People?
Robert Stolorow
Definition
-About the interaction between two minds, two subjectivities
-Built on top of self psychology
Post-Cartesian psychoanalysis
Mind is only understood in the context of relationships
Sustained empathic inquiry
-Understanding from within client’s subjectivity, an investigatory stance
-Both conscious and unconscious
-Many Tx were required to serve self-object functions for a parent
-Tx continually reflects on involvement of own subjectivity and impact on therapy process
Intersubjective conjunction
Overlooking things due to resonating with the client
Intersubjective disjunction
Therapist can’t resonate -> hard time finding empathy
Treatment?
-Interpretations: provide client a new experience of being deeply understood, thus providing a new self object experience; interpretations must address two dimensions
o Client yearnings and hopes for missing or insufficient self object experiences
o Client fears and expectations for a transference repetition of the original self-object failure, which is a significant source of conflict and resistance
Successful Rx addresses both dimensions, as they alternate between figure and ground
Attuned interpretations evoke and expand self-object experiences, while mis attuned or unattuned experiences if interpretations foreshadow traumatic repetition of early failures and drive self-object longings into hiding
