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The Psychodynamics of Self-Observation

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Psychoanalytic Dialogues, 17(4): 551–574, 2007

The Psychodynamics of Self-Observation

Fredrik Falkenström, M.A.

A framework for thinking about self-observation in relational psychoanalytic

terms is described, in which three different levels of self-observation are dis-
tinguished. These levels are differentiated according to the kind of intra-
psychic relationship enacted (monadic, dyadic, or triangular). Each level of
observation is discussed separately with focus on the dynamic forces inhibit-
ing or facilitating self-observation within each level. Dyadic and triangular
levels of self-observation are well known in psychoanalytic theories, but a
monadic, or one-dimensional level in which the ego is not split, is also de-
scribed. This form of observation and the psychodynamics involved is dis-
cussed in relation to Bion’s concept “O” and theory from Buddhist psychol-
ogy. Finally, the interrelatedness of levels is described, and a brief case
description from a session of psychoanalytic psychotherapy is used to illus-
trate how the three levels of observation interact.

T
he issue of self-knowledge and insight has been a subject that many
of the world’s great philosophers and spiritual thinkers have grap-
pled with for thousands of years. As is well known, Freud made in-
sight the goal of psychoanalysis, and although in modern psychoanalytic
theory insight is no longer seen as the only road to salvation it is still held in
high esteem. But what do analysts mean by insight? We would probably all
wish for the grand insight that would solve all our problems forever, but I
believe most analysts today see insight as an ongoing process that is never
quite achieved. The evolution of psychoanalytic treatments from an em-
phasis on discrete symptoms to character analysis has lead to a situation in
which analysis in some respects is, and should be, interminable (Freud,
1937).
Seen in the context of normal psychological development, it is perhaps
not surprising that this is so. Throughout life, each new phase of develop-

Fredrik Falkenström is a clinical psychologist and psychotherapist at the Young Adults

Counselling Centre (Samtalscentrum Unga Vuxna) in Nyköping, Sweden. He is also a
part-time research assistant at the Department of Behavioural Sciences and Learning at
Linköping University.

551 © 2007 The Analytic Press, Inc.

552 Fredrik Falkenström

ment brings its own particular issues and conflicts to be resolved (Erikson,
1985). From this perspective, the ideal outcome of analytic treatment
would be if the patient acquires the means for continuing to learn from ex-
perience in a productive way throughout life. In Analysis Terminable and In-
terminable , Freud (1937) grappled with the issue of “prophylactic” treat-
ment, that is, treatment not just for conflicts that are currently active but
also for ones that might arise in the future. Freud dismissed the only two al-
ternatives he came up with, to artificially produce new conflicts in the
transference or to rouse them in the analysand’s imagination by talking
about them and explaining that they may arise in the future.
However, after Freud analysts have come up with another alternative,
namely, that patients internalize the analyzing function of the analyst so
that they may continue analysis internally after termination (e.g., Horney,
1942; Hoffer, 1950; Meltzer, 1967; Ticho, 1967). In theory, this would solve
the problem of prophylactic treatment. Still, it is unknown how often this
ideal outcome is actually achieved in practice. One of the most ambitious
research projects on the outcomes of psychoanalysis and psychoanalytically
oriented psychotherapy, the Stockholm Outcome of Psychoanalysis and
Psychotherapy Project (Sandell et al., 2000; Blomberg, Lazar, and Sandell,
2001), showed that patients who had been in psychoanalysis or, to a lesser
degree, psychoanalytically oriented psychotherapy continued to improve 3
years after termination of treatment. Exploratory analyses of posttermina-
tion interviews with a subgroup of these patients showed that the patients
who continued to improve after termination were more likely to describe
using self-analysis than those who did not (Falkenström et al., 2007). This
preliminary study admittedly does not prove that psychoanalytic treat-
ments help patients deal with future conflicts that arise after termination,
although the data suggest that some patients might achieve this kind of
outcome.1
If we are to help our patients to deal not just with present difficulties but
to acquire or reinforce a generalized capacity for self-observation, it is im-
portant to know something about the process of self-observation and the
dynamics that facilitate or obstruct it. Within psychoanalysis, self-observa-
tion has traditionally been described in terms of a split in the ego between

1Self-analysis and self-observation are obviously related phenomena. As used in this pa-
per, self-analysis is a broader term that includes self-observation as its most important part.
Self-observation is defined as the capacity to observe the self and its relations to others in the
present moment (Safran, 2002), whereas self-analysis is a more complex activity that may
also include, for example, reflections on the historical development of the self.
Psychodynamics of Self-Observation 553

an observing and an observed part, engendered through identification with

the analyzing function of the analyst (Sterba, 1934). Most analysts have fol-
lowed Sterba in speaking about self-observation in dyadic terms, as a rela-
tionship between two parts of the ego. More recently, some authors have
suggested another way of conceptualizing self-observation as internal trian-
gulation (Britton, 1989, 1998, 2003; Benjamin, 1990; Aron, 2000; Josephs,
2003). This might be seen as reflecting clinical and theoretical develop-
ment, in that analysts have become able to link the observing ego to the dy-
namics of the Oedipus complex and the depressive position (Britton,
1998). Specifically, if the observing ego is best understood as a relationship
involving not two but three parties, issues of exclusion, rivalry, voyeurism
(Josephs, 2003), and so on,become important in understanding the
psychodynamics of self-observation.
However, I believe that self-observation might usefully be described in
both dyadic and triangular terms. Dyadic observation would then involve
knowing and understanding discrete emotional states for what they are,
whereas triangular observation would be a more complex form of observa-
tion in which emotions are understood in relation to internal and external
object relations. The psychodynamics involved on each level would also
differ, in that preoedipal and paranoid–schizoid dynamics determine the ca-
pacity for dyadic observation, whereas oedipal and depressive position dy-
namics are involved in triangular observation.
Finally, there is a third type of self-observation that cannot be described
in either dyadic or triadic relational terms. In this paper I call it “one-di-
mensional observation.” With this I mean a level of self-observation in
which the ego is not split. However, to speak of “self-observation” on this
level is paradoxical because self-observation without a self that is separate
from the observed object is a logical impossibility. One-dimensional obser-
vation is at the level of being aware of any experience without trying to un-
derstand or change it but just experiencing and being with it.
Next is a more in-depth description of each of these three levels of
self-observation as well as a delineation of the forces inhibiting or facilitat-
ing self-observation within each level. I begin with dyadic, or two-dimen-
sional, self-observation followed by triangular observation of object rela-
tionships. The reason for starting with these two levels is that they cover
the two most common ways of thinking about observing ego within psycho-
analytic writings. My conceptualizations, especially on the dyadic level, dif-
fer somewhat from traditional theories in the direction of a relational/struc-
ture model of the mind (Mitchell, 1988). I then go on to describe what I call
the one-dimensional observation level and the psychodynamics operative
554 Fredrik Falkenström

within it. The dynamics related to self-observation on this level have, as far
as I know, not been spelled out before in a systematic way within the frame-
work of psychoanalytic theory. Finally, the relationships between levels are
described, and an example from an early session of psychoanalytic psycho-
therapy is used to illustrate this interrelatedness.

Two-Dimensional Self-Observation:
Containment of Mental States

With two-dimensional self-observation, I refer to the simple act of under-

standing—in the sense of being able to observe and name—the momentary
emotional state of self or other. This kind of observation requires the sepa-
ration of awareness into an observing and an observed part, creating a
dyadic internal relationship. On this level a benign, understanding internal
presence is needed to contain potentially disturbing, confusing, or painful
mental states. However, in many patients there is instead often a harsh,
punishing internal object that is trying to eradicate and destroy painful
mental states in various ways. The dialectic between these polar internal
object relationships can be said to be the hallmark of the paranoid–schizoid
position and also constitute the central psychodynamics involved in dyadic
self-observation.
Central to my understanding of the dynamics of this kind of self-observa-
tion is the need for containment of affective states. In this I follow Bion
(1962) and other post-Kleinian authors (e.g., Britton, 1998), although I dif-
fer from these in one important respect that I hope becomes clear in the fol-
lowing: Instead of seeing guilt as arising from a death instinct projected out-
wards onto the object, I see guilt as based on unconscious perception of the
caregiver’s reactions to the infant’s needs for containment. When the in-
fant repeatedly perceives the caregiver as distressed by its affective displays,
guilt and/or shame can sometimes be so overwhelming that the infant de-
velops insecure attachment patterns. I elaborate this further, but first I de-
scribe the theoretical and empirical foundations for my thinking.

The Need for Containment in the Development

of Secure Attachment

As Bion (1959, 1962) writes, the development of a capacity for understand-

ing mental states, what he terms alpha function, begins in infancy in the re-
Psychodynamics of Self-Observation 555

lationship between the containing and the contained object. The caregiver,
who acts as the containing object, receives the infant’s expressions and
translates them into meaningful information that is then given back in a
form that the infant can process. In this way an external alpha function is
provided that the infant in time can internalize.
In his 1959 paper “Attacks on Linking,” Bion describes the deleterious
effects on the capacity for self-observation when the process of infantile
containment goes seriously wrong. Hinshelwood (unpublished) described
two forms deficient containment can take: the object that takes in the in-
fant’s projections but breaks (i.e., the container is unable to process the
emotional states of the infant and instead panics) and the object that does
not take in but rejects (the “projective identification-rejecting object”;
Bion, 1962). Fonagy et al. (2002) made a similar distinction between two
major forms of deviant mirroring2: “Correct but unmarked” mirroring is
when the caregiver takes in the infant’s emotion but is unable to process it
and gives it back in an unmodified form that makes the infant believe that
the emotion belongs to the caregiver, which does not modulate but rather
escalates the infant’s distress. This description is quite similar to the con-
tainer that breaks, although more specific and operationalized for research
purposes. “Incorrect but marked” mirroring, on the other hand, means that
the caregiver reflects the wrong emotional state to the infant as if it were
the infant’s emotion. This second form of deviant mirroring seems to be a
development of Bion’s theory of the projective identification-rejecting ob-
ject.
There seem, thus, to be two distinct forms that deviant containment can
take. My main argument in the following section is that these two forms of
deviant containment lead to two distinct transference patterns, based on
unbearable guilt and shame, respectively. In the first, containment needs
are felt to be destructive to the object, leading to feelings of guilt and need
for self-punishment. In the second, needs are instead felt to be shameful,
leading to withdrawal and/or narcissistic inflation. These two patterns also
correspond to the major forms of insecure attachment, the anxious ambiva-
lent and the anxious avoidant attachment patterns, as well as to Blatt’s
(e.g., Blatt & Shichman, 1983) anaclitic and introjective personality con-
figurations. Because the affect of guilt has the inherent propensity to move

2As used by Fonagy et al. (2002), mirroring refers to the external manifestations of con-
tainment. The term containment is often used to refer to the internal processing of the care-
giver or therapist, whereas mirroring in this context refers to the process of reflecting back
what has been processed.
556 Fredrik Falkenström

people toward each other (Morrison, 1983) it is reasonable to assume that a

personality configuration that is overly concerned with relationships (the
anaclitic and the anxious ambivalent attachment pattern) is a configura-
tion motivated by guilt (Eagle, 2003). It is also reasonable to assume that a
personality configuration characterized by avoidance of others (the
introjective and anxious avoidant pattern) is motivated by shame, an affect
that has the inherent propensity to make people retreat from others. The
following are two brief clinical vignettes that I believe exemplify how these
forms of deviant containment are revived in the transference.

Unbearable Guilt About Needs for Containment

Ms. C was 17 years old when I first saw her, first in once-a-week psychother-
apy and later twice a week. She had an extremely vivid fantasy life, includ-
ing dreams and visual hallucinations. She was also very suspicious of inter-
pretations that were too far removed from her immediate experience,
feeling these to be accusations implying her being guilty for traumas she had
suffered. She was prone to interpreting my comments as attacks, and she
seemed to have very little sense of me as a person trying to understand her.
I, on the other hand, often felt overwhelmed by her dramatic material,
which often involved violence and sex and which she recounted in great
distress and often in close detail. I here limit myself to one aspect of her
transference that is important for the discussion that follows: Ms. C often
said, either spontaneously or in response to a question from me, that she
thought that I, due to my education and profession as psychologist, was
emotionally invulnerable (at least in regard to my patients). When investi-
gating this fantasy, it turned out that thinking otherwise (i.e., that I could
be hurt, excited, angry, etc., by what she was telling me) would make her
feel intolerably guilty because it would mean that her needs made me suffer.
Thus, to endure being in therapy at all she had to obliterate any awareness
of me as a separate, feeling human being. In other relationships the opposite
was true; only the needs of the other could be attended to while her own
had to be denied. Signs of my having feelings were often very anxiety pro-
voking to Ms. C. For example, in one session I got very touched by some-
thing she said, and tears welled up in my eyes. Ms. C commented on this,
looking troubled. Her associations were that she had destroyed me and that
she needed to take care of me.
One aspect of this transference pattern is the idea that containment
needs are destructive to the object. The origin of this transference fantasy is
Psychodynamics of Self-Observation 557

probably in part an accurate observation that the caregiver was unable to

contain the infant’s emotional states and instead displayed the “correct but
unmarked” mirroring style described by Fonagy et al. (2002). The infant
thus seems unconsciously to have drawn the conclusion that the need for
containment is destructive to the object. When this happens, the infant
internalizes a damaged container, and mental states need to be handled
through more primitive mechanisms. Projective identification3 is used to
unconsciously expel unbearable mental states into an external other,
whereas the mind state of this other needs to be denied because of guilt. All
signs of the object’s having a mind with a capacity to be touched and to suf-
fer is experienced as persecution, because this threatens to bring up guilt
that cannot be tolerated by the ego. To defend against this, the patient of-
ten identifies with the persecutory object in self-destructive acting out. Not
infrequently there is also a compulsive need to take care of objects per-
ceived to be damaged and an intolerance of separation and growth because
of fears of damaging a loved object (Modell, 1971).
This transference fantasy is related to the container that takes in but
cannot process the infant’s emotions and is seen most clearly in patients
with borderline personality disorder. Still, I submit that some version of this
pattern exists in less disturbed patients with anxious ambivalent attach-
ment patterns as well, patients who are preoccupied with relationships at
the expense of knowing their own needs and emotions.

Unbearable Shame About Containment Needs

A second brief clinical description illustrates another transference configu-

ration detrimental to observation of mental states in self and other. Ms. D
was 22 years old when she first sought psychotherapy. At that time she was
not in great distress, although she knew she needed therapy because of past
traumatic experiences (physical and sexual). The psychologist she saw for
evaluation reflected to Ms. D that she seemed to have blocked out her feel-
ings massively. This reflection touched Ms. D deeply, and they agreed to
put her on a waiting list for long-term psychotherapy. When I saw her about
6 months later she described states of depression and hypomanic activity al-
ternating from week to week. In her first session she described a painful
feeling in her stomach that she associated to a feeling of “unhappy love.”

3I use the term projective identification here in the interpersonal sense (e.g., Ogden, 1979),

not in the more general sense used by Kleinians.

558 Fredrik Falkenström

She also told me she had been thinking a lot about what her previous psy-
chologist had told her about blocking her feelings out, saying it felt like a
wall inside her that she needed to break through.
It soon turned out that she had a massive need to block out her therapist
as well. Despite best intentions and a strong manifest motivation for ther-
apy, she cancelled one-fourth of her appointments during the first year of
her once-a-week psychotherapy. Instead, she made regular visits to her
doctor (often at the same time that she had her therapy appointment, so
that she had to cancel it) because of severe stomach cramps that could find
no physical explanation. This behavior of course made it difficult to get
close to her, and after a while I started to think that this might be its func-
tion. When I began to interpret her need to keep me at a distance because
of fears of feeling dependent on me, she started to come more reliably to
therapy and her stomach cramps became less frequent. At the same time,
however, her emotional life was becoming very unstable, and at times she
felt completely out of control and extremely suicidal. We now increased the
frequency of therapy sessions to twice weekly. She alternated between
keeping emotional distance from me, sometimes being extremely disparag-
ing of me as a person and as a therapist and being somewhat more open and
trusting about herself. Every move toward more trust was, however, fol-
lowed by a violent negative therapeutic reaction in which she viciously at-
tacked our therapeutic work, herself (by cutting her wrists and underarms),
and me. She was scornful about my interpretations and my therapeutic atti-
tude, and I often felt incompetent as a therapist as well as feeling a diffuse
sense of shame about having thought that I meant something to her.
For Ms. D, dependency seemed to be associated with unbearable shame
and inadequacy. Therefore she had developed a “pathological grandiose
self” (Kernberg, 1975) to defend against the unbearably shameful depend-
ent part of her self. The therapist’s countertransference shame can thus be
seen as the result of the patient identifying with the contemptuous grandi-
ose self, projecting her shameful dependent part “into” the therapist.
I believe that the case of Ms. D can be seen as an example of the pattern
resulting when the containing object has rejected the infant’s needs for
containment. This pattern is related to the anxious avoidant attachment
style and to pathological narcissism (Goodman, 2003). These individuals
seem to have drawn the conclusion not that containment needs are de-
structive to the object but that needs are weak and disgusting or contempt-
ible. What is internalized is not a damaged container but an impenetrable
one. This leads to a deep sense of shame about containment needs and fears
of annihilation should these needs be exposed to a disgusted or rejecting
Psychodynamics of Self-Observation 559

object. The alternative is to try to obliterate needs for others and retreat
into self-sufficiency. The most severe cases are the ones referred to in the
literature as destructive narcissism (Rosenfeld, 1987), whereas in less se-
vere cases shame about containment needs can manifest as shyness and so-
cial inhibition without the complete annihilation of the capacity to observe
mental states.

Guilt, Shame, and the Superego

When writing about guilt and shame, I refer to the subjective emotional
states that are felt in the tension between actions and moral standards in
the case of guilt and between actual self and ego ideals in the case of shame.
If the different functions of the superego are compared with a court of law,
moral standards and ego ideals can be compared with the law itself. Other
important functions in a court of law are the ones of prosecutor, defense
counsel, and judge. In a court of law, the functions of these people are to
regulate guilt—that is, guilt in its legal sense. Translated into psychological
language, the sense of guilt comes about as a discrepancy between actions
and the “laws” part of the superego. The other, more active parts of the su-
perego can then be likened to prosecutor, judge, and executioner, whose
functions are to regulate guilt.
Like Wurmser (2004), I believe that one of the most important functions
of the “archaic” or “ego-destructive” superego is to defend against traumat-
ically overwhelming affect, and foremost among these affects are guilt and
shame (see also Carveth, 2001). This form of superego can be likened to
prosecutor, judge, and executioner at the same time. The ego-destructive
superego and the observing ego seem to somehow occupy the same psychic
space, so that the two cannot coexist at the same moment. When affect
cannot be contained by the ego, the ego-destructive superego takes the
place of self-observation.
The description given so far, with guilt being associated with one type of
personality organization and shame with another is obviously a simplifica-
tion. All children are likely to experience their caregiver as at times over-
whelmed by and at times rejecting of needs for containment. Similarly,
both guilt and shame are universal human affects. Still, it seems to me that
many adult patients’ dynamics are more readily described in terms of either
guilt or shame being most predominant. Adult attachment research has
also been able to reliably classify most insecurely attached individuals into
either a pattern of preoccupation with or dismissing of relationships (Main,
560 Fredrik Falkenström

2000). The difference, however, is a matter of degree rather than being ab-
solute, and there are cases that fall in between (Golan, Blatt, and Ford,
2003; Goodman, 2003).
This way of conceptualizing guilt and shame differs from some tradi-
tional formulations in which shame is seen as a developmentally more im-
mature emotion than guilt, the latter being seen as requiring some sense of
concern for the object (Winnicott, 1963). To equate the sense of guilt with
a capacity for concern for the object as some authors do is, however, prob-
lematic. In my opinion, concern for the object requires one to be able to
bear guilt, so that one does not need to compulsively restore the object that
one believes one has destroyed (see also Modell, 1971). If guilt is felt but
cannot be tolerated, any reparation is likely to be done for narcissistic pur-
poses rather than out of concern for the object, because when dependency
is absolute death of the object is equated with death of the self (Eigen,
1981; Carveth, 2001).
When guilt and shame cannot be tolerated, the capacity to learn from
experience is diminished. What is needed is the faith to dare risking annihi-
lation of the object, or—as Steiner (1993) put it—allowing the object to
die. This corresponds to what Winnicott (1971) called object usage, in
which the object is destroyed in fantasy while experienced as surviving in
reality—making possible a relationship to the real object in contrast to the
“subjective object” based on projection and introjection (Eigen, 1981).
True concern for the object thus requires of one to overcome guilt to be able
to see beyond one’s projections and introjections to the real other
(Benjamin, 1990).
In Winnicott’s description, the motivation behind object usage is an ag-
gressive or destructive impulse. Although I believe this may often be the
case, I don’t think it is necessarily so. I believe that the motivation behind
object usage originally is the need for containment of painful mental states.
The content of what needs to be contained may be aggressive feelings, but
it may just as well be loving or sexual ones. In the case of Ms. C, for exam-
ple, it turned out that not only was she afraid of her own hatred but sexual-
ity was also felt to be destructive.
However, if the need for containment is not initially met, the infant
needs to pursue its needs more vigorously, that is, with more aggression, so
that the containing object might eventually come to recognize its needs.
This is why aggression in some form is always present when needs for con-
tainment have not been met. The problem with this is when the container
is perceived as breaking, because then it is not likely that more aggression
behind expressions will lead to the desired outcome. Similarly, when the
Psychodynamics of Self-Observation 561

object is unable to take in emotional expressions, more aggressive pursuit of

containment is often likely to lead to more violent rejections. The alterna-
tive is to identify with the aggressor either in internal self-destructive activ-
ities or in externally directed hatred and violence.4

Three-Dimensional Self-Observation:
Reflecting on Object Relations

When the observation of simple mind states of self and other can be toler-
ated, the next step is to bring separate two-dimensional relationships to-
gether into a three-dimensional world. This more complex level of observa-
tion corresponds to a triangular internal situation (Britton, 1989;
Benjamin, 1999; Aron, 2000). The corners of the triangle are made up of
two objects in interaction and an observing third party. In self-observation
the objects in interaction are self and object, whereas the observing third is
the observing ego. As Britton (1989, 1998, 2003) argued, to be able to ob-
serve object relationships this way one also needs to be able to tolerate ob-
serving two objects in interaction or having one’s interactions with another
observed by a third object. This brings up dynamics of the primal scene and
the Oedipus complex. If containment in previous development has been
deficient, the third position is occupied by a self-destructive superego that
precludes the possibility of self-observation.
Adopted at an early age from a foreign country, Ms. C had the fantasy
that the reason her biological mother had abandoned her was because
Ms. C was the result of a rape. Early in therapy, Ms. C herself was victim
of a brutal rape, an experience that dominated a large part of her 1st year
of therapy. The transference was positive as long as I limited myself to
empathic reflections that stayed very close to her own perspective. When
I used more abstract interpretations meant to link or explain different as-
pects of her personality, she became extremely anxious and said that I
was blaming her or implying that she was crazy. About 1 year into her
treatment, Ms. C gradually began to relax enough to be able to say things
like “right now it feels just as if you are blaming me for being raped. It
feels so real, but at the same time I can understand that it might not be
what you mean” in response to interpretations. She thus seemed to be
able to keep a “third position” from which she could observe the

4These formulations are consistent with Benjamin’s (1990) writings on recognition and

destruction.
562 Fredrik Falkenström

sadomasochistic object relation enacted in her mind while still being

open to other possibilities.
Triangulation, according to Britton (1989), is present in a two-person
therapeutic relationship in that every act of thinking by the therapist that
goes beyond the perspective of the patient is experienced as the coming to-
gether of two objects in the therapist’s mind. The patient feels excluded
from the interaction that is going on between the therapist and his theory,
and this is unconsciously experienced as two objects who are having “inter-
course” within the therapist’s mind. However, when (as in the case of Ms.
C) the primal scene fantasy is one in which the good object is destroyed by a
bad object, the patient needs to control the therapist’s mind so that no third
object is allowed into the relationship.
Britton’s technical recommendation for this kind of situation seems to be
a combination of empathic mirroring of the patient’s perspective while
gradually bringing in objective5 interpretations in a pace that is tolerable to
the patient. Although not mentioned by Britton, this strategy is remarkably
similar to Kohut’s (1971). Empathic mirroring gives the patient a sense of
the presence of an understanding maternal6 object, whereas interpretations
bring in the third object and a constructive relationship between the mater-
nal and paternal aspects within the therapist’s mind. The often extremely
uncomfortable countertransference reactions are handled by relating to a
third object, either internally or with the help of supervision.
Another technical strategy that is related to three-dimensional self-ob-
servation is metacommunication (Kiesler, 1996; Safran & Muran, 2001).
As outlined by Safran (2002), metacommunication is particularly indicated
in situations when the therapist is drawn into enactments with the patient.
The purpose of metacommunication is to establish a third perspective on
the interaction between therapist and patient by taking the current inter-
action as focus of communication. This requires of both therapist and pa-
tient to, at least temporarily, disengage from their own subjectivities to ob-
serve themselves from an outside perspective. In metacommunication the
triangle is made up of therapist, patient, and the observational position
from which metacommunication is attempted.
These technical strategies are related in that the therapist makes use of a
“third position” to handle a situation in which the only alternatives seem to

5I use the term objective in the sense of third person perspective, rather than as unbiased
truth (Gabbard, 1997; Britton, 1998).
6Maternal and paternal are used here as archetypal metaphors and should not be inter-

preted as necessarily innate gender attributes.

Psychodynamics of Self-Observation 563

be domination or submission. Also, the goal of both strategies are to help

the patient find a way to negotiate the back and forth movements between
subjective and objective perspectives on the self (Britton, 1998; Aron,
2000).
Working through the dynamic factors related to triangulation is equiva-
lent to working through the depressive position and the Oedipus complex
(Britton, 1989). This leads to a kind of self-observation that is increasingly
mediated by symbols. In her classical paper on symbolization, Hanna Segal
(1957) wrote,

Symbols are needed not only in communication with the external

world, but also in internal communication. Indeed, it could be asked
what is meant when we speak of people being well in touch with their
unconscious. It is not that they have consciously primitive phantasies,
like those which become evident in their analyses, but merely that
they have some awareness of their impulses and feelings. However, I
think that we mean more than this; we mean that they have actual
communication with their unconscious phantasies. And this, like any
other form of communication, can only be done with the help of sym-
bols. So that in people who are “well in touch with themselves” there
is a constant free symbol-formation, whereby they can be consciously
aware and in control of symbolic expressions of the underlying primitive
phantasies [p. 44].

This kind of inward listening and reflection mediated through symbols

can provide information on what is going on in the unconscious mind, what
internal object relations have become activated or phantasies stimulated.
Here the triangle is made up of the conscious ego, the unconscious
phantasies, and their symbolic expressions.

One-Dimensional Observation: Mindfulness

In addition to the two- and three-dimensional levels outlined so far, there is

another kind of self-observation that is not well known within psychoanal-
ysis. However, to speak of self-observation in this regard would be some-
what misleading, because on this level there is no split between the observer
and the observed. Instead, this level is about simple awareness and being. I
call this one-dimensional observation, to contrast it to the two more com-
564 Fredrik Falkenström

mon forms of self-observation that many psychoanalytic theorists have

dealt with.
Whereas two-dimensional self-observation is the result of successfully
negotiating the dynamics of the paranoid–schizoid position and three-di-
mensional self-observation comes about through the resolution of the de-
pressive position, one-dimensional observation is, I believe, mostly inde-
pendent of psychological positions. Although the other two forms of
self-observation are about depth of reflection and generation of meaning,
this form is about depth of experiencing and being. In the following I use
Bion’s concept “O” and theories from Buddhist insight meditation to out-
line the dynamics of this level.

The Psychodynamics of “O”

Bion (1970) described an attitude he calls Faith (“F”), by which he means

an openness to the emotional reality (“O”) of the moment. Eigen (1985)
described Bion’s “F” in the following way: “F in O approaches an attitude of
pure receptiveness. It is an alert readiness, an alive waiting” (p. 326). This
attitude, and methods for developing it, is described in the Buddhist medi-
tation literature (e.g., Nyanaponika, 1962; Kapleau, 1980; Buddhaghosa,
1991; Goldstein, 1993; Kornfield, 1993, 2000). In this tradition the same
attitude is called mindfulness, or bare attention. When the mind is fully
concentrated on the present moment, there is no distinction between the
observer and the observed (Falkenström, 2003). Still, there is no loss of
awareness as in trance states or other altered states of consciousness, but
the mind is unified in attention to the experience of the moment. In the fol-
lowing I use the words one-dimensional observation and mindfulness inter-
changeably.
In Bion’s (1965, 1970) terminology, the psychodynamics of bare atten-
tion can be described as the dynamics of “O.” The sign “O” is used by Bion
to describe the “ultimate reality,” or truth, of what is present. “O” cannot be
described or understood but can be experienced if we let go of memory of
what has been, desire for what will come, and understanding of what is.
This focus on ultimate reality that can be experienced but never under-
stood or put into words puts Bion within the mystical tradition (Eigen,
1998).
With the psychodynamics of “O,” I refer to the mind’s tendency to seek
in fascination yet withdraw in terror from the experience of “O.” Mystic tra-
ditions often emphasize the ecstatic aspect of contact with truth, whereas
Psychodynamics of Self-Observation 565

psychoanalytic authors emphasize its violently shattering impact (Eigen,

1998). “At-one-ment or unity with O is in prospect fearful” (Bion, 1970,
p. 53).
In the Buddhist meditation literature, the mind’s tendency to withdraw
from the reality of the present moment is described in terms of five basic
hindrances (i.e., hindrances to concentration): desire, aversion, sleepiness,
restlessness, and doubt. These are ways in which the mind withdraws from
experiencing fully the reality of the present moment, and they can all be re-
duced to variations of seeking pleasure and avoiding unpleasure. The Bud-
dhist principle of dependent origination (see Falkenström, 2003, for a de-
tailed explanation of this principle) describes how raw experiences in each
moment are transformed into a sense of self, based on clinging to pleasant-
ness and avoidance of unpleasantness. All contents of experience, sensory
impressions as well as thoughts and emotions, are in every moment either
identified with as “self” or “not-self,” based on their quality of pleasure/
unpleasure.
The hindrances are worked with in meditation much like resistance is
worked with in psychoanalysis. First the hindrances have to be noticed and
consciously included in awareness, and later the anxiety that fuels them has
to be faced and worked through. The latter part is described in the writings
of Kornfield (1993, 2000). Kornfield described his experience that working
with the hindrances involves coming to terms with an underlying “body of
fear.” According to Kornfield, this body of fear is the root cause of suffering
and the primary obstacle to being mindful of present moment experience.
What is feared, it seems, is the loss of the false security provided by re-
treat into mind-made fantasy worlds, ideals, self-images, and so on. Facing
“O” means facing our fundamental human fragility and the absence of any
true security and stability. Because of the instability of “O,” the mind fears
overwhelmingly unpleasant experiences and chooses the false security of
fantasized pleasure over the ecstasy and terror of pure being. The instability
of “O” can be understood in relation to the movement of the psychological
positions (Ps ↔ D). One-dimensional observation is threatening to the ego
because at any time it may bring the mind into contact with the chaos and
turmoil of the paranoid–schizoid position or the intense pain of the depres-
sive position. The challenge of one-dimensional observation is to stay emo-
tionally present even with these very difficult experiences. In effect, one-di-
mensional observation challenges manic defenses and the mind’s tendency
to create defensive self- and object representations. The paradox of one-di-
mensional observation is that it brings the mind into closer contact with
the “raw” experience of Ps or D while it reduces the sense of being caught
566 Fredrik Falkenström

up within it by lessening identification with the contents of experience. Ex-

periences are thus only experiences; they are not “I” or “me.”
The Buddhist perspective adds a different dimension to the psychoana-
lytic emphasis on the creation/investigation of meaning. Mindfulness is not
about meaning but about tolerating and experiencing fully the emotional
reality of the moment. At least in principle, any emotional experience can
be approached mindfully. This implies the possibility of “instant awaken-
ing” in any moment. What this means is that any experience, no matter
how painful, can be “held” in awareness in such a way as to be bearable.

One-Dimensional Observation
and Related Concepts

In this section I relate the concept of one-dimensional observation to some

other psychoanalytic concepts. First, one-dimensional observation can be
compared to the concept of containment (Bion, 1962). Containment
mainly implies an unconscious processing of raw experience into psycho-
logically meaningful units that is characteristic of two-dimensional rather
than one-dimensional observation. However, it is likely that the process of
containment presupposes some degree of mindfulness, because experience
needs to be tolerated before it can be processed. Bion himself seems to have
regarded containment to belong to the “K” (knowledge) dimension, which
he clearly distinguished from the dimension of “O” (Ogden, 2004).
A concept that can easily be confused with one-dimensional observa-
tion is Ogden’s (1989) autistic–contiguous position. This concept refers to
an area of the mind that seems one-dimensional, at least to an external ob-
server. The autistic–contiguous position is described by Ogden as a
presymbolic mode of organizing experience according to raw sensations, es-
pecially sensations on the surface of the body or sensations of bodily
rhythms such as heartbeats or breathing. These impressions constitute the
sensory ground on which a sense of self can be organized.
Mindfulness meditation is often practiced with a primary focus on the
touching of body surfaces and the rhythm of breathing, and this brings the
meditating person into close contact with experiences that are strikingly
similar to Ogden’s descriptions of the autistic–contiguous position (e.g., be-
ing one with the rhythm of breathing or the touching of bodily surfaces, or
experiencing the body “falling away”). However, mindfulness itself is not re-
stricted to these experiences. Quite to the contrary, mindfulness is said to
be completely independent of the contents of experience. Body and breath-
Psychodynamics of Self-Observation 567

ing are used as anchors for concentration (especially in preliminary prac-

tices), but mindfulness can and should be practiced in all kinds of situations
and with any type of experience. Thus, mindfulness (or one-dimensional
observation as I call it in this paper) should not be confused with Ogden’s
autistic–contiguous position.
Balint (1968) described a third area of the mind in addition to the area of
the basic fault and the area of the Oedipus complex, which he called the
“area of creation.” According to Balint, the area of creation is an
unobservable and incommunicable creative core, a state of mind that can-
not be observed in the transference because it is objectless. Because of its
one-dimensionality the area of creation bears some similarity to one-di-
mensional observation. However, Balint’s concept seems to point toward
an unconscious source of creativity rather than to an observational posi-
tion. There is nothing inherently creative about mindfulness; in itself mind-
fulness is just an observational perspective and a way of relating to experi-
ence. However, there might be an indirect relationship between
mindfulness and the area of creation, in that mindfulness sometimes seems
to facilitate spontaneous creative transformations of experience (see next
section).
There is perhaps a closer connection between one-dimensional observa-
tion and Winnicott’s (1949) concepts of psyche-soma and “going on be-
ing.” As is well known, Winnicott believed that the mother’s holding func-
tion protects the infant’s psychosomatic sense of continuity of being against
traumatic impingements. Disturbances to the infant’s sense of continuous
being necessitate reactions that dissociate the self from its psychosomatic
roots. As described by Epstein (2001), mindfulness meditation functions to
reverse this process by continually applying awareness to bodily and emo-
tional experience. Thus, it is likely that one-dimensional observation
strengthens the experiential sense of going on being by directly confronting
dissociation (Falkenström, 2003). However, although the concepts are
clearly related, they are not identical. Rather, one might say that continuity
of being is one-dimensional observation applied consistently over time.
In his descriptions of the implications of the concept of “the present mo-
ment” for psychotherapy, Stern (2004) touched upon one-dimensional ob-
servation when he is making a case for the distinction between depth of ex-
periencing and depth of understanding. Throughout his writings, Stern
(1985, 1990, 2004) describes in beautiful and evocative language the kinds
of implicit, nonverbal experiences that one-dimensional observation en-
genders and the inevitable sense of loss when the verbal and narrative do-
mains of the self replace these experiences. “The loss is of wholeness, felt
568 Fredrik Falkenström

truth, richness, and honesty” (Stern, 2004, p. 144). However, Stern does
not develop the other side of the conflict—the dimension of fear of and re-
sistance to the present moment. Also, much of his writings on the psychol-
ogy of the present moment (see Stern, 2004) are about the micromeanings
that are discovered when momentary experiences are studied carefully (“to
see a world in a grain of sand”) and about the intersubjective contexts of the
present moment.
Finally, the concept of “focusing” (Gendlin, 1996) within the experien-
tial psychotherapy tradition seems to be more or less identical to what I am
trying to describe as one-dimensional observation. In Gendlin’s work, fo-
cusing is used to allow the meaning of an unclear “felt sense” to evolve ac-
cording to its own inherent movement. According to Gendlin, these un-
clear “felt senses” often contain within them the part of the unconscious
that is closest to becoming conscious. By focusing on this unclear felt sense
in a friendly and receptive way, its implicit meaning is allowed to unfold.
Although focusing is used to facilitate the evolution of meaning, Gendlin
emphasized that focusing requires an attitude of “being with” any experi-
ence without expecting anything to happen or change (i.e., one-dimen-
sional observation).

Relationship Between Levels and Implications

for Psychotherapeutic Technique

The traditional way of viewing psychological development is the move-

ment from the preoedipal to the oedipal phase and from the para-
noid–schizoid to the depressive position. The relationship between two-
and three-dimensional observation would thus be one in which three-di-
mensional observation is dependent on an already established capacity for
two-dimensional observation. Of course, in practice there is continuous
movement back and forth, and the therapist needs to listen carefully to
know on which level to intervene. As noted before, my experience is, along
with other authors (e.g., Kohut, 1971; Killingmo, 1989), that empathic re-
flections often have the power of moving the patient at least temporarily
from two- to three-dimensional observation—making more abstract inter-
pretations possible. In turn, the understanding gained from symbolization is
usually stabilizing so that regression becomes less frequent and less ex-
treme.
However, Bion (1963) partially changed this way of thinking with his
Ps ↔ D formula, adding the useful idea that optimal development involves
Psychodynamics of Self-Observation 569

temporary fragmentation as well as integration. In clinical practice, it is not

an uncommon observation that patients hold on fiercely to an already es-
tablished integration, fearing breakdown of a precarious sense of self. The
fear of fragmentation can be a difficult one to overcome, and in my experi-
ence there is a special type of intervention that utilizes the one-dimen-
sional level of observation that can sometimes be useful to overcome this
kind of situation. I illustrate one such intervention from an early psycho-
therapy session with Ms. B. This case material also illustrates the interde-
pendence of the three observation levels.
During her initial psychotherapy sessions, Ms. B grew increasingly agi-
tated. She was a woman in her mid-30s seeking outpatient psychotherapy
at the local psychiatric clinic because she had started to sense a craving for
drugs again. Previously an amphetamine addict, she had been clean for al-
most 6 years now. She had become drug free after about 2 years of treat-
ment at a psychiatric inpatient institution, in which she had had intensive
individual and group psychotherapy as well as drug counseling. She told me
she had chosen to terminate her previous individual psychotherapy at a
moment when she regained a memory from early childhood, in which she
was alone in her bedroom, crying uncontrollably. A short while later she
moved out from the institution, at about the same time that her daughter
was born. She felt she had managed quite well without drugs until recently.
During the assessment sessions I interpreted her present craving for drugs
as a response to the increase of her daughter’s separation strivings. Ms. B
confirmed this interpretation, saying that she was afraid of becoming alone
now that her 6-year-old daughter was starting school and creating more of a
life of her own with her friends.
In her third psychotherapy session Ms. B was speaking in an agitated
manner, jumping from subject to subject, leaving no space for me to follow
her or comment. Her speech was full of psychological reflections, although
these all felt hollow and she kept changing subjects for no clear reason—
leaving me with a very fragmented and confusing impression. At one point,
I somewhat abruptly stopped her, saying, “Wait a minute—could you, just
for a moment, try to sense—how do you feel, right now, sitting in this
chair?” She stared at me with surprise, and then settled back in the chair
(having previously sat on the edge). Immediately tears welled up in her
eyes. “I feel empty.” She looked at me with fear. “It’s so scary, I feel com-
pletely empty. Like a black hole inside.” Encouraged to stay with this feeling
for a little longer, she reflected—a bit calmer now—that she thought this
was a feeling she had been running from (by always keeping busy) for a long
time.
570 Fredrik Falkenström

In the following months her agitated state shifted into a state of depres-
sion. Strong feelings of sadness and guilt emerged, feelings for which she
could find no explanation. She now said that the “black hole” that she had
thought to be empty had actually been full of feelings that she could not
bear. A sense of guilt was particularly strong and especially painful because
she could see no real reason for feeling guilty. During the termination
phase, Ms. B spontaneously told me that the intervention I just described
had been especially important to her because she had since been increas-
ingly able to stop herself at times when she was “speeding away” in her
mind.
My understanding of this sequence is that Ms. B was trying desperately
to hold on to the insights that she had gained in her previous therapy and
had learned to rely on for stability of mind. However, our sessions stirred up
“unmentalized” affect (Fonagy et al., 2002), which she unconsciously be-
lieved would kill me if she allowed herself to express it (see Two-Dimen-
sional Self-Observation: Containment of Mental States section). This, in
turn, would leave her abandoned and unbearably guilty. Thus, she instead
tried to cover up for the deficit of containment and symbolization by means
of manic activity. My intervention was intended to bring her into one-di-
mensional observation, encouraging her to approach her present moment
experience and challenge her manic defense. The intervention brought her
into contact with the “O” of her emotional experience, which at this time
was a “black hole” experience (Grotstein, 1990).
According to Grotstein, the black hole experience is related to trau-
matic separation experiences in which the “background of primary identi-
fication” with the caregiver is not sufficiently established so that the ex-
perience is one of falling into a void. In the case of Ms. B, the black hole
was probably the same experience that had made her terminate her previ-
ous therapy. This time, however, it was possible for her to confront this
experience, which effectively threw her into the paranoid–schizoid posi-
tion for short while. With some help she was able to tolerate this frag-
mented state, which created the internal conditions for an evolution of
“O,” in which the content of her emotional experience was allowed to
evolve. I see this as an example of “going to pieces without falling apart,”
as Epstein (1999) put it.
In retrospect, it became evident that Ms. B had defensively emptied her
mind of feelings because she had not been sufficiently able to internalize a
benign containing object that could help her understand and work with
them. To establish an internal containing object, she first had to become
aware of her painful present moment internal experience. This was facili-
Psychodynamics of Self-Observation 571

tated by my one-dimensional observation intervention. Then she had to

communicate this experience to me, thus risking that I would be as over-
whelmed as she had, presumably, experienced her caretaker to have been
in infancy. Over time she became more able to trust my capacity to survive
and to process her communications. The situation was thus such that she
felt her internal object to be destroyed whereas I, as her external attach-
ment figure, seemed to be surviving. This created a tension between her in-
ternal and external reality and the conditions for internalizing a new con-
taining object.
As this example shows, the awareness level is most evident when it is ab-
sent. In less obvious cases, we can perceive the absence of contact with
present moment experience when the patient’s associations seem vague or
intellectualized. As Stern (2004) pointed out, there is a huge difference be-
tween depth of understanding and depth of experiencing. Both are ex-
tremely important, and often in therapy they promote each other. When
therapy is moving on smoothly, there is a spontaneous movement back and
forth between awareness, processing, and symbolic reflection, making the
one-dimensional observation level invisible to the therapist.
Although interventions within the two- and three-dimensional observa-
tion levels might be the most frequent ones in psychotherapy or psycho-
analysis, the aim of these can in a way be said to be to create a sense of sta-
bility that enhances the capacity for being. Verbal understanding and
symbolization are important for bringing order to a confusing world, but ul-
timately life needs to be lived rather than understood.

Conclusion

I have found it useful to distinguish between three distinct, though interre-

lated, levels of self-observation. Levels are differentiated on the basis of the
kind of intrapsychic relationship enacted (monadic, dyadic, or triangular).
All three levels are seen as important for the capacity to continue to learn
from experience and adapt to new circumstances throughout life, and
psychopathology usually stems either from not being able to negotiate the
specific conflicts within each level or from holding on excessively to one
level as a way of defending against the anxieties of another. It is also inter-
esting to note that each level seems to have its own distinct existential
“theme” that needs to be negotiated: In two-dimensional observation this
is (acceptance of) interdependence, in three dimensional observation it is
separateness and sense of exclusion, whereas on the one-dimensional level
572 Fredrik Falkenström

it is fear of the unknown—of “O.” On the opposite side of the conflict is cu-
riosity and the pleasure of increased self-knowledge, sense of mastery, and
capacity to let go.

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24:183–205.

Samtalscentrum Unga Vuxna

Repslagaregatan 5a
S-611 30 Nyköping
Sweden
fredrik.falkenstrom@dll.se

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