A New Drive-Relational-Neuroscience Synthesis for Psychoanalysis by van der Linde Leon;

Author:van der Linde, Leon;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
Published: 2019-09-30T00:00:00+00:00

Kernberg (1976, 2001)

Whereas Slavin and Kriegman (1992) apply evolutionary design mechanisms as an attempted integrative measure, Kernberg (1976) accords “affect dispositions” (p. 88) such an integrative role, claiming that affects are “the primary motivations of behaviour” (Kernberg, 2001, p. 604). Kernberg’s (1976, 2001) synthesis therefore sets out to “develop a contemporary psychoanalytic theory” (Kernberg, 2001, p. 605) by using affect theory as a frame of reference to integrate drive and object-relations theory.

Kernberg’s (1976, 2001) tripartite framework. Kernberg (1976) applies “new findings in such fields as ethology, neurophysiology, psychophysiology of affect, and general learning theory” (p. 85) in his “reformulation of Freud’s dual instinct theory” (p. 86). This reformulation delineates a “tripartite structure of the mind” (Kernberg, 2001, p. 604) seeing psychic function to be consolidated in an overall, “suprasystem” (Kernberg, 1976, p. 85) that regulates human behaviour, comprised of instinctual, object-relations and affective component systems or subsystems (p. 85).

According to Kernberg (1976), the first component system, namely instincts, is “represented by psychologically organised drive systems” (p. 85), described as “complex, hierarchical organizations of behaviour centred on major drive systems … [such as] ... fight-flight, hunger, [and] sex” (p. 86). These “instinctive building blocks” (p. 86) are considered to inform “inborn perceptive and behaviour patterns which determine early attachment, inborn affect dispositions (represented by the combined activation of hypothalamic and other reward or punishment centres), the nonspecific reticular activating systems, neurovegetative discharge patterns, and structured memory traces of increased extroceptive and introceptive perceptions” (pp. 86-87).

A second component system of the “personality at large” (Kernberg, 1976, p. 85) is comprised of units of “internalized object relations” (p. 85). Kernberg (1976) proposes that during initial mother-infant interaction, “primitive affect dispositions ... are activated in the context of [the infant’s establishing of] primitive units of internalized object relations” (p. 113). Such early “self-object-affect units” (p. 87) are seen as “constellations of affectively integrated and cognitively stored perceptions of affective, physiological, behavioural, and environmental changes” (p. 87), albeit not fully differentiated. As these object-relations units gradually “become more complex structures” (p. 113) and co-differentiate along with the drives, they become intimately linked with the organisation of the “overall psychic structures” (p. 113).

The third component of the overall, higher level psychological or suprasystems, comprises affect dispositions, which, according to Kernberg (1976), “constitute the primary motivational systems” (p. 87), integrating “the perception of (1) central (pleasurable or unpleasurable) states, (2) physiological discharge phenomena, (3) inborn perceptive and behaviour patterns, and (4) environmental responses” (p. 87). Kernberg contends that the intensity of the instincts and the degree of object representations “depends on the constitutionally determined intensity of affect activation and ... the extent to which there is or is not an average, expectable environment, a sufficiency of primary maternal function” (pp. 88-89).

However, it is unclear how Kernberg (1976) can describe instincts as building blocks that determine inborn affect dispositions, but then proceed to accord affect a primary organising status. Similarly, given that Kernberg accepts that the intensity of affect activation is determined constitutionally, it is not clear how he can ignore the implication that affect is an ancillary function of endogenous drive operations.

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