Sidney Blatt’s Psychoanalytic Legacy: An Introduction

This special section of articles is dedicated to elucidating the psychoanalytic legacy of Sidney Blatt (1928–2014). Known for his many contributions to psychoanalysis, personality/developmental/clinical psychology, and psychotherapy research, Blatt was a formidable bridge builder across disciplines and perspectives. His ability to integrate theory, empirical research, and clinical practice rendered his work a source of inspiration for scholars and clinicians who value a psychodynamic perspective.

Those of us close to Sid Blatt are keenly aware of his fierce commitment to psychoanalysis. He was committed not just to the intellectual edifice and the method of treatment, but also to the intellectual and professional movement that began with Freud in Vienna and spread throughout the world. We are also aware that such commitment did not always come easy to Sid. He was acutely cognizant of the movement’s and the treatment’s limitations and flaws, chief of which was, in his opinion, psychoanalysts’ ambivalence toward empirical research. But Sid bore this tension with characteristic dignity and grace, and he used to posit that this tension reflects the human situation: all things are multilayered, and people and ideas are complex, sometimes seemingly contradictory. One must bear this, he thought, and do what one can to sort through (and respect) the complexity.

It was Sid’s inspiring ability to tolerate, even “play with,” tension and complexity, juxtaposed with his prodigious intellectual abilities, that enabled him to make his decades-long, diverse contribution to psychoanalytic theory, research, and clinical practice. Fortunately, for many, he did so by sharing his gifts with students and colleagues. It was this very tolerance and tenacity that allowed Sid to mentor, and/or work with, an incredibly diverse group of people, and to be able to work through differences of temperament and opinion in order to study and write about the human mind. Little wonder, then, that Sid’s students and colleagues, shortly after mourning his passing, were determined to commemorate his legacy. In this spirit, seven of us, Sid’s former students and/or collaborators (John Auerbach, Beatrice Beebe, Diana Diamond, Frank Lachmann, Patrick Luyten, and the two of us), have written these four articles discussing Sid’s contribution to psychoanalysis.

Sid once told one of us (GS), “I am first and foremost a clinical theorist.” While this statement might not be entirely accurate—Sid was “first and foremost” many things—it was clear that he was particularly passionate about clinical theory. We therefore commence this special tribute by considering his theoretical-philosophical contribution to psychoanalysis, namely, his stand on human nature and the human mind. As argued by the two of us, the three pillars of Blatt’s theoretical-philosophical position are cognitive, humanistic, and psychodynamic. Specifically, Blatt was in awe of the centrality of cognition, particularly mental representations of the world, in the human mind. He was adamantly benevolent with respect to the appreciation of individuals’ resilience and ability to grow, but this humanistic persuasion was far from being Pollyannaish, as he constantly emphasized the key influence of the psychodynamic unconscious in individuals’ development, psychopathology, and health.

Next, Patrick Luyten reviews Blatt’s most seminal contribution to psychoanalysis: his two-polarities theory of personality development and psychopathology. According to this theory, personality develops across the lifespan through a synergy between two fundamental pathways: interpersonal relatedness and self-definition. Disruptions of the synergistic development of both pathways leads, on this theory, to psychopathology. Luyten himself has been one of Blatt’s chief collaborators in advancing this theoretical and empirical work in its most recent forms, adding a strong neurobiological thrust to previous work by Blatt and colleagues. In the present article, Luyten reviews this neurobiological thrust, and draws some important implications for clinical assessment, while highlighting the specific contribution of the psychoanalytic perspective.

The next contribution is by Beatrice Beebe and Frank Lachmann, world-renowned experts on early development. Theirs is an empirical article, applying Blatt’s two-polarities model to the understanding of mother-child communication over the first four months of an infant’s life. Specifically, they collected data from 126 mother-child dyads, assessing moment-to-moment relating within the dyad. Maternal self-criticism, representing an emphasis on self-definition over interpersonal relatedness, was associated with lowered attention and emotion coordination, staying more “separate” from infants in these realms, compromising infant interactive efficacy. Dependent mothers and their infants showed reciprocal emotional vigilance, consistent with elevated neediness of emotional supply. These findings are strikingly consistent with Blatt’s two-polarities model.

The fourth contribution is by John Auerbach and Diana Diamond, both of whom are experts on the theoretical and empirical investigation of mental representations of self and others (i.e., “object relations”) using Blatt’s Object Relations Inventory (ORI; Blatt, Auerbach, and Levy 1997). The ORI is an investigator-based projective procedure in which respondents provide descriptions of self and significant others (mother, father, friends, former therapists, etc.), which investigators then score using a reliable manual based on object relations theory and Piaget’s cognitive-developmental theory (Blatt 1995). The ORI has inspired considerable research on personality development and psychopathology. Auerbach and Diamond chart the evolution of this research and identify an interesting pattern, whereby an early focus on cognition in this line of inquiry paved the way to a more recent focus on interpersonal relatedness, in turn mimicking Blatt’s description of the synergy between self-definition and interpersonal relatedness.

Concluding this special Blatt tribute is a commentary by Emanuel Berman, a well-known psychoanalytic thinker with specific expertise in the sociohistorical underpinnings of psychoanalytic theory. A long-time friend and colleague of Blatt, Berman has a strong command of Blatt’s theory and psychoanalytic contributions. In his commentary, Berman discusses the four articles through the lens of the debate on inclusivity-exclusivity in the history of psychoanalysis. Berman locates Blatt squarely—alongside thinkers such as Rapaport and Bowlby—in the inclusive camp, which seeks to engage psychoanalysis in a fruitful dialogue with other disciplines.

This is also the proper place to thank—wholeheartedly—Bonnie Litowitz (JAPA Editor) and Marilyn Herleth (Managing Editor) for their steady support and encouragement throughout the work on this tribute. We very much hope that it enables JAPA readers to gain an appreciation of Sidney Blatt’s legacy: his contributions to our field and his continuing inspiration for so many.