“Of Course All Relationships Are Unique”: How Co-creative Processes Generate Unique Mother–Infant and Patient–Therapist Relationships and Change Other Relationships

Abstract

The question of the uniqueness of relationships is examined: How do relationships come to be unique? What are some of the features of their uniqueness? And how can relationships, be it the mother—infant relationship or the patient—therapist relationship, have unique rather than archetypical effects on other relationships? A model of relationship uniqueness is presented that argues that mother and infant, and patient and therapist, co-create dyadic states of consciousness—states of making implicit and explicit sense of the world—out of their normally messy exchanges of age-possible meanings. These co-creative processes lead to change in the infant's and child's state of knowing the world, and also change the way the patient makes sense of the world and ways of being with others. Additionally presented are (I) a critique of attachment theory's assumption that the mother—infant relationship is the prototype of later relationships; (2) a critique of models of therapeutic change that see adult analysis as working primarily in the same domain as the workings of the mother-infant relationship; (3) a brain model of co-creative relational processes, Relational Activation Patterns (RAPs); and (4) possible psychodynamic processes in infants.