Shifting Relational States, Activators, and the Variable Unconscious: Towards a New Psychoanalytic Theory of Awareness

Abstract

This article uses three clinical vignettes to propose a revised model of the unconscious, arising from "template theory," which views the individual as possessing multiple "relational templates," observable patterns of relatedness encoded during development and manifesting themselves in automatic relational behavior. A relational template contains two roles, and either role can be occupied, a phenomenon described as "role exchangeability." The grouping of template role, with its corresponding affects and memories is defined as a "relational state." Each relational state has its level of awareness and unawareness, which changes when "state shifting" is initiated by an "activator." Fluctuating change in the level of unawareness is identified as the "variable unconscious." Controlled movement between relational states can be directed by the overriding function of an individual's reflective abilities, derived from their "reflective state," and enhanced by analytic interpretation (which converts procedural phenomena into symbolic thought.)

The fantasy relationship: Repetition’s antidote and an explanation for resilience.

“…Analysts continue to rely on the premise that what is experienced in early life inevitably manifests itself in someone’s future. Beginning with Freud’s (1912) innovative concept of transference, which Sullivan (1940) expanded upon through his idea of parataxic distortions, the basic concept continued forward with more modern iterations that included RIGs 1 (Stern, 1985), internal working models (Bowlby, 1988), and relational templates (Herzog, 2012a). The principle of repetition of early experience is so ubiquitous that it could be maintained that much of analytic thought has somewhere at its base a theory of repetition.…”