Dramatic Dialogue: Dreaming & Drama in Contemporary Clinical Practice

Abstract

Dramatic Dialog refers to a conceptualization of therapeutic action derived from the legacy of Sándor Ferenczi that articulates how internal object relations and multiple self-states are unconsciously dramatized and brought to experiential life on the analytic stage. The terms dramatic and dramatology imply live dialog in the here-and-now. The metaphors of playing, dramatizing, dancing, and dreaming with the patient are all ways of describing how the analyst joins with the patient in a system of mutual regulation. We define generative enactment as the affirmative and creative dimension of repetition, played out in the intersubjective system and influencing it from the inside out. This article presents an intersubjective and relational perspective on dramatic dialog as a model of therapeutic action and therapeutic traction with case material presented for illustration and discussion. The article samples a wide range of clinical theorists, across schools of thought, geographical regions, and extending over many decades, who view therapeutic action as constituted by dramatic dialog and generative enactment.

Keywords:

• drama
• dreaming
• relational
• enactment
• generative enactment
• prospective function.

Notes

¹ Later we will draw attention to the similarity between Ferenczi’s “games” of dramatic dialog with Antonino Ferro’s current advocacy for viewing psychoanalysis as “narrative games” (Ferro & Nicoli, 2017).

² The term “dramatic dialogue” seems to be De Forest’s who was a patient and supervisee of Ferenczi and who received certification from him as a psychoanalyst in his last years. Although she uses the term to capture her understanding of Ferenczi’s innovation, it is altogether possible that it is a term that Ferenczi had used in his discussions with her or is at least evocative of his technical conceptualization as can be seen in the quote above from the Clinical Diary.

³ Probably a decisive influence was the work of J. Sandler (1976) who described the actualization of object-relations in the transference along with the analyst’s free-floating role-responsivenes. Sandler’s work, along with the general introduction of post-Kleinian ideas about projective-identification into the United States, met with the American interpersonal literature that had for many decades emphasized the interactive, co-partipant and co-created dimension of the treatment.

⁴ We utilize the word affirmative in the spirit of Schafer’s (1983) use of the term in The Analytic Attitude.

⁵ See especially Aron (2006), Benjamin (2004), Benjamin and Atlas (2015), Benjamin (2018).

⁶ Of course, linking is linked to splitting, and this brings us to Bion only by skipping over Melanie Klein, but see her (1955) paper, “On identification” where she analyzes Julian Green’s novel If I were you (compare to our “I wish I were you” and its connection to greed and envy) in terms of entering and possessing multiple other selves through projective identification.

⁷ On the various forms of splitting, including repression and dissociation, see Blass (2015).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Lewis Aron

Lewis Aron, PhD, ABPP is the Director of the New York University Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis. He is a past President of the Division of Psychoanalysis (39) APA; founding President of the International Association for Relational Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy (IARPP); founding President of the Division of Psychologist-Psychoanalysts of NYSPA. The co-founder and cochair of the Sándor Ferenczi Center at the New School for Social Research, and Adjunct Professor, School of Psychology, Interdisciplinary Center (IDC) Herzliya, Israel; A co-founder of Psychoanalytic Dialogs and the co-editor of the Relational Perspectives Book Series; author and editor of numerous articles and books, including (coauthored with Galit Atlas), Dramatic Dialog: Contemporary Clinical Practice.

Galit Atlas

Galit Atlas, PhD is a psychoanalyst and clinical supervisor in private practice in New York City. She is on the faculty at NYU Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis, and faculty at the Four-Year Adult and National Training Programs at NIP. She is the author of The Enigma of Desire: Sex, Longing and Belonging in Psychoanalysis (Routledge, 2015), and of Dramatic Dialog: Contemporary Clinical Practice (coauthored with Lewis Aron. Routledge, 2017). Atlas serves on the editorial board of Psychoanalytic Perspectives and is the author of articles and book chapters that focus primarily on gender and sexuality. Her NYT article “A tale of Two Twins” was the winner of a 2016 Gradiva award.