ABSTRACT
Hans Loewald, a principal figure in the evolution of an American independent tradition, is a comprehensive and original theorist on a par with any major post-Freudian thinker, even as neither his ideas nor his person has become the basis for a Loewaldian school. This chapter introduces the scope and depth of Loewald’s theory. Loewald can be said to have a vision of the psyche and psychic life, of the psychoanalytic process, and of the human as well as clinical goals of psychoanalysis (what in The Power of Feelings I call a “psychoanalytic vision of subjectivity”). It suggests that Loewald holds two doubled perspectives. First, he is emphatically both ego psychological and object relational. Second, he is committed equally to the first topography and to the structural theory. Loewald’s views are undergirded by developmental and clinical ideas centering on differentiation and integration that begins in infancy. Subjective past and present, ego and object relations, intertwine and are sustained by psychic intensity, depth, and range. The chapter reflects on how we can assess theories developed before empirical research that seems to challenge them.
