Self psychology’s primary goal is to strengthen the self through specific qualities of relationship that enable the patient to have a new experience in the treatment and also get in touch with and include more and more of his or her past and current experience in the patient’s sense of who he or she is or can be. The more of our experience we can include in our sense of self, the richer we feel and the more confidence we have that we will be able to face life’s inevitable challenges and setbacks. But what anyone can include in a sense of self is closely related to what is positively responded to by the individual’s human environment from birth onward. Additionally, effective parents both “dose” and name their children's experience in accordance with the child’s momentary state and current level of development (Emde, 1990). At times, analysts may need to do the same with their patients.
自体心理学的主要目标是通过特定的关系量来强化自体,这种关系使患者能够在治疗过程中获得新的体验,并与患者的认同感中(他或她是谁或者可以是谁)越来越多的过去和现在的经验联系起来。我们容纳在自体感的经验越多,我们感觉就越丰富,我们能够面对生活中不可避免的挑战和挫折的信心也就越大。但是,任何人都可以在自体感中容纳的是与个人的人类环境从生而来的密切联系的积极响应的东西。另外,起作用的父母也按照孩子的瞬间状态和当前的发展水平“量身定制”并命名了孩子的体验(Emde,1990)。有时,分析师也许需要对患者做同样的事情。
The analyst’s mirroring or responsiveness does more than reflect what the patient presents. When successful it adds something, however subtle, or enhances the patient’s understanding of his or her own experience. For instance, for a patient who was the second of seven closely spaced children—with a depressive and understandably exhausted mother— an abiding theme of treatment was her inability to feel she had a right to anything even to her own psychoanalysis. She worried about burdening me with her talk. One day she began her session as follows: “I feel like saying ‘this happened and this happened and this happened’, but what stops me is that I think of my mother” I responded, “You’re afraid I’ll react the way your mother did.” And then I continued, in a mock-exasperated voice, “I can barely survive just seeing that you seven kids get clean and clothed and fed. So don’t ask me to just sit here and listen to you!” The patient’s eyes filled with tears and she responded, “Yes, that’s exactly how she talked.” She later spoke of how comforting it had been to feel so known and understood by me in relation to her painful formative experiences. Ultimately she felt more confident that not everyone in her life would feel as put-upon by her everyday needs as had her fatigued and harassed mother (Teicholz, 199’s).
分析师的镜映或回应不仅仅是反应患者的表现。当它成功地增加了一些东西时,无论如何微妙,会提高患者对自身体验的理解。例如,一个患者,她是七个出生年龄间隔很短的兄弟姐妹中的第二个孩子——有一位抑郁且可想而知的疲惫的母亲——她治疗的永恒主题是,她无法感觉自己对一切东西的权利甚至是自己的精神分析。她担心与我的谈话会加重我的负担。有一天,她开始了会谈,如下:“我想说‘它发生了,发生了,发生了’,但是阻止我的是,我想到我的母亲”我回应说,“你害怕我会以你母亲的方式做出反应。”然后,我以一种模仿的声音继续说道:”只是看到你们七个孩子弄干净,穿上衣服和吃饱,就够我受的了。所以不要要我坐在这里听你的话!“病人的眼睛充满了泪水,她回答说:”是的,那就是她说的话。“她后来谈到我对于她痛苦的形成体验的了解,是多么令她安慰。最终,她更感确信,她的生活中的不是每个人都会受到日常需要的影响,像她的疲惫而厌烦的母亲(Teicholz,199年代)一样。
Just as we are strengthened by having a more inclusive sense of self, we are weakened to the extent that, for any reason, the experience we are able to include in our sense of self is highly selective. The less our experience has been contained, made sense of, and named by our early caregivers, the ''thinner” or more shallow is our sense of who we are and the more fragile and vulnerable we are likely to feel. Without the fullness of our own experience in our sense of who we are,we go through life “operating on one cylinder” or “without a full deck of cards.”
正如我们通过拥有更加包容的自体感而得到加强,那么我们减弱的程度,就是因为,我们包含在自体感中的经验是精挑细选的。我们容纳早期照料者理解和命名的经验越少,我们是谁和我们可能感到的脆弱性的感觉就更“单薄”或更肤浅。如果我们对自己是谁的感觉缺乏丰富经验,我们就会经历“无从下手”或是“没有底牌”的生活。
Traumatic experience, large or small,is the biggest contributor to the gaps in our sense of self, generating ''black holes” of the mind that admit no light or leading to psychic ''compart- mentalization” in which the traumatic experience and associated self-states are walled-off and lose their (associative) links to the rest of the personality. Although trauma is defined as any experience that the mind cannot assimilate,there are nevertheless degrees of trauma ranging from the more catastrophic—as, for example, repeated childhood experiences of severe pain and terror intentionally inflicted by those who are supposed to be protecting and nurturing the child—to the more subtle disruptions of a sense of “going on being” (Winnicott,1960b), such as might come from the daily experience of being raised by a parent who fails to respond or responds negatively or by a parent who chronically responds in ways that are slightly off, to the spontaneous gestures and initiatives of the child. Many children are regularly beat up or sexually abused by older siblings or have parents who repeatedly tell them they are stupid, ugly, or will never amount to anything. It is not only the gross trauma of such outright attacks on the self that derail development but also the everyday erosions that accumulate over time; these latter experiences, although less dramatic, can also lead to a somewhat compromised, distorted, or impoverished sense of self.