PSYCHOSOCIAL THEORIES OF THE SELF PATH IN PSYCHOLOGY Published in Cooperation with Publications for the Advancement of Theory and History in Psychology (PATH) Series Editors: David Bakan, York University John Broughton, Teachers College, Columbia University Miriam Lewin, Manhattanville College Robert Rieber, John Jay College, CUNY, and Columbia University Howard Gruber, Rutgers University WILHELM WUNDT AND THE MAKING OF A SCIENTIFIC PSYCHOLOGY Edited by R. W. Rieber HUMANISTIC PSYCHOLOGY: Concepts and Criticisms Edited by Joseph R. Royce and Leendert P. Mos PSYCHOSOCIAL THEORIES OF THE SELF Edited by Benjamin Lee PSYCHOSOCIAL THEORIES OF THE SELF Edited by Benjamin Lee Center for Psychosocial Studies Chicago, Illinois With the collaboration of Kathleen Smith PLENUM PRESS • NEW YORK AND LONDON Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Conference on New Approaches to the Self (1979: Chicago, Ill.) Psychosocial theories of the self. (PATH in psychology) "Proceedings of a conference on New Approaches to the Self, held by the Center for Psychosocial Studies, March 29-April1, 1979, in Chicago, Illinois"-T.p. verso. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Self-Congresses. 2. Self-Social aspects-Congresses. I. Lee, Benjamin. II. Smith, Kathleen. III. Center for Psychosocial Studies. IV. Title. V. Series. BF697.C576 1979 155.2 82-13123 ISBN 978-1-4684-4339-4 ISBN 978-1-4684-4337-0 (eBook) DOl 10.1007/978-1-4684-4337-0 Proceedings of a ,C;onference on New Approaches to the Self, held March 29- April 1, 1979, by the Center for Psychosocial Studies, Chicago, Illinois ©1982 Plenum Press, New York Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1s t edition 1982 A Division of Plenum Publishing Corporation 233 Spring Street, New York, N.Y. 10013 All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the Publisher ACKNOWLEDGMENTS It remains for me to express my gratitude to those who assisted with this task in so many ways. My thanks to Janine Poronsky, Hedwig Sarnicki, and Phyllis Schneider for typing the manuscript and its interminable revisions, and to Marta Nicholas for her many hours of copyediting. Special thanks to Kathleen Smith, Administrative Assistant of the Center for Psychosocial Studies, without whose skills this volume would never have been completed. Benjamin Lee CONTENTS Introduction 1 The Self of Psychoanalysis 3 A. Goldberg Comments on Heinz Kohut's Conceptualization of a Bipolar Self . • . . . . • • • • 23 E. S. Wolf The Self and Its Development in an African Society: A Preliminary Analysis . . • 43 R.A. LeVine Person, Self, and Identity: Some Anthropological Retrospects, Circumspects, and Prospects 67 R.D. Fogelson The Structure of the Self in Northern Cheyenne Culture .•... " •....•... 111 A.S. Straus Personal and Social Identity in Dialogue •. . • . • . 129 M. Singer The Self, the Third, and Desire •.••••.••.•• 179 V. Crapanzano List of Contributors 207 Name Index 209 Subject Index 213 vii INTRODUCTION Benjamin Lee Center for Psychosocial Studies On March 29-April 1, 1979, the Center for Psychosocial Studies held a conference in Chicago on "New Approaches to the Self" in which all the authors in this volume partici pated. Over the years the Center has acted as a communica tions link and coordination point for interdisciplinary dis cussions and research. Several years ago, we discovered that there was a renewed interest among psychoanalysts, anthro pologists, and developmental psychologists in the investiga tion of the self, and the reason for this groundswell of ac tivity was the discovery of the importance of problems of meaning and interpretation in each discipline. Since inves tigators in each of these disciplines were relatively ignor ant of developments in the other approaches, we felt that a conference would be a timely catalyst. Each of the authors gave a presentation at the conference, and it is a mark of the success of the interdisciplinary effort that almost all the papers were extensively revised in response to the dis cussions. The first three papers by Arnold Goldberg, Ernest Wolf, and Robert LeVine all use Heinz Kohut's psychoanalytic self psychology as their starting point. Goldberg places the self within a broader framework of philosophical and psychoana lytic theories, finally locating it in the types of communi cative relationships a person constructs in his interactions with others. Wolf's paper explicates the basic ideas and innovations of Kohut's self psychology. He clearly links Kohut's theory of self-development with its roots in the transferential situation of analysis and the analyst's use of empathic introspection as the method by which analytic data is gathered. Finally, LeVine's paper applies some of Kohut's ideas to the analysis of ethnographic data he has collected over a span of over twenty years among the Gusii of Africa. His results indicate the usefulness of psycho analytically based approaches to such cultural phenomena as 2 INTRODUCTION the "evil eye" among the Gusii, while at the same time forc ing psychoanalysts to consider a more variable conception of self-development. The next two papers by Raymond Fogelson and Anne Straus are anthropological approaches to the investigation of the self. The former author presents a history of the major approaches that anthropologists have used to study the self. Its major contribution is to present to other social scien tists the variety and richness that only ethnographic exam ple can provide, thereby forestalling premature intellectual closure or rigidity while expanding our perception of the range of phenomena which must be included in any theory of the self. Dr. Straus' paper comes, therefore, as a welcome example of the points made by Professor Fogelson. She presents an analysis of the Cheyenne theory of the self, based upon her own fieldwork, and thereby challenges the adequacy of Western conceptions of the self to analyze the Cheyenne. The final two papers by Milton Singer and Vincent Cra panzano are semiotic approaches to the study of the self. Professor Singer, utilizing Pierce's dialogic model of seme osis (the process of sign generation), erects a foundation for the study of the self as a sign system which emerges out of dialogue. He focuses'particularly on the child's use of personal pronouns as being a foundation of self-development, and then extends his analysis to cultural materials. Pro fessor Crapanzano's paper approaches the self from a more Lacanian perspective, although it does overlap with Profes sor Singer's on several points, especially the importance of the personal pronouns "I" and "you". He extends previous semiotic analyses, however, by emphasizing the critical role of semiotic processes in mediating not ofily representational activity, but also desire and motivation. While these papers represent a healthy diversity in both emphases and subject matter, they all share one trait in common. The discussion of one's theory of the self, no matter what it is, like the self itself, is nurtured and ex panded through communication with others. THE SELF OF PSYCHOANALYSIS Arnold Goldberg, M.D. INTRODUCTION The self has assumed a new popularity, within psycho analysis as well as in other disciplines. In the former it has given rise to a focus of study called self psychology (Goldberg 1980), which in turn makes claims for certain advantageous positions in both technique and theory. As an expectable counterreaction to these claims, there has been a welcome cry for clarification of the definition and th~oret­ ical status of the self--especially one that will delineate the self that is of relevance to psychoanalysis. The fol lowing work is an attempt to fashion such a definition and to place it in a developmental perspective. A SELF DEFINITION In a masterpiece of linguistic legerdemain, a philoso pher (Mischel 1977) writes that one point on which philoso phers and psychologists can easily agree is that "the self is not some entity other than the person". This would seem to translate into "the self is the person", but this simple statement probably can generate as much disagreement as any other issue raised by a combination of philosophers and psy chologists. Before a psychology of the self can be fully developed, an attempt must be made to define that elusive word, and to decide whether it is indeed an entity, a structure, or mere ly someone whom we all know well. Whether or not a defi nition is possible must also be appraised. Herewith is a start at ,a disentangling of the selves of other fields, to arrive at the one of relevance to psychoanalysis. 3 4 A. GOLDBERG THE SELF AS THE PERSON The very definition of a person becomes the initial stumbling block for this consideration. It seems clear that a person is simply not equivalent to the bodily configura tion of an individual; yet philosophers from Feigl (1958) to Strawson (1979) to Margolis (1977) have long struggled with whether one should equate mental and physical phenomena, or should attach mental predicates to a person, or should have the mind "embodied" in the physical substance of an indivi dual. The resolution of the philosophical muddle will assist but will not solve the psychological problem--since the term becomes all-encompassing in the one sense of seem ingly including everything about the mental and physical components and contents of the person, yet woefully ignoring the unconscious and developmental features. It would seem prudent to emphasize that psychoanalysis often pays little heed to the physical attributes of a per son, save as they contribute to other psychological consid erations which begin to form a definition of the self. To but touch, at this time, on the problems of defining a per son, we must probably grapple with some of the familiar problems concerning the mind and the body. Strawson (1979) says that although we clearly talk of ourselves as having intentions, beliefs, sensations, thoughts, memories, etc., we also speak of our having positions such as locations, characteristics such as weight, and attitudes such as lying down. It seems that one's thoughts are ascribed to the very same thing as the physical situation. He feels that a con cept of a person must thus include both mental and physical predicates, and he emphasizes the relationship between these two. This, of course, is in contrast to the sharp dichotomy between mind and body in Descartes. Rather than pursuing and enumerating the many solutions and resolutions of the mind/body dilemma, we can say that a person seems to consist of some form of enduring relationship between the two (mind and body), even if that relationship at times appears to be identical (identity theory) or totally separate (as in a physical materialism theory). The self as the person needs definition in both its corporeal and its psychological mani festations. The self of psychoanalysis need not fulfill the same criteria of personhood needed in philosophy or in other dis ciplines, but must be of particular importance and relevance