Herbert Rosenfeld's Research On Psychoanalysis

Herbert Alexander Rosenfeld (1910-1986) was a famous Germany-born English psychoanalyst. As one of enthusiastic follower of Melanie Klein, originator of the theory of object relation, he made several post-Kleinian innovations in his clinical and theoretical contributions. Rosenfeld mapped out with great clarity the various types and motives of projective identification and distinguished projective identification used for purposes of ridding the self of unpleasant or unbearable mental content from projective identification used for communication. Rosenfeld put forward the first modern theory on pathological narcissism after Freud. He saw narcissism as narcissistic object relations which often play the role of defence. He differentiated between libidinal and destructive aspects of narcissism, especially stressed on destructive aspect which was directed against any positive libidinal object relationship. In his opinion, destructive narcissism was closely connected with death instinct. Rosenfeld also described how confusional states arise when the normal and structuring splitting between "good" and "bad" breaks down. If envy predominates destructive, attacks are mounted against the "good" object itself so that it becomes impossible to distinguish "good" from "bad" and unbearable states of confusion results.Rosenfeld devoted all his life to explore the psychoanalytic skills and the clinical practices and its applications. He developed his own views on psychopathology, stressed on that the patient always hold a strong desire to communicate, analyst must understand patient exactly. He suggested analysts keep an open mind and try not to fix on some special roles. Rosenfeld’s greatest clinical contribution was his delineation of impasse. He discussed different reasons for impasse:the breakdown of communication between patient and analyst or collusion between them. Meanwhile, he signed out some ways to deal with impasse such as keeping the analyst’s flexibility, trying to avoid collusion and so on.Rosenfeld’s contributions to psychoanalysis primarily cover putting forward the systematic theory of object relation, deepening the research of development mechanism beneath object relation, discussing the normal and abnormal state of object relation, developing the psychoanalytic treatment techniques. The main limitations of her theory lie in the following aspects, some terms having not been declined definitely and few concept remaining disputes, psychological mechanism of children and normal adult having not been exploded more as far as they could. In addition, Rosenfeld encouraged other psychoanalysts to develop object relations theory, and had an important influence on psychoanalytic applications especially on intersubjectivity therapy.