It is this foundation that provides support for applications of techniques common to existential therapies. The stages of mature identity development through integration begin with fragmentation and ideally end with synthetic cohesion. Intermediate stages necessarily encompass the struggles of individuation. These stages encompass the acceptance of those parts of the self that one has gained historically but have not easily assimilated. These parts may have been externally imposed and may forever be at odds with the ideal or authentic self. This is something that this theory of maturation has in common with self-discrepancy theory as well as “theories of ego” and ego psychology (Hartmann,1938). The task of incorporating these aspects and taking ownership of them is a goal of the maturation process. This process can be reinforced through a positive, healthy, equity-promoting transference that is neither idealizing nor devaluing. It is not seeking twinship. It is this process that helps the individual to question the “consensus consciousness” (Durkheim, 1893) in which we collectively exist and in which much of the draw to unhealthy behaviors and mass movements lies.
Conclusion
I work with clients at the nexus of social theory, political history, and psychology. My theory of change is informed by my background in psychosociology and many of the “intellectual offspring” of the various attempts to fuse Marx and Freud over the past century. Although my psychoanalytic training is grounded in attachment theory, my social theory training took place at organizations with a legacy of interdisciplinary thought that bridges the European origins of the soft sciences and their application and reinterpretation in response to totalitarianism.
My experience in a clinical setting has only strengthened my belief in the importance of psychoanalytic process being made available to the disenfranchised. The history of modernity is replete with examples of dangers associated with the stratification that is an inherent and necessary condition of capitalism. The mass movements that have emerged as a result of capitalism succeed in gaining adherents by breaking through the atomization that capitalism requires. Hence the frequent recourse of these movements to nativist themes such as race, blood, and soil. It is the individual’s rejected aspects of identity and the creation of “otherness” as a form of impoverished individuation that contributes to individual “poorness of fit.” Far more dangerous are tendencies in the social and political sphere that lead to devastating implications for us all. Only by creating safe spaces for individuals to discover and assert their authentic selves in the here-and-now can we hope to rescue ourselves as a global society.
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References
Adler, A. (1964). Superiority and social interest. (Ansbacher, H.L. and Ansbacher, R.R., Eds.) Chicago: Northwestern University Press.
Adler, H.G. (2017) Theresienstadt 1941-1945: The face of a coerced community. (Loewenhaar-Blauweiss, A., Ed.; Cooper, B. Trans.). London: Cambridge University Press (Original work published 1955).
Adorno, T. W., Frenkel-Brunswick, E., Levinson, D., Sanford, N. (1951). The authoritarian personality. New York: Harper & Brothers.
