informal rule that generally analysts should speak only sparingly and remain silent for the most part. Conservative coparticipant analysts, like noncoparticipant ana- lysts (participant-observers and classical analysts), might follow this stricture. The radical coparticipant analyst, on the other hand, most likely would not observe this convention and might, in fact, be quite talkative in his or her sessions. The more radical analyst sees this as important to an engaged dialogue, whereas the others see this as unwarranted intrusion, an interference with the patient’s associational process. Similar differences characterize other aspects of coparticipant inquiry, such as the issue of self-disclosure, the place of spontaneity in analytic practice, ways of analyzing transference, working with immediate experience, the analytic role of asking questions, to mention but a few of the many ways in which one can engage in coparticipant inquiry in a relatively conservative or more radical way. This is not to say that either conservative or radical coparticipant inquiry is necessarily better either version may veer into excess. Radical coparticipation may become “wild analysis,” and coparticipant conservatism may become a “mild” analysis. This said, those analysts of a more radical bent are better posi- tioned to take advantage of the therapeutic possibilities for analytic intimacy and individuation offered by the coparticipant approach. Coparticipant analysts, conservative and radical, are more venturesome in their pursuit of personal truth and psychological growth than adherents of the two paradigms that coparticipant inquiry builds upon and supersedes. Though each analytic paradigm stands separately with identifiable unique premises, there is some overlap between them, at their transitional edges, so to speak. One paradigm doesn’t leave off and another begin in a sharp divide. It may be that those analysts who seem to have one foot in the coparticipant door and one foot outside it are in transition from one paradigm to another and are testing the waters, tentatively trying out a bolder, more dynamic and bidirectional form of inquiry. We are dealing here with one facet of a multidimensional and extraordinarily complex phenomena—the interpersonal dynamics of the coparticipant psychoan- alytic relationship. Psychoanalysts’ (and patients’) attitudes and beliefs guide their clinical actions, often in ways that are so complex as to defy easy explanation or analysis. Thus, in comparing paradigms or looking at one paradigm’s structure, simple examples offer little valid information on the meaning of an analyst’s (or patients’) clinical actions they may be clinically illustrative but have little proba- tive value. This is true even of more sophisticated and complex studies of clinical phenomena. However, the study of clinical behavior in sharp detail over pro- longed periods of time is more likely to give a truer or at least a fuller account of the meaning of analysts’ actions. However, there is a limit to our understanding. Inherently, the relationship between patient and analyst is so infinitely complex that our understanding of it will always remain incomplete and open to revision. Consequently, our study of it is inexhaustible. One final note and caveat. Language and human communication, is often sub- ject to distortion. Words, for example, often accrue connotations resulting in a surfeit of meanings. While this may enrich our language and gladden the poet, it plays havoc with the scientist. For instance, the terms conservative and radical 218 Notes
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