Dr. Shane is Co-president of the Institute of Contemporary Psychoanalysis; Past Director of the Los Angeles Psychoanalytic Society and Institute; and Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at U.C.L.A.
By the time my education in psychiatry began, which was in 1954, Brenner was already poised to be the towering national and international figure he has since become. A year later, his elementary textbook on psychoanalysis emerged with a clarity and brilliance which has characterized his writings ever since, and became for me a chief reference point for informing my newly developing psychoanalytic understanding before my formal training ever began. But as my official psychoanalytic training was in an institute led and inspired by Ralph Greenson and Leo Rangell, Brenner's ideas, which indeed remained in the forefront nationally, were held up in our group for criticism and for the sake of contrast, as often as they were used for clinical direction and for the sake of psychoanalytic understanding they offered. I had already graduated from analytic training in 1964 when Brenner and Arlow published their declaration that has guided classical psychoanalytic education ever since, that the tripartite model is to be taken as the supreme model for theory and practice. This book, like all else Brenner has written, including his monumental Mind in Conflict (1982), is informed by a deep conviction that his own vision is clear and his own commitment unwavering. The crisp precision of his prose, the clean logic of his formulation, is promoted by that very quality of trust he has in his own vision and the certainty he holds about his own commitment. This quality is persuasive to many, infuriating to some, and always promotes an elegant model for psychoanalytic education. I myself have never taught a course in psychoanalytic technique that did not include Brenner's writing, and these writings have never failed to stimulate in the residents or candidates I have taught either enthusiastic adherence or antagonistic rejection, but they have always, like any exemplary educational tool, offered a challenge to their thinking. Those who are convinced and those who are put off are alike in being impressed by Brenner's self-assured logical commitment to his ideas, and by the certainty in which he holds them.
I guess what I am trying to say, then, is that like E. F. Hutton, when Brenner speaks, people listen, and moreover, when Brenner doubts, people sense it must be time for change. As we all know, Brenner, along with Arlow, has been the chief champion of the tripartite model and its universal application for the understanding of all dynamic psychopathology. The tripartite model has for many years been under siege, but has persistently proven itself resistant to the assaults directed against it, principally, I believe, because Brenner himself had continued to see it as useful, indeed irreplaceable, for the understanding of unconscious conflict and compromise formation. But when the chief proponent of an idea begins to seriously question aspects of it in terms of its validity and utility, then it opens the way for others who might have had doubts all along to more forcefully assert them. Like Nixon in China, then, Brenner alone can challenge the received and time-honored wisdom of the structural theory. Witness the fact that the essence of Brenner's paper, "The Mind as Conflict and Compromise Formation," has already created rumors that are widespread in the psychoanalytic community. I myself received a letter in early November from a colleague across the country who said, and I quote, "I understand Brenner is going to pull the plug on the structural model this December: What will be its replacement?" Before Brenner even speaks, then, people are listening, their ear pressed to the ground.
Consideration of this paper must begin with the question of what it is that Brenner doubts. It is not his own basic axioms that conflict and compromise formation constitute the essence of mental life, whether normal or pathological, that every aspect of conscious mental life that is emotionally significant is the resultant of compromise formation. Rather, it is whether the structural model constitutes the best theoretical encasement for such psychoanalytic "facts," as Brenner thinks of them. In structural theory, the ego contains the rational part of the mind that, to quote Brenner, "takes realistic account of external reality without being motivated by the libidinal and aggressive wishes of childhood." This is clearly in conflict with Brenner's own thesis which posits that there is no such part of the mind, that no part of the mind is "mature, integrated, and free of conflict." Brenner cites Arlow to the effect that "every thought, even every perception, gratifies one or more drive derivatives" (see Brenner, this issue, p. 478), so that the ego can never be seen to function in a conflict-free sphere, a sphere conceptualized as either primarily or secondarily autonomous from the drives. All of this persuades Brenner that he must question the validity of structural theory, and to wonder, first, what if any disadvantages ensue in clinical work when postulating separate agencies of the mind as contained in structural theory, and second, whether these disadvantages are great enough to justify changing that theory.
Of course I was most honored to be asked to talk about what I think in regard to Brenner's latest ideas. My short answer is, I like them; Brenner has taken a significant step to free analysis from a conceptual framework that, while obviously fruitful in the past, has in some ways outlived its usefulness, particularly if the framework is taken too literally, and Brenner shows us how and why, from his own vantage point, this questioning becomes a necessity. I certainly can agree that to remain consistent with his own theory of the mind, Brenner's best strategy is to replace the structural model, as he is attempting to do, with his own reformulation. I applaud the fact that he feels free to do so in a respectful, scholarly, and scientific way, in an effort, as he says, to achieve evolutionary change. This has been Brenner's consistent approach to theory building and clinical practice. But to address my own theoretical concerns, I would go even further than Brenner has in reconceptualizing the structural model; I would go further for different reasons, then, and perhaps in different directions. For I have questions not just of structural theory, but of Brenner's theory as well.
To continue now with my more detailed consideration, Brenner answers his first question, is it clinically justified to attempt structural theory revision, by noting, first, that inherent in structural theory is the belief that conflict is a function of pathology only, that through analysis, conflict is resolved, and that the conflict-free sphere of the ego is enlarged as the ego increases its hegemony over the id. These ideas clash with Brenner's own thinking that conflict is ubiquitous, an inevitable part of everyone's functioning, and that health is the achievement of more efficient and more effective compromise formation, rather than the elimination or renunciation of drive derivatives and conflict per se. This distinction, Brenner tells us, has implications for how one assesses the effectiveness and progress of a given analysis, of how analysis cures. Brenner's internal logic is impeccable and indisputable here, but to my view it also clarifies a particular limitation in his theory (all theories have their limitations). In limiting his field of observation to the psychoanalytic situation, particularly the adult psychoanalytic situation, no conceptual room is preserved for conflict-free functioning and for the usefulness of such a postulate, though clearly Brenner has in view a general theory of the mind, not one limited either to pathology or to the psychoanalytic situation per se. For example, infant observers, and analysts influenced by them, such as Stern (1985), Lichtenberg (1983, 1989), and Emde (1988), postulate in the infant and young child a perceptual capacity free of conflict, though not, of course, a concept of immaculate perception, that is, a veridical perception uninfluenced by the child's perceptual and cognitive immaturity. Moreover, cognitive epistemologists, including analysts who are influenced by cognitive developmental principles, such as, for example, Weiss and Sampson (1986), Slap (Slap and Slap, 1991), Horowitz (1988), Dorpat (Dorpat and Miller, 1992), and Stolorow and Lachmann (Stolorow, Brandchaft, and Atwood, 1987), postulate mental processes of assimilation and accommodation that achieve a reality adaptation different and apart from areas of the mind that are sequestered, conflictual, and arrested in an immature, childhood-based perception of the environment and oneself, areas influenced, that is, by persistent pathogenic beliefs. Obviously these are different strategies from that of Brenner's, differing in the concept of the person's mind, leaving room for both conflict, as Brenner conceptualizes it, as well as for more mature conflict and compromise formation, but at the same time, leaving room also for a reality-based functioning. Such a reality-based functioning certainly does not require either the term or the concept of ego, but can depend instead for conceptual base on mind, psyche, or self organization. In my own view, there is a distinct advantage in such strategies which preserve a segment of the mind mediating an interpersonal, intersubjective, negotiated, realistic, reality-based relationship, unsequestered and available for current influence, for new object experience, for viewing the new as a potentially new creation, and as not always and inevitably a reedition of the old, that is, the archaic and unaccommodated. Such mental capacity permits the voice of reason in the form of interpretation to be heard ultimately by the patient, relatively free from intrusion by childhood-based, forbidden desires, be they libidinal desires, assertive desires, attachment desires, aggressive desires, or what have you. I have in mind in this context the conceptualizations of such diverse analysts as Gill (1982), Kernberg (1988), Modell (1988), Greenson (1967), and Meissner (1991).
The second drawback of structural theory in the clinical situation identified by Brenner is its relegation of morality to a special agency separate from the rest of the mind, which has had the effect, Brenner says, of hampering the analysis of many conflicts to which moral functioning is an important contributor. In Brenner's view, morality is but one potential calamity in the hierarchy of calamities or dangers attributable to childhood, and also morality is but one of the four interacting components of conflict. What Brenner is getting at here is that morality itself is both a resultant of conflict and a contributor to conflict, as he has made clear in his earlier work. Brenner's approach successfully demystifies and dereifies the development of the moral sense, including the dysphoric experiences of guilt, shame, humiliation, and the like, perceived in relation to, and evolved from, interactions with one's parents. I find this an extremely important modification of the structure theory, one that has ramifications not only for the classical framework, but for the Kleinian, object relations, and self psychological frameworks as well.
Brenner identifies four components of conflict, discussing each in turn. Beginning with the first component of conflict, Brenner makes clear his distinction between drive and drive derivative, the first, drive, being the general theory and the second, drive derivative, being the individual and individualistic expression of that general theory. Consistent with modern structural theory, Brenner sees aggression as on all fours with libido, equal in the pleasures it affords through discharge, as well as in the contribution that it makes toward conflict formation. I feel somewhat disappointed that Brenner has not been more radical in this area, that in rethinking the drives and drive derivatives, he has neither considered expanding the range of the potential motivational repertoire, nor freed drives and drive derivatives from their solipsistic implications. Beginning with Loewald's aphorism, there is no id without the mother, certainly the thrust in the field in understanding the origins and the basics of human motivation has been in the direction of such an expanded repertoire. Motivation as conceptualized within ethology, evolutionary biology, and infant observational research has been placed within an environmental, interactional nexus. As Modell has written recently (1990), and I quote:
If one consults recent authoritative texts on the evolution of behavior such as Hinde (1982), Mayr (1988), and Trivers (1985), one discovers that the term instinct or drive no longer exists. . . . With regard to evolutionary biology, the concept of instinct appears to have joined the ranks of pseudo-explanations such as phlogiston. It would be ironic if psychoanalysis, once a revolutionary discipline, became the preserve of obsolete scientific concepts [p. 184].
Modell contends that instead of referring to instinct, "functional systems" would be more appropriate. I am in agreement with Modell's set of assertions as quoted here. I believe that any attempt to view motivation as drive, or as comprised of but two drives, is an unfortunate holdover from the past. This is equally true, in my opinion, whether the drives, or drive derivatives, are intermixed, as in Brenner's suggested revision here, in an inevitable ambivalence, or whether the drives or drive derivatives are maintained as separate and distinct. There are a number of current psychoanalytic formulations that address the motivational problem in our field. Lichtenberg (1989), Emde (1988), and Pine (1989), each in his own way, provide alternative and viable options. Bowlby's attachment theory (1973), so long ignored in analysis, has now found a place in these theories. Moreover, aggression, one of the two cornerstones of Brenner's drive theory, has been seriously challenged for encompassing but a single, basic motive. It has been better formulated, I believe, as comprising two distinct clusters of affect, that of assertion, and that of destructive aggression, or in Lichtenberg's (1989) terms, rageful aversiveness. Parens (1979), and Stechler and Halton (1987), among others, have elucidated this idea in their infant and toddler research studies. According to Stechler and Halton, a central feature of the assertive system is that it is activated by an optimal level of variety in the environment, and is greatly enhanced when the actions of the infant are effective in producing an alteration in the environment. The destructive-aggressive affects system is reactive to a perceived threat to the integrity of the individual. It operates through self-protective functions aimed at destroying or driving off the perceived threat and is associated with the dysphoric affects of fear, distress, and anger. The clinical usefulness of perceiving assertiveness and destructive aggression as distinctly different systems, I believe, has been demonstrated by many contributors. In this area, then, I think Brenner should be encouraged to go further in his elegant efforts at rethinking psychoanalytic theory.
As to the second component of conflict, the unpleasure that is associated with the drive derivatives, I have another concern. I find the distinction between "pleasurable" and "unpleasurable" too global, at least as stated in this paper. I am certain that Brenner is aware of and takes into consideration the many subtleties and gray areas that lie between these two poles of pleasure and unpleasure. Even primitive categorical affects considered by many to be inborn or hard wired, available to the infant at birth or shortly thereafter as predesigned emergent structures, are difficult to classify as either pleasurable or unpleasurable. Each categorical affect has a range encompassed within it, and some include both pleasure and unpleasure in that range. For example, surprise is conceptualized as a primary affect which, as you might imagine, can be pleasant, unpleasant, or something in between. The older oedipal child may have difficulty determining whether a sensual-sexual experience is pleasurable, unpleasurable, exciting, intrusive, frightening, overwhelming, or whatever. Affects, in other words, are not so readily classifiable as pleasurable or unpleasurable. Moreover, Brenner includes ideational content as a part of affect, his strategy being to limit the field of psychoanalytic inquiry to the verbal, semiotic child. This strategy is inconsistent with that of infant researchers who see as preceding symbolic semiotic content.
As for the third component named as a part of conflict, that of defense, Brenner has been most helpful in expanding and freeing our ideas about defense and about defensive constellations. I feel indebted to him and quote him often in this regard, especially his previous insight that, in effect, anything can be defensive against anything. This is in my mind an invaluable clinical concept. Here, he explains that defense is used to diminish unpleasure or dysphoria, so that any thoughts or behavior that are garnered in the service of diminishing unpleasure or dysphoria should be conceptualized as defensive. This idea, too, has wide clinical utility.
I have always commented upon Brenner's fourth component of conflict, superego, when I noted earlier in this discussion that it is in Brenner's hands an area of major contribution to our clinical understanding. My only concern is that, as stated, the introjected parents as introjects, might be minimized in clinical accounts. It is worth remembering Sandler's finding that in indexing child analytic cases the heading of superego dissolved clinically into parental identifications. In other words, the disembodied moral strictures of the parents that we call the superego do not carry the clinical impact in the patient's mind of the internalization of their relationships with their parents. This is a perspective emphasized in object relations theory and supported by infant research. Brenner is calling our attention to the fact that more could be and should be done in adult analysis with respect to morality and its development and manifestations. He is suggesting this might be effected potentially by deconstructing the superego into its clinically relevant, conscience-connected components, along with the concomitant identifications.
In conclusion, I feel Brenner's paper is a groundbreaking effort to move psychoanalysis forward. I am grateful for Brenner's ever vigorous endeavors to rethink and remodel our theories, to make them simpler, more elegant, more scientific, and more germane to the analyst-analysand encounter.
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Morton Shane, M.D.
