In my experience, those of us who practice self psychologically and who think this way feel a deep resonance between its vision of human nature and human development and our own most optimistic hopes for humankind.  Self psychology offers a solid theoretical foundation upon which to build a hopeful view of what is possible for us individually and collectively.

 

As an example, I would like to offer some thoughts about the self psychological thinking about the fate of our most basic psychological needs after they become thwarted in their development.  We take it as a given that essential emotional and cognitive nourishment is provided via our relationships with others.  As infants, our psychological development can progress only as far as the care and responsiveness of those caring for us will allow.  Good-enough growth proceeds if good-enough caretaking is available, but development stops once this psychological sustenance is removed. 

 

So, what happens when the child’s attempts to find reassuring strength in his parents is met with indifference or repeated hostility?  What becomes of that need for the essential childhood thrill of showing ourselves off, when it is misunderstood and rejected over and over?  Where does the need for feeling a kinship with another human being go, when nobody in the child’s world receives it?

 

These situations – which are both common and tragic – are the source of much of the pain (dare I say most of the pain?) that we as human beings bear.  The problems that develop as the legacy of these repeated failures to acquire needed psychological nourishment are also what prompt our patients to seek us out.  In our consulting rooms, hour after hour, day after day, we hear stories – always sad and sometimes shocking – of  repeated attempts by our patients to elicit from those around them the basic responses that allow for psychological growth and development.  But the outcomes of these stories is depressingly familiar:  the attempts to elicit responsiveness come up empty.  Too often, the promise and hope of growth are stopped prematurely and development stalls.

 

But, for all who find their way to us, hope has not been entirely extinguished.  For some, a frightening few, hope may barely flicker and may even die out, but usually, even when the patient is unaware of its persistence, hope does persist.  Because what happens to those needs that received insufficient response early in life is not that they are snuffed out, but rather – and here is where self psychology offers hope for a healing second chance – they are held in a kind of psychological suspended animation, as if through a process of emotional cryogenics.  These needs, thankfully, will not die.  They do persist.  Sometimes their presence is noisy and quarrelsome and impossible to ignore and gets their possessor into trouble.  Sometimes they are disguised under a veneer of civility and caution and are hard to find.  Sometimes they are obvious.  Sometimes they are elusive.  But they are never gone.

 

According to self psychology, the needs wait patiently – like Ice Age plant seeds rediscovered today in an ancient glacier – waiting for an opportunity to begin again, to resume the development that lies coiled as if in their DNA.

 

And we who believe in second chances have the opportunity and the responsibility of resuming that thwarted development – of thawing those long-frozen seeds, warming them, planting them, and cultivating them, so that they can grow.

 

                        Lucky for us, needs never die.  

Gordon Powell, LCSW, Certified Psychoanalyst, New York City