Marilyn Charles Analyzes and Expands on the Commentaries

I appreciate the opportunity to continue this conversation with those who have commented on my paper. Hearing commentary back, one can see what has been missing or gone unarticulated, which makes this type of dialogue very precious, particularly in this age of split speech, where too often there is insufficient engagement for learning to occur.

I will speak back to each of the commenters in turn. I appreciate Fred Alford’s highlighting the importance of actively supporting the growth and development of our children. I could not agree more. One of the advantages for me because of my work at the Austen Riggs Center is that I do have the opportunity to engage beyond the dyad in experiences that move toward growth and new learning. This environment refuses simple answers because there is always another perspective to be taken into account, continually reminding us how essential context is to meaning. I also agree that we neglect, at our peril, the everyday needs of those around us. Alford reminds us that proponents of psychoanalytic theory would do well to turn their attention to the social problems that ail us and also, more pointedly, to the healthy development of our children.

I was interested in Herbert Barry’s research, with which I was not familiar. I appreciate the lens he turns towards the interrelationships between cultural needs and expectations, as well as desired or adaptive traits. He reminds us how profoundly meanings are tied to cultural lenses and values. I also appreciate his highlighting of birth order as another important variable affecting development, reminding us that to some extent we each grow up in an environment not entirely like that of anyone else, including our siblings.

Donna Crawley focuses on psychosocial development as a context within which to consider the adaptive and maladaptive aspects of autonomy and interrelatedness. She turns her lens onto the changing course of interrelatedness across the lifespan, noting ways in which these needs change over the course of the life span, in relation to both one’s own aging and also the changing relationships with other generations and changing times.

Jay Einhorn turns an even wider lens onto the problem, noting ways in which societal changes have imposed different de-

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mands on citizens. In simpler societies, he suggests, authoritative parenting was likely adaptive, teaching children how to become able members of the group. As change has become broader and more rapid, however, we need to be able to adapt to those changes rather than merely relying on whatever rules were previously in play. From that perspective, he sees psychodynamic psychotherapy arising in relation to the increasing need to be able to adapt to the evolving exigencies of time and circumstance. A clinician, Einhorn ends where Alford began: stressing the importance of bringing our learning to the important tasks of parenting, teaching, and being better members of the human community.

Ken Fuchsman focuses on dependency in relation to the increasing diversity of families today, complicating the conversation in his acknowledgment of the variety of family environments in which a child might find him or herself. Importantly, he notes ways in which the instability of marriage as an institution leaves many children with not only unstable households but also unstable parents, who “may have trouble regulating themselves, and may be less capable of helping children with their distress.”

Fuchsman then turns to the adolescent struggle for autonomy, noting that autonomy is not something that is fully or finally achieved, but rather must be negotiated in successive interchanges as one establishes one’s place in work and civic environments. As a clinician, my lens turns increasingly toward the early negotiations that take place between the self and others, through which blossoms the possibility of becoming a separate person in relation to others’ needs and values that might be different or similar to one’s own. That development is built on the capacity for autonomy and relatedness, which I believe are fundamentally interrelated. But I take Fuchsman’s caution that autonomy is not something one ultimately achieves but rather continues to negotiate and develop, as is also true of one’s capacity to be deeply and respectfully related to others.

In her discussion of the particular challenges regarding dependence and interdependence in individuals with intellectual disabilities, Christine Jensen points to challenges that adhere to trying to provide protection without overriding autonomy. She points toward historical swings between what she likens to authoritative and permissive parenting styles, each position adhering to an ethical imperative that is also relatively blind to some of the ramifications of their interventions. She highlights the inevitable difficulties in

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trying to offer protection without undermining the autonomy and choice that also make it possible to learn.

Mindfully serving those who may benefit most from our assistance if we can be sufficiently respectful seems to me to be at the core of the dilemma highlighted by Jensen, which is also at the core of the challenge highlighted by Paul Salstrom in his musings on these issues. Salstrom invites us along as he ponders some of the complexities of autonomy and relatedness through the lens of his own experience. He then writes of trying to invite his students to ponder through their own unique lenses. That, for me, is the hope of the future: having educators, parents, and leaders in various fields who actively invite curiosity and thinking in those they encounter.

Jensen points to Bion’s notable crossroads between growth and evasion, that choice point between more mindfully taking on a challenge versus allowing our fear to undermine developmental possibilities. Those of us who work in systems of care, of whatever sort, are inevitably faced with the challenges of working with our anxieties mindfully, trying to think through what is at stake for us and for those we serve, and therefore how to make the issues sufficiently clear that they can be worked at directly rather than moving too quickly toward autocratic solutions we deem protective.

As time goes by, I am increasingly drawn toward the challenge at the heart of Bion’s seventh servant, or what he terms the truth instinct. Although psychoanalysis shows us that there are inevitably unconscious forces driving us that we cannot control and may not even be aware of, psychoanalysis has also taught me to be more conscious of my own inner regulatory mechanism that offers navigational feedback as I veer toward or away from my own internal sense of truth. That compass is the star I try to steer by, making use of what I have learned about myself and others, trying to be willingly curious about what more might be at play than I am initially aware of.

I think that developing the capacity for registering and reflectively considering and organizing our understanding of those internal cues is facilitated by the type of reflective space offered by psychoanalysis, which, of course, is also offered by other types of practices that invite deep levels of contemplation. At the core of such practices are, I think, the deeper truths that are promoted by various camps through diverse language structures but which seem

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to have, at their core, a recognition of the similarity and difference that adheres between all living beings. The hope of a better future might lie in our ability to recognize those truths and learn to live with them, to identify that we are all connected and yet each unique. At some level, our actions affect all others, but only we can contribute in precisely the ways we do. From that perspective, we each have an important place in this world that is worth struggling toward.

Psychoanalysis recognizes that paradox is inherent in being human. We can’t escape our dependence on one another, nor our essential singularity. That nexus seems to be what Winnicott described in his musings on the area of creativity, which also seems to be what Lacan came to in his Borromean knot (the intertwined “real,” “imaginary,” and “symbolic”), much like Bion’s truth instinct. Psychoanalysis has many languages, but at the core is an interest in the complexities of human experience and a willingness to leave room for having to work with complex problems over time. How we invite our children, students, patients, friends, and colleagues to better tolerate and work with unresolvable tangles—such as that between dependence and independence—with interest, curiosity, and a willingness to both develop ideas and alter them or cast them aside is a worthy challenge.

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