Reconsidering communicative psychoanalysis

Communicative psychoanalysis, developed by the American analyst Robert Langs, is a radical approach to the theory and practice of psychotherapy. This article argues that some of its key concepts such as 'derivatives' and 'the frame' have been defined ambiguously or in a contradictory fashion, and that there has been a failure to set out what its central claims mean in terms of observable data. Having explained why it is vital for communicative psychoanalysis to address these issues, the article outlines a way in which such a project might be taken forward. Logical links and disjunctions between various theoretical constructions of communicative psychoanalysis are then elucidated, and this allows for a dispassionate assessment of the extent to which it would ever be possible to judge whether its contentions are sound. In addition, the implications of common ground and divergences between communicative theory and certain hypotheses in small-group psychology are highlighted.