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I offer responses to the discussions of my paper written by Ferro and Civitarese, Carnochan, Peltz and Goldberg, and Levine. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is the second part of an examination of field theory in psychoanalysis. In this article, contemporary Bionian field theory, primarily the work of Antonino Ferro, is compared with contemporary interpersonal and relational psychoanalysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I knew that writing a comparison of two points of view in psychoanalysis would be difficult when I proposed this project. But I didn't know how difficult. It was one of the hardest writing tasks I have ever had. The difficulty of the task, though, is interesting, at least in retrospect, because I believe that in it lies a hint of why the comparison of theories is seldom attempted. I have come up with three reasons for the difficulty. In the course of describing these reasons, I respond to John (Jack) C. Foehl's commentary. After that, I turn to the discussion by Don Troise. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This is the first of two articles comparing conceptions of the field in interpersonal/relational psychoanalysis (IRP) and Bionian field theory (BFT). This article compares the thinking of the originators of IRP and BFT, Harry Stack Sullivan and Madeleine and Willy Baranger. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

I argue that because psychoanalysis and psychotherapy are emergent processes and the expression of values, a hermeneutic perspective is necessary to study them. I present some basic aspects of one significant perspective of this kind, that of Hans-Georg Gadamer. We have no choice but to recognize that objectivism is the dominant mode of thought in our culture and the means by which the public is liable to judge our claims for psychoanalysis and psychotherapy. Nevertheless, it is crucial for us not to privilege quantitative empirical research in the study, and especially in the formulation, of these activities. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A good interpretation contributes to the patient's feeling of being witnessed or recognized. Recognition is an affective experience, not a matter of truth value, so that the truth in an interpretation, while it may be necessary to the recognition, is not sufficient. In fact, since interpretation is hardly the only form in which recognition can be couched, a good outcome can take place apart from any kind of interpretation. But this does not mean that new understanding is unimportant. It's just that the place of that new understanding in clinical process matters more than its content. I discuss Ellen F. Fries'case of Andres from this perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

When the editor of this issue invited me to write about technique, I found myself drawn to a general consideration of the nature of technique, rather than to an overview of my own views about how to practice. This article concerns what seems to me to be the inevitability of multiple and implicit theories of technique in psychoanalysis. We are continuously in the process of formulating articulate versions of technical theories that have been implicit up to that point. Implicit technical theory is the source of all explicit technical theory. And implicit theory, in turn, is the expression of value positions that we often have not reflected on. It is our positions about what is good in life, so frequently unexamined, that underlie our theories of technique. Evaluation of technical theory requires that we identify the values that have inspired our theories, and that we then decide which of these purposes are most important to us, and which theories best accomplish them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I discuss the relatedness with certain hard-to-engage patients as a kind of dissociative enactment, and I present a case illustration of a man whom I liked but could not help. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this discussion of Eyal Rozmarin's 'To Be Is to Betray,' I focus, along with Rozmarin, on the reconciliation of guilt and love, the embeddedness of our individual lives in the social world, and the significance of ethics in the creation of the kind of liberation that psychoanalysis can offer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Even when trauma can be remembered, the memory does not infuse the present with vitality or emotionality, as other memories do. To become a vital part of experience, trauma must be linked with other current experiences. Such links are metaphorical, in the sense meant by Lakoff and Johnson (1999). In metaphor, the meaning of a memory is carried over or transferred to a present experience. When such transfer takes place, trauma can be reflected on, because it can now be seen against the background of another experience. Transfer is made possible by cooccurrence, or the simultaneous presence in one's mind of a memory and a present experience. Such cooccurrences are potential metaphors; they can be actualized or refused. Modell (2003) tells us that this kind of refusal, common among trauma sufferers, prevents traumatic experience from becoming part of “emotional categories.” I refer to the unconscious refusal to tap the potential of cooccurrence—the unconscious refusal to create metaphor—as dissociation. This view of dissociation, and its breaching, is illustrated by a clinical vignette. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I discuss the work of the Boston Change Process Study Group, focusing on the paper in this issue of Psychoanalytic Dialogues, but also addressing broader issues across the range of their work. After describing the considerable similarities between their views and mine, I focus on three areas about which I have questions: the concept and clinical use of mutual enactment, BCPSG's use of nonlinear dynamic systems theory, and certain problems revolving around science and social construction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I use dissociation and the concept of the multiple self to link Mitchell's profound insight with Goldner's critique. In the process, I use the idea of dissociation to think about the nature of different kinds of long-term relationships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]