Meeting Mitchell's Challenge: A Comparison of Relational Psychoanalysis and Intersubjective Systems Theory

Comparing Fruit and Oranges: Response to Philip A. Ringstrom

“…(pp. 365-366) Ringstrom (2010) seems not to have grasped that we (Stolorow, Awood, & Orange, 2002) have offered a critique of relational psychoanalysis from the inside, as it were-that is, we have sought to illuminate certain remnants of Cartesian, isolated-mind thinking that persist within a broad relational perspective with which we ourselves strongly identify.…”

“…The subtitle of a recent article by Ringstrom (2010) exhibits an obvious category mistake-the error of comparing a general category (relational psychoanalysis) with an instance of that category (intersubjective-systems theory)-that renders the core of his argument logically incoherent (see also Jacobs, 2010). That Stephen Mitchell, whose "challenge" Ringstrom's article is supposedly meeting, regarded intersubjective-systems theory as an instance of relational psychoanalysis is shown unambiguously by Mitchell's and Aron's (1999) inclusion of our chapter on the unconscious in their volume, Relational Psychoanalysis: The Emergence of a Tradition.…”

Mi devenir como Psicoterapeuta: Una diálogo con el pensamiento de Stephen Mitchell

“…La solución que encuentra Mitchell (2015) para que se salvaguarde la autonomía es que como analistas no neguemos el impacto personal que tenemos frente al otro y reconocer la naturaleza interactiva del proceso analítico. Si bien la metodología del psicoanálisis relacional consiste en que la experiencia subjetiva del paciente es abordada, por lo menos al principio con mucha empatía, a la vez que el analista también realiza su introspección acerca de su propio repertorio teórico y experiencial en su intento por comprender la experiencia del paciente y sus propias limitaciones y entendimientos hacia éste (Ringstrom, 2010) nos topamos con lo que Mitchell (2015) definió como el bootstrapping problem, en el cual uno intenta apoyarse sobre su propio peso para levantarse a sí mismo pero para ello debería de haber algo más, algún punto de apoyo escondido y ese punto de apoyo es la alianza de trabajo. Sin una buena alianza de trabajo no podemos hacer nada por levantarnos a nosotros mismos ni a nuestro paciente para que avance el proceso, ambos quedaríamos estancados en un impasse.…”

Commentary on Donna Orange's, “Recognition as: Intersubjective Vulnerability in the Psychoanalytic Dialogue”

“…In other words, part of recognizing something about a patient may entail recognizing something about herself that lends not only to the dialogical processes of "mutual regulation" but also to those of "mutual perception." 5 By contrast, I find Sander's (1995) and the Boston Change Process Study Group's (2002) work as very resonant with processes of recognition that emerges in play, or what I refer to as improvisation (Ringstrom, 1999(Ringstrom, , 2001a(Ringstrom, , 2001b(Ringstrom, , 2003(Ringstrom, , 2004(Ringstrom, , 2007a(Ringstrom, , 2007b(Ringstrom, , 2008a(Ringstrom, , 2008b(Ringstrom, , 2010a(Ringstrom, , 2010b(Ringstrom, , 2010c(Ringstrom, , 2010d. These processes involve "mucking around" (Stern, 2004;Nabaum, 2008) or "flummoxing" (as I put it)-none of which are about "generosity" or even necessarily "self-expressiveness" (although that certainly can be involved).…”

“…It is here that I have proposed that models of improvisation (Ringstrom, 2001a(Ringstrom, , 2001b(Ringstrom, , 2003(Ringstrom, , 2004(Ringstrom, , 2007a(Ringstrom, , 2007b(Ringstrom, , 2008a(Ringstrom, , 2008b(Ringstrom, , 2010a(Ringstrom, , 2010b(Ringstrom, , 2010c(Ringstrom, , 2010d can be useful in breaking out of the grip of mutual inductive processes and in truly finding innovative ways of explicating the heretofore unformulated.…”