@article{Ringstromand, author = {Ringstromand, Philip A.}, title = {The Dreamer and the Dreams: Clinical Presentation}, series = {Psychoanalytic Dialogues Vol. 13 (2003), pp. 193-205.}, journal = {Psychoanalytic Dialogues Vol. 13 (2003), pp. 193-205.}, abstract = {This discussion compares Pizer's concept of >relational (k)nots< with >crunches< and double bind impasses. It argues that all of these constructs capture what happens when conventional analytic method - the exploration, elucidation, and interpretation of transference - fails to work. In this context a >last-ditch effort< emerges, a necessary crisis of treatment. The situation is a plea that something must occur >now or never< or the >charade of therapy is over.< This plea is extraordinarily challenging since it embodies contradictory elements wherein the patient's very call for involvement with the analyst is embedded in a process that obfuscates their connection. Notably this sets the stage for the >damned if one 'gets it' and damned if one doesn't< experience that is a part of the paradox of recognition/mis-recognition that befuddles many analyses. Extrication from such impasses requires the analyst's recognition that she is colluding in a kind of avoidance or distraction from recognizing their disconnection. Her second act involves meta-communication about their process. That is how their >relational knot< both binds them together while negating their connection. While this observation may be necessary it is recognized as insufficient on its own. Thus her third move out of the impasse requires her to enter into a state of improvisation. That is, to use some part of herself that must surrender from the one-up one-down impasse position of >either your version of reality or mine.< Instead, she must cultivate through her action a third way in which both she and her patient can think about their impasse and do something about it, including something different from what either one might have imagined before.}, language = {en} } @misc{Ringstromand, author = {Ringstromand, Philip A.}, title = {Review Essay: Is Freud Dead? Questions and Answers for the Practicing Analyst}, series = {Psychoanalytic Dialogues Vol. 11 (2001), pp. 797-806.}, journal = {Psychoanalytic Dialogues Vol. 11 (2001), pp. 797-806.}, language = {en} } @misc{Ringstromand, author = {Ringstromand, Philip A.}, title = {Review Essay: Communicating Incommunicado}, series = {Psychoanalytic Dialogues Vol. 11 (2001), pp. 727-754.}, journal = {Psychoanalytic Dialogues Vol. 11 (2001), pp. 727-754.}, abstract = {This article juxtaposes two orientations to psychoanalytic theory and clinical action - the prescriptive, embodied in the metaphor of classical theater, and the improvisational, embodied in the metaphor of improvisational theater. The metaphor of classical theater is analogous to how the theoretical predilections of each school of psychoanalysis has its own set of prescriptions (>sets,< >roles,< and >scripts<) for how an analyst influences mutative moments of change with a patient. In contrast, the metaphor of improvisational theater refers to actions that arise on the spur of the moment, without preparation. These improvisational moments ineluctably communicate to the patient a special instance of authenticity, which may well be antidotal to the crushing reality of the patient's life of pervasive inauthenticity. They also enable analysts to more readily engage disparate, often dissociatively disconnected parts of the patient through imaginative intersubjective engagement with each. This may take the form of reverie within the analyst - from which his own mental state of play informs his interpretation. Still, at other times, it may involve a form of spontaneous engagement that conveys not only a moment of deep recognition but also the purest state of authentic engagement - that is, one that cannot arise with comparable impact when reflection precedes the analyst's action. In sum, the capacity for engaging in improvisation may well be one of the most defining capacities for the development of a genuine psychoanalysis.}, language = {en} }