Emotional Connections and Dyadic Consciousness in Infant-Mother and Patient-Therapist Interactions: Commentary on Paper by Frank M. Lachmann

The emotional connection between patients and therapists and between developmental infants and researchers is argued to be a uniting basis for discussion of differences between therapists and researchers. Infant-mother research is seen as providing an understanding of the specificity of relationships and of the dyadic expansion of consciousness (DEC). DEC is hypothesized to be a mechanism of developmental change as well as a change process of therapy.