ABSTRACT
In this discussion paper I try to elucidate Lichtenberg's six technical principles from my own viewpoint as a so-called “classical” analyst who is trying to integrate so-called “self psychology” within the matrix of existing psychoanalytic knowledge as it has been developed by Freud and by many creative analysts after his death. I appreciate the fact that Lichtenberg uses the expression “self psychological viewpoint” in the title of his presentation. The term viewpoint, rather than theory, creates an atmosphere of relativity that is further accentuated by his willingness to describe that viewpoint as he utilizes it. This atmosphere of relativity enhances the realization of our common aim: to help patients explore as much as possible their inner world to the fullest extent of their potentialities. Any obstacle to that aim must be recognized and overcome. Seen from the patient, these obstacles are both external and internal. They may consist of fantasied and/or real empathic failures, very often both. These real and fantasied empathic failures are a special and powerful source of resistance, but they are not the only source. Removing special resistances of fantasied and real empathic failures is a step by step process necessary to help patients overcome their basic resistance against relinquishing the fantasied wish fulfillment of their traumatized past existence; that is, their traumatized past states of self whether object-instinctual or narcissistic, libidinal or aggressive. In another paper Lichtenberg (1981) has called this the empathic process. Although this process is a necessary condition for the psychoanalytic process, it is not to be considered identical with it, nor it is an aim in itself. It is from this vantage point that self psychology deals with special resistances based on special disruptions of the working alliance. I now turn to the gist of Lichtenberg's paper.
