Discussion of Arthur A. Gray’s “Living Truthfully Under Imaginary Circumstances: Improvisation in Psychoanalysis”

Abstract

In this discussion of Gray’s paper I show how he misrepresents the dialogical (Strasberg–Johnstone influenced) tradition of improvisation—the one most commonly in use in psychoanalytic literature—by asserting that its “appeal” is “that analysts could feel in charge by using words to extricate themselves from tight spots” (p. 729). In bolstering his argument, Gray completely misrepresents my improvisational episode with a patient named “Daryl” (Ringstrom, 2007). Having denounced the dialogical approach as essentially stemming from countertransference resistance, Gray then asserts his Meisner-influenced improvisational approach is the one that facilitates psychoanalytic therapy exhibiting “Living Truthfully Under Imaginary Circumstances,” echoing the title of his paper. By contrast, I show that Gray’s “three exchange improvisational” technique not only does not evince any significant impact on his treatment of his patient Coleen but also bears little resemblance to Meisner’s improvisational “Repetition Exercise” that Gray professes to be copying, or to it exhibiting anything very improvisational in analytic treatment at all.

Notes

¹ Gray clearly misunderstands Benjamin’s idea of the “doer and the done-to.” He appears to think that a “doer” is someone exhibiting a “proactive” sense of agency versus a “done-to” is someone who identifies with being a “victim.” Gray’s application of these terms belongs to a one-person model of psychology. Instead, Benjamin’s (2004) concept of “doer and done-to” is a relational construct (not about individual agency in the manner Gray intones). It is about the tendency of dyadic systems to lapse into experiential binaries wherein one of the parties is “labelled” in the dominant position while the other is “labelled” in the submissive one, with these roles being routinely reversible. When the dyad is locked in this binary position, each party is prone to experience the other as the dominant, that is, the “doer” trying to dominate, while experiencing themselves as the “done-to,” that is, submissive. This dyadic system constitutes a relational collapse into mutual misrecognition versus mutual recognition of what each one’s subjective reality is constituted by. The binary can relinquish its grip on the field only when the parties recognize that they can both behave in manners perceived as dominant and submissive. Gray’s congratulatory use of Coleen finally experiencing herself as a “doer,” that is, a “proactive” agent of change in her life, and therefore no longer a victim, is an egregious misapplication of Benjamin’s seminal contribution to relational psychoanalysis.

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Philip A. Ringstrom

Philip A. Ringstrom, Ph.D., Psy.D., is a Senior Training Analyst, Institute of Contemporary Psychoanalysis; Member of the Board of Directors of the International Association of Relational Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy; Member of the International Council of Self Psychologists; and in private practice in Encino, California.