ABSTRACT
The use of historical data in the Interpersonal approach to psychoanalysis varies among its practitioners. For some it is a cornerstone of their clinical approach to elicit and reconstruct the patient's personal history, while other Interpersonalists take, as their starting point and main focus, the present-day world of the patient. Within the Interpersonal school the degree to which accurate recall of the past can be achieved is open to debate. There are also differences of opinion as to how much remembering is needed in order to bring about change and improvement in a person's current functioning. As a result of these controversies, it is not possible to speak of a single, unified theory of the nature and use of historical data within the Interpersonal schooL
Ghent (1989) notes that at its inception psychoanalysis was fundamentally an interpersonal psychology. In observing this, Ghent emphasizes that Freud originally believed neurosis resulted from traumatic childhood experiences suffered at the hands of adults. Specifically, Freud thought that his patients developed neuroses following the repression of actual sexual seduction during childhood. Thus, before turning away from the "seduction" theory of neurosis, Freud sought, in his clinical work, to recapture the memory of actual significant events between people, that is, interpersonal experiences. If the repressed memory of these traumas could be recovered, and if the appropriate feelings could be reexperienced by the patient, then the cure would follow. Soon, however, he rejected this model as inaccurate and too limited. He realized that the "traumatic" memories that were presumably responsible for his patients' neuroses had sometimes happened only in the patient's imagination rather than in the real world. Freud chose not to pursue or elaborate a theory and technique of psychoanalysis based on the occurrence of real experiences, or the patient's interpersonal history. Instead, he turned to an energic model that focused on intrapsychic processes and instinctual vicissitudes. In Freud's revised theory of psychopathology, the patient's repression of real events was not responsible for emotional problems (Siegert, 1990). Instead,
the patient was now seen as struggling against endogenous sexual wishes and impulses that had to be kept out of consciousness. Neurosis was caused by the defensive warding off of wishes arising in childhood, and this warding off was independent of the behavior of other people. Freudian psychoanalysis turned to the study of what went on inside the individual, with litde attention to the effects of actual or internalized interpersonal events. From the perspective of the Interpersonal school, this is seen as having been an erroneous and highly unfortunate shift (e.g., Levenson, 1981, 1983).
