Reply to Commentary

In my reply to Dr. Philip Ringstrom, I acknowledge our mutual understanding of some of the impasses that we face in working with couples, particularly those whom Ringstrom describes as reflecting characteristics of “mutual inductive identification.” I reemphasize the role of the implicit domain in these and further elaborate ideas about why couples presenting in this way are so difficult to impact. These include the ways in which the brain is organized around prediction and problems in the ability to metacommunicate. I then discuss some clinical interventions to address this.     

Whiteness Revisited: Reply to Commentary

In reply to Altman's discussion, the author explores in more depth the topic of whiteness, both her South African and American whiteness. She situates American whiteness in the history of slavery, Jim Crow, and the ongoing racial discrimination of the present. When Altman points to the author's unconscious submission to the regulatory power of the larger society, she postulates that her submission is to American whiteness. She notes that, in finding a new home, that which she wished to discard—a white racist identity synonymous with the oppressor—has reappeared, to be confronted once again.     

Sociorelational Psychoanalysis and Agency: Reply to Commentary

The author notes that, overall, he and White seem to agree on many important issues that she writes about in her commentary, such as the necessity of recognizing both our shared humanity and the agency of separate, subjective selves. He argues, however, that White mischaracterizes what it means to think of the self as socially constructed, and he clarifies his views of how the concept of a socially constructed self may be related to individual differences in the same culture, and to personal agency. He responds to White's imputation that his paper implicitly prescribes a type of intervention or mandates some particular view of the Truth as a new theology, substituting a concrete environmental or social determinism for the abstract (intrapsychic) determinism that he criticizes. Finally, he responds to some interesting and insightful questions White raises about the case vignette of Mr. J that was presented in his essay.     

The Particularities of Form: Reply to Commentary

In this brief reply to Bollas's commentary on our paper about his work, the cycles of intersubjective dialogue endlessly sustaining should be apparent. We begin with an example of the form—content distinction and attempt to use it as a springboard for further disentangling some of the nuances of Bollas's intersubjective theorizing. Bollas's emphasis on form over content as a means of conceptualizing the analyst's contribution to the analytic process is indeed compelling. We all know from both sides of the couch the profoundly different meanings and messages that an analyst's mien invites: whether she's abrupt, verbose, meditative, tranquil. Yes, the medium is the message, and, thus, whether the analyst conveys a message through the effects of form that Bollas points out, such as “We have all the time you need for the nuances of unconscious figuring” versus “This is hot—we hafta figure it out now” surely does have an effect on the psychic material produced in the analytic process. We go on to add to Bollas's discussion of form by considering the particularities of form and how these too affect the analytic process.     

Hidden in Plain Sight: Reply to Commentary

Drawing on anecdotes that illustrate some European fantasies about the U.S.A. and its citizens, this paper suggests that what's American about American psychoanalysis has to do with differing cultural perspectives on human nature and on the relation of self to other. Via the European prejudices and stereotypes conveyed in the anecdotes, the essay delineates certain enviable things about what the U.S. stands for, such as persistent demands for equality and relatively greater possibilities for social mobility, as well as certain unenviable things, such as a superficial niceness and a tendency to deny the individual's embeddedness in social contexts. The paper puts relational analytic theory in its socio-historic context, praising its deconstruction of analytic authority while questioning the way it for the most part maintains the analytic tradition of grounding the individual in no larger social context than that of the family.     

Of Coals and Eskimos: Reply to Commentary

I first point out that there are similarities between the Fiscalini and me, and then I try to clarify some differences. Fiscalini suggests that I may be “inadvertently taking coals to Newcastle,” in arguing in favor of a well-known concept. Coming from a Freudian orthodox background, I have learned to substantiate every step of my reasoning on nonorthodox concepts. This sort of clarification may be useful, even for those who share my point of view.

One misunderstanding is that Fiscalini classifies me as an advocate of participant observation, whereas I identify with coparticipation. After suggesting some possible explanation for this difference, I develop some of my own ideas about psychoanalysis considered in terms of analogical hermeneutics, the paradox of being both individual and communal at the same time, and the need to include the social and political context in the analytic inquiry, and transcend the pseudo-opposition between interpretation and experience.     

Reply to Commentary by Daniel N. Stern

I respond to Stern's largely affirming discussion by fleshing out a few points, for example, improvisation is more than just being spontaneous, it is ensemble work that plays off and with patterns emergent in the personalities of both parties. These patterns illuminate something about the unconscious of each from which blossom things heretofore unimagined or unarticulated. Several principles are then emphasized: First, improvisational moments arise when the “characters” in the moment draw from something real within themselves along with who they are inducing one another to become. Second, the cultivation of play in improvisation lends itself to putting to rest the myth of the perfectly analyzed analyst as not only impossible but as being both unnecessary and undesirable—a seminal point to the entire relational canon. Third, improvisation is a means for putting live flesh on the sterile bones of a host of theories now informing the contemporary psychoanalytic perspective such as chaos and complexity theory, along with dynamic systems theory. I also note that improvisational moments exhibit an emerging sense of vitality and a deepened sense of connection between the partners. Their work obtains a greater sense of focus, though not a deliberate focus as that their relational unconsciouses are “directing” them. Improvisational work feels liberating, playful, as well as affirming and recognizing what what each is bringing to their coauthorship. By contrast, when the improvisation fails, it devolves into negative thirdness or one-upsmanship, the qualities of which reflect deadness, avoidance, confusion, constriction of play, and a misrecognition of one another that devolves into a mutual sense of defeat. Responding to Stern's question about posi-traums, I affirm there is a phenomenon in which an entrenched emotional conviction of a patient's can be dramatically altered. This happens when something positive occurs that cannot be assimilated within the patient's intransigently negative belief system such that she must accommodate a new organizing principle, that is, a new emotional conviction to make sense of it. I concede, however, that it may be too soon to tell how much such phenomena penetrate the more physiologically encoded elements of trauma.     

Dual Visions,Dual Voices Reply to Commentary

An overarching thematic implication of both Grand's discussion of my article and my reply to her discussion is the need for sharing and integration of knowledge and concepts belonging to the separate fields of psychoanalysis and the trauma/dissociation. Grand and I have different expressive voices, both singular and plural, which, I conjecture, are in part reflective of different traditions. Grand's response demonstrates eloquently a problem facing both psychoanalysis and the field of trauma treatment: the tendency of fields, like individuals, to proceed in isolation deprives all from the benefit of shared information. Procrustean beds cannot be shared.     

The Whole of the No-thing: Reply to Commentary

We attempt to apply our conceptualization of the absence–presence dialectic and the capacity to disappear to our understanding of the experience and the treatment of trauma. Francisco Gonzalez challenges us to encounter the place of destruction and void where the absence is simply uncontainable. We suggest that the transformational meeting place between patient and therapist entails a reawakening of the movement between absence and presence, being and not-being, some-thing and no-thing, which were previously a frozen or derailed dialectic. The therapist's capacity to surrender to the temporary nihilation of the self within the therapeutic relationship is seen as the turning point in the reestablishment of movement and the creation of meaning.     

The Search for Objectivity in the Study of Subjectivity Reply to Commentary

Two central questions raised by Spezzano's commentary have to do with the extent to which we seek objectivity in psychoanalytic theory and practice, and the extent to which one or another set of methods (e.g., clinical observation) is adequate or optimal for generating that knowledge. A discipline and treatment devoted to understanding subjectivity is nevertheless devoted to objective knowledge about a patient's subjectivity, defenses, and so forth and requires valid theories to guide exploration, inference, and intervention. Seeking objective knowledge does not require a naïve empiricism ignorant of the limits of objectivity. We would do well to use multiple methods to learn about how the mind works and what leads to therapeutic change.     

To See or Not to See: Blinded by Guilt: Reply to Commentary

In response to Annabella Bushra's discussion and her focus on what is missing in the clinical material, the author speculates about the repetition of the historical trauma of purifying mixed race in the face of its complexity—trying to neatly package race despite it not so neatly fitting into any one category—and losing the individual by overly focusing on skin color. The author considers the silence, secrecy, and transgression in the treatment and, in this context, a few of Bushra's key points are addressed—sorting out the nature of hate in relation to Susan, passing as transgression, and White guilt. A distinction is made between a malevolent, destructive hate and a loving hate, and White guilt is considered as a defense against recognition of the other.     

The Analyst as Comic and the Comic in Analysis: Reply to Commentary

This discussion elaborates aspects of the use of humor and jokes in clinical psychoanalysis. The use of humor, like dreams or other symmetrical processes, facilitates the patient's development of the capacity to symbolize unconscious experience and mitigates the need to evacuate unconscious experiences and fantasies into the external world. In focusing on specific clinical interventions I highlight three dimensions of the process: the concept of coconstruction in the emergence of humor in the psychoanalytic relationship, the authority of the patient's psychopathology and affective and cognitive development, and the analyst's willingness to take the risks of self-exposure and possibly hurting the patient implicit in the use of humor and jokes in the analytic relationship. Different forms of humor are described in relation to the different clinical situations, including mutually created jokes, caricatured enactments, cartoonlike images, and self-depreciating commentary on the analytic process. In using jokes and humor in psychoanalysis we introduce the possibility of pleasure within an intense, intimate moment which allows for the transformation of unacceptable aspects of both patient and analyst as they become joined within a broader human experience.     

Reply to Commentary by Collins: Distinguishing Proximal and Distal Levels of Explanation

Two analytical methods are proposed to evaluate the extent to which the age-related influences in a set of variables are independent of one another. Application of the methods to 16 different data sets, representing a total of 169 variables and 4505 subjects, reveals that as few as one or two distinct factors may be sufficient to account for a large proportion of the age-related variance in a variety of cognitive variables. These results therefore imply that a relatively small number of independent "causes" may be responsible for a substantial percentage of the age-related declines apparent in many measures of cognitive functioning.     

A Reply to Uttl and Morin’s (2010) Commentary of

In response to a commentary provided by Uttl and Morin (2010) regarding the recent study by Hughes and Nicholson (2010), we evaluate their suggestion to modify our study’s design to reduce ceiling effects (similar to that of Rosa, Lassonde, Pinard, Keenan, &; Belin, 2008). Also, the commentators failed to take into account our data on reaction times (a measure that is arguably less affected by ceiling effects), which help substantiate our conclusions regarding self-face and self-voice recognition. This rejoinder encourages readers to consider the relevance of the ecological validity of Hughes and Nicholson’s findings.     

Everyone Must Get a Turn: From Omnipotence to Respect for Otherness: Reply to Commentary

The authors conceptualize Davies's account of the difficult session with her patient Karen as a mentalization mismatch: an expectable failure on the analyst's part to understand the mental state of the patient. In response, the patient used projective identification to re-create the link to the analyst that was temporarily severed. They argue that the therapeutic impasse produced by Karen's successful externalization of a persecuting part of her self is more than repetition of a past relationship. It is the current experience of a disorganized self: a pervasive state for the borderline patient, and a temporary but no less disorganized state in the analyst.     

The Analyst's Uses of Theory and the Theory the Analyst Uses: Reply to Commentary

Where Slochower focuses her discussion on the analyst's multiform uses of theory, I focus my response on how the theory we each use informs a quite different way of understanding what is at issue for my patient in the apparent disengagement that marks her quest for help. More broadly, I consider how the theoretical perspective Slochower brings to her rendering of my clinical understanding and position makes for a reading that diverges significantly from my own view of what transpired in the treatment process I present.     

The Value of Research Methods in Psychotherapy Research: A Reply to the Commentary of Dr Norton

Norton's commentary on our article has prompted us to think further about the purpose of psychotherapy research. We agree with his suggestion that researchers have much work to do to understand when and for whom interventions are most efficacious. We hope that our field will make progress in this regard. In this reply, we further describe why we believe careful attention to research methods, such as those highlighted in our article, is key to making progress in psychotherapy research.