andregulations of the family. These demands were part of a lifelongfamilial negotiation process in which we all mutually shape and adaptto each other (Erikson, 1963).

The evolutionary lessons here can be read on many levels. Whatis most relevant for my basic argument is not that the pediatric advicethat portrays the child’s behavior of sleeping alone all night in a quietdark room as normal (and the parent as acting neutrally in the child’sbest interests to condition him to this behavior) is unlikely to be anaccurate depiction of the child’s nature or of the real motives involvedin the transaction.2 More significant is the way in which suchexplanations (helpful as they may be at times for some parents)represent an excellent example of our tendency to deceive ourselvesand our children about the conflicting interests that are central tosuch transactions. Some degree of deception and self-deception aboutthe conflicting interests involved in developmental negotiations suchas these is probably as ubiquitous as the conflict itself. Yet I believe

2 I mentioned the fact that the pediatric wisdom which holds that it is normal for

a young human child to sleep alone in a dark silent room flies in the face of muchthat we know about the sleeping conditions in which human infants and parentsevolved (Konner, 1982; Hrdy, 1999). This is not to say that there may not be amultitude of good reasons why contemporary parents may want and need thisarrangement. Such early training may well fit the norms of attachment and separationin our mobile, individualistic society, and most human infants seem to have theevolved, adaptive flexibility to accomplish this feat of learning, with effort, mostof the time. Ultimately, it may even be in their long term interest to self-soothe inthis way. Yet to portray the process as a natural one that is primarily for the child’sbenefit introduces a significant element of deception into the framing of the issueand communication about it.

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that certain pervasive types of deception in which parental aims aremisrepresented as simply expressions of the child’s interests are farmore debilitating and pathogenic than the experience of evensubstantially conflicting needs. Winnicott’s suggestion that therapistsmust let their patients see the therapist’s “hate” seems to be an attemptto avoid the repetition of this type of deception.

Parent–Offspring Conflict in the Womb

The biological term for the normal, developmental clash of interestsbetween parent and child is parent–offspring conflict (Trivers, 1974,1985). David Haig (1993), an evolutionary biologist at HarvardMedical School, has recently extended the investigation of parent–offspring conflict into the interactions in the womb. Haig’s datasuggest that there appears to be a complex, hormonally mediatedinteraction (a biochemical signalling system) between mother andfetus from early in pregnancy. What they are communicating aboutoften concerns how much investment of key nutrients the motherwill make in the fetus. Specifically, one question is often how muchblood sugar will be delivered to the fetus across the placenta. Haig’sobservations seem to document the expectation that the twoparticipants, mother and unborn child, do not totally agree, as it were,on this matter. They agree a great deal, but not completely—and thismixture, this divergence of aims, may have powerful implicationsfor their interaction.3

Basically, the fetus typically wants somewhat more investment ofcalories than the mother wants (is optimal for her) to give. The fetusreleases chemical signals to raise the mother’s blood sugar. Themother releases insulin to lower it. Both parties act to induce anaccommodation in the other, engaging in what is essentially a processof negotiation—a negotiation for which each has a complex evolvedcapacity to carry out at an unconscious, bodily level. I believe theirinteraction represents an interesting variant on what Beebe andLachmann (1988) describe as a mutual regulatory system (Beebe,

3 I hope it is amply clear that the “intentionality” that is deliberately implied in

all such evolved interactions by no means assumes conscious, rational intent orcontrol. These are useful shorthand metaphors for the workings of “evolved deepstructure” (Ogden, 1985; Slavin and Kriegman, 1992) in which consciousness anddeliberate control may or may not play a role.

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personal communication). In this model, the element of naturallydiffering aims—partially divergent interests—is included as anintegral element in the system. In this negotiation, like most realdevelopmental negotiations, there is enormous gain for bothparticipants in a stabilized, mutually beneficial outcome: essentiallyan intersubjective compromise. Nevertheless, both parties stand tobenefit additionally if they are able to bias the outcome, tilt it a bit,in her or his own individual direction.

Sometimes the intrauterine, developmental negotiations that Haigdescribes turn into strategic escalations in which each signalsincreasingly strongly in response to the other’s attempts at regulation,and the hormonal levels increase beyond what is mutually beneficial.In short, the negotiation gets out of hand—perhaps because of thevigor of the child’s strategy, perhaps a structural weakness in themother’s insulin metabolism. The result may become the inductionin the mother of diabetes of pregnancy—essentially a coconstructedcondition resulting from this very early negotiation of normal conflictgone awry. The conflict itself, we must remember, is rooted in thevital differences in the perspectives—the interests—of each party.The pathology in the diabetic result is, of course, the rare exception.Most of the time it is likely that the participants—mother and fetus—will negotiate a successful initial relationship.

One of the more interesting things about this early interaction isthe way in which it represents a mutual regulatory system that seemsto work by means of a primitive negotiation. The language ofhormonal signals may simply represent an early vehicle, ormechanism, by which aims are negotiated, much as affective, gestural,and verbal signals become the vehicles later on as developmentproceeds (Slavin, 2000).

Conflict as an Essential Constituent of Relating

I suggest that all these instances—Winnicott’s analyst whose rulesand limits express “hate,” the mother who “hates her baby from theword go,” my struggle with Sam, David Haig’s subtly competingmother and unborn child—point to a larger existential reality in whichwe see the internal and interactive functions of hate arise. I see thisas interactive field, an existential relational field in which a kind of“psychic undertow” operates between any two distinct human beingswho are attempting to interact in an intimate way. Each participant—

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Sam and I, mother and fetus, Winnicott’s mother and baby—attemptsto pull the other toward his or her subjective world (the world of hisor her self-interests), and each attempts to resist the pull, the undertow,in the opposite direction. Simultaneously, though, each needs to “use”(make use of) the other to construct his or her own identity and thuswants, must want, to take in aspects of the other’s subjectivity. Eachtries to redefine the other in his or her own terms (and to both acceptand resist re-definition in the terms of the other). I’m calling theseuniversal relational tensions an “undertow” because they operateinexorably beneath whatever crashing of waves and ebbing andflowing of behaviors that may catch our attention on the surface(Slavin and Kriegman, 1998b).

Growing up, each child faces the existential problem of what tomake of and how to “use” (in Winnicott’s [1969] sense) these crucial“others” who, we innately sense, must act, to some extent, forthemselves, in accord with their own inevitable biases. These “others”seem to know us and—intertwined with their biases—care deeplyabout us, our needs, our interests. How can we use such others toinfluence us, shape us, to organize our very identity?

There is a profound evolutionary paradox in the way a human childis designed to develop: constructing an identity through social andsymbolic interactions with others that necessarily entail someidentification with the biases of those others, biases that inevitablyalienate the individual to some extent from his or her own uniqueinterests and identity. How do we as parents fully express andcommunicate our own interests and unique identities whilesimultaneously promoting the separate, divergent interests of thechild? This evolutionary paradox brings with it an enormous potentialfor a “confusion of interests” that is, for conscious and unconsciousdeception and self-deception in which parental interests arecommonly recast in terms of “what is good for the child” (Slavinand Kriegman, 1992, 1998b; Slavin, 1996b).4 If we move beyond

4 There is obviously an echo of Ferenczi’s (1932) “confusion of tongues” (the

blurring of the intrinsically different “languages” of sensuality for parent and child)in the notion of “confusion of interests” (the blurring of the intrinsically differingaims and needs of parent and child). I think the “confusion of interests” is a broaderconcept that can encompass the “confusion of tongues.” Unlike Ferenczi, I alsostress the ways in which significant conflict between some of the aims of parentand child are also natural aspects of good-enough parenting.

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our customary technical language and tendency to idealize theanalytic frame, we can see these same human dilemmas—includingthe same potential for self-deception and deception—in thetherapeutic relationship. Let us take a look at some of the paradoxicalbinds—the crunches and the efforts at negotiation—that thisdeception-shrouded clash of aims can typically engender in a previouslyreported intensive psychotherapy (Slavin and Kriegman, 1998a).

Edward and His Analyst

Edward was the most intensely and tenaciously depressed person hisanalyst had ever known. Trials of virtually every known medicationhad been almost totally ineffective. Yet, after a few years of treatment,on occasion, his analyst felt there were small, momentary brighteningsin his mood, brief periods of improved concentration, and from timeto time, moments of interest, passion, and insight. To his analyst—arelatively experienced woman—in these moments Edward seemednoticeably more alive.

Sustained Empathic Responsiveness andthe Return of Psychic Deadness

The analyst felt that the positive moments, the flickerings of hopeand passion, were linked to her highly consistent efforts to remainclosely attuned to Edward’s subjective world, to remind herself that,more than anything else, he needed to establish (and continuallyrestore) the sense that someone could grasp his experience of deadnessand impossibility—the trapped futility—in which he constantly lived.

They had come to construct a picture of his having grown up as anunwanted child—a child of a removed, depressed, fundamentalist,religious mother and a childish (yet critical) father. He seemed tohave grown up feeling that he existed only insofar as he correspondedto, and validated, everyone else’s needs and expectations of him.Edward was tortured by an unresolvable dilemma: Though he cravedintimacy, attempts at close relating with other people invariably lefthim feeling lost, trapped in what he called “the black hole.” By this,Edward meant bereft of meaning, living for the other person, virtuallylosing all sense of himself as a real, living being.

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Despite brighter moments, Edward’s intense, deadeninghopelessness always seemed to return. He felt he could never havethe sense of aliveness that other people felt. Nor could he toleratethe deceptiveness, the hypocrisy, the self-deceiving “mechanicalsocial ritual” that he astutely observed in the lives of others. Yet themore he removed himself, the lonelier and more desperate he became.

Over time, Edward’s analyst became regularly aware of living witha powerful, anticipatory dread within herself. She had come to dreadand absolutely hate what felt to her like the repeated undercuttingand undermining of all good feelings. Early on in one session, Edwardseemed to be fighting off the horrible tug of yet another slide intohopelessness. For an instant, the analyst was aware of silently sidingwith what she sensed as Edward’s effort not to lapse, once again,into a state of angry despair. She attempted to remain closely attunedto the story he was telling about a perennially frustrating problem atwork. As the hour proceeded, however, it became clear that Edward’sdespair was gaining the upper hand. Nothing was helping. Whateverthey might come to understand, he still had no life!

“Can’t you see?” he said, “I am dying more each day. This analysisis futile.”

In the midst of this, it seemed like something inside her began totalk. She heard herself saying, “At times like this, I sometimes feelthat all I can do is to be here with you in your despair.” And then, asshe realized it, she added, “Yes, there is something more, maybe moreimportant. I . . . I’m trying to deal with the part of me that reallydoesn’t want to feel it.”

In the next session, Edward said that something “sort of strange”had happened: “That image of you had a different sense to it . . .Different from the ways I think about us . . . you as a person who’senduring the despair. . . . It puts you inside the image rather thanoutside it. Do you know what I mean?”

“I think so.”“As opposed to me being desperate and you trying to know what

to do about it. And me convinced that you can’t do anything aboutit—enduring the desperation together. I think it’s probably the onlyreal comfort you can give me.”

In many moments like the preceding one, it became clear to theanalyst that her arduous and careful effort to remain empathically

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attuned to Edward’s subjective world regularly clashed painfully withher own sense of life and hope. At a very profound level, her sense ofhope for Edward (and her hatred of him for the dreaded slide intodespair) was rooted in her own natural need to maintain a basicallypositive view of herself and of life—as well as her need to feel hopefulabout the analysis itself. To the extent that Edward seemed to sensethis conflict between them—and particularly that he sensed anytendency in her to deceive herself about whom the hope was reallyfor—his despair and his rage intensified.

In her comments, I think the analyst had begun to signal herwillingness to experience her own internal struggle over hope anddespair—an inner conflict that was induced, in part, by the conflictbetween them and signalled powerfully by her hatred of Edward atthese moments. She needed to reopen her own efforts to come toterms with some of the grief and despair she had felt in her own life.Having a genuine relationship with Edward required her to reimmerseherself in painful realities for which she had successfully and moreor less adaptively found a working resolution. It seemed as thoughshe conveyed something crucial about her ongoing capacity andwillingness to be moved away from something that had beenprovisionally settled in her own identity.

Deepening Conflicts With the Analyst’s Identity

Edward’s earliest memory was of being held in his mother’s arms,sensing that she is vaguely present and distracted. Mother doesn’tput him down, yet it feels to him like she doesn’t really want to holdhim. The analyst’s closeness now only makes him more painfullyconvinced that, like every relationship he has ever had, he is beingtortured by getting something, but not getting what he really needs.It is real, but not real. He clings to her while she pursues her real life,with him on the side.

The only way he can feel held by her is if she admits and acceptshis hopelessness, their hopelessness together— the hopelessness ofanalysis and of life itself. What can analytic understandingaccomplish? He has no life. Can’t she see he is dying more eachday? He wants to die. He realizes (when she points it out) that this isthe Catch 22: the essential dilemma he experiences at every turn, the

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“black hole” of relationships. He desperately needs to feel she isgenuinely with him, yet he can only feel her to be genuinely withhim if she accepts his reality, his belief that analysis is futile. And ifshe does, their relationship must end. She needs to give up her realityto be truly with him.

The analyst knows that in some real way it is a Catch 22: a paradoxthat ultimately derives from the fact that their needs are in conflict.She must wrestle with this and not gloss over the ways in whichanalysis is, in a real sense, a seduction (as Lawrence Friedman [1991]calls it), a tease, bringing him to experience his needs intensely yetin many ways not providing the real, loving holding that he ultimatelyneeds. She must in a sense (at least temporarily) relinquish anycertainties about what “therapeutic holding,” what special “potentialspace” the therapeutic relationship may offer.

Over countless reiterations of this theme, the analyst came to awrenching, emotionally complex appreciation of what Edward’s ragewas compelling her to see. She began to try to communicate her graspof this to him. Indeed, in many ways, she would not (analysis, as shepracticed it, could not) give him what he, in many important ways,needed: to be held, to be a “real” part of her life. Nor could she fullyaccept the legitimacy of his despair and fully decenter into a completeempathic union with his hopelessness. She could not fully acceptthat psychoanalysis with him was futile. Yes, these were, in significantways, limitations of her method, not simply his incapacity to adaptto the limitations or her failure to attune herself thoroughly andconsistently enough to him. The realities of her own life and her wayof working created the limits in their relationship. These limitationsmight be more than he could take. His life might not improve, andthe heightened longings stimulated by the analysis might be sounbearable that he would kill himself.

She was not “setting limits” in the face of his rage at thisunrealness—not in the sense that we often mean this as “doingsomething for the patient’s good” to help them contain his or herhate or something like that. Rather, she was accepting the real limitsof something in which, at the same time, she had a deep faith.

It was never really the conflict between them per se that was mostdifficult. The greatest difficulties revolved around any self-deceptionsabout this (what seemed like her natural, unwitting tendency to

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confuse their interests) that drove him into a quietly raging despair.The worst part seems to come if and when Edward senses that “sheseems to want to give” something for him, when it is actually forher. This “confusion of interests” (related I think to Ferenczi’s notionof “confusion of tongues” in trauma) that felt lethal to him.

It was her relatively open revelation to him, each time, of herdawning realizations about this process (within her and between them)that restored the sense of realness and created a sense of authenticityto their relationship. Of course something in her was renegotiatedand changed each time.

Understanding You in Order to Understand Me

The negotiation process clearly took place well beyond the verballevel in which I am trying to cast it. Near the seventh year of treatment,in one session Edward commented that he thought she had begun tomove her hands much more with him. Only when he said it did shebecome aware that she had, in fact, been very dimly aware of feelingthis shift herself. He had been bringing more and more of her to life.

“Is it true?” he asked.“Yes. As you say it, I can see it.”“What does it mean?”She said she felt like she was groping toward him and groping

around herself, searching in the dark. She told him she had begun totry to express things with him that she doesn’t really understand butis trying anyway.

Soon he began to question her frequently whenever he felt shemay be holding back. She began to be more able to acknowledgemoments when she felt anger with him—always carefully—with alot of reflection. “I’m always looking to prove that love doesn’t exist,”he said. “It’s weird. But when I hear you talking about being angry,it makes me feel I can trust you.”

Edward began to ask her to push him more. And, of course, he hadalso told her for years that he totally disappeared when she pushedher own agenda in any way.

“Often I worry,” she said, “that we’re doing things here that arereally my agenda—that it is going too far for you. It can feel like itmight be just for me, or even destructive—that it will hurt you, makeyou regress, less able to work and function. I feel I’m taking a risk,

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but something inside me says: ‘Don’t let this fear control you. Youknow you believe, more and more, what you’re trying to do with himis it is basically right. Be more active with him, go ahead, put it inwords, try to say what you’re thinking in some way.’ “I think it’swhen I take this risk of hurting you that something in it feels like agood kind of pushing.”

Edward’s face opened gradually as she spoke. He nodded. After apause, he burst out: “So all these years I’ve been thinking you’re sittingthere thinking about me . . . and you’re actually thinking about you!”

They both laughed very hard. “This is such a strange relationship,”he says. “We’re here to understand me, but we have to understandyou in order to understand me.”

Slowly, over much time, through this kind of negotiatedunderstanding, Edward began to develop a sense of realness in therelationship with his analyst that, for the first time, seemed to enduredespite the annihilating pull of the “black hole.” The analyst, too,felt that there was not only something durable between them butsomething palpably stronger, more capable of experiencing anurturance in herself.

Only after these events did Edward tell her more about howhe was beginning to realize that he had always hated anyone hewas ever at all close to. “I hate people because they always have afaith in something and I have none,” he said, adding, “I have totake their faith apart. It’s the only way I can level the playing field.It’s what I have to do with you and this whole analysis thing.”Still later, he commented that he was beginning to see that he hatedpeople with whom he felt some closeness. At these moments hebegan to catch himself becoming really frightened when he felt hewas so hateful a person that he endangered anyone who matteredto him. It seemed to the analyst that he was now becomingmore enlivened by his hate. She caught on that she didn’t need tointerpret this at all.

Edward continued in a long, arduous process of grieving the lossof his deadened self. He discovered repeatedly how terrified, lost,and crazy he felt in the moments when his depression actually seemedto lift: the world felt absolutely surreal; very bizarre dreamsproliferated. The analyst experienced him as palpably more alive.Edward actually became more afraid of dying than he had ever felt

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before and more afraid than ever of always being alone. One day hesaid that he realized that he was no longer “desperate.”

The Mutual Negotiation of Real Conflict

The relationship between Edward and his analyst was fraught withdeepening experiences of conflict and the continuing uncovering ofa web of unwitting deceptions and self-deceptions. No doubt Edward’spathology—the tenuousness of his self-organization and hisentrenched, unrelenting beliefs in the danger and hopelessness ofrelationships—contributed heavily to the extreme complexity ofnegotiating a greater closeness with him. Sure, aspects of his analyst’sstruggle derived from rigidities and blindspots within her self-organization. Yet I think a very significant dimension of this conflict,deception and self-deception was not attributable to a reenactmentof his pathology per se. Nor was it attributable to idiosyncraticcountertransference obstacles or significant technical failures on thepart of his analyst.

What I see as central in this treatment is an adaptive processrevolving around the patient’s evocation of, and close attunement to,the real inner life of the therapist as discussed by Hoffman (1983,1991), Aron (1991), Davies (1994), Searles (1975), Renik (1993),Rogers (1995) and Weiss and Sampson (1986). In my view, Edwardand his analyst challenged each other’s identities on many differentlevels. His primitive transference (in both its pathological andadaptive elements) served to create and sustain a relentless series ofreal challenges to his analyst’s identity. But these challenges were—had to be—quite real to her, in the sense that they entailed a deepand consistent questioning—and revising—of the way she organizedaspects of her personal and professional world.

Recognizing how profoundly her own agenda, her own identity asanalyst, was involved in the dilemmas she encountered with Edward,his analyst temporarily “forgot” something about transference andthe “life raft” provided by the frame. She experienced the relationshippulling her away from aspects of her analytic identity—she “lost” acomforting emphasis on the symbolic and became somewhat moreconcrete, taking literally the realness of her patient’s experience (e.g.,of “needing to be actually held” or believing that “analysis is really

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hopeless”). The analyst engages in her own identity struggle,becoming, temporarily, a stranger to herself (Slavin and Kriegman,1998a).5

If Edward’s analyst had focused primarily on his transferentialpathology, or her countertransference pathology, she would have losther central way of living with this arena of real conflict and continuouspotential deception between them. I believe it would not have beenthe same had she had thought of her role as somehow “being a newobject” for him, or straining to sustain a “consistent empathic inquiry”into his world. As I view it, they were able to negotiate together arelationship in which such functions emerged.

Similarly, although this treatment entailed—over many years—agood deal of careful, groping, self-disclosure on the part of the analyst,it was not a matter of self-disclosure used as some new technique.This is especially important to recognize in light of the currentemphasis on the supposed “realness” or “authenticity” of the therapistin contemporary relational approaches. The candid, often spontaneousexpression of the analyst’s inner struggle emerges in the context ofher readiness to engage the realness of the conflicts through a long-term process of mutual influence or negotiation. Authenticity is notturned on or off. Sometimes—with significant effort and risk on boththe therapist’s and the patient’s parts—a meaningful authenticinteraction may be achieved.

In short, I think that a vigorous, often hate-filled, deconstructiveinvestigation of the analyst’s identity must often take place—for

5 We often talk about relational dynamics in which conflict is induced within the

other using the term “projective identification.” For most self psychologists thisterm is highly problematic when it refers to a process by which certain versions ofself experience, or of inner conflict, are somehow seen as “put into” the therapist.or even simply as serving to elicit an affective resonance in the therapist’s personallife. Such “induced” experience (Ogden, 1985) and “role responsiveness” (Sandler,1976) does seem to occur at moments and many therapists find that thinking inthese terms helps to cope with the intense pathological hatred expressed by somepatients. The related notion of “enactment” can be talked about in the same way: asthough the transference-countertransference mix that is enacted (and hopefullyeventually understood) is a kind of as-if scenario in which the participantsemotionally re-live the patient’s fantasy world—not the therapist’s real (and fantasy)world—as it is activated by their relationship ( Jacobs, 1991). Although thetherapist’s real participation is usually acknowledged in contemporary versions ofboth of these concepts, I still believe that they radically short circuit ourunderstanding of the realness of the actual (internal and interpersonal) negotiationbetween patient and therapist.

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basically adaptive (though not necessarily successful) reasons. Thepatient attempts to investigate and discover the elusive strands ofbias that, as our patients well know, is tensely interwoven into ourpersonal and analytic identities. By not recognizing the context ofconflicting interests, analysts tend to lose this larger, relational pictureof what the patient is trying to penetrate, break down, and discoverabout the analyst’s relationship to the analytic “rules and regulations.”The analyst may adopt the narrower, sometimes pathologizing, viewthat (in a Kleinian, “drive” sense) the patient must try to “destroythe analyst and the analysis.” Indeed, the analyst must survive anoften hate-filled deconstruction. But, again, the analyst’s “survival”(and the survival of the frame itself) is usually not survival in a static,uninfluenced sense. Indeed, the analyst’s engagement in a genuinenegotiation represents, in itself, a “new experience”: an analyst“other” struggling to look out for herself or himself and to adapt tosome aspects of the patient’s agenda—a patient trying to preserveherself or himself while (often mournfully) adapting to the natureand limits of the analytic frame. Through a successful negotiation,an analytic “third space” is jointly created in which both parties maychange (Slavin and Kriegman, 1998a).

Conclusions

As Beebe (this journal) has said, we need a better psychoanalytictheory of human interaction. I think such a model can be integratedwith and will complement Lichtenberg’s (1989) useful newmotivational paradigm. We don’t need a theory that generalizes frominfant–mother interactions to adult patient–therapist relating but,rather, a new model of interaction that embraces both. Such a modelwould respect the complexity and multiplicity—the normalcontradictions—within both parties in a dyad. Perhaps this ultimatelyimplies that there really is no such thing as a dyad since, fromconception onward, both parties always have multiple ongoing andpotential loyalties, attachments, and so on to many other parties.

From the word go, over and above—yet intertwined with—thepotential pathology in mother and special sensitivities in the infant,both participants are first and foremost human beings with complexneeds—only some of which nicely overlap with the needs of the other.In fact, what overlaps and how much overlap there is has to be

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discovered/created—taught to each other. The mother who “hatesher infant from the word go” has a complex—normally diverse,contradiction-filled subjectivity, lots of diverging interests and needs(what I think Winnicott was really saying). The baby has atemperament and unique interests that are quite distinct from dayone, literally from the moment of conception. As Haig’s (1993) workillustrates, the environment that is optimal for the mother to provideis not the same environment that is optimal for the child and viceversa. In seeking to find their mutual benefit, mother and child eachwant to influence the adaptation of the other—to bias it toward one’sown needs. And thus the dynamic of their interaction—while designeduniversally, biologically wired to unfold through a complexintersubjective process—will actually entail a powerful negotiationprocess that profoundly influences the psyche of each participant(Slavin, 2000).

I think the negotiation of conflicting interests—and the potentialfor hate and deception—starts when the patient comes in the door,wondering, quite legitimately: who is this for, the therapist or me?How much and in what ways is it for each of us? The negotiationproceeds for months or years as we collect our fees, and the patientmay well feel only marginally better, or worse—benefiting in moretangible, enduring ways after very long periods of time. And, let’snot forget it: though it may well protect them, provide a “life raft”(Benjamin, 1998) for us both and facilitate our work, it is ourtherapeutic frame, our rituals around time, place, and payment towhich they must, by and large, adapt.

The relational/self psychological paradigm has brought home tous the realities of the coconstruction of the transference andtherapeutic relationship (Mitchell, 1993; Slavin, 1994; Stolorow,Brandchaft, and Atwood, 1987). No longer can we think oftransferences as simply residing in the patient. And with this co-construction, the new paradigm has led us to appreciate the relativityof the reality, the subjectivity of the constructions that both patientand therapist bring to their encounter. But, in my view, slipped inwith these indisputable gains, there lies embedded within manyrelational/self psychological approaches (as different as these twomodels may be in other ways) the inaccurate assumption that—apartfrom specific, individual countertransference issues—simply workingconsistently and competently in a relational or empathic mode places

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the therapist in an unambiguously harmonious relationship with thepatient’s basic interests. While relational and intersubjectiveapproaches clearly move us closer to aspects of our patients’experience, they often introduce a whole new set of blindspotsregarding conflict and self-deception. Most frequently when we sensethese blindspots, we cast them in traditional terms of the issues ofaggression, sadism, and unconscious motivation. And, because wehave cast the issues in narrow, misleading terms, we often slip backinto dichotomous, polarized ways of viewing the human psyche andthe therapeutic relationship.

What I think is missing in a fuller relational and intersubjectiveapproach is a framework that frankly recognizes that much oftherapy—like any other intimate relationship—is a relationship inwhich two separate people with very distinct interests are engagedin a prolonged process of negotiating their competing needs. Theystruggle with the inevitable clashes and conflicts both within each ofthem and between them as they try to establish, and inevitably lose(then restore through negotiation), some form of greater mutuality.It is especially important in the treatment of patients who projectand evoke intense hate and despair that therapists be able to recognizethe fact that their own legitimate needs (self states) and those oftheir patients will, at times, inevitably clash. Therapists are thus morelikely to have a framework in which to both accept their patient’sneeds as “real” yet effectively convey that their own needs—theprofessional frame in which they work (Winnicott’s “rules andregulations”)—do not at times fit easily with the real needs of theirpatients. In good faith, they can see if, with time and effort, they canbetter define these inevitable differences and negotiate them.Acknowledging the conflict and our own inevitable self-deceptionsabout it is a crucial place to start.

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112 Lakeview AvenueCambridge, MA 02138Malslavin@aol.com

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