Herzog and Shifting Relational States

On the morning of January 14, 2012, Dr. Bruce Herzog presented to the Tampa Bay Psychoanalytic Society, Inc his 2004 paper Reconsidering the Unconscious: Shifting Relational States, Activators, and the Variable Unconscious. “The unconscious is not a fixed structure, … thus what is conscious in one state of mind can become an unconscious entity in another… When an event is encoded into memory, it occurs within the specific relational state that is active at the time. …Hence, what I am conscious of at any particular moment has much to do with the relational state that I am in.” [When I read this paper a few years ago, these statements of Herzog’s were a kind of eureka moment for me: what he wrote had made profound sense (with a forehead slapping “Of course!’) and yet I had not heard it articulated that way before.]

Herzog continues: “… each relational state has its own particular consciousness and unconsciousness. …In any individual, the unconscious is in no way fixed, but is rather a continually changing phenomenon. I have chosen to name this the variable unconscious. … The notion of a variable unconscious proposes that people, when shifting from state to state, have a level of awareness and unawareness that shifts along with them. The unconscious is no longer considered a fixed phenomenon, but is something that moves and adjusts according to what state one is in. A shift to a new relational state can grant access to certain affects, memories, and relational behaviors that may have been previously unconscious [inaccessible].” Herzog calls his concept of shifting relational states, activators and the variable unconscious: template theory.

Herzog gracefully utilizes both traditional interpretation and relational theory: “…it is not only an interpretation’s content, but … the act of interpreting [italics added] can trigger a shift to a new state that can give rise to a different awareness.” [Here I like the integration of interpretation itself, its content making conscious what was heretofore unconscious, with the act itself having meaning separate from the meaning of the content. This deconstructs somewhat the privilege heretofore given to narrative interpretation, and insight, as a mutative power.] One aim of psychoanalytic treatment has always been to increase the capacity for self reflection, in Herzog’s terms, to activate a reflective state and increase the frequency of its activation. In treatment this can allow access to previously disavowed self states or to newly co-created (in therapy) self states.

I particularly liked finding new ways to consider transference, repression, interpretation, and the goals of treatment: “The transference might be seen as the activation of a particular relational state, and the interpretation could be seen as a means to help the patient organize the procedural (non-verbal) elements of the [that] state into symbolic thought (Herzog 2001; see previous post). The entire process serves to improve the reflective capacity of the individual, by allowing the current relational state to be consciously apprehended, understood, and modified - from within an overriding reflective state established in the analysis.” And where “repression comes in the form of disavowal of certain relational states …
What’s reported to the analyst is limited to what can be accessed in the state the patient is in when seeing the analyst.”

Herzog concludes: …”my patients [are] shifting through relational states, moving between the various possibilities within their relational repertoire, and having each state of mind containing its own unconscious elements… Pathology in the individual comprises rigid denial of the existence of parts of the self, whereas emotional health involves a general awareness of all parts of the self and controlled, flexible movement between them. …The analytic dyad’s growth-promoting behavior and ability to comment on the relational changes that are being fostered will lead to the development of a new repertoire of more functional relational behaviors, and a capacity to recognize and access them.”

I thoroughly enjoyed my day with Bruce Herzog, a presenter who embodies what he says, thereby providing the best educational experience: when procedural learning accompanies the symbolic or spoken lesson. I did regret that Dr. Herzog often chose to put aside for the day, leaving unexplored, the contribution the analyst makes to a shift in a relational template, and thereby, momentarily, eschewing elaboration of a two-person psychology.

A Conversation With Bruce Herzog: Relational Templates

When the Tampa Bay Psychoanalytic Society, Inc offers a day-long program with a guest psychoanalyst, one of my favorite parts of the day is the early morning, intimate, small group “Conversation” with the expert speaker. On January 14, 2012, Bruce Herzog discussed his very accessible ideas about relational templates.

Repeated behavior becomes a relational template, and becomes procedural. He defines relational template as “an internalized relational pattern that has been learned through repeated exposure and applied to interpersonal circumstances throughout life”[1] and may be “activated” by specific, contextually-driven interactions. (Unlike Stolorow’s ‘invariant organizing principles’ which implies cognitive, relational templates are behavioral. Herzog‘s “relational expectancies” are more akin to the former. A relational expectancy includes an automaticity that assumes a relationship to be a certain way.)

Multiple templates exist, each with its own variable unconscious, and are hierarchical, the most frequently activated ones being the most accessible. He notes “a stockpile of templates waiting to be mobilized when needed”[2] The analyst can track shifts in relational states (often accompanied by a shift in affect), e.g. when a negative transference appears. Clinically, the analytic relationship offers the opportunity to encode new ways of being in relationship, new templates. For example, when a patient, long holding the expectancy to be ignored or misunderstood, finds that the analyst does not meet her/his expectation, a new template is encoded and now joins the repertoire of multiple relational templates. Herzog notes that each of us has the capacity throughout life to continue to grow and change when our expectations are confounded in this way.

Herzog prefers the term ‘template’ for its simplicity; Preferring ‘relational template’ to the unwieldy 'projective identification,' Herzog nonetheless notes that Klein described something useful to the clinician. For example, where Kleinian analysts might say a patient had projected disavowed sadism into the analyst and so now the analyst is feeling angry at the patient, Herzog would say simply that a sadomasochistic template has been activated.

Like an attuned parent who gives words to experience, thereby adding to the child’s comfort, mastery, or joy, Herzog says “naming and explaining” helps a patient. But, he notes, it is not simply content which is mutative, but that we bother to say something at all, for, along with tone, prosody, etc, this is also a procedural interpretation, the non-symbolic part of the verbal interpretation. [See his 2001 paper]

Patients may activate templates in the therapist just as analysts’ behaviors also activate patients’ templates. The therapist has certain capacities (e.g. what s/he can give) while the patient has certain capacities too (e.g. what s/he can take). In template theory, provision might balance expectation; it is as if the analyst is saying, ‘Even though you ask something of me in a way that makes me want to withdraw from you, I know you need it and so I will provide it.’ Having in the past been accused of being a ‘provision-ist,’ Herzog retorts that the accuser might be a ‘frustration-ist’ and recalls how Kohut advocated “optimal frustration” and Bacall, “optimal responsiveness.”[3]

Herzog finds that perhaps his foremost goal in treatment is to enjoy his work, which means enjoying his patient, which means the patient, perhaps for the first time, is enjoyed (thereby creating a new relational template). Herzog also reminds us that each therapist must ‘survive’ (in Winnicottian terms). He also seeks to find something he can love in every patient. [It is perhaps these final sentiments with which I most agree.]






[3] Bacal and Herzog (2000). Optimal Responsiveness and the Use of Specificity Theory
in Clinical Practice, Presented at the 23rd Annual International Conference on The
Psychology of The Self, Chicago, Ill.

Herzog, B. (2001). Procedural Interpretation and Insight: The Art of Working Between
the Lines in the Non-Verbal Realm. Presented at the 24th Annual International
Conference on The Psychology of The Self, San Francisco, Ca.

[1,2] Herzog, B. (2004). Reconsidering the Unconscious: Shifting Relational States,
Activators, and the Variable Unconscious. Presented at the 27th Annual
International Conference on The Psychology of The Self, San Diego, Ca.

"A Day with Robert Stolorow"

On Saturday, January 9, 2010, the Tampa Bay Psychoanalytic Society, Inc hosted Robert Stolorow, PhD who spoke in the morning on “The Historical Evolution and Clinical Application of Intersubjective Systems Theory”.

Like Heinz Kohut, who wrote that scientific theory should be consistent with its method of investigation, Stolorow, along with George Atwood, Bernard Brandchaft, and, later, Donna Orange, advocate keeping close to the phenomenological, that is, to what one can observe through empathy and introspection, and eschew metapsychology (theoretical structures which are not observable, such as ‘the id’) in the clinical setting. Over the decades, he and colleagues sought to develop a theory of personal subjectivity which could account for both observed phenomena and theories themselves.

Stolorow et al differ with Self Psychology in three important aspects: 1) in the reification of self experience as ‘the Self;’ 2) they see the deficit or defects model as reductionistic, defined by what is absent; and 3) the generalization of narcissistic disorder’s narcissistic transference to a theory of total personality.

Stolorow et al define intersubjectivity as any psychological field created by the interplay between two subjective worlds, even if the two subjects have not yet developed the capacity for mutual recognition. Recall that Jessica Benjamin describes intersubjectivity as a developmental achievement which allows one to recognize an other, not simply as a person separate from oneself (Dan Stern’s infant research), but as a subject with a separate center of experience. [see later blog].

Stolorow highlighted Brandchaft’s work on the negative therapeutic reaction : Freud’s explanation about why theoretically correct interpretations make the patient worse (unconscious guilt; Klein’s was the destructive envy of the analyst’s goodness). Brandchaft wrote that neither had considered that their interpretations might be incorrect, nor considered the analyst’s subjective impact on the patient. Likewise, they never considered that faulty interpretations might retraumatize a patient.

“Organizing principles” are what Stolorow et al call their affective schema, which constantly organize experiences: “The organization of the child’s experience is a property of the child-caretaker system of mutual interaction, and recurring patterns of intersubjective transaction within a developmental system give rise to principles that unconsciously organize subsequent [italic, mine]experiences.” This Intersubjective theory is without supposition as to what the organizing principles are, or how many exist, as they are a product of each unique, individual personal history. Stolorow prefers ‘organizing principles’ to ‘transference’ and sees, with Frank Lachmann, transference as an expression of the unconscious organizing principles, i.e. sees transference as an organizing activity, inherently contextual and inherently intersubjective.

He described two dimensions of transference/organizing principles: developmental and repetitive. Developmental are a patient’s longings for experiences that were lost, missing, or prematurely aborted during the formative years (more than just narcissistic needs, such as the longing to be protected or to be with someone with own emotional pain). Repetitive dimensions are patient’s fears, expectations, or actual [re] experiences of the developmental trauma, leading to conflict and resistance. The psychoanalytic situation routinely lends itself to the repetitive dimension, e.g ending the session [a rejection], or a misattuned interpretation where patient again feels painfully misunderstood, left alone with unbearable affect.

He also described intersubjective conjunction, where there is an overlap between the patient and analyst’s organizing principles or their meanings, and intersubjective disjunction, where there is not. Either, when outside of the analyst’s self awareness [presumably these unconscious organizing principles have been or will be made conscious?] can impede the therapeutic process.

In this morning presentation, I found the freshness of Intersubjectivity theory’s contributions to the clinical situation, such as how the fluidly interactive worlds of the patient and analyst mutually influence one another, obscured by the painstaking but exquisite delineation of the speaker’s personal, historical contributions and by the jargon. I also found the lack of needing to recognize an other as a subject mind-boggling when considering intersubjectivity.

Lycia Alexander-Guerra, MD

A DIFFERENT DREAM

In continuing “A Day with James Fosshage” on October 10, 2009 at the monthly program meeting of the Tampa Bay Psychoanalytic Society, Dr. Fosshage advocated for an approach to dreams different from the way Freud, or even Jung, might conceive of dreams. Fosshage noted that Freud saw dreams as wish fulfillments, to protect against waking (guardian of sleep), and to discharge instinctual energy. To function in these ways, wishes and instincts must be disguised if they are to guard sleep, and so Freud divided the dream into manifest content and latent content, the latter which fell under the scrutiny of dream analysis, a chaotic endeavor said Fosshage. Jung, noted Fosshage, saw dreams as an attempt to correct or compensate for the conscious state, particularly when the conscious ego state deviates from the Self. Others (Fromm, French; Greenberg) have noted the problem solving nature of dreaming. Kohut saw self state dreams as an attempt to restore self consolidation from fragmentation and dissolution. Stolorow and Atwood refer to dreams as the guardian of psychological structure.

Fosshage agreed with those who emphasize the dream functions of development of psychological organization (and self consolidation) and memory consolidation. He noted that dream mentation, just as in waking, can reinforce, transform, or develop patterns of organizing experience. He enumerated the many similarities of waking and dreaming mentation: Both organize and integrate memory into data, leading to increased adaptation; both use imagistic and verbal encoding; both regulate affect and problem solve. Furthermore, reverie and REM activity both occur in wakeful and dreaming states. He reminded us that REM deprivation leads to psychological disorganization, compensated somewhat by daytime reverie/REM activity. Dreaming and waking states differ in that waking utilizes more often explicit thinking and verbal processing, while dreams utilize imagistic processing more often, as well as have more access to unconscious processing.

If dreaming states serve an organizing function, and dreams are not simply defensive, then distinguishing between manifest and latent contents is no longer a useful demarcation. Classical dream analysis, deciphering the latent meaning from the manifest dream, is, then, no longer the goal. Instead, Fosshage encouraged the therapist to listen to the patient’s experience, to encourage the patient to fill out the narrative (What were you feeling when [this] was happening?), and to inquire about themes and issues in the dream and their applicability to those in waking life. He discouraged assuming a transference component to the dream unless the therapist is in the dream or referenced when telling the dream. In general, Fosshage encouraged therapists to look for evidence within the dream, not to our theories, for our ideas about the dream. Likewise, Fosshage does not see dreams as shifts in self states, but rather, they show the transformative process at work. He cited his previously published Case P as an example.