Why We Love Who We Love: A Psychodynamic Perspective on the Loss of Free Will

James Tobin, Ph.D. Assistant Professor of Clinical Psychology The American School of Professional Psychology/Argosy University

Private Practice, Newport Beach, CA www.jamestobinphd.com 949-338-4388

February 24, 2014

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Outline for Tonight’s Talk

• Part I: Analytic Theory and Object Relations

• Part II: Attachment Theory • Part III: A Psychodynamic View of How We

Fall in Love • Part IV: The Emerging Field of

Interpersonal Neurobiology

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Part I: Analytic Theory and Object Relations

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Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)

•Austrian neurologist•Psychoanalysis was originally formulated as a philosophy of life; developed into a metapsychology.

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Basic Tenets of Classical Drive Theory

• Drives are often in conflict with reality, and are thus defended against.

• The original model of the mind (topographic model) featured repression as dividing the conscious from the unconscious.

• Repressed material remains compartmentalized but consistently emerges into mental life, whether or not it is cognitively or affectively mediated.

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Basic Tenets of Classical Drive Theory

• “We are doomed to repeat what we do not remember” – Freud’s discovery of the repetition compulsion (loss of our own agency, our free will).

• Attempts to bring drives into conscious awareness repressed material meets psychological resistance.

• Once unconscious material is “represented,” the person is liberated from its effects.

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Basic Principles of Classical Drive Theory

• The patient’s transference onto the therapist was Freud’s major discovery, providing evidence of the motivation for repetition compulsion.

• What actually gets “transferred” is the ungratifying nature of the parental object, i.e., the frustration generated by the primary caregiver that could not be managed by the ego (the mechanism of defensive processes).

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Transference Neurosis: The Talking Cure of Psychoanalysis

Real Therapist

Transference Material Transference

Material

Real Therapist

Transference Material

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Theoretical Developments Following Freud’s Classical Drive Model

• Ego Psychology: Anna Freud’s The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defense (1936)

• Object Relations: Otto Rank, Fairbairn, Melanie Klein, Ferenczi, Winnicott, Guntrip (1940s and 1950s)

• The Interpersonal School: Harry Stack Sullivan’s The Interpersonal Theory of Psychiatry (1953)

• Self Psychology: Heinz Kohut (1970s): The Analysis of the Self• The Relational School: Stephen A. Mitchell and Jay

Greenberg’s Object Relations in Psychoanalytic Theory (1983)• Intersubjectivity: Robert Stolorow, George E. Atwood, Jessica

Benjamin, and Daniel Stern (1980s to present)

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“Object”• Object = another

human being, a human relationship

• Seeking relationships emphasized more than the tension reduction of classical drive theory.

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Melanie Klein

• Observational Study of children:– Children have the drive to seek relationships– Children devoted more energy to constructing their interpersonal

worlds than trying to control libidinal impulses or to discharge tension

– Children have the need to control aggressive/negative/critical feelings directed at significant figures in their lives

• Introduced the study of relationships• Focus on the early relationship between mother and child• Infants internalize their relationships with their caregiver

(introject)

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The Introject, Projection, and Projective Identification

• The introject consists of the child’s construction of (1) self, (2) other, and (3) self in relation to other.

• Klein linked the intrapsychic framework of the introject to actual real-world relationships, thus moving into territory Freud never got to.

• The major theoretical construct that allowed this to occur was Klein’s notion of projection: whatever is “disavowed” gets projected onto the other. Often, the other is destined or induced to identify with the projection (projective identification), thus becoming in real life what exists in the person’s mind.

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Klein’s Normative Process

• Klein originally theorized a normative process in the child-parent relationship in which the mother contained the child’s projective material:

• Early family experiences –> Introject –> Projection –> Partial Projective Identification by Mother –> Mother contains the projected material and reintrojects it back into the child in a more benign form.

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Part II: Attachment Theory

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The Psychology of Attachment

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The Psychology of Attachment

• The study of attachment (between child and parent) has been a major research topic in psychology for the last 5 decades.

• What we have learned is that the infant/child has evolved highly advanced skills for detecting how to get from mother what he/she need and wants.

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The Attachment Dance

• Attachment becomes a dance consisting of the infant seeking what he/she wants, mother giving it/not giving it, and an ongoing tug of war that escalates until ultimately the dyad reaches some form of stability, a status-quo.

• The mother, for the most part, wins! The infant adapts to the mother vs. the mother adapting to the child.

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Personality is Adaptation

• The young child’s personality becomes organized around all of the nuanced behaviors and emotions required to participate successfully in the attachment dance with mother.

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Personality is Adaptation

• For example, a depressed mother may not be very responsive to a child, but she gets more responsive when the child acts cute or is funny; the child learns this quickly and efficiently; the dance that ensues between them involves the child “warming up” the mother (by making her laugh or feel better) so that the mother moves out of a depressive state and enters a more optimal position to respond to the child.

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Personality is Adaptation

• This relational sequence, across thousands of repeated interactions, becomes well-patterned and essentially solidifies in a specific style of personality the child takes on.

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Personality is Adaptation

• As personality evolves into adolescence and young adulthood, the self coalesces into three parts:

(1) the compromised (“false”) self;(2) the non-compromised (“true”) self;(3) the part of the true self that was not given the opportunity to develop (“the lost self”).

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The Self in Adulthood

• The False Self

• The True Self

• The Lost Self

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The False Self

• The evolutionary (survival) genes in our DNA are so strong that we are programmed to adapt (the compromised, false self is activated) over and over again, resulting in the false self becoming habituated.

• The compromised (false) self centers around a major traumatic relational theme.

• The false is stronger and predominates over the true and the lost parts of the self.

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Our Personality as Adults

• At the core of our personality as adults is a highly adaptive child (if the adaptation worked early on, we repeat it again and again across our life span).

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Part III: A Psychodynamic View of How We Fall in Love

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The Standard View of Romantic Relationships

• Attraction/ “chemistry”• We just understand each other/we seem to

know each other • Common interests • Similar background/values

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The De-evolution of Relationships

• Dating • Sex (often intense and passionate at the beginning) • Commitment• The relationship evolves • Things change in comparison to how they were in the

beginning • Unresolved conflict or avoidance of conflict • “We grew apart” • Infidelity • Crisis drives a wedge between the two persons

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Typical Reactions to the Failed Relationship

• I could not have predicted how things would go ...

• What attracted me to him/her turned out to annoy and frustrate me ...

• My needs were not fulfilled ...• We lost interest in each other ... couldn’t keep

it fresh ... became bored with each other ....

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A psychological understanding of the de-evolution of relationships

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Attraction

• Attraction/chemistry is usually based on “baggage.” • We are attracted to those people who hold the

potential to hurt us as we have been hurt before (our original relational trauma).

• The person we see “registers” something in our brains ... we find them familiar, yet we don’t understand why.

• We are driven to bond to the persons most likely to re-traumatize us.

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Why seek to be re-traumatized?

• No one knows. • Evolution: what is familiar is chosen over that which

would challenge us to develop new adaptations or jettison the adaptations we have grown accustomed to using.

• Correcting the original relational trauma: we may believe that if we re-create the original trauma of our development through the creation of a parental-surrogate in contemporary life, we can finally overcome or solve the original trauma.

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The Two Types of Relational Trauma

Type I: The Original Relational Trauma of Early Life• It is inevitable that we get relationally injured

early in development. • This original trauma stays stored within us.• In adult life, we are “programmed” to repeat the

original trauma (1: our aura communicates it to others, and 2: we induce/project others to become parental surrogates) – in essence, we are motivated to create a transference neurosis!

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The Two Types of Relational Trauma

Type II: Relational Trauma of Adult Life• We all get hurt in adult romantic relationships. • In an effort to not get hurt again, we may:

(1) Do a cross-over: become our past partner; our current partner becomes ourselves in the previous relationship

(2) Sabotage the relationship (3) Withdraw from the emotionality of the

relationship

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Our “Selection” of a Partner

• We are not really selecting our partner, as the partner (and how we relate to them) is pre-determined by trauma of Types I and/or II.

• The partner is selected (NOT CHOSEN) by unconscious factors – we simply cannot help it!!!

• The relationship is destined to fail and usually does!

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Repetition

• Some version of the past is always being repeated in the present. • The amount of repetition is determined by the

amount of the previous traumas that remains unresolved.

• “We are doomed to repeat what we do not remember”(Freud); in contemporary psychodynamic psychology, repetitive processes are called “enactments.”

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Enactments• A majority of human interactions are nothing more than

enactments. • A good way to think about enactments is that Person A acts/behaves

in ways that begin to constrict the bandwidth of relatedness Person B generates back toward Person A (this is “induction”).

• Example• Over time, the bandwidth is narrowed to such an extent that Person

A falsely assumes or actually creates a situation in which he/she is “traumatized” by Person B.

• In essence, Person B is unconsciously recruited to perpetrate upon/traumatize Person A (THUS AFFIRMING THE CONTENT OF THE INTROJECT).

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Enactments

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If induction takes a foothold, ....

• Things typically devolve, quickly or gradually.• But in any “normal” relationship, induction will

(and must) take place. • The trick is to not let it get out of hand – if it

does, both partners enact and are no longer “real” persons with each other.

• The key idea is to attempt to maintain (in yourself and in the other) the widest bandwidth of relatedness as possible.

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How This All Happens in Our Romantic Worlds

• What I’ve just told you captures the process of how we meet someone new, become attracted to them, start dating them, form a relationship with them, ... with ultimately (more often than not) the relationship blowing up and dissolving.

• There are 6 stages to this process:

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What makes the guy pick girl #2 ?

1 2 3

Stage 1: Attraction

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Our guy thinks the selection of #2 is the dominating attraction commonly called

“chemistry.”

1 2 3

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Our guy thinks the selection of #2 is the dominating attraction commonly called “chemistry.”

It is NOT!!!NEVER!!!

1 2 3

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What he mistakes as “chemistry” are interpersonal/neurobiologic cues, i.e.,

what is “familiar!”

1 2 3

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Unconsciously, he wants to repeat a previous “relational structure” from his

past.

1 2 3

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Stage 2: The Honeymoon Period• Things seem to be going well: they start doing more and

more together, they find they have things in common, etc.

• There is the sense that it is easy/that they seem to “know” each other better than what would be expected given the amount of time they have spent together.

• Sex often occurs in this stage and is “very passionate.” • The unconscious relational structure that each holds

lays dormant/is hibernating and not yet apparent.

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Stage 3: Induction

• In our example, the man unconsciously “induces” the woman to act more and more like his wounding parent (or his mental construction of his wounding parent).

• The woman is already primed to act this way (contains qualities consistent with the man’s wounding parent), but his inductions activate the similarities in her even more so that they become more dramatic and manifested.

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Stage 4: Injury and Repair • Each partner starts injuring the other (in ways that are

familiar, i.e., in the ways that caregivers injured them during childhood).

• During this phase, the bond between the two actually gets stronger as each tries to “calm down” and “make up”; the other feels so important and familiar that the underlying dysfunction of the relationship is denied by one or both partners.

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Stage 4: Injury and Repair

• Co-habitation and/or marriage often occur during this stage, particularly during or right after “repair” periods in which there is a profound sense of relief and euphoria (there is often the internal fantasy of having finally found one’s “soul mate” or finally having moved past what went “wrong” in prior relationships).

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Stage 5: Parasitic Take-Over

• Through ongoing inductions and the accumulation of repeated injuries, repair becomes less and less frequent and merely partial.

• The partner becomes the parental-surrogate (AND THEN SOME!!).

• The partner is overtaken by mysterious forces (parasitic psychological communications) of which he/she is no longer in control of; he or she actually becomes “alien” to himself/herself; the partner becomes something else/ “not themselves” the more the relationship goes on.

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Stage 6: Break-up • Due to repeated inductions

and the parasitic take-over process, one partner eventually decides to end the relationship (due to guilt/shame at injuring their partner over and over again or due to no longer feeling like himself/herself – “alien” – with their partner).

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Repeating the Pattern• Most people repeat the same, or a similar pattern, over

and over again in consecutive relationships (this is the phenomenon of serial monogamy and multiple divorces).

• Avoiding the pattern is a psychological alternative to repeating the pattern.

• This alternative has been described in research as the “avoidant” attachment type and can take many forms:

(a) men (or women) who just want superficial relationships/sex

(b) the self-sabotager (addiction, infidelity) (c) business/financial success (workaholics) (d) or the indecisive/obsessive personality

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Implications for Romantic Love

• As adults, we are destined to continue our adaptive patterns with our next significant attachment figure (our lover/partner).

• That is, we seek to find a lover who resembles our caregiver (psychologically, emotionally) so that we can continue with our usual adaptive style to maintain the attachment.

• This implies something very paradoxical: we are destined to seek a romantic partner (and a “relational structure”) that wounds us in familiar ways!

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The Dissolution of the Relationship

• When the parental-surrogate is embodied in our partner, conflict/distress occurs and is often (1) tolerated/lived with for many years,. and/or (2) causes break-up/divorce.

• Our (unconscious) hope to resolve the wounds from our past in our contemporary partner usually fails! (AND, we remain unknown to ourselves and to the other).

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Part IV: The Emerging Field of Interpersonal Neurobiology

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The Car in the Parking Lot Story

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The Emergence of a New Field: Interpersonal Neurobiology

The Mindful Brain: Reflection and Attunement in the Cultivation of Well-BeingDANIEL J. SIEGEL

The Neuroscience of Human Relationships: Attachment And the Developing Social BrainLOUIS COZOLINO

The Haunted Self: Structural Dissociation and the Treatment of Chronic

TraumatizationONNO VAN DER HART, ELLERT R. S. NIJENHUIS, KATHY

STEELE

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Interpersonal Neurobiology

Affect Regulation and the Repair of the Self & Affect Dysregulation and Disorders of the Self

ALLAN N. SCHORE

Affect Dysregulation and Disorders of the SelfALLAN N. SCHORE

Affect Regulation and the Repair of the SelfALLAN N. SCHORE

Healing Trauma: Attachment, Mind, Body and BrainDANIEL J. SIEGEL, MARION SOLOMON

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Interpersonal Neurobiology

Love and War in Intimate Relationships: Connection, Disconnection, and Mutual Regulation in Couple TherapyMARION SOLOMON, STAN TATKIN

The Neuroscience of Psychotherapy: Healing the Social BrainLOUIS COZOLINO

From Axons to Identity: Neurological Explorations of the Nature of the SelfTODD E. FEINBERG

Infant/Child Mental Health, Early Intervention, and Relationship-Based Therapies: A

Neurorelational Framework for Interdisciplnary PracticeCONNIE LILLAS, JANIECE TURNBULL

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Interpersonal Neurobiology

Healing the Traumatized Self: Consciousness, Neuroscience, TreatmentPAUL FREWEN, RUTH LANIUS, BESSEL VAN DER KOLK, ET

AL.

Neurobiologically Informed Trauma Therapy with Children and Adolescents: Understanding Mechanisms of Change

LINDA CHAPMAN

Loving with the Brain in Mind: Neurobiology and Couple TherapyMONA DEKOVEN FISHBANE, DANIEL J. SIEGEL

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Interpersonal Neurobiology

Body Sense: The Science and Practice of Embodied Self-AwarenessALAN FOGEL

The Archaeology of Mind: Neuroevolutionary Origins of Human Emotions

JAAK PANKSEPP, LUCY BIVEN

Brain-Based Parenting: The Neuroscience of Caregiving for Healthy Attachment

DANIEL A. HUGHES, JONATHAN BAYLIN, DANIEL J. SIEGEL

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Ours is a Social Brain

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“Aura”

• Our brains and bodies put forth a series of complex, nonverbal and unconscious communications that are “read” by others.

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“Aura”

• We see something similar in the animal kingdom, where the weakest animal in a pack is sensed, identified and hunted (survival of the fittest).

• In humans, it’s a bit different: the aura promotes our survival by cuing others to traumatize us so that we can maintain our adaptations (conversely, if others were cued to promote our true or lost selves, we would be threatened and great anxiety would ensue).

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This is the Central Component of the Therapeutic Relationship or any Intimate Bond

• The patient is programmed to adapt (use a facade or adapt to an actual or assumed trauma) vs. have his/her true self or lost self acknowledged.

• The therapist promotes the true and the lost over the facade, just as a lover senses his/her partner’s anxiety about living without trauma (and preference for maintaining a compromised/false self).

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Implications

• Our compromised (false) self must be gradually reduced in intensity and power (what has become so familiar is suddenly strange).

• This occurs in part by discovering how we falsely assume the potential to be injured and also how we induce others (and are induced) so that we end up becoming re-traumatized.

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Implications

• It also occurs by realizing the nature of our relational traumas and how we managed them at a primitive level.

• The aura of our relationally traumatic past will never fully disappear so we must understand in detail how people are likely to “view” us.

• By doing this, there are ways to interfere with the aura.

James Tobin, Ph.D.Licensed Psychologist, PSY 22074220 Newport Center Drive, Suite 1Newport Beach, CA 92660949-338-4388

Email: jt@jamestobinphd.com Website: www.jamestobinphd.com