The most important question for the Psychoanalytic Process Research is presumably what Mitchell calls the problem of “bootstrapping” the transferential matrix: how do the members of the dyad manage to disengage from being ‘heard’ according to old or unsuitable affective categories? On the grounds of a bi-phasic Conceptual and in-depth Analysis of the Psychoanalytic Complexity literature, I construct a minimal model of the psychoanalytic process as a theoretical context for conducting Process Research. According to the ‘story’ that I have read in the literature four main themes describe the process: a) the gradual emergence of a ‘phenomenological’ language that facilitates the flow of experience, b) the coupling, synchronicity and coordination of analyst and analysand, in ‘phase’ and ‘anti-phase’ at several levels, c) the shifting of the mental states and the thin and delicate slicing and sampling of experience that actualizes the emergence of mental objects and finally, d) Scaling that involves all those ‘mental’ processes that correct for the excesses or the deficiencies that are made evident during the shifting of mental states. Experience is generated as we ‘couple and shift’, and generative tensions appear as we ‘scale’ through this coupling and shifting process. Enactments, role-responsive transferences and countertransferences, testing of the transference and alliance or communication ruptures appear as coupled oscillating patterns that have both a repetitive and a developmental dynamic.

Regarding the question of how we should study ‘Coupling, Shifting and Scaling’ I propose the adoption of an Enactivist epistemological framework which perceives the mind not as the workings of a representational machine but as a living process and the expression of an embodied living organism which in a “precarious” state of “needful freedom” (Jonas, in Thompson, 2007) strives to make sense of its environment. On the grounds of this framework I defend the view that we should study Scaling as an expression of the ‘radical dialogicality’ of the human mind that underlies the ‘structuring of experience’. I examine this ‘radical dialogicality’ at the level of inter-hemispheric differences, psychopathology and the enactive structuring of experience and the horizon of affective affordances in the clinical process. 

Finally, on the grounds of this conceptual analysis and its application to a case-study, I try to defend the view that, adopting relevant “dialogical” and micro-analytic methodological tools, we can achieve an appropriate level of ‘resolution’ so as to study “bootstrapping” at the moment-to-moment shifts in the experiential states or the shifts in attitudes that appear at bifurcation points in the system’s evolution. Through Scaling, the clinical dyad strives for a “maximum grip” of those experiential dimensions that carry the potential to expand the shared reality as a generative field and engage those surfaces of experience that bridge lost connections and separations, by fractalizing the dimensionality of the generative space. A detailed examination of the Scaling processes may bring us closer to a better understanding of the problem of “bootstrapping”.

Poiesis in/between the Transferential Matrix: Insight, Imagination and the Relational Interpretation

In this article I review some of the ways in which the themes of authenticity, spontaneity and improvisation have become important values in the writing of many contemporary psychoanalysts. I examine the emergence of this trend in the context of historical and cultural changes in the construction of the self, and the fragmentation of traditional beliefs and social structures linking the individual to the collective. I also explore the relationship between the principle of authenticity and various dimensions including autonomy, mutuality, intersubjectivity, and the ethical realm. In addition I explore the perceived tensions between traditional social forms and the experience of authenticity, and examine the implications of the questions raised in this essay for our conception of the nature of psychoanalytic practice.

The unbearable lightness of being: Authenticity and the search for the real.

The term regression refers to the idea that a person can return to earlier phases of mental development and the primitive modes of functioning associated with them. A core concept in both conflict and deficit models of development, the idea has nonetheless come under increasing scrutiny from critics who argue that it misleads us into a genetic fallacy whereby we reduce the issues of adolescent and adult development to their childhood precursors. Inderbitzen and Levy (2000) suggest that we focus on transformations, or shifts, in mental organization, instead of on regressions. But discarding the concept of regression has theoretical implications: to adopt instead a focus on shifts in mental organization we must (1) consider our object of study to be the meaning-making person, not isolated instincts or needs; (2) understand conscious and unconscious mental life to be embedded in the here-and-now relational field; and (3) adopt a lifespan model of development. The aim here is to outline a theoretical framework in which we can more fully explore the possibility of discarding "regression" in favor of a focus on transformations in the developmental present.

The Critique of Regression: The Person, The Field, The Lifespan.

Interpersonal psychoanalysis is not well known outside the northeastern United States, yet it has been present since the 1930s and has influenced psychoanalysis all over the world. In this article, the origins of interpersonal psychoanalysis are described, providing at least a partial explanation for this widespread ignorance. Interpersonal psychoanalysis no longer finds much of its definition by an opposition to ego psychology, as it did in its early days. Today, instead, the more significant question for interpersonal psychoanalysis is how, and whether, it can be differentiated from relational psychoanalysis. This is especially important for those who, like me, identify as both interpersonal and relational. Interpersonal thinking was the heart of Mitchell's original conception of relational psychoanalysis. I argue that interpersonal psychoanalysis remains a coherent psychoanalytic perspective, defined by radical field theory; a deemphasis on unconscious fantasy and repressed memories as template...

Interpersonal Psychoanalysis: History and Current Status

Dramatic Dialog refers to a conceptualization of therapeutic action derived from the legacy of Sandor Ferenczi that articulates how internal object relations and multiple self-states are unconsciou...

Dramatic Dialogue: Dreaming & Drama in Contemporary Clinical Practice

In Relational Freedom: Emergent properties of the interpersonal field Donnel Stern takes the reader on an intimate journey through an interpersonal landscape. This interpersonal expedition occurs s...

LP S. Montana Katz

Papers

Relational freedom: Emergent properties of the interpersonal field