ERIC GILLETT wrote:

> Perhaps Freud's complementary series is a
> useful point of departure for clearly defining the differences between rival
> psychoanalytic schools.  They may emphasize different kinds of environmental
> factors as crucial to the generation of different kinds of psychopathology or
> differ in other important beliefs.

I agree with you about this. As Laplanche and Pontalis suggest, the idea
of the complemental series actually has a double-use. First, it alerts
us to the possible range of influences -- from genetic to environmental
-- that may contribute to psychopathology. Second, it proposes a
complementary relationship bedtween the different factors involved. i.e.
the notion that the weaker one factor, the stronger the other.  I think
this second point is a particularly interesting feature of Freud's
thinking in general, as in the U-Tube model of the relative strength of
ego- and object-libidio in relation to each other ("On Narcissism: An
Introduction").

As far as the lessons of infant-observation research are concerned, I
think there is a real problem of bias/selectivity in the issues
investigated in the first place. For example, Stern's most influential
book (1985) pays eager attention to the "interpersonal world of the
infant" but has not a word to say about infantile sexuality or
aggression. Thus it should be little surpise that analysts who have
already broken with Freud by moving to the environmental end of the
spectrum have embraced this "data" with enthusiasm.  Self psychologists
are a prime illustration of this and, in the past decade, Kohut's Baby
has become increasingly Stern's Baby.

Fortunately there is more to infant research than just this denatured
version of early life. Lichtenberg, though strongly identified with self
psychology, at least includes a "sensual-sexual motivation system" and
"aversive motivation" (e.g. aggression) within his overall model. Roiphe
and Galenson shift the issues even further towards a Mahlerian position
(somewhere in the middle of the complemental series?).

The problem, though, is that while we have various "theoretical babies"
in our midst today, none of them is really Freud's Baby. It's not that
this conceptual entity doesn't exist; rather that people are not looking
for it, at least not within analysis. By contrast, I think the
sociobiologists and especially the neurobiologists (MacLean, Schor and
many others) have been doing our -- also Freud's -- work for us and very
much deserve our attention.

Regards, Chris
--
Christopher Nichols, Ph.D.
Division of Social Science
York University
4700 Keele Street
North York, Ontario, Canada M3J 1P3