Self and Motivational Systems

In Psychoanalysis and Motivation (The Analytic Press, 1989), Joseph Lichtenberg redefined psychoanalysis as a theory of structured motivation consisting of five discrete systems that promote the fulfillment and regulation of basic needs. Now, in Self and Motivational Systems: Toward a Theory of Psychoanalytic Technique, Lichtenberg and coauthors Frank Lachmann and James Fosshage show how this revised theory of motivation provides the foundation for a new approach to psychoanalytic technique.
This approach emphasizes 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.
Self and Motivational Systems offers a powerful, empirically informed alternative to the theory of classical psychoanalytic technique. For Lichtenberg, Lachmann, and Fosshage, psychoanalytic technique is first and foremost a response to the analysand's lived experience over the course of an analysis. It follows that unconscious mentation, conflict, deficits, defense, interpretation, values, and morality gain expression in the clinical exchange; they are not remote metapsychological constructs. Based on these fundamental reconceptualizations, the authors outline a theory of technique that is both conceptually rigorous and clinically flexible.
Among their accomplishments is a broadened understanding of the technical use of empathic perception, with specific emphasis given to an exploration of affects to apprehend the analysand's motivational goals and degree of self-cohesion. They also detail the need to supplement intrapsychic and intersubjective perspectives with an assessment of the analysand's "state," or mind set. Out of these refinements of the analyst's empathic-introspective stance emerges a technique in which analytic interventions occur within an ambiance of shared inquiry and joy of discovery. A pivotal contribution to contemporary psychoanalysis, Self and Motivational Systems speaks to self-reflective clinicians in search of conceptual anchorage freed from dogmas of the past.