James L. Fosshage

An Experience-based Vision of Psychoanalytic Theory and Practice looks at each individual as a motivated doer doing, seeking, feeling, and intending, and relates development, sense of self, and identity to changes that are brought about in analytic psychotherapy. Based on conceptualizing experience as it is lived from infancy throughout life, this book identifies three major pathways to development and applies Lichtenberg, Lachmann, and Fosshage’s experience-based vision to psychoanalytic psychotherapy. Using detailed clinical narratives and vignettes, as well as organizational studies, the book takes up the distinction between a person’s responding to a failure in achieving a goal with disappointment and seeking an alternative path, or with disillusion and a collapse in motivation. From the variety of topics covered, the reader will get a broad overview of an experience-based analytic conception of motivation begun with Lichtenberg’s seven motivational systems. This title will be of great interest to established psychoanalysts, as well as those training in psychoanalysis and clinical counselling psychology programs.

An Experience-based Vision of Psychoanalytic Theory and Practice looks at each individual as a motivated doer doing, seeking, feeling, and intending, and relates development, sense of self, and identity to changes that are brought about in analytic psychotherapy. Based on conceptualizing experience as it is lived from infancy throughout life, this book identifies three major pathways to development and applies Lichtenberg, Lachmann, and Fosshage’s experience-based vision to psychoanalytic psychotherapy. Using detailed clinical narratives and vignettes, as well as organizational studies, the book takes up the distinction between a person’s responding to a failure in achieving a goal with disappointment and seeking an alternative path, or with disillusion and a collapse in motivation. From the variety of topics covered, the reader will get a broad overview of an experience-based analytic conception of motivation begun with Lichtenberg’s seven motivational systems. This title will be of great interest to established psychoanalysts, as well as those training in psychoanalysis and clinical counselling psychology programs.

In this sequel to Lichtenberg's Psychoanalysis and Motivation (TAP, 1989), the authors show how their revised theory of motivation provides the foundation for a new approach to psychoanalytic technique. The approach in Self and Motivational Systemsemphasizes a finely honed sensitivity to moment-to-moment analytic exchanges and an appreciation of which motivational system is dominant during that exchange. Throughout, the authors stress the creative power of psychoanalysis as a joint effort shaped by the intersubjective context of a particular analysand communicating and interacting with a particular analyst. At the heart of the analytic relationship is the analysand's expectation of evoking a vitalizing selfobject experience from the analyst and the analyst's expectation, in turn, of evoking a selfobject experience of efficacy from his or her work with the analysand.

Thoroughly grounded in contemporary developmental research, A Spirit of Inquiry: Communication in Psychoanalysis explores the ecological niche of the infant-caregiver dyad and examines the evolutionary leap that permits communication to take place concurrently in verbal an nonverbal modes. Via the uniquely human capacity for speech, the authors hold, intercommunication deepens into a continuous process of listening to, sensing into, and deciphering motivation-driven messages. The analytic exchange is unique owing to a broad communicative repertoire that encompasses all the permutations of day-to-day exchanges. It is the spirit of inquiry that endows such communicative moments with an overarching sense of purpose and thereby permits analysis to become an intimate relationship decisively unlike any other. In elucidating the special character of this relationship, the authors refine their understanding of motivational systems theory by showing how exploration, previously conceptualized as a discrete motivational system, simultaneously infuses all the motivational systems with an integrative dynamic that tends to a cohesive sense of self. Of equal note is their discerning use of contemporary attachment reseach, which provides convincing evidence of the link between crucial relationships and communication. Replete with detailed case studies that illustrate both the context and nature of specific analytic inquiries, A Spirit of Inquiry presents a novel perspective, sustained by empirical research, for integrating the various communicative modalities that arise in any psychoanalytic treatment. The result is a deepened understanding of subjectivity and intersubjectivity in analytic relationships. Indeed, the book is a compelling brief for the claim that subjectivity and intersubjectivity, in their full complexity, can only be understood through clinically relevant and scientifically credible theories of motivation and communication.

Introduced in Psychoanalysis and Motivation (1989) and further developed in Self and Motivational Systems (1992), The Clinical Exchange (1996), and A Spirit of Inquiry (2002), motivational systems theory aims to identify the components and organization of mental states and the process by which affects, intentions, and goals unfold. Motivation is described as a complex intersubjective process that is cocreated in the developing individual embedded in a matrix of relationships with others. Opening by placing motivational systems theory within a contemporary dynamic systems theory, Lichtenberg, Lachmann, and Fosshage then respond to critics of motivational systems theory. The authors present revisions to their approach to the original five motivational systems, adding two more: an affiliative and a caregiving motivational system. The authors go on to suggest, using ideas garnered from complexity theory and fractals, that motivational systems theory can help us understand how a continuity of self can be maintained despite near-constant fluctuations in interpersonal relations. They then consider how the making of inferences, explicitly and implicitly, is shaped by motivation, before applying their theory to an actual human experience - love - to demonstrate the interplay of multiple shifting motivations within an individual. Last, they present new looks at the clinical applicability of their research. Grounded in observational research of infants but relevant to psychoanalysis at any stage of life, motivational systems theory has evolved via the combined experiences of these three analysts for more than 20 years, and remains an important contribution to our understanding of the driving forces behind human experience.

Thoroughly grounded in contemporary developmental research, A Spirit of Inquiry: Communication in Psychoanalysis explores the ecological niche of the infant-caregiver dyad and examines the evolutionary leap that permits communication to take place concurrently in verbal an nonverbal modes. Via the uniquely human capacity for speech, the authors hold, intercommunication deepens into a continuous process of listening to, sensing into, and deciphering motivation-driven messages. The analytic exchange is unique owing to a broad communicative repertoire that encompasses all the permutations of day-to-day exchanges. It is the spirit of inquiry that endows such communicative moments with an overarching sense of purpose and thereby permits analysis to become an intimate relationship decisively unlike any other. In elucidating the special character of this relationship, the authors refine their understanding of motivational systems theory by showing how exploration, previously conceptualized as a discrete motivational system, simultaneously infuses all the motivational systems with an integrative dynamic that tends to a cohesive sense of self. Of equal note is their discerning use of contemporary attachment reseach, which provides convincing evidence of the link between crucial relationships and communication. Replete with detailed case studies that illustrate both the context and nature of specific analytic inquiries, A Spirit of Inquiry presents a novel perspective, sustained by empirical research, for integrating the various communicative modalities that arise in any psychoanalytic treatment. The result is a deepened understanding of subjectivity and intersubjectivity in analytic relationships. Indeed, the book is a compelling brief for the claim that subjectivity and intersubjectivity, in their full complexity, can only be understood through clinically relevant and scientifically credible theories of motivation and communication.

In this practical sequel to the same authors' Self and Motivational Systems (TAP, 1992), Lichtenberg, Lachmann, and Fosshage offer ten principles of technique to guide the clinical exchange. These principles, which pertain equally to exploratory psychotherapy and psychoanalysis, integrate the findings of self psychology with recent developmental research that has refined our understanding of the self as a center of experience and motivation. The ten principles of technique not only provide a valuable framework for attending to a wide range of motivations, but lead to basic revisions in the theory and technical management of affects, transference, and dreams.

In this sequel to Lichtenberg's Psychoanalysis and Motivation (TAP, 1989), the authors show how their revised theory of motivation provides the foundation for a new approach to psychoanalytic technique. The approach in Self and Motivational Systemsemphasizes a finely honed sensitivity to moment-to-moment analytic exchanges and an appreciation of which motivational system is dominant during that exchange. Throughout, the authors stress the creative power of psychoanalysis as a joint effort shaped by the intersubjective context of a particular analysand communicating and interacting with a particular analyst. At the heart of the analytic relationship is the analysand's expectation of evoking a vitalizing selfobject experience from the analyst and the analyst's expectation, in turn, of evoking a selfobject experience of efficacy from his or her work with the analysand.