Keynote Presentation:
Honoring the Work of Marian Tolpin: Psychoanalysis on the Edge

As Frank Lachmann launched the IAPSP conference with a discussion contrasting his own "leading edge" concept with Marian Tolpin's "forward edge," we heard, "Well, I will tell a nice story about when I first met Frank." Tolpin's instantly recognizable, if pre-taped, voice reverberated throughout the auditorium.

As they reminisced, the speakers reminded us that Kohut had shocked the psychoanalytic status quo with his "leading edge" self psychological theory. Classical interpretation, he had maintained, often wounded narcissistically vulnerable patients; analysts were chided when they provided these "unanalyzable" patients with merely "supportive" emotional milieus.

Lachmann described how he himself had learned to delineate between "leading" and classical "trailing edge" interpretations through Jule Miller's paper, "How Kohut Actually Worked" (1985). In it, Tolpin remembered, that one of Miller's patients had excitedly begun a session by talking about a mutually admired performer and announced news of an event at which he was appearing. Not having know about the event, Miller interpreted this remark as very "competitive;" self psychologically, it was a "trailing edge" interpretation.

In supervision, Kohut explained to Miller that the man had instead displayed an intense childlike wish and a "preservation and sequestering of the patient's childhood enthusiasm ...in relation to his analyst...[and that] 'leading edge' interpretations recognize the extent to which a patient's thoughts, fantasies, and behaviors are necessary for, and strive toward, self-protection, self-restoration, self-righting or self-regulation." Lachmann added that in Tolpin's "forward edge" terms, it also included the patient's subtle "healthy strivings," but he defined them more broadly: they also involve the patient's motivational systems and physiological regulations of affect and arousal.

The speakers agreed that the "leading edge" differs primarily from the "forward edge" in its reliance on the analyst's noticing and formulating that "edge." This relates to Tolpin's requirement that the analyst see and understand a "tendril" of healthy development. "Like a gardener," Lachmann said, "the analyst must know the difference between a tendril and a weed." Both "edges" operate through empathy. A difference would be, Lachmann insisted, that his "edge" is co-created within the treatment.

Tolpin explained that she had chosen to use the term "leading," instead of "forward," because it seemed less commercially ubiquitous. While Kohut's, and ultimately, Lachmann's "edge," she maintained, is "interwoven and compatible... [It] had more to do with the analyst and how the analyst sees things and works. Where [it]...interdigitates with mine is that...the 'forward edge' is any tendril of health remaining [from] normal development in a very larval or sometimes hardly noticeable, form."

Tolpin provided her own clinical illustration from the beginning of an analysis to portray her viewpoint: "A gay man, "who is very split about his own homosexuality... comes for treatment with intense desires and falls in love with men that don't fall in love with him." He brings in a dream in which small toy cars and planes, with wheels spinning, are in a bathtub filling with water. He associates this to having recently enjoyed playing with his sister's children. The second part of the dream entails realizing that his roommate has brought home all the victims from Hurricane Katrina.

Lachmann interpreted the "spinning wheels" as the patient's "trailing edge" anxiety about the treatment's possible helpfulness; the best that he could imagine is to save some of the hurricane victims. The "leading edge," said Lachmann, would be the patient's courageously sharing these fears with Tolpin. She responded that she had instead seen the patient's "forward edge" desire for "youthful freedom," illustrated though playful elements--the toys and children--and felt it was a hopeful beginning to the therapy, regardless of any fears for its success. To her, the "trailing edge" was the victimhood-the patient's or the hurricane survivors'-along side his hopefulness.

"So, what do you say to the patient?" Lachmann asked Tolpin. Presenting one of his own patients, Lachmann described a man whose wife sent him to therapy because she caught him using internet pornography. Subsequently, Lachmann learned that this behavior began before their marriage. He shared with his patient his view that using porn was an all-purpose affect regulator--and a "leading edge." The patient's lack of acknowledgment about its effect on his wife had a deleterious effect on the relationship--or his "trailing edge." Upon hearing this interpretation, the man felt surprise and relief.

Tolpin agreed and added her "forward edge" delineation: Anything we do to protect ourselves is "forward;" the healthy parts for the patient she presented previously are the "tendrils" of enthusiasm he communicated when he spoke of playing with his niece and nephew.

Within the broader conception of "leading edge" interpretations, Lachmann brings an intersubjective understanding: they set a unique and transformative therapeutic process into motion, and can bring excitement, good news, understanding, relief from suffering, joyfulness or hope to patients. In turn, the analyst also feels more positively than when he has made "trailing edge" interventions, and he can participate more completely in the patient's emotional experience.

According to Lachmann, these two patients represent a range of "leading edge" examples. Tolpin's, at one end, displayed enthusiasm; his patient is at the other end, because although he succeeded in regulating his affect and arousal, he damaged his relationship with his wife.

In parting, Lachmann told Tolpin that he, "in the spirit of Jule Miller's and Heinz Kohut's contributions," had included her "forward edge" and its "healthy tendrils" in the broader category of the 'leading edge." Second, he suggested a range for "leading edge" interpretations, dependant upon the scope of their emotional, physiological and social utility. Here he included the influence of contemporary dynamic systems theories and infant research on his thinking. Third, because his "leading edge" relies on the dyadic experience, with any "tendril" noted first by the analyst and then experienced anew by the patient, he called for a reevaluation of transference.

Would Marian Tolpin agree with Lachmann's summary? As her voice trailed from the meeting room, it remained a "forward edge" in my experience.