Commentary on Paper by Terry Marks-Tarlow

Abstract

This discussion of the paper merging and emerging: A nonlinear portrait of intersubjectivity during psychotherapy focuses on how the original paper demonstrates the usefulness of the concepts of nonlinear dynamics systems theory (NLD) to clinical psychoanalysis. Diagnosis conceptualize in NLD terms successfully resists the pressure to reduce complex situations to overly simple few word phrases. The phenomena of transference and repetition are redescribed as resulting from an iterative process that is evident in complex adaptive systems. The model of psychoanalysis in terms of coupled oscillators is demonstrated to be clinically useful as is the concept of emergence which overcomes some of the less useful aspects of the reductionist program. The idea of studying boundaries per se, as opposed to their function of separating individuals, arises naturally from the study of fractals and promises to clarify the oversimplified discussions of these matters in the psychoanalytic literature. The original author has successfully demonstrated how useful NLD conceptualizations can be to the clinical psychoanalyst.

Notes

¹In this regard this form of ego-psychology needs to be sharply differentiated from the detailed study of defensive operations initiated by Reich (1949), continued by Anna Freud (1966), and further developed through the clinically-focused work of investigators like Paul Gray (1973, 1990).

²A skeptic about the usefulness of NLD could rightly point out that Winnicott (1962, 1965, 1971a, 1971b) made similar clinical recommendations based on his theory of the mother–infant relationship, a theory that though extremely attractive has been hard to verify. Essentially those of us who adopt Winnicott's ideas do so because they feel so right. NLD provides us with an intellectually more satisfactory way of coming to very similar ideas and has the advantage of providing an intellectually satisfactory framework from which they can be taught.