used here to classify different versions of coparticipant inquiry and to differenti- ate them from previous paradigms of analytic inquiry, may, like many words, have taken on unwanted connotations (such as, for example, those of political prefer- ences or positions). However, in these chapters these terms are not meant to take on any values beyond their dictionary meanings. 2: Core Principles of Coparticipant Inquiry 1. From a coparticipant perspective, influence in the psychoanalytic situation is seen in terms of a contributory, rather than deterministic, concept of influence. In other words, patients and analysts each contribute to the shaping of the copartici- pation of the other, but neither completely determines the analytic experience of the other. The self, as it were, is influenced, but not defined, by the interpersonal forces of its communicative context (the analytic social field). Interpersonal influence, in this perspective, is mutual, continual, and variable for both patient and analyst. In contrast, theories of clinical participation that reflect a radical environmen- talism (as in overly interpersonalized situationalism) or radical individualism carry deterministic concepts of analytic influence. The extreme situational per- spective views the individual patient’s coparticipatory experience as determined by the social forces of the analytic field. In this view, the self is defined by its social surroundings. Alternatively, a marked individualism minimizes the importance of the social context. Transference is seen as only minimally influenced by counter- transference and vice versa. The patient’s and analyst’s coparticipation, in this extreme individualistic perspective, is determined by the flow of endogenous psy- chic process. 2. In Sullivan’s (1940, 1953) theory of personality the terms “prototaxic,” “parataxic,” and “syntaxic” refer to the three modes of human experience. They are ordered in developmental sequence. Prototaxis, the most primitive mode, refers to undifferentiated “cosmic” experience. It is objectless “oceanic” experience with- out any sense of self or others. Developmentally intermediate between very primi- tive prototaxic experience and the logical thought of syntaxis, parataxic experience is roughly synonymous with primary process thinking. It is prelogical or alogical (arational) thought, and it forms the experiential subsoil for intuition and creativ- ity as well as for irrational and distorted experience. Syntaxis, according to Sulli- van, is the developmentally most advanced mode of experience. Similar to second- ary process thinking, it refers to logical, rational, consensual experience and logi- cal reasoning. For further study see Sullivan (1940, 1953) and Fiscalini (1995b). 3: The Evolution of Coparticipant Inquiry in Psychoanalysis 1. The contemporary interpersonal analyst Irwin Hirsch uses Fromm’s term “observant participation” in his typology of contemporary analytic approaches. Fromm and Hirsch, however, use the same term to refer to very different clinical phenomena, and their individual usages of the term reflect very different analytic sensibilities. Notes 219
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