Reply to “Expanding the Frame” by Anthony Bass and to Commentaries

In this reply I offer a short answer to the question about the theme “What do we learn from experience?” I can say that certainly the power of that particular experience with that patient made me more sensitive and careful toward similar moments with other patients. I then offer some comment on the contributions in this issue of the journal. I emphasize the interweaving of structure and process and the process of building meaning as an intersubjective achievement. I also intervene on the theme “how to transmit psychoanalytic wisdom.”     

Reconsidering “Considering Gestational Life”: Reply to Commentaries by Levine and Williams

The two commentaries of “Considering Gestational Life” are both wonderful in their generative reflections and from such uniquely different perspectives. Each has generated an array of new questions about the nature and impact of gestation that are yet to be substantially explored. This discussion attempts to further their inquiries by focusing on how “gestational thinking” leads us into exploring Negative Capability; the improvisational nature of analytic process; objectivity versus subjectivity; reconsidering the impact of gestational trauma; the epistimophilic instinct; gender bias; clarifying “objectless intersubjectivity”; the role of silence, isolation, interiority, and privacy in analytic listening; what patients seek in treatment; and clarification of the meaning of “merger” and “unity.”     

“Was It Good for You?”: Reply to Commentaries

In many ways, psychoanalysis revolutionized attitudes about sexuality. Yet by undertheorizing female erotic passion and downplaying the role of the clitoris, psychoanalysis perpetuated a long historical tradition of denying essential aspects of women's sexual experience. Psychoanalysis has at times contributed to women perceiving their own bodily erotic excitement as frightening, dangerous, and out of control. In this reply to the commentaries, the authors continue to explore the ways in which women and women's experience, especially their embodied sexual experience, are so often rendered invisible.     

Found in Translation … Perhaps: Reply to Commentaries

The commentaries by Cornell and Markman are read here as attempts to convert or translate my text in terms they have found useful building on ideas by Winnicott, Bion, and others. I experience meaning in these commentaries in the sense that I can feel found at times in their words, but also, perhaps not. I try to convey the value and limits of our attempts to use a languaged representation of the polyrhythmic weave of embodied registrations, which I emphasize as a useful expansion for analytic attention. It is with these registrations that dissociated affect might be engaged in a way that helps the analyst to navigate, rather than react to, difficult to bear affects associated with dysregulation and shame.     

Fantasies that Light Up Reality: Keeping the “Old Flame” Lit: Reply to Commentaries

In response to Foehl's phenomenological perspective that an underlying unity and interconnectedness does away with the need for any kind of distinction between reality and fantasy, the author argues for maintaining this very distinction. The author then uses his notion of fantasy in revisiting Hirsch's treatment of Angela and makes the case that the absence of desire on the analyst's part and the impasse that persisted is partially a result of not sufficiently reviving, altering, and joining the respective fantasies of analyst and patient that existed in isolation of each other throughout the analysis.     

What's Possible? What Matters? Reply to Commentaries

The three discussants agree that a definition of psychoanalysis tied to session frequency is problematic and needs to change. Yet none supports my recommendation to redefine the practice of psychoanalysis in terms of the practitioner's training. This prompted me to look more closely at my proposal and push my thinking further. I argue that psychoanalysis, like many other professions, needs to define its practice as the application of its complex and evolving knowledge and skill base, grounded in its unique field of inquiry. Although there are individual exceptions, the inculcation of this knowledge and skill base is generally best accomplished through psychoanalytic training. This assertion, however, rests on the premise that our training curricula keep pace with our rapidly evolving field of inquiry and knowledge. To further clarify my vision I examine the nature of psychoanalytic expertise. I suggest that such expertise amounts to the inculcation and integration of a large number of psychoanalytic frames of reference. I contend further that the nature of contemporary psychoanalytic theories is such that important psychoanalytic frames of reference are proliferating more rapidly than in the past, that the relationships among them are becoming more complex, and that consequently the application of psychoanalytic theory to practice is also becoming more complex. Psychoanalytic training programs need to recognize this expanding complexity and revise curricula and pedagogic methods on an ongoing basis to reflect this evolution within our field.     

Good Grief—What Becomes of the Lost Relationship: Reply to Commentaries

In replying to the discussions of Gilbert Cole and Stefanie Solow Glennon, I focus on several issues raised, including the continuing intrapsychic relationship with a dead parent who may have been destructive to the patient; the analyst's facilitating role in enabling the patient to connect with, and construct the future of, the lost relationship; the potential meaning of an enactment with a bereaved patient; and some thoughts on the dyad's needs to work creatively postloss in multiple affective time zones.     

How to Use Your Mind When You Can’t Think: Reply to Commentaries by Davies and Cooper

There is much area of agreement between the author and the discussants. The author addresses areas of concern and questions raised in the commentaries. These topics include the use of reverie, how I have defined maternal desire, concerns about the avoidance of negative transference, the analyst’s own dissociation, and compassion.     

Mechner’s Reply to the Commentaries on His Article, “A Behavioral and Biological Analysis of Aesthetics”

The Psychological Record - The commentaries prompted my realization that it is more useful to view the core of the aesthetic reaction as composed of a set of Pavlovian respondents than as a...     

Mental Structure,Psychic Process,and Analytic Relations—How People Change in Analysis: Reply to Commentaries

This essay elaborates on some of the ideas set forth in “It Takes One to Know One” in response to Peter Shabad's and Paul Williams's commentaries on that paper. In particular, the distinctions between process and mental structure and between unconscious process and relationship are explored and developed. An attempt is made to clarify some of the similarities and differences between British object relations perspectives and some U.S. relational ideas as they apply to these distinctions and their relevance to clinical technique.     

“Evidence” on Characteristic Empathy: A Reply to Cross and Slee

This paper addresses a number of issues raised by Cross and Slee (1984) in their comment on Watson (1983). It clarifies the construct of characteristic empathy by comparing this variable with variables derived from interactive empathy. Various aspects of reliability as they relate to popular empathy measures are then discussed ad the particular version of the Indices studied by Watson (1983) is identified. Finally, there is a discussion of the extent to which the literature reviewed by Cross and Slee actually offers conclusive evidence about empathy measures.     

“Expanding the Frame”: Reply to Commentary

In responding to a discussion by Susi Federici-Nebbiosi of “When the Frame Doesn't Fit the Picture,” I further consider the ways in which analysts and analysands together create the best conditions for their work. I emphasize that analytic work best fulfills its potential when it grows out of a collaborative search for ways of constructing the psychoanalytic situation that are most fully and subtly responsive to the unique qualities and circumstances of each patient and analyst. Implications for psychoanalytic training of an intersubjective model of frame construction are briefly considered.     

“A Place to Enter and in Which to Feel”: Reply to Cath,Levine, and Peltz

In this response, I clarify my argument for the utility of affectively organizing and containing work in the treatment of a traumatized child. I find myself in agreement with many of the comments of Peltz regarding the vitalizing aspects of the work and Levine’s discussion of scaffolding to promote development. I delineate my thinking in response to Cath’s queries about transference, Oedipal themes, and the value of interpretation.     

“It All Comes Down to Imagination”: Reply to Commentary

In her generous and full discussion of my paper, Doris Brothers writes about patient's efforts to restore themselves following trauma and how that runs into walls caused by their “systemically emergent certainties.” She beautifully writes, “Since our capacity to hope depends on being able to tolerate uncertainty we sometimes join our patients in their hopelessness” (p. 231). Brothers emphasizes how Murakami can help us tolerate uncertainty. My emphasis is on how writers like Murakami help us restore our imaginative and empathic capacities. Frozen landscapes, as evoked by Murakami in “UFO in Kushiro,” are depictions of shut-down psychic states. Animated imagery helps to melt the ice, creating living motion in thought and affect. Both Brothers and I are looking at the crucial movement from simplified to complex shared states of mind. We seem at first to differ in our understanding of the function of rage in treatment, though I believe we may be discussing different clinical situations.