These clinical models or paradigms differ fundamentally in their under- standing of the three essential analytic dimensions, and they represent sig- nificantly different conceptions of psychoanalytic data, technique, and process in other words, they are positioned quite differently on the dual clinical axes of dyadic interactivity and psychic subjectivity. And, of course, they represent different perspectives on the nature of analytic par- ticipation. The various traditionally defined analytic schools have bor- rowed from all three models, though some schools lean more heavily on one or another model to guide their understanding of analytic inquiry. The impersonally oriented nonparticipant mirror paradigm encom- passes the orthodox analytic theory of inquiry whose guiding metaphor of the analysis is that of the nonparticipant mirror or psychic surgeon who reflects and interpretively operates on the transferential biopsychic fan- tasies of the individual patient. This is the model of inquiry prescribed by Freud and practiced most purely by the American neoclassicists of the 1950s. Even today, it remains the most widely held view of what is proper psychoanalysis. The interpersonally focused participant-observer paradigm, in con- trast, focuses on the social mind, the interpsyche, as it arises from the social field the interpretive and experiential interplay of self and other within the interpersonal analytic matrix forms both analytic data and therapeutic action. This model of inquiry informs the clinical approach of a wide range of analysts who practice some variant of participant-obser- vation, however widely they may differ from one another in other respects. This paradigm covers the heterogeneous span of British object- relations theory, the American school of interpersonal psychoanalysis, and Kohutian self-psychology, as well as some contemporary Freudians. The deeply personal clinical model of coparticipant inquiry, histori- cally rooted in the clinical ideas and experiments of Sandor Ferenczi, is based on the interpersonally oriented participant-observer paradigm but has a more personal and intersubjective focus. In this model of praxis, analyst and patient are seen as forming a coparticipatory and coordinate inquiry into both their interpersonal relatedness and their uniquely indi- vidual experience. The coparticipant model emphasizes the importance of real factors in transference and countertransference experience as well as the curative role of the personal relationship. This model of inquiry, which also bears an existential influence, significantly informs (often uncon- sciously) the work of a number of contemporary analysts and is becom- ing increasingly influential in its effect on analytic practice. Each of the three paradigms I posit here has or has had some influence on the traditionally defined psychoanalytic schools, even if only mini- mally in some instances. Each school has found the logic of one or another 4 Introduction
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