Psychoanalysis in Three Dimensions: Ringstrom’s Relational Metapsychology: Discussion of “Three Dimensional Field Theory”

Abstract

Although the analytic intersubjective field remains infinite in its potential forms, processes, and transformations, this commentary highlights Ringstrom’s 3D model (this issue) as tackling the challenge of theorizing the relational analytic act, explaining simultaneously the dimensions of metapsychology and practice. Within the epistemological premises of information theory, the 3D model offers a triangulation between the asymmetry of hemispheral modes of processing, consciousness as truth seeking and an intersubjective dramaturgic dimension to describe the vicissitudes and evolutions of an intersubjectively embedded subjectivity. Reading Ringstrom’s model through the corridor of some basic Freudian intuitions, I formulate my reading of the model’s unique conceptions of time, nothing, and otherness as agents of transformation in the thick relational web of the analytic dyad.

Notes

¹ In this commentary, I do not dwell on the validity of associating the different mental processes with particular hemispheric activity. This is clearly not a simple matter and would require a separate paper to properly analyze (Hadar, 2015). Like Ringstrom, LH and RH are employed in their intuitive referential simplicity.

² This idea is based on Heidegger (1996, pp. 315–343), who discussed nothingness and angst as experiences that rehabilitate Dasein from its fallen states.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Shlomit Yadlin-Gadot

Shlomit Yadlin-Gadot, Ph.D., is a practicing clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst, member of the Tel Aviv Institute of Contemporary Psychoanalysis. She teaches in the doctoral program “Psychoanalysis and Hermeneutics” at Bar-Ilan University and in the General Humanities Studies program and the doctoral program in the School of Psychotherapy, Sackler School of Medicine, Tel-Aviv University. She writes and lectures on the interface of philosophy and psychoanalysis. Her book Truth Matters: Theory and Practice in Psychoanalysis (2016) was published by Brill. She lives and practices in Ramat-Hasharon, Israel.