Editor's Introduction
John Hanwell Riker, PhD is Professor of Philosophy at Colorado College. He has a deep and sophisticated interest in self psychology, witnessed by his paper "The Life of the Soul: An Essay in Ecological Thinking" delivered while he was the 2003-2004 Distinguished Heinz Kohut Visiting Professor at the University of Chicago. Dr. Riker's paper can be found on Psychology of the Self Online by clicking this link. Dr. Riker has authored three books: The Art of Ethical Thinking (1977), Human Excellence and an Ecological Conception of the Psyche (1991), and Ethics and the Discovery of the Unconscious (1997). He was interviewed by Eleanor Feinberg, PhD, advanced candidate at the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis, about his most recent book.

Eleanor: The lyrical and thoughtful quality of your book makes it a pleasure to read. Could you talk a bit about your book, Ethics and the Discovery of the Unconscious? Why you wrote it, how it fits into your life, and third, what you hope the reader will get from it?

John: I began writing Ethics and the Discovery of the Unconscious shortly after I finished Human Excellence and an Ecological Conception of the Psyche because I realized upon concluding that book that I had not addressed a major question: What does the discovery of the unconscious - to me the most important discovery of the twentieth century - mean for our ethical category and concepts, all of which were framed in a psychology which equated the mental with consciousness. I was especially interested in the question of whether we are responsible for our unconscious intentions, and, if so, in what way.

I personally came to these issues in a rather existential way. I had been trained in philosophy and thoroughly believed that reason plus a strong will could solve all personal problems. When my first marriage came apart in 1979, so did I, and try as hard as my reason and will could, they could not put me back together again. I started seeing a psychoanalytic therapist who opened up for me what was going on at an unconscious level. For the first time in my life I started to make sense to myself. I also began to see the damage and pain that my unacknowledged sufferings and intentions had caused for others. I had not known what I was doing, but still I seemed responsible, for I produced the consequences. What I try to develop in the book is how responsibility can be taken for unconscious intentions without the ascription of guilt. With unconscious intentions, we could not have done otherwise than we did do, and thus are not in the traditional sense guilty (guilt implies choice). But once we discover our unconscious intentions, then we have an obligation to try to integrate what is causing devastation. One of the most surprising conclusions (surprising for me) is that once the notion of the unconscious is accepted, then I believe that we have a moral responsibility to know it. That is, if the unconscious produces powerful consequences for ourselves and others, then we are obligated to find out who we are and what is stewing inside of us. This has the consequence of making activities such as working through the meaning of one's dreams an ethical activity, not just a psychological one.

What I hope readers get from this book is the important interrelation between a psychological of the unconscious and ethics. That is, activities in which unconscious sufferings and strivings are brought to light are, all things being equal, ethical activities - activities that allow us to accept more responsibility for who we are.

Eleanor: Given the importance that you ascribe to understanding our unconscious motivations do you think that seeking therapy can be viewed as an ethical responsibility?

John: I think that if a person has evidence that he or she is causing suffering to others or to themselves and don't know why, then I think that engaging in therapy is an ethical responsibility. These matters are difficult for the unconscious is a master magician and can cause us to deny what we are doing and feeling. The discovery of the unconscious is still new - really less than a century old and still being strongly resisted by a culture taught to believe in the power of rational will. In my optimistic moments I foresee a time in which people engage in therapeutic activity as a natural part of maturing - like going to school. If my argument is right, and I thoroughly believe it is, then most evil is caused by unconscious intentions. If our society is serious about becoming a better, more human place, then it must both recognize the unconscious and put great resources into making it available. I do not think we can become a 'good' society without this shift.

Eleanor: Because therapists normally avoid ideas that seem to carry theological overtones, could you please elaborate on what you mean by evil?

John: Evil, for me, occurs when life or liveliness is taken from a person. Conversely, good occurs when a person becomes more able to feel alive and participate in his or her own life. Since, psychoanalysis and psychotherapy have as their aims the releasing of blockages to life, I consider it to have not only psychological goals but ethical ones as well.

Eleanor: How do you think one does achieve an ethical and cohesive self in the aftermath of acute or chronic trauma?

John: This is a difficult question that concerns the nature of therapeutic action. Kohut, of course, would look for a process of optimal frustration and transmuting internalization. I rather like Ernie Wolf's notion that analysis allows one to feel safe enough to fall apart and in the state of disorganization, the self spontaneously re-organizes itself at a more cohesive level. I would add Loewald's notion that the analysand is lured into development by the higher level of organization of the therapist. It is still a mystery why two people in a room talking and responding can evoke transformation. I also think that empathy is crucial. I think when the analyst comes to know and not fear the inner being of the analysand, then the analysand can start to come to acknowledge and integrate his own being.

In thinking over my responses, I felt I needed to make one thing clearer. While I think that analysis in its aim of restoring life to the soul is an ethical activity, I do not think that moral judgments have any place within the therapeutic relationship. The analyst or therapist is not to morally judge the analysand, for such judgments almost always play into the sickness. I think that the wider culture might learn a lot from this interaction and start conceiving of ethical activity as empathic concern, listening, and non-judgmental care rather than morally judging someone or some event to be good or bad, praiseworthy or blameworthy. Understanding is so hard; judging so easy.

Eleanor: I think that your book and your replies do make that clear. I would like to clarify my previous question, but first, your sensitive response elicits another question; after your own experience with therapy did you consider becoming a therapist?

In regard to my earlier question, I was wondering what role you think the intellect and the life of the mind plays in the aftermath of acute or chronic trauma? In what ways do you think that it contributes toward stabilizing and reclaiming the interrupted self?

John: I seriously considered becoming a therapist, for psychotherapy had given me the possibility both of self knowledge and self cohesion in a way I had never even imagined could be true. I think we want to give back to the world the gifts we receive, and I longed to give to others what my therapist had given me. I seem to have some natural diagnostic skills - the ability to sense where a person's suffering is coming from. But when I examined myself as to whether I had the kind of temperment that would make for a good therapist, I had to conclude that I did not. My major problem is that I do not have much patience and would have difficulty restraining interventions. I would simply get too frustrated with patients who were stuck and wouldn't let my 'brilliance' help them (that is, my narcissism would get in the way). And, I do have gifts as a teacher and profoundly enjoy teaching philosophy and watching minds open up when they encounter the rich, challenging ideas in the history of philosophy. And, to be fully honest, there was the practical side of things. With three young children, it would have been hard to drop everything and start another career!

I, obviously, greatly enjoy the life of the mind and the powers of the intellect. What is the role of the intellect in therapy? Certainly, it helps you understand what is happening and gives a self understanding that can be critical in continuing through rough times or prolonged lulls. And, I think, psychopathology tends to creep into all the ways the psyche works, and the intellect can work on how the cognitive function has become distorted. But the intellect can also be a real obstacle, for it can be used defensively. When my early childhood was unbearably painful, I discovered that the realm of ideas and the imagination could save one from a harsh reality. I like to think life and this is not the same as living it. I was quickly able to intellectually grasp what had happened to me and why I was the way I was. But this did not change much in who I was. A great deal of the psychotherapy I have had has been devoted to opening up deeper ways to be immersed in life.

Part of why I write the way I do - with more metaphors, stories, and emotional coloring than is typical in philosophy is that I want the person reading my books to respond with more than just their intellects. Since one of my major themes is that the psyche is an ecosystem with many different creatures in it (emotions, basic needs, character dispositions, intellect, memory, etc.) and that these have to be interrelated in non-destructive, mutual way, I try to use language that speaks to more than just one part of the psyche. There seems to be something inconsistent about saying that the psyche is an ecosystem and then writing only abstract prose for the intellect.

Eleanor: Your writing certainly succeeds in engaging the psyche. This is one of the many strengths of your book. I think that you describe the preservative and enhancing function of the intellect along with its inhibiting and restrictive functions. Were there things that you had to relearn about philosophy once you undertook therapy?

John: Indeed! I had written about a third of Human Excellence and an Ecological Conception of the Psyche when I realized that my style of writing was antithetical to the content of the writing. It was the style I had learned in graduate school - highly analytic conceptual prose. So I threw out one hundred pages of manuscript and started over. Changing styles of writing is a bit like changing was basic posture - very hard to accomplish. It took several years. But I found that as my style changed, so did my thinking - it became more complex and meaningful to me. The change in style seemed to be part of a change of self structure; as the style became more integrated so did I. Therapy might have been producing the change in both, but I suspect that there is a set of complex feedback mechanisms whereby changes in any one sector of the psyche, including the use of language, have reverberations in the other parts.

Eleanor: Do you have plans for a new book?

John: I am just starting to work out a new book. It will involve the paper I wrote for the Midwest Psychoanalytic Seminar on Ethics and Self Psychology. I was quite excited about what I discovered in writing that paper, namely, that self psychology can offer compelling answers to the question: Why be moral? That is, in its conception of individuals as interrelated and dependent on one another for self object support, there is a ground for saying that we must take others into account. When individuality is defined in atomistic, independent terms, almost no reason can be given to someone as to why the interests of others ought to be morally considered. In short, if we ask, "What do I need to do to ensure that I will have the self object support that I need?" the answer is to be willing to give to others self object support. That is, we all need friends and, what I will try to show following Aristotle, is that one cannot be a friend or engage in genuine friendships unless one is an ethical person capable of reciprocity, justice, and empathic caring.

The wider framework of the book will involve showing why the psychology that underlies economics, along with psychologies connected with Freud, and sociology would lead one to want to be a free rider - someone who both cheats but appears to be moral. I hold that is only with self psychology that we get really good reasons for valuing integrity, ideals, and the ethical consideration of others.

Eleanor: There are those who would argue that the concept of the selfobject in self psychology hinders the possibility for the self actualization process to evolve beyond the relationship between the self and its selfobject, and that the emphasis on the functions that the selfobject provides may limit one's ability to fully recognize the subjectivity, integrity and ideals of the other. How would you answer this criticism?

John: These are difficult questions, Eleanor! First, let me say that "self-actualization" is, in fancy philosophical terms, an "enigmatic signifier." That is, it carries a lot of emotional punch but little conceptual content. What it means to be self-actualized will depend on what one takes to be the self. If one's theory of the self is that the self is capable of full independence, then, yes, selfobject relationships look like regressive structures. But, if we understand the self as self psychology does, as vulnerable to environmental forces, then selfobject relations are crucial for sustaining self-actualization. What we need to distinguish are the archaic selfobject transferences which are regressive in adulthood and mature selfobject relationships which sustain us at a level of optimal functioning. Where I strongly agree with self psychology is in the claim that there is no such thing as an invulnerable psychic structure. And, since there isn't, we all, from time to time, need selfobjects.

The second question is important, for one of the ways that "having selfobjects" can be interpreted is as "using others to sustain oneself" where who the other is and what their own subjectivity is of little concern. They are there "for me." This looks like a manipulation and use of the other for one's narcissistic needs. I think that self psychology can handle this problem in two ways. First, just as there are no invulnerable psychic structures, there is no encountering the other without the other also being there "for me." I do not think that a pure, unmediated openness to the other is a possibility. But there is a huge difference between using the other as an archaic self object and as a mature selfobject. Here is where self psychology and ethics need to come together, for the concept of maturity is both a psychological construct and an ethical one, for it defines what we ought to become. What a mature selfobject relationship involves is the ability to participate in reciprocity, to give empathic concern as well as receiving it. The young child engaged in archaic selfobject relationships is not capable of reciprocity, and premature demands for reciprocity make a child over-attentive to the needs of the caretaker, often to the detriment of knowing its own needs. The major aim of the new book I am contemplating is to discuss what narcissistic development has as its proper goal becoming an ethical person - a person capable of reciprocity, justice, and care for others.

Eleanor: I look forward to reading your new book. I want to thank you for your comprehensive, thoughtful, and engaging replies. It has been a pleasure to interview you.

John: Thank you!