Response to Fonagy

Abstract

Peter Fonagy's critical commentary entails a blend of, on one hand, misrepresentations of my views so that he argues against positions I do not hold and, on the other hand, real substantive differences. With respect to the latter, for example, when Fonagy equates “doublethinking” with “recognition … of the limitations of scientific methodology,” he misses the way in which the articulated “limitations” often unequivocally undermine the privileging of systematic research relative to case studies, a privileging that I call upon Fonagy, Safran, Strenger, and others to repudiate. Embedded in the debate there is an interlude, in effect, of dialogue about a vignette in the “Doublethinking” plenary/essay, a dialogue that illustrates the way I believe understanding can advance in our field. Such progressive development of understanding involves reports of clinical experiences and discussion of those reports from various points of view. Associated “Nonlinear Constructivist Learning” yields heightened clinical sensibility that can have expression in unpredictable ways in the context of new clinical situations.