Jacob Arlow (1912–2004) was an American teacher, scholar, and clinician who served as president of the American Psychoanalytic Association and the New York Psychoanalytic Institute. Arlow was an editor of the Psychoanalytic Quarterly from 1972 to 1979. He wrote several articles on psychoanalysis.;[1] and, with Charles Brenner, was 'author of...Psychoanalytic Concepts and the Structural Theory, a once controversial, now standard advanced text'.[2]
The latter's argument that 'the psychoses (and thus, by implication, also the narcissistic personality disturbances) can be adequately elucidated...within the frame of reference of the metapsychology of the transference neuroses'[3] would be challenged with the emergence of self psychology.
In his 1960 article on "Fantasy Systems in Twins", 'Arlow observed that the "bond of complete understanding which is missing with the parent unites the twins in the wish fantasy....The existence of another individual who is a reflection of the self brings the experience of twinship in line with the psychology of the double"'.[4]
Perhaps 'Arlow's major contribution to psychoanalytic theory reformulated the Kleinian concept of unconscious fantasy from an ego psychological perspective'.[5]
Arlow insisted on 'the limits of the psychoanalytic approach: these limits are inherent not only to the technique but also to human nature, because conflicts are a fact of life. He warns against the illusion of creating a "perfect" human being thanks to psychoanalysis'.[6]