ABSTRACT
The fourth chapter explores the relational matrix in which the person makes meaning of his experience. Traditional psychoanalytic conceptualizations argued for the regressive nature of group functioning (Freud, 1921; Bion, 1961). A related but distinct wave of pre-Oedipal theorizing emphasized the infantile nature of intense interpersonal dependency (Hartmann, 1939; Winnicott, 1954a, 1954b; Balint, 1968; Mahler, 1975; Kohut, 1971). A tautology emerges in which it is presupposed that only children are intensely dependent on others; intense dependency in later life thus becomes evidence of regression. But it is by now a commonplace that we are all embedded in fields of dependency. The tautology is rejected for a broader conception of Nachträglichkeit (Freud, 1896, 1898, 1918), or deferred action, in which the past is continuously reshaped in the field of our present dependencies. Our ongoing dependency becomes, therefore, not the evidence of regression, but rather a precondition in re-imagining the past.
