THE MASTERSON GROUP, P.C.

Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy
of the Personality Disorders

Descriptions of Books by James F. Masterson, M.D.

THE REAL SELF - A Developmental, Self, and Object Relations Approach

"A highly readable, down-to-earth, clinically relevant tour de force."
--Leo Goldberger, Ph.D.

This latest volume by Dr. Masterson crowns and brings to fullness his 30 years of clinical research linking normal separation-individuation with object relations theory and developmental psychopathology. It focuses on the core problem - the lack of a concept of the self integrated with object relations theory. By adding a theory of the self to object relations theory, the author both enlarges and more acutely focuses the therapeutic perspective, thereby enhancing work with patients. He also further enables therapists to clarify their own real selves.

This theory of the real self enables a shift of the focus in both development and disorder from the object (object relations) to the self; we can think of the self with its objects and ego rather than in terms of only objects and ego. The work of a therapist revolves around a person with a self, not a collection of objects and ego.

This added perspective on the self also provides additional focus for observation and intervention; it rounds out and completes our understanding of the psychopathology. Beyond that, it focuses the clinical work closer to the patient's experience of distress and provides a more immediate vocabulary for communication.

Masterson's thesis is that, for the real self to finally emerge from the symbiotic union and assume its full capacities, identification, acknowledgment and support are required - from the mother and father in early development and from the therapist in psychotherapy. He describes and illustrates the therapeutic technique of communicative matching which provides the necessary acknowledgment while maintaining therapeutic neutrality.

Part I reviews psychoanalytic theories of the ego and the emerging real self: its structure, function, development, and its psychopathology and treatment.

Part II explores the relationship between maternal libidinal acknowledgment and the development of the real self by a cross-cultural comparison of child raising in Japan, Israel, and the United States. It then describes the influence of social and cultural factors on the functioning of the real self in the United States.

Part III on Creativity and the Real Self draws upon fairy tales, John Paul Sartre, Edvard Munch, and the life and work of the novelist Thomas Wolfe to show how for some artists creativity becomes a crucial vehicle in their search to establish a real self. This section illuminates the nature of personal and artistic creativity and describes how a professional interest in the functioning of the real self leads inevitably to an interest in the ultimate of self-expression - creativity.

Of special interest are the numerous new case illustrations drawn from Masterson's extensive clinical work showing how acknowledgment and support enable the real self to fully emerge from the symbiotic union and to assume its full capacities.

The Real Self provides a unique synthesis of theory and clinical expertise that succeeds in filling in the gaps in developmental theory and object relations in the service of a more creative and effective psychotherapy.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
James F. Masterson, M.D., is founder and director of the Masterson Group and Masterson Institute for Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy in New York City. He is also the founding father of The Society of Adolescent Psychiatry and past president of its New York Chapter. He is the author of a dozen books, including The Search for the Real Self (1988), The Emerging Self (1991), and Disorders of the Self (1995). Several of his books are required reading in courses throughout the country, and many have been translated into other languages. He has also written numerous articles and papers for leading journals both here and abroad.

Dr. Masterson maintains a private practice and is Clinical Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry at the Joan and Sanford I. Weill Medical College of Cornell University.