George S. Klein, in conceptualizing self, speaks of beginning “with the assumption of a single apparatus of control which exhibits a variety of dynamic tendencies, the focus of which is either an integration experienced in terms of a sense of continuity, coherence, and integrity, or its impairment, as cleavages or dissonance. I call this central apparatus the ‘self’” (1976, 8). Klein views self as effecting control, sustaining identity (a person-oriented element), and resolving conflict. Eagle goes so far as to claim that “without expressly stating it, Klein (1976) essentially reformulates psychoanalytic theory as a psychology of self” (1984, 87). As for Kohut, he writes confiisingly of the self as a content (“a content of the mental apparatus”), as a structure of the mind rather than an agency (a structure “cathected with instinctual energy”), and as a location (a psychic location) of self representations (1971, xv). Later he stresses the need for what he regards as complementary approaches: “a psychology in which the self is seen as the center of the psychological universe, and a psychology in which the self is seen as a content of a mental apparatus” (1977, xv). Astonishingly, the author of self psychology eventually confesses, “My investigation contains hundreds of pages dealing with the psychol ogy of the self—yet it never assigns an inflexible meaning to the term self, it never explains how the essence of the self should be defined” (310). A less biased observer might contend that Kohut simply fails to treat the topic with reasonable consistency.
Schafer, who emphasizes the wholeness and integrity of individuals as agents who must learn to take responsibility for their actions, including their thoughts and feelings, has proved to be one of the most incisive critics of ego psychology, identity theory, and self psychology in his efforts to avoid semantic confusion resulting from models involving split selves, anthropomorphism, reification, and various related errors he encounters in psychoanalytic writing. Schafer criticizes Kohufs conceptualization of self as suffering from an attempt “to mix a phenomenological, experiential, representational concept with the traditional structural energic metapsychological entities [such as narcissism]” (1976, 116). Schafer even attacks the term “selP itself because of the multiplicity of meanings attributed to it. Worse, the nominative phrase, “the self,” tends to reify the concept of self: “Like the thingness and agency attributed to identity, ‘the self’ concretizes or substantializes a term whose referents are primarily subjective or experiential and whose force is primarily adverbial and adjectival” (117). Moreover, he adds, “in some of its usages, such as ‘self actualization,’ ‘the’ self is set up not only as the existential referent of behavior but as, all at once, the motor, the fuel, the driver, and the end point of the journey of existence” (117). Elsewhere Schafer remarks, with commendable clarity, “Self and identity are not things with boundaries, contents, locations, sizes, forces, and degrees of brittleness” (1973, 51). He mentions that individuals’ representations of themselves vary enormously in scope, time, origin, and objectivity: “Many are maintained unconsciously (for example, self as phallus and self as turd), and many remain forever uncoordinated, if not contradictory” (52). Schafer distrusts the term self because of its protean meanings: it can signify “my body, my personality, my actions, my competence, my continuity, my needs, my agency, and my subjective space. Self is thus a diffuse, multipurpose word” (53). When Schafer addresses the concept of self-control he asks, “But just what does self-control refer to? Does it refer to a self that controls, and if so what is the nature of that self? Does it refer to a self that is to be controlled, and if so what is its nature and how does it stand in relation to the exerciser of control . . .?” (1978, 78). As far as Schafer is concerned, ‘to say that the self controls the self is to commit a category mistake in that controlling anything is one of the constitutive features, or one of the referents, of what we mean by self. We would not say that a thermostat controls a thermostat. . . . When someone is admonished, ‘Control yourself,’ a logical mistake is being committed” (79).
As it happens, there are models of selfhood that render moot such issues as the multiplicity of function attributed to self and the problem of the location of control. These may be referred to collectively as the systemic model. According to this model, self can be conceptualized as a set or system of indwelling interrelated governing functions of the whole person, a superordinate system incorporating innumerable subsystems, both physical ones with bodily organs such as lungs (the respiratory system), and others with less palpable, ponderable elements, such as memory systems, value systems, and sets of self-and-object representations. There is no need for any homunculus-like ego, a regulatory self within the self. Regulation can be thought of, metaphorically, as built in, or wired in. From a cybernetics point of view, the system is self-regulating, the function of control being systemically located, feedback-operated, and subject to the heirarchical constraints of a range of well-established priorities. A systemic view of selfhood conceptualizes awareness in terms of systemic monitoring, and lack of awareness (unconsciousness) as absence of access to specific behavioral programs. Inherently dynamic in conception (process-oriented), the systemic model accounts for both normal and neurotic conflict, the latter (less than optimal self-regulation) resulting from the activation of incompatible programs (see Schafer 1983, 82-95 regarding conflict as paradoxical action). A systemic model accounts for motivation as goal-oriented behavior (not necessarily conscious), the categorization of principal goals in the version of Rosenblatt and Thickstun (1977, 298-99) being the maintenance of positive affective relationships with significant others (attachment behavior), the satisfaction of basic (mostly physical) needs, and the goal of defending against the threat of any form of injury.
Though Stern remarks with plausible common sense that “no one can agree on exactly what the self is” (1985, 5), he himself may be numbered among the many psychoanalysts whose theory is compatible with a systemic view of self. (The extent to which analysts explicitly subscribe to a systemic model appears to be a function of the degree of their familiarity with general systems theory.) Well before the advent of systems theory, Sullivan wrote about what he called “the self system,” which for him is essentially “an organization of educative experience called into being by the necessity to avoid or to minimize incidents of anxiety” (1953, 165). The father of systems theory, Ludwig von Bertalanffy, insists that modern views of man have in common the principle “to take man not as a reactive automaton or robot but as an active personality system” (1968, 207), meaning, among other things, an open (as distinguished from closed), information-processing, dynamically self-regulating system. Peterfreund, whose application of systems theory to psychoanalysis remains the most comprehensive and valuable treatment, writes that “self, object, and superego representations are highly interrelated and interdependent; they form a vast system, and each part constandy feeds back information to every other part” (1971, 159). Rosenblatt and Thickstun say that the self system “can be conceptualized as the superordinate system, or the organism itself, encompassing all of the systems operating within the organism”(1977, 300). Bowlby, who embraces systems theory, tends to think in terms of groups of individuals rather than isolated ones, and he seems to be uncomfortable with person-oriented terms. He discusses the concept of self (1980, 59-64), yet makes litde use of it; there is, nevertheless, litde or nothing in his writing that conflicts with a systemic view of selfhood. Although Stern’s book on self theory (1985) does not explicidy refer to systems theory, nothing in his focus on epigenesis appears to be at odds with the systems model. Lichtenberg (1989), whose work derives partly from Stern and partly from self psychology, makes extensive use of the concept of system even though, methodologically, he does not appear to rely much on general systems theory as such. Lichtenberg, who defines “the self as an independent center for initiating, organizing, and integrating” (12), generates a schema of five distinct yet interactive motivational systems: a system regulating physiological