Self and Other

Front matter

SELF AND OTHER

Object Relations in

Psychoanalysis and Literature

Foreword

The Psychoanalytic Crosscurrents series presents selected books and monographs that reveal the growing intellectual ferment within and across the boundaries of psychoanalysis.

Freud’s theories and grand-scale speculative leaps have been found warning, if not disturbing, from the very beginning and have led to a succession of derisive attacks, shifts in emphasis, revisions, modifications, and extensions. Despite the chronic and, at times, fierce debate that has characterized psychoanalysis, not only as a movement but also as a science, Freud’s genius and transformational impact on the twentieth century have never been seriously questioned. Recent psychoanalytic thought has been subjected to dramatic reassessments under the sway of contemporary currents in the history of ideas, philosophy of science, epistemology, structuralism, critical theory, semantics, and semiology as well as in sociobiology, ethology, and neurocognitive science. Not only is Freud’s place in intellectual history being meticulously scrutinized, but his texts, too, are being carefully read, explicated, and debated within a variety of conceptual frameworks and sociopolitical contexts.

The legacy of Freud is perhaps most notably evident within the narrow confines of psychoanalysis itself, the “impossible profession” that has served as the central platform for the promulgation of official orthodoxy. But Freud’s contributions —his original radical thrust—reach far beyond the parochial concerns of the clinician psychoanalyst as clinician. His writings touch on a wealth of issues, crossing traditional boundaries—be they situated in the biological, social, or humanistic spheres—that have profoundly altered our conception of the individual and society.

A rich and flowering literature, falling under the rubric of “applied xi xii FOREWORD psychoanalysis,” came into being, reached its zenith many decades ago, and then almost vanished. Early contributors to this literature, in addition to Freud himself, came from a wide range of backgrounds both within and outside the medical/psychiatric field, and many later became psychoanalysts themselves. These early efforts were characteristically reductionist in their attempt to extrapolate from psychoanalytic theory (often the purely clinical theory) to explanation of phenomena lying at some distance from the clinical. Over the years, academic psychologists, educators, anthropologists, sociologists, political scientists, philosophers, jurists, literary critics, art historians, artists, and writers, among others (with or without formal psychoanalytic training), have joined in the proliferation of this literature.

The intent of the Psychoanalytic Crosscurrents series is to apply psychoanalytic ideas to topics that may lie beyond the narrowly clinical, but its essential conception and scope are quite different. The present series eschews the reductionist tendency to be found in much traditional “applied psychoanalysis.” It acknowledges not only the complexity of psychological phenomena but also the way in which they are embedded in social and scientific contexts that are constantly changing. It calls for a dialectical relationship to earlier theoretical views and conceptions rather than a mechanical repetition of Freud’s dated thoughts. The series affirms the fact that contributions to and about psychoanalysis have come from many directions. It is designed as a forum for the multidisciplinary studies that intersect with psychoanalytic thought but without the requirement that psychoanalysis necessarily be the starting point or, indeed, the center focus. The criteria for inclusion in the series are that the work be significantly informed by psychoanalytic thought or that it be aimed at furthering our understanding of psychoanalysis in its broadest meaning as theory, practice, and sociocultural phenomenon; that it be of current topical interest and that it provide the critical reader with contemporary insights; and, above all, that it be high-quality scholarship, free of absolute dogma, banalization, and empty jargon. The author’s professional identity and particular theoretical orientation matter only to the extent that such facts may serve to frame the work for the reader, alerting him or her to inevitable biases of the author.

The Psychoanalytic Crosscurrents series presents an array of works from the multidisciplinary domain in an attempt to capture the ferment of scholarly activities at the core as well as at the boundaries of psychoanalysis. The books and monographs are from a variety of sources: authors will

FOREWORD XU be psychoanalysts—traditional, neo- and post-Freudian, existential, object relational, Kohutian, Lacanian, etc.—social scientists with quantitative or qualitative orientations to psychoanalytic data, and scholars from the vast diversity of approaches and interests that make up the humanities. The series entertains works on critical comparisons of psychoanalytic theories and concepts as well as philosophical examinations of fundamental assumptions and epistemic claims that furnish the base for psychoanalytic hypotheses. It includes studies of psychoanalysis as literature (discourse and narrative theory) as well as the application of psychoanalytic concepts to literary criticism. It will serve as an outlet for psychoanalytic studies of creativity and the arts. Works in the cognitive and the neurosciences will be included to the extent that they address some fundamental psychoanalytic tenet, such as the role of dreaming and other forms of unconscious mental processes.

It should be obvious that an exhaustive enumeration of the types of works that might fit into the Psychoanalytic Crosscurrents series is pointless. The studies comprise a lively and growing literature as a unique domain; books of this sort are frequently difficult to classify or catalog. Suffice it to say that the overriding aim of the editor of this series 1s to serve as a conduit for the identification of the outstanding yield of that emergent literature and to foster its further unhampered growth.

Leo Goldberger Professor of Psychology New York University

Preface

A memorable comic moment in the psychological high jinks of High Anxiety occurs when the psychiatrist protagonist, played by Mel Brooks, becomes able to recall the childhood origin of his uncontrollable fear of heights. He visualizes a dreamlike scene of angry conflict between his parents. He remembers sitting in his high chair, fearful of it being tipped over, as his father speaks harshly to his mother, complaining that the baby keeps them prisoners in their own household. She responds with defensive fury: “Whaddya want me to do? Get rid of him?” Then the high chair begins to topple over. On the basis of this memory Dr. Thorndike has a sudden insight into the real meaning of his acrophobia: “It’s not heights Pm afraid of; it’s parents!”

The shifts of theoretical perspective I have experienced over the past two decades that moved me to write this book have not taken the form of any sudden illuminations such as the one dramatized by Mel Brooks, but in at least one respect the alteration of my viewpoint parallels that of Dr. Thorndike: instead of seeing behavioral problems in terms of impersonal forces (in the movie, the force of gravity, shall we say), I now look at them in terms of the effect of interpersonal relationships.

I cannot take much credit for this improvement for the simple reason that my altered perspectives surely correspond to changes that have been taking place on a far broader scale in the field of psychoanalysis. When I was working on The Double in Literature (1970) it seemed perfectly acceptable to base my discussion of splitting and dissociation largely on the foundation of Freud’s structural theory. I did not realize at the time that my working knowledge of object relations theory was almost entirely confined to oedipal configurations and was almost exclusively drive-ori-

XV xm PREFACE ented. As I wrote Metaphor: A Psychoanalytic View (1978), I was only beginning to have doubts about Freud’s doctrine that individual motivation is largely fueled by libidinal drives, so it still seemed meaningful to try to account for the powerful effects of the language of poetry in terms of certain assumptions about the operations of what Freud calls the primary and secondary processes. At that time my methodology remained locked into the dynamic, economic, and structural metapsychological points of view. Then, as I wrote a series of papers about the interpretive process during the years that followed, I eventually began to repudiate psychoanalytic drive theory—under the guidance of others, of course— even though I was not altogether clear about what there was to replace it. By the mid-1980s the principal new resource available to me, I thought, was Bowlby’s attachment theory. But there were certain problems. Relatively few people in psychoanalytic circles appeared to be paying much attention to Bowlby at that time, and my attempts to interest colleagues in his work fell flat. I also began to realize at this time that in some ways Bowlby’s theory did not match well with my convictions about internalized object relations, especially as they are represented in literature. Worse yet, I no longer felt very secure about where I stood regarding the etiology of neurosis. Worst of all, I became increasingly aware of the lack of consensus concerning object relations theory in the psychoanalytic community.

The more I thought about these problems, the more it made sense to me to try to explore the possibility of making some sort of contribution, however limited, toward the integration of a science-oriented, person-oriented theory of object relations—one purged of drive theory but merged with the best features of attachment theory and with what I refer to as self theory so as to distinguish it from Kohutian self psychology.

The limits of this undertaking will be more or less apparent from the following prospectus. Chapter 1 begins with an account of the mixed legacy we inherit from Freud, offers a brief overview of the principal contributions to object relations theory from Klein to Kohut, summarizes some of the major arguments against drive theory, and concludes by taking a firm stand in favor of a person-oriented theory of object relations. Chapter 2 attempts to integrate the most meaningful features of traditional object relations theory with attachment theory, with recent findings deriving from the observation of early mother-infant interaction, and with self theory. Chapter 3 provides a critical rereading of all of Freud’s major cases in a way that deemphasizes sexual factors while stressing interper-

PREFACE XV sonal conflict and attachment deficits. Chapter 4 continues the same strategy using published case histories of Winnicott, Lichtenstein, Sechehaye, and Bettelheim. Chapters 5 through 8 deal with object relations represented in literary fantasy. Chapter 5 emphasizes the permutations of attachment behavior depicted in the text of Moby Dick. Chapter 6 focuses on the special, essentially unsuccessful adaption to aberrant infant-parent relations exhibited by Meursault in The Stranger. Chapter 7 treats creative uses of the self as a facilitating environment in the poetry of Emily Dickinson. And chapter 8 traces patterns of attachment, separation, anxiety, and loss in four Shakespearean tragedies.

I am grateful to those who in various ways have assisted me in this endeavor. I especially want to thank the friends and colleagues who have read and commented on one or more chapters of this work: Peter Heller, Joseph Masling (whose high standards concerning what constitutes empirical evidence have remained beyond my reach, I fear), Charles Proudfit, David Richards (whose response has been so constructive and sustaining), and David Willbern. Their efforts helped me to avoid innumerable blunders, yet it goes without saying that they can in no way be held in the least degree responsible for any of the faults that doubtless remain. I am also grateful to Arthur Efron for his willingness to share discoveries with me, to Bruce Jackson for his sound advice, and to Claire Kahane and Ronald Ruskin for their friendly collegiality. I want to thank all of my students, graduate and undergraduate, for their patience in hearing me out and for the stimulation our interactions afforded me. I thank Jonathan Havey especially for the benefits of the many hours we spent discussing object relations theory. My sense of indebtedness to the late Emanuel Peterfreund runs deep. He was a source of strength for many years. I thank Joan Cipperman as much for allowing me to bask in the warmth of her presence as for her labor in typing the manuscript. To Leo Goldberger I am greatly obliged for his willingness to include this book in the Psychoanalytic Crosscurrents series. And I want to thank Jason Renker and Despina Gimbel, at New York University Press, for all their help. Finally, and most important of all, I want to thank my wife for her untiring support.

DRIVE VERSUS PERSON: TWO ORIENTATIONS

One’s choice of terms always has consequences. So does one’s selection of explanatory frameworks. An instance from one of Winnicott’s case histories illustrates the distance between an orthodox, drive-oriented perspective on object relations and one that assumes that interpersonal relationships may reflect forms of attraction not necessarily fueled by sexual urges. A little girl called Gabrielle, only two years and ten months old, goes immediately to the toy box at the beginning of her sixth therapeutic consultation with Winnicott: “She put the two big soft animals together and said: “They are together and are fond of each other ”(1977, 77). Winnicott responds in this instance with a sexual interpretation, one highly characteristic of his former mentor and supervisor, Melanie Klein: “And they are making babies.” Gabrielle, who has already glossed her own play in a very different way (“They are ... fond of each other”), remarks, “No, they are making friends.” Would Winnicott’s customary, person-oriented mode of interpretation have been more accurate, and functional, at this point than the sexually oriented one? Many contemporary analysts might think so.

When it comes to selecting explanatory frameworks in the field of object relations theory, there is God’s plenty to choose from. To whose work do we turn for guidance? Even if we go first to the theory of object relations explicit and implicit in Freud, we cannot fail to be aware that the ensuing history of the development of object relations theory constitutes a complex and often conflicting response to his work in this area. Can we rely on the innovations of Melanie Klein, who still has many followers? Or can we perhaps find better guidance in the work of Fairbairn, or Winnicott, or Guntrip, or Sullivan, or Bowlby, or Kohut? Practitioners of various kinds frequently associate themselves with the object relations theory of a particular individual, Winnicott and Kohut being popular choices these days. Alternatively, many choose to be eclectic, often without thinking about it, by adopting a casual mixture of views: some Freud, for instance, with a helping of Klein, a dollop of Winnicott, and a lacing of Kohut. More commendable than passive eclecticism, surely, are deliberate attempts on the part of theoreticians to effect syntheses of earlier views, such as Kernberg’s attempted integration of “object-relations theory with psychoanalytic instinct theory and a contemporary ego psychological approach” (1976, 131). The problem in this case is that the proposed synthesis may prove to be unworkable because of incompatibilities inherent in the explanatory frameworks.

Virtually all current psychoanalytic schools of thought agree substantially on the fundamental importance of object relations, yet no consensus about these matters exists at present according to Greenberg and Mitchell (1983). To be more precise, they say that “underlying the apparent diversity of contemporary psychoanalytic theory there is a convergence of basic concerns” (2). It would be still more exact to speak not of “a convergence” but, in the plural, of convergences, or groups, of basic concern. Thus, for convenience, one may designate two major groups of object relations theory as drive oriented and person oriented. It may then be asked, should we select a person-oriented theory like those of Sullivan and Fairbairn, or a drive-oriented one like those of Freud and Melanie Klein? Or can we live with both, in a state of enlightened complementarity analogous to living with both wave and corpuscle theories of the behavior of light, as Greenberg and Mitchell imply 1s possible—and perhaps even desirable insofar as it may give rise to a “creative dialogue” between the two (408; cf. Mitchell, 1988)? Collateral questions then unfold. Is it possible to invest heavily in a person-oriented theory while retaining some interest in drive theory, as Winnicott appears to do? And if we totally reject drive theory, as Bowlby does, how satisfactory 1s attachment theory, which he considers to be a theory of object relations (1969, 17)? Does the strength of its empirical basis compensate for an orientation to outer reality that slights the inferable existence, volatility, and complexity of intrapsychic constellations of internalized objects, and that in rejecting libido theory neglects to account in any detail for sexual behavior?

The essential problem for the psychoanalyst, as Schafer sees it, is the problem of “finding the right balance” (1983, 293). He refers specifically to how much emphasis should be placed on the “inner world” and the “outer world.” “How much do you talk about real interactions and how much do you talk about the analysand’s fantasizing, particularly the unconscious infantile aspects of what is fantasized?” (292). One can think of other “balancing acts” that need to be considered as well, such as the possible “correct balance” between a self-oriented theory of object relations, such as Stern’s (1985), which not only regards an emergent selfhood as being present in neonates from virtually the beginning of life outside the womb but also privileges self over other in modeling object-relational interactions, and, in contrast, an other-oriented theory such as that of Lacan, for whom autonomy is unthinkable because “man’s desire is the desire of the Other” (1977, 158). Another balancing act would have to deal with the possible equilibrium between models of object relations relying on the concept of a coherent, specialized, centered ego, as in ego psychology, as distinguished from models depending on a decentered conception of self, or “subject,” one dispersed in language and culture, like Lacan’s—or, to take a less extreme and very different instance, the comparatively decentered, systemic conceptualization of behavioral control envisioned by Peterfreund (1971), who rejects the concept of ego in its structural sense.

All terms remain suspect. This chapter, which does not aspire to be a “balanced,” neutral account, or a systematic survey, endeavors to compare the two broad orientations in object relations theory already referred to as drive oriented and person oriented. Other writers employ different sets of terms to make a comparable distinction. Greenberg and Mitchell use “drive/structure model” and “relational/structure model” (20), phrasings that seem to me not only awkward but seriously problematic because of the way they imply a commitment to Freud’s structural theory, a difficulty Mitchell finesses later (1988, vin) by treating object relations as part of a “relational theory” that excludes drive theory and ego psychology. Eagle provides another instance of inconsistent terminology when he writes dichotomously of “Freudian instinct theory” as against “a psychology of object relations” (1984, 19)—as though there were no overlap. In one sense, of course, there is no middle ground here. Yet we need to make room, as Eagle does in his discussions, for elements of object-relational theory in Freud, a situation I try to account for by speaking of the “drive-oriented” object relations theory of Freud and some of his followers without excluding the possibility of the presence of traces of drive theory in the positions of figures who are fundamentally person-oriented, like Winnicott. A clearer, more precise sense of what the terms “drive-oriented” and “person-oriented” are meant to convey will unfold as discussion proceeds. Meanwhile these two categories are intended to provide a set of coordinates in terms of which to argue the claim that contemporary psychoanalysis needs to adopt a person-oriented theory of object relations, more unreservedly than it already has, in order to be free of the defects of Freud’s drive-oriented emphasis and to be responsive to empirical findings and clinical evidence concerning the formative role of interpersonal relationships in human development.

FREUD'S MIXED LEGACY

The origins of many of the intractable difficulties of Freud’s early theorizing can be located in the formulations of Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (1905b). One of the most momentous of these derives from Freud’s insistence on isolating “the sexual aim” from “the sexual object” (1905b, 135-36). He argues that abnormal sexuality shows that “the sexual instinct and the sexual object are merely soldered together” (148). He urges us to “loosen the bond” in our minds because “it seems probable that the sexual instinct is in the first instance independent of its object,” and shortly thereafter he stresses that under a great many circumstances “the nature and importance of the sexual object recedes into the background” (149). This emphasis allows Freud to valorize sexuality at the expense of object relations, such as when he remarks that children behave “as though their dependence on the people looking after them were in the nature of sexual love,” adding, “Anxiety in children is originally nothing other than an expression of the fact that they are feeling the loss of the person they love” (224). Freud’s language also performs the maneuver of constituting all objects as sexual objects, by definition, with the paradoxical result that while sexuality can be discussed more or less independently from objects, objects themselves can never be divorced from sexuality, a position that soon hardens into doctrine. Further instances of Freud’s perspective can be found in the following statements, some of them from late in his career. After claiming that “sexual life does not begin only at puberty, but starts ... soon after birth” (1940, 152), Freud goes on to characterize the child’s tie to his mother as an erotic one: “A child’s first erotic object is the mother’s breast that nourishes it; love has its origin in attachment to the satisfied need for nourishment” (1940, 188). He adds, in the language of seduction theory, “By her care of the child’s body she becomes its first seducer” (188). Thus it is that Freud comes to regard all initial object relations as incestuous in their essential character, all subsequent relations as tainted by the lingering psychological influence of the earliest ones (1905b, 225-28), and he even goes so far as to think of “an excess of parental affection” (223) as potentially harmful.

Freud’s conceptualization of sexual behavior as instinctive does not, in itself, constitute a problem within the scope of the issues being considered here, though it should be noted that in place of speaking of “the sexual instinct,” as Freud does, I shall try to speak instead of “sexual behavior” in order to remain closer to the actualities of human experience and to avoid the common tendency in psychoanalysis to reify abstractions (as in the case of such nominative phrases as “the unconscious,” “the ego,” “the libido,” and so on). Neither does Freud’s construction of a general theory of the development of human sexuality from particular bodily zones and events and experiences and stages into the more complex design of adult sexuality constitute a stumbling block, though judgment may be reserved with regard to specific features of this developmental theory. Nature does not make jumps, as an ancient proverb reminds us, so adult sexuality cannot be supposed to blossom overnight out of nowhere. What do constitute major problems with Freud’s early theories are, first, his assumption that sexual experience, including fantasy, serves as a privileged arena of psychological conflict; and, second, his metapsychological suppositions known collectively as libido theory. I address the latter problem first.

An endless source of confusion in psychoanalysis results from the common practice of casually using “libidinal” as a synonym for “sexual.” Doing so effectively blurs two levels of discourse, the high level of abstraction belonging to libido theory and the clinical, everyday level of immediate observation and experience. Freud himself obscures the difference at the outset of Three Essays by equating the term /zbido, Latin for “pleasure,” with “sexual instinct” (1905b, 135). Later he calls it “the energy of the sexual instinct” (163). He thinks of this sexual energy as a psychic, or “mental” energy, a “force” (177). Freud’s inclination to describe the action of the libido in the naively concrete language of hydraulic flow has been a target of widespread criticism. Freud depicts “the libido” as flowing through “channels” that are like “inter-communicating pipes” (151n); these “mental forces” can be dammed up, and “diverted” (178), and of course “repressed”; in some cases “the libido behaves like a stream whose main bed has become blocked. It proceeds to fill up collateral channels which may hitherto have been empty” (170). Elsewhere Freud describes libido in highly abstract ways: “We have defined the concept of libido as a quantitatively variable force which could serve as a measure of processes and transformations occurring in the field of sexual excitation” (217) and as “a measure of the demand made upon the mind for work” (168). Freud explicitly distinguishes “libidinal and other forms of psychical energy” from the energy made available by metabolic processes (217), lest there be any question on that score. But the more one reads, the more difficult it becomes to decide just exactly what Freud did have in mind by the concept of libido— quite apart from the problem of whether or not this concept can be found to correspond to anything in the real world, a problem to be addressed late in this chapter in the context of considering various published critiques of libido theory. In any case, it becomes understandable that even those discriminating and indefatigable lexicographers, Laplanche and Pontalis, lamely concede that “the concept of libido itself has never been clearly defined” (1973, 239).

Although related ideas of Freud involving such distinctions as those between the sexual instincts and the ego instincts, and the distinction between ego-libido and object-libido, will be passed over for the time being, it will be useful to dwell for a moment on the comparison Freud makes between the sexual instinct and what he refers to as “the herd instinct” (1923, 257). Freud doubts the innateness of any social instinct, but he believes that even if it were innate it could probably “be traced back to what were originally libidinal object-cathexes” (258). He claims that the social instincts belong to a class of aim-inhibited sexual impulses. “To this class belong in particular the affectionate relations between parents and children, which were originally fully sexual, feelings of friendship, and the emotional ties in marriage which had their origin in sexual attraction” (258). These assumptions on his part stand in stark contrast to those of person-oriented object relations theory in general and to attachment theory in particular, as later discussion will emphasize.

The underlying purpose of Freud’s theory of sexuality is to account for neuroses, “which can be derived only from disturbances of sexual life” (1905b, 216). In “My Views on the Part Played by Sexuality in the Aetiology of the Neuroses” (1906) Freud summarizes his position. Although he says he had earlier attributed to sexual factors “no more significance than any other emotional source of feeling” (1906, 272), he eventually arrives at a different decision: “The unique significance of sexual experiences in the aetiology of the psychoneuroses seemed to be established beyond a doubt; and this fact [in midsentence an opinion becomes a “fact”] remains to this day one of the cornerstones of my theory [of neurosis]” (1906, 273; italics added). These experiences lie in “the remote past” of the developmental continuum (274). Freud mentions one further constraint: for childhood sexual experiences to be pathogenic, they must have been conflictful (have been repressed), the reason being that some individuals who experience sexual irregularities in childhood do not become neurotic (276—77). This qualification can be regarded as a pivotal one. If the essential etiological factor is the presence of conflict, as distinct from what kind of situation is involved, then it may turn out that conflicts relating to sexuality are by no means unique in the sense of constituting the sole class of crippling influences. From the perspective of a person-oriented theory of object relations, in contrast, conflicts with important others may or may not include sexual elements, but if the others are important persons, such as parents, the potential for serious conflict must necessarily be of a high order whether or not sexual factors are present.

What is plain to see is the mixed nature of Freud’s legacy. Try as he will, his theory of sexual motivation (as distinct from his theory of sexual development) never manages to divorce sexual impulses from objects more than momentarily, and analytically—zin the root sense of the word (from analyein, to “break up”). It therefore becomes reasonable to say that in addition to a drive-oriented motivational theory he bequeaths elements of a person-oriented theory of object relations, especially if one thinks about the relative weight of object-relational factors in the oedipus complex. The same point holds true a fortiori with regard to the transference, which is nothing if not a replication of variants of earlier object relations. Also worth mentioning here, if only in passing, is the object-relational orientation of the mental processes known as incorporation, introjection, and identification, particularly where Freud talks about the internalization of aspects of an object relation, as in the case of the development of superego functions, and the introjection of an object in the instance of mourning. While it is true that Freud conceptualizes the “introjection of the object into the ego” as “a substitute for a libidinal object-tie” (1921, 108), one has only to replace “libidinal” by “emotional” for such a passage to be harmonious with a person-oriented perspective.

CONTRIBUTIONS TO OBJECT RELATIONS THEORY

The task of identifying various contributions, other than Freud’s, to the development of a person-oriented position in psychoanalysis begins with Melanie Klein. She may be thought of as an amphibian, a creature who swims in the great sea of Freudian instinct theory but travels as well on the solid land of object relations. She accepts libido theory without reservation. She does more than merely accept the idea of a death instinct. She embraces it, thinking of it as innate in infants and as giving rise to fears of annihilation and persecutory anxiety (1952a, 198). Her views of the importance of human sexuality parallel Freud’s and often take the form of comparably extreme statements, such as her claim that behind every [!] type of play activity of children “lies a process of discharge of masturbatory phantasies” (1932, 31). Grosskurth, writing in connection with the case of Richard, quotes E. R. Geleerd as remarking, “Klein’s random way of interpreting does not reflect the material [of the Richard case] but, rather, her preconceived theoretical assumptions regarding childhood development” (1986, 270). Grosskurth then quotes from her own interview with Richard: