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From: Ernest Wolf
Date: 28 Apr 1997
Time: 21:32:18
I want to reply to the posting by Jule P. Miller III on 20 April on the Self Psychology Web Page.
I wish to support Dr. Miller’s concept of organizing fantasies that he posted here on April 20, 1997. I believe that we have for too long a time focused primarily on the self’s vicissitudes when exposed to trauma before, during or after emerging as a cohesive core self. We need to supplement these considerations with observations about the self’s inner urgency to express aspects of itself. Dr. Miller’s conceptualization of a WILL TO DO (effectance) seems a step in the right direction. As he says, fantasy formation is a central part of self structuralization and needs to be integrated into our theoretical framework. There is here also a connection to what I have called the need for Efficacy Selfobject Experiences but I believe with Dr. Miller there is more to it than that alone. The need for Efficacy Selfobject Experiences implies a need for others that are being affected. Dr. Miller, if I understand him correctly, calls attention to an effectance need that does not involve others per se but is strictly a needed expression of self in the form of a fantasy. Could that be extended to include the form of an enactment if that can be separated from the fantasy behind it?