Clinical truth and contemporary relativism: Meaning and narration in the psychoanalytic situation

Journal/Book: J Amer Psychoanal Assn. 1995; 43: 59 Boston Post Rd, PO Box 1524, Madison, CT 06443-1524. Int Univ Press Inc. 713-739.

Abstract: This paper proposes that clinical psychoanalysis requires distinctions for its practice that tend to be blurred by a less than careful importation of contemporary philosophical concepts. One such distinction is that between narration and the event narrated; another, that between meaning seen as absolutely relative and meaning understood as hierarchical. The first distinction identifies present experience as formed by a narrative strategy arrived at in the past. The second distinction allows pathology to be described as arrests or limitations in the ability to construe meaning. This perspective has implications for a number of current debates, among them those concerning the roles of interpretation and reconstruction. A clinical illustration involving the reconstruction of a disavowed perception and relying on the aforementioned distinctions is presented.

Note: Article GS Reed, 1199 Pk Ave, New York, NY 10128 USA

Keyword(s): RECONSTRUCTION

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