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Analysts who espouse a two-person psychology characterize classical psychoanalysis as a one-person psychology which fails to recognize the inevitability of interaction and mutual influence in the analytic relationship. They claim that this one-person view maintains an outmoded conception that the analyst is in a privileged position to observe and interpret the patients unconscious impulses, defenses, and resistances.
They refute the classical view that the analyst can function as a blank screen, upon which the patients transference is projected. Two-person analysts emphasize the limitations of the analysts knowledge, the analysts unavoidable self-revelation, and inescapable involvement in the patients transference and resistance. Some recommend that analysts utilize self disclosure as a principle of technique, minimize the analysts unwarranted authority and encourage mutual examination of all issues by patient and analyst. These recommendations are discussed and critically examined from the point of view of modern analysis.
The psychoanalytic literature has been inundated recently with discussion and debate about "the emergent frontier (rapidly becoming settled territory) of a two-person psychology" (Cooper, 1996, p. 649). It has been asserted that a new and revolutionary paradigm, represented by the phrase "two-person psychology," has taken a firm foot-hold in American psychoanalysis. Stephen Mitchell (1995), for example, has written that two-person considerations necessitate "a reevaluation of every major premise and dimension of the classical psychoanalytic theory of technique" (p. 1140). Some form of two-person perspective has been presented by L. Aron (1992), D. Ehrenberg (1992), S. Gerson (1996a), E. Ghent (1989), M. Gill (1994), j. Greenberg (1995a), I. Hirsch (1992), I. Hoffman (1991), E. Levenson (1996), S. Mitchell (1993), 0. Renik (1996), D. Silverman (1996), C. Spezzano (1996a), R. Stolorow (1993), and others. Whole issues of psychoanalytic journals have been devoted to this topic: Psychoanalytic Dialogues (1996, 6[51), Psychoanalytic Inquiry (1996, 16 [ 1 ]), Psychoanalytic Psychology (1995, 12 [1 ]) and Psychoanalytic Quarterly (1996, 65).There has been a lively ongoing discussion this winter on the Internet ([email protected], 1996) about a recent article on two-person psychology by C. Spezzano (1996a). Talks, conferences, and articles referring to two-person psychology lately seem ubiquitous.
What is this debate all about? At the most basic level, a two-person psychology encompasses the reciprocal influences that obtain between two people in interaction, while, in contrast, a one-person...