Individual psychological development owes as much to the meta-context in which it takes place (historical, social, economic, political) as it does to the micro-context of our earliest attachments: the initial dyad in which capacities for self-esteem, love, and connection are formed. Political psychology owes much to the pioneering work not just of Erik Erikson and his psycho-historical approach, but also to Alfred Adler (Maniacci et al, 2013), who understood that the individual develops in a social context. Many of the concepts that were developed by Adler, such as holism, emerged within the context of a Viennese leftist orientation during a period in which Freud had abandoned the idea of “the clinic” as a psychoanalytic space for socially and economically disenfranchised classes. It was replaced in favor of an approach that unintentionally led to an elitist view of psychoanalysis that has had repercussion in terms of treatment options for the working classes and the poor to this day (Danto, 2005).
Idealizing Transference and the “Good Enough” Psychotherapist
Ego-personification describes the way that the false self makes up for failures of empathic attunement in the primary caregiving bond. An idealizing transference is created that has as its underlying goal a twinship (Almaas, 1996) that will provide a sense of being “real,” of legitimizing and authenticating the false self. This type of non-pathological idealization is normal in youth and explains the drive to join groups, causes, and other modes of expressive action in which idealization is applied to group membership. However, it becomes pathological if the false self carries this desire through into a kind of delayed or prolonged adolescence or disowns responsibility for actions. One of the common results of this type of idealization in the presence of an historically absent/invasive parenting style on the part of the primary caregiver is often narcissistic personality disorders. These disorders include elements of grandiosity, a sense of entitlement and “specialness,” and oppositional-defiant disorder (Kohut, 1984).
Often, clients presenting with issues that stem from anxious/ambivalent attachment patterns created by absent/invasive parenting styles benefit from cohesion therapy (to address both grandiosity or its shadow “other,” which is imposter syndrome) combined with recognition of attachment deficits in the context of a self-psychological cycle of rupture-and-repair within the therapeutic dyad. Object-constancy failures are also addressed (Mahler et al, 1979), with a blurring of the lines between the all good and all bad partial object representations (Klein, 1964). These are representations which lead to many of the modes of black-or-white thinking that characterize populist and extremist movements (xenophobia-producing rigidity and paranoia among them).
The derailments caused by failures of empathic attunement at key developmental junctures in infancy and early childhood are rectified within the therapeutic dyad (Kohut). Habits are created to maintain the proximity of the original wound. By extension, those habits can be broken that continue to provide “oxygen” to the shadow of the primary caregiver in the hope of retroactively repairing the failure. Patients can then start to progress to a state of self-actualization informed by reasonable, achievable goals and increased satisfaction with “what is.” In this way, the fantasy of what the self might one day become and the reality of what the self can realistically and legitimately become are fused.
