ABSTRACT
Chapter 4 is devoted to the explication of “Winnicottian” ideas about analysis. Winnicott divided development into “absolute dependence,” “relative dependence,” and “toward independence.” All psychopathology is an arrest at one of these stages, but borderline pathology is an arrest at the level of “relative dependence.” The aim of analysis is to help the patient regress to the period of the arrest and then help the patient develop a sense of self based on this regression. The corpus of Michael Balint’s work I summarized to show the way Balint treated severely disturbed patients in analytic therapy. Other analytic theorists share Winnicott’s belief in the power of benign repression to “re-start” human emotions. Christopher Bolas’ work on the transformative object and the forces of “destiny” are discussed as a model of analytic therapy. Alongside is discussed the work of Arnold Modell and Thomas Ogden. Each theory has a concept of therapeutic regression, but each puts its own unique stamp of individuality on the regression Modell uses and Winnicott’s notion of the analytic setting to treat the regressed issues of severely disturbed patients.
