The Psychoanalytic Cure

The state of "common unhappiness" presumably regarded by Freud as the end point of the psychoanalytic cure is examined as an ontological conviction reflected in a still-prevailing view of the self as ideally autonomous and fully demarcated from its surround. More recent contributors have envisioned individuation as relationally contingent rather than as essentially solitary. Yet, although more contemporary, most seem to embody a concept of social relatedness in the service of ultimately unidirectional self-demarcation. An argument is offered that attainment of a fully and inflexibly demarcated self, regardless of social contingency, leads to a state of discomfort, which I have termed self-encapsulation. This form of malaise is comparable to the disquietude addressed by Zen Buddhist meditation, and by some contemplative practices in Middle Eastern and Western religion. An altered ontological perspective on evolving psychoanalytic developmental theory comprehensively elaborated by Loewald and also found in the writings of Winnicott, Balint, and others, illuminates a healthy need for a generic decapsulation or depolarization of self-boundaries, including, but not limited to, boundaries with the social surround. Examples of decapsulation in daily life are provided. This outlook, illustrated by case material, is discussed as an improvement both on current maturational theory and on the theory of technique. This paper focuses on alterations in existential outlook, in baseline experience of self-inthe-world—the ontological dimension—as an outcome of the analytic cure. I suggest that the analyst's clinical attention to issues of self-polarization can facilitate changes in the analysand's self-state that (1) eventuate in a more adaptive psychoanalytic cure, and (2) are intriguingly comparable to goals sought by meditative practices in spiritual realms such as that of Zen Buddhism. In defining an alternative decentering or depolarizing approach, I am taking the liberty of characterizing the ontology of a conventional psychoanalytic cure as reflecting Freud's (1930) pessimistic denotation of "common unhappiness" as its end state. I hope to demonstrate that contemporary relational developments in psychoanalytic theory and practice confer only a partial alleviation of the limitations of Freud's model of a fully demarcated self. Admittedly, one treads on shifting sands when characterizing Freud's model of the self. While depicting a fully demarcated self as late as 1930, he undoubtedly had already introduced a radical revision of the classical Enlightenment ideal of a completely rational