Interactional Complexity and Communication

This paper draws attention to an oversimplification that we believe has been frequently made in the analysis of interpersonal communication. This happens when one uses interpersonal communication models that do not match the interactional complexity of the system under observation. The aim of the paper is to present some conceptual parameters (Territoriality, Temporality, Duality) of an N-adic model of communication in the effort to match the interactional complexity of the N-person games. In other words, if we accept the so-called "systems" approach, we need communication models that allow us to observe different levels of interactional complexity. The observer (the therapist) may decide on which level to take up his or her stance with reference to the particular case at hand and the goals in studying it.     

WITHSTANDING TRAUMA: THE SIGNIFICANCE OF EMMA ECKSTEIN'S CIRCUMCISION TO FREUD'S IRMA DREAM

The author considers the medical rationale for Wilhelm Fliess's operation on Emma Eckstein's nose in February 1895 and interprets the possible role that this played in Freud's dream of Irma's injection five months later. The author's main argument is that Emma likely endured female castration as a child and that she therefore experienced the surgery to her nose in 1895 as a retraumatization of her childhood trauma. The author further argues that Freud's unconscious identification with Emma, which broke through in his dream of Irma's injection with resistances and apotropaic defenses, served to accentuate his own “masculine protest”. The understanding brought to light by the present interpretation of Freud's Irma dream, when coupled with our previous knowledge of Freud, allows us to better grasp the unconscious logic and origins of psychoanalysis itself. 1