Implicit Theories of Technique and the Values That Inspire Them

Abstract

When the editor of this issue invited me to write about technique, I found myself drawn to a general consideration of the nature of technique, rather than to an overview of my own views about how to practice. This article concerns what seems to me to be the inevitability of multiple and implicit theories of technique in psychoanalysis. We are continuously in the process of formulating articulate versions of technical theories that have been implicit up to that point. Implicit technical theory is the source of all explicit technical theory. And implicit theory, in turn, is the expression of value positions that we often have not reflected on. It is our positions about what is good in life, so frequently unexamined, that underlie our theories of technique. Evaluation of technical theory requires that we identify the values that have inspired our theories, and that we then decide which of these purposes are most important to us, and which theories best accomplish them.

Acknowledgments

I am grateful to Phillip Blumberg, Ph.D., for his editorial advice and substantive contributions.

Notes

Dr. Donnel B. Stern is Training and Supervising Analyst, member of the Faculty, William Alanson White Institute; Faculty and Supervisor, NYU Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis; Former Editor-in-Chief, Contemporary Psychoanalysis; Board of Directors, International Association for Relational Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy; Editor, “Psychoanalysis in a New Key” Book Series (Routledge).

¹The kind of thinking that Foehl (2010) wrote about, and that I advocate as well, is consistent with understanding the mind—and psychotherapy and psychoanalysis, for that matter—as emergent, a dynamic system in which perturbations from outside interact with the current state of the system to produce nonlinear effects (e.g., Galatzer-Levy, 1995, 2002, 2004, 2009a, 2009b; Seligman, 2005).

²The hermeneutic and postmodern critique in psychoanalysis is by now well known and established. The following is a partial list of the writings that awakened that perspective in our field. This selection has been made from those writings that concerned general issues of psychoanalysis and espistemology. If I had included the writings of those who have brought this sensibility to particular areas, especially those who introduced feminism, gender theory, and queer theory to our literature, the list would have been several times longer (Klein, 1976; Loch, 1977; Steele, 1979; McLaughlin, 1981; Spence, 1982; Hoffman, 1983, 1998; Schafer, 1983, 1992; Stern, 1983, 1985, 1992; Protter, 1985, 1988; Sass, 1988; Flax, 1990, 1993; Cushman, 1991, 1995, 2005, 2007; Phillips, 1991; Cooper, 1993; Mitchell, 1993, 1997; Spezzano, 1993; Gill, 1995; Aron, 1996; Pizer, 1998; Fairfield, Layton, and Stack, 2002).

³Hermeneutics is the study of the nature of understanding, i.e., what is it to understand? The heart of philosophical or ontological hermeneutics, which is identified with Heidegger, Gadamer, Charles Taylor, and others, is that all experience is created by a process of interpretation (see the text). We are not generally aware, moment to moment, of the extent of this interpretive process, though, so that we tend to accept our experience as given.

⁴This point has been taken by some (e.g., Busch, 2001) to mean that Relational and Interpersonal theories do away with the individual mind. Any such contention represents a serious misunderstanding. Relational and Interpersonal theories do take account of the interaction of minds, and are based in the position that such interaction is continuous. But that is not at all the same thing as suggesting that only interaction exists. No theory of psychoanalysis can do without the individual mind.

⁵Of course, not every instance of groping or being pulled toward a course of action is the outcome of the kind of intuition we want to depend on in a straightforward way. The sense of groping and being pulled, after all, are also part of the experience analysts have in unconscious enactments (e.g., Stern, 2009). As a matter of fact, identifying the nature of the pull on the analyst or the direction of his groping is at least as crucially important in working with enactments as it is in our attempts to reflect on our implicit theories. Although I am not going take on the task of distinguishing these two types of pulling and groping from one another, I will make one small foray in that direction: In unconscious enactments, the pulling frequently has an urgent or peremptory quality, and the groping often feels compulsive (I must find a way to … ). In their intuitive forms, on the other hand, one feels curious and interested in the senses we have of groping or being pulled, but not controlled by them.

⁶There are times when it is better not to formulate our implicit theories of technique. The determination of whether or not to formulate any experience depends on the degree to which the experience is ready to be articulated. We make such judgments more or less continuously in our work with patients, in our own exploration of countertransference, and in our relations with our implicit theories of technique. If there is any sense of forcing an explicit formulation, then the experience has not yet percolated enough to be given shape (Stern, 1997). (I leave aside for the moment the consideration of unconscious defensive processes, which often enough provide other, dynamic reasons why unformulated experience is not ready to be articulated.) If the experience is not yet ready to be formulated, trying to cram it into language results in a dessicated or intellectualized meaning. The French novelist Nathalie Sarraute wrote, “Scarcely does this formless thing, all timid and trembling, try to show its face, than all powerful language, always ready to intervene so as to establish order—its own order—jumps on it and crushes it” (quoted by Shattuck, 1984, p. 1).

⁷ Atwood and Stolorow (1994) conclude not only that explicit theory is the outcome of the formulation of implicit theory, but also, in agreement with the argument I make as this article goes on, that the diverse theories in psychoanalysis “consist not in alternate theoretical models that can be tested against one another in a meaningful way but rather in competing ideological and conceptual orientations to the problem of what it means to be human” (p. 4).

⁸ Canestri (2006a) wrote, “Some of the ‘implicit’ concepts or models that the analyst uses or creates in clinical practice have, over time, acquired theoretical status and have been integrated into official theories. Many of the concepts elaborated by Bion, Winnicott, Kohut, etc., followed this path. Sometimes it has been possible to trace their origins in clinical practice through the narratives of the protagonists—for example, Ferenczi's Clinical Diary, Bion (1992), and so forth” (p. 1).

⁹The work of Donald Schön (1983, 1987) focuses on the necessity of continuous creation of technique—what he thinks about as reflection in practice—for professionals of any kind. What I call implicit theory, Schön refers to as theories-in-use, theories-in-action, or theories-in-practice. Here is one of Schön's definitions of technical reationality, about which he is no more enthusiastic than I am.

… [I]nstrumental problem solving can be seen as a technical procedure to be measured by its effectiveness in achieving a pre-established objective… . [R]igorous practice can be seen as an application to instrumental problems of research-based theories and techniques whose objectivity and generality derive from the method of controlled experiment… . [A]ction [in this view] is only an implementation and test of technical decision [p. 165].

¹⁰For another expression of the view I am taking here, see Fonagy (2006).

¹¹A significant paper by Steven Tublin (in press), “Discipline and freedom in Relational technique,” may have influenced these passages and others in this article. At any rate, the views in Tublin's paper are thoroughly congruent with my own take on the issue of technique. Tublin makes the simple but profound point that theories of technique can no longer be descriptions of concrete analytic conduct, but should, instead, focus on the particular aims that the author of the theory believes are important to accomplish:

I am proposing a far looser definition of technique, one that is tied explicitly to varying and at times incompatible notions of analytic intent. It is intent, not the objectivist-tainted notion of correctness, that should guide the analyst's participation in the consulting room. The analyst's intent is driven by his theory of therapeutic action and his technical actions must be those, and only those, that serve his intent.

¹²I limit myself to the contributions of Kohut, ignoring for the sake of simplicity the Self Psychology that has come after Kohut. For the same heuristic purpose, I employ a simple version of contemporary Freudian theory.