Among the challenges facing 21st-century psychoanalysis is the task of integrating our various theoretical schools. Hans Loewald is a pioneer of this endeavor.

Loewald’s emphasis on the fundamental role of internalization combines object relations, drive theory, self-concepts, and the socio-cultural history of an individual. Throughout his writing, Loewald views mind as an open system and the analytic relationship as an interpsychic experience developmentally grounded in the mother–infant matrix.

He conceives of the analyst’s task as holding in safe-keeping the image of the individual that he or she can become. In his model of therapeutic action, Loewald understands the analyst’s interpretations as conveying not only insight, but also a new object relational experience. The original objects – the ghosts that haunt present day life - are thus gradually transformed into ancestors.

Loewald’s ongoing, internal dialogue with Freud and others brought him to his remarkably prescient synthesis. In the same spirit of dialogue, the Loewald Center will continue to strive toward a radically integrative vision for our theoretical and clinical work.