Ritual and Spontaneity in the Psychoanalytic Process (Dialectical-Constructivist View)

Author: Irwin Z. HoffmanPublisher: RoutledgePaperback:ISBN 10: 0881633623ISBN 13: 978-0881633627The psychoanalytic process is characterized by a complex weave of interrelated polarities:  transference and countertransference, repetition and new experience, enactment and interpretation, discipline and personal responsiveness, the intrapsychic and the interpersonal, construction and discovery.  In Ritual and Spontaneity in the Psychoanalytic Process, Irwin Z. Hoffman, through compelling clinical accounts, demonstrates the great therapeutic potential that resides in the analyst's struggle to achieve a balance within each of these dialectics.     According to Hoffman, the psychoanalytic modality implicates a dialectic tension between interpersonal influence and interpretive exploration, a tension in which noninterpretive and interpretive interactions continuously elicit one another.  It follows that Hoffman's "dialectical constructivism" highlights the intrinsic ambiguity of experience, an