The Clinical Erik Erikson: A Psychoanalytic Method of Engagement and Activation

183 Pages·2016·14.68 MB·English

by  Stephen Schlein

“We need Erik Erikson today. We need from psychoanalysis the intelligence, sen-
sitivity and disciplined daring to engage the role of public intellectual, a role into
which Erikson was, to his surprise and occasional chagrin, inevitably drawn and a
role he could take up because of his restless curiosity to relate the clinical encoun-
ter to the world around him. These excursions into history, anthropology and
other fields are well known and serve as models for the interdisciplinarity essential
to addressing our more intractable problems; this volume’s great contribution is
to open for us—to bring us deeply into contact with—the clinical Erikson and
the intimate relatedness to one person’s history and pain in which his larger work
is grounded. Erikson famously commented that all he had to offer was ‘a way of
looking at things;’ Dr. Schlein, respectfully and caringly, works through Erikson’s
shyness to show us the place from which he could see these things, namely,
the world as opened up between two people, one of whom is in the service of the
other’s psychological growth. This book is a fascinating window into how Erikson
acquired not only understanding but his authority as well.”
—M. Gerard Fromm, PhD, senior consultant, Erikson
Institute for Education and Research, The Austen
Riggs Center, Stockbridge, Massachusetts
“Schlein worked with Erikson and offers us for the first time a chance to learn
about Erik Erikson’s clinical psychoanalytic work and thinking. He does a great
service by bringing this to public awareness. He also helps to spell out ways that
he believes Erikson’s clinical work relies on essential ingredients of an inter-
personal method and ways in which it articulates interactional dimensions that
facilitate growth and restorative potential. This book will be of great interest to
those who have always wondered about the ‘clinical’ Erikson, and it also will
be of great interest to those who never thought to wonder about it before.”
—Darlene Ehrenberg, PhD, William Alanson White Institute of Psychiatry,
Psychoanalysis and Psychology and New York University Post-Doctoral
Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis
“This well-organized and engaging book is a most welcome addition to the
many books and articles by and about one of the best-known psychoanalysts
of the twentieth century. Having been in the enviable position of being this
master teacher’s student and confidant, Dr. Schlein focused on a little-known
aspect of Erikson’s life: on his extraordinary skill as a clinician. Erikson’s psy-
choanalytic colleagues and others interested in how a gifted clinician works
will appreciate the carefully selected clinical illustrations. It is a rare gift to get
such a ‘close-up’ view of an analyst’s thinking as is being offered here, with
direct citations from Erikson’s handwritten clinical notes. It required insight
and great discipline by Dr. Schlein to organize this rich material in a most
readable and entertaining manner.”
—Anna Ornstein, MD, professor emerita of Child
Psychiatry at the University of Cincinnati and lecturer
in Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School
“Schlein shines an intimate, tender, contemporary light on what, for many
of us, remained an enigma: Had Erikson ever actually translated his bril-
liant, overarching, psychosocial vision of identity and the life cycle—as well
as imaginative play therapy with children—into a way of thinking about
psychoanalytic psychotherapy with late adolescents and adults? Was Erikson
able to maintain the radical elements of his own identity as a theorist while
fitting himself into the mid-century, ego psychological world of The Austen
Riggs Center? Comparative analysts of all stripes will savor Schlein’s deeply
informed depiction of Erikson’s clinical work in light of the more chal-
lenging paradigm shifts that were simultaneously emerging in the work of
Erikson’s contemporaries—especially Winnicott and Kohut—whose thinking
lacked his cultural and historical scope yet notably shared much of his overall
clinical sensibility.”
—Malcolm Owen Slavin, PhD, founder, past president, faculty and
supervisor at the Massachusetts Institute for Psychoanalysis, MIP;
author of The Adaptive Design of the Human Psyche: Psychoanalysis,
Evolutionary Biology, and the Therapeutic Process (with Daniel Kriegman),
and, in process, Original Loss: Human Identity and Existential Grief; as
a student, he worked as a teaching fellow at Harvard for Erik Erikson
THE CLINICAL ERIK ERIKSON
The twentieth century has been described as the time of man’s discovery of himself;
few have contributed more to this cause than Erik Erikson. The Clinical Erik Erikson:
A psychoanalytic method of engagement and activation highlights Erikson’s transform-
ing contributions to the field of psychoanalysis and honors his legacy by providing
unpublished clinical case illustrations of his psychotherapeutic work.
The publication of case material—simple memorable fragments and clinical
vignettes—brings the reader into Erikson’s consultation room, providing a portrait
of his clinical technique and demonstrating how he actually worked.
Stephen Schlein, an authority on Erikson, presents an illuminating account of
Erikson’s pioneering work through an exhaustive search of his early monographs on
child psychoanalysis, clinical writings, psychotherapeutic case studies, and participa-
tion at case conferences at The Austen Riggs Center.
Erikson’s writings reveal a psychoanalytic method of extraordinary richness that
emphasizes essential ingredients of an interpersonal-relational clinical method and
articulates interactional dimensions that have restorative potential. His vision focuses
on the interpersonal relationship, its powerful affects, and a belief that individ-
uals have a remarkable capacity for change. This book will be essential reading for
psychoanalysts and psychoanalytic psychotherapists.
Stephen Schlein, a clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst, received his clinical
training at The Austen Riggs Center where he first met and studied with Erik
Erikson. He was a member of the teaching faculty of the Harvard Medical School,
serving as a clinical supervisor. He taught with Erikson at the Erikson Center of
Cambridge Hospital and collaborated with him as the editor of Erikson’s selected
papers: A Way of Looking at Things. Currently he lectures on Erikson’s writings
throughout the United States and abroad. He serves on the teaching faculty at
the Massachusetts Institute for Psychoanalysis and as a guest faculty at the Boston
Psychoanalytic Institute. He maintains a clinical practice in Lexington, Massachusetts.
Erik Erikson (1969), Cotuit, Massachusetts. Photo by Jon Erikson
THE CLINICAL
ERIK ERIKSON
A psychoanalytic method of
engagement and activation
Stephen Schlein
First published 2016
by Routledge
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and by Routledge
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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2016 Stephen Schlein
The right of Stephen Schlein to be identified as author of this work
has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced
or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means,
now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording,
or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in
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Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation
without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Schlein, Stephen, author.
Title: The clinical Erik Erikson : a psychoanalytic method of engagement
and activation / Stephen Schlein.
Description: 1st Edition. | New York : Routledge, 2016. | Includes
bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2015036723| ISBN 9781138853317 (hardback) |
ISBN 9781138853355 (soft cover)
Subjects: LCSH: Psychoanalysis. | Developmental psychology. |
Erikson, Erik H. (Erik Homburger), 1902-1994.
Classification: LCC BF173 .S356 2016 | DDC 150.19/5092—dc23
LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015036723
ISBN: 978–1–138–85331–7 (hbk)
ISBN: 978–1–138–85335–5 (pbk)
ISBN: 978–1–315–72283–2 (ebk)
Typeset in Bembo
by Keystroke, Station Road, Codsall, Wolverhampton
EPIGRAPH
In an effort to establish his overall perspective and clinical method, Erikson wrote
in the preface to Young Man Luther (1958):
I will not be ashamed then, even as I analyze what is analyzable, to display
sympathy and empathy with a young man who (by no means lovable all of
the time) faced the problems of human existence in the most forward terms
of his era. I will use the word existential in this simplest connotation, mindful
that no school of thought has any monopoly on it.
(p. 22)
Written as a postscript for Joan Erikson’s book, Activity, Recovery, Growth (1976),
Erikson provided a developmental perspective on the essential environmental con-
ditions and ingredients necessary for growth:
Things that grow are without ambivalence, without triumph or complaint in
their clear indication of what will help them unfold or what will make them
wilt, and only demand that you apply to them the simplest wish to foster
growth and prevent decay.
(p. 265)
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CONTENTS
Preface and acknowledgments ix
1 Introductory remarks 1
2 Personal reflections on the 100th anniversary of Erik Erikson’s
birth 13
3 Perspectives on Erikson’s clinical-psychotherapeutic work with
children and adults 17
4 Configurations of children’s play: “Toys and Reasons” 29
5 Exploration in the interpretation of children’s play and child
psychoanalysis: “Psychoanalysis without Words” and “Play and
Cure” 39
6 Erikson and the clinical case conferences at The Austen Riggs
Center: visual observations and reflections about treatment 67
7 Adult psychoanalysis, Part I: an introduction to Erikson’s
psychotherapeutic work utilizing clinical case material 81
8 Adult psychoanalysis, Part II: an in-depth perspective of
Erikson’s clinical method: the story of James 95