A Procedural, Contextual, Action-Focused Understanding: Response to Renn and Westerman

Abstract

In this reply to comments by Paul Renn and Michael Westerman, I discuss the nature of relational discourse and the various meanings of multiplicity in the relational literature. In further discussing Mitchell’s (2000) case of Connie, cited also by Renn, I highlight the ways in which Mitchell understood that Connie’s sadness was perpetuated by the ways she communicated her feelings and needs in the present. I discuss Westerman’s participatory perspective in relation to Schafer’s action language, Shapiro’s emphasis on action and responsibility, and Dollard and Miller’s conceptualizations of repression as the active behavior of not-thinking certain thoughts. I examine as well Westerman’s distinction between “self and context” and “self-in-context” formulations in relation both to the cyclical psychodynamic point of view and his own case example.

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Notes on contributors

Paul L. Wachtel

Paul L. Wachtel, Ph.D., is Distinguished Professor of Psychology in the doctoral program in clinical psychology at City College and the CUNY Graduate Center. He was a cofounder of the Society for the Exploration of Psychotherapy Integration (SEPI) and is a past president of that organization. Among his books are The Poverty of Affluence; Action and Insight; Psychoanalysis, Behavior Therapy, and the Relational World; Race in the Mind of America: Breaking the Vicious Circle Between Blacks and Whites; Relational Theory and the Practice of Psychotherapy; Inside the Session: What Really Happens in Psychotherapy; Therapeutic Communication: Knowing What to Say When; and, most recently, Cyclical Psychodynamics and the Contextual Self: The Inner World, the Intimate World, and the World of Culture and Society. He was awarded the Hans H. Strupp Award for Psychoanalytic Writing, Teaching, and Research, the Distinguished Psychologist Award by Division 29 of APA and the Scholarship and Research Award by Division 39.