Drive, Ego, Object, And Self: A Synthesis For Clinical Work

In this important new book, the noted theoretician Fred Pine provides a synthesis of the four conceptual domains of psychoanalysis: drives, ego functioning, object relations, and self experience. He argues that a focus on the clinical phenomena themselves, and not on the theoretical edifices built around them, readily illuminates the inevitable integration of the several sets of phenomena in each person's unique psychological organization. With superb clarity, Pine shows how one or another or more of these becomes central to a particular individual's psychopathology. Drawing on a wealth of detailed clinical material -- brief vignettes, process notes of sessions, and full analyses -- he vividly demonstrates how a broad multimodel perspective enhances the treatment process, and is, in fact, its natural form. He also applies these ideas to such crucial clinical issues as preoedipal pathology and ego defect, the so-called symbiotic phase, and the mutative factors in treatment. Conceptually elegant and immensely practical, this highly original work is certain to be, in the words of Arnold Cooper, "a guide for theorists and clinicians for many years to come."

Fred Pine is Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine/Montefiore Medical Center, author of Developmental Theory and Clinical Process (1985) and, with Margaret Mahler and Anni Bergman, The Psychological Birth of the Human Infant (Basic Books, 1975) and a practicing adult psychoanalyst.