@article{Hoffman, author = {Hoffman, Irwin Z.}, title = {>E< Enactments in Psychoanalysis: Another Medium, Another Message}, series = {Psychoanalytic Dialogues Vol. 01 (1991), pp. 074-105.}, journal = {Psychoanalytic Dialogues Vol. 01 (1991), pp. 074-105.}, abstract = {The three papers by Modell, Aron, and Greenberg are discussed in terms of their relationship to a new paradigm for understanding the psychoanalytic situation. The paradigm is called social-constructivist to capture both the idea of the analyst's participation and the idea of construction of meaning. It is argued that these theorists, as well as many of the authors they cite as part of a broad movement in the field, do not consistently meet the criteria for this paradigm, although they seem to be aiming for it. An important source of inconsistency and confusion derives from the confounding of the two axes: drive-relational and positivist-constructivist. Many relational theorists who hold fast to the idea that analysts can grasp the truth of both their own experience and that of the patient are no closer to the constructivist point of view than was Freud. The call by Aron and Greenberg for greater attention to the patient's resisted experience of the analyst's subjectivity is discussed in terms of its potential benefits and problems. The ritualized asymmetry of the psychoanalytic situation is said to have important functions, including prevention of excessive involvement and protection of the unobjectionable positive transference and of a degree of idealization. Modell's notion of paradox, which makes the therapeutic relationship seem >real< and >unreal< at the same time, is seen as a special instance of the always precarious social construction of reality. It is argued, moreover, that the social and individual aspects of experience are interdependent. Neither is reducible to the other, and both should be understood, like many other issues in the new paradigm, in terms of a dialectical interplay of figure and ground in experience.}, language = {en} } @article{Hoffman, author = {Hoffman, Irwin Z.}, title = {A note on the dialectic commentary on paper by Bruce E. Reis}, series = {Psychoanalytic Dialogues Vol. 01 (1991), pp. 535-544.}, journal = {Psychoanalytic Dialogues Vol. 01 (1991), pp. 535-544.}, language = {en} } @article{Hoffman, author = {Hoffman, Irwin Z.}, title = {An inquiry into mental processes. Commentary on paper by Slochower}, series = {Psychoanalytic Dialogues Vol. 02 (1992), pp. 567-570.}, journal = {Psychoanalytic Dialogues Vol. 02 (1992), pp. 567-570.}, language = {en} } @article{Hoffman, author = {Hoffman, Irwin Z.}, title = {A View from Abroad: Can We Have Reason Without Feelings?}, series = {Psychoanalytic Dialogues Vol. 02 (1992), pp. 287-304.}, journal = {Psychoanalytic Dialogues Vol. 02 (1992), pp. 287-304.}, abstract = {How one thinks about the nature of what analysts know about themselves and their patients is said to have practical implications for the way analysts work. A social-constructivist view of the process is contrasted with both the objectivist perspective and what is termed the >limited constructivist< view. The latter, exemplified by Schafer, focuses only on the way theory affects interpretation. At the heart of the more thoroughgoing social-constructivist viewpoint is the notion that analysts cannot know the full meaning of their own behavior, both retrospectively (in the context of interpretation) and prospectively (in the context of deciding what to do from moment to moment). The model requires that analysts embrace the uncertainty that derives from knowing that their subjectivity can never be fully transcended. Nevertheless, this very uncertainty frees analysts to >be themselves< within the constraints of the purposes of the analysis. Analysts can now >speak their minds,< including expressing conviction about their points of view, even sometimes when they clash with those of their patients. Both uncertainty and conviction are present but have different meanings in constructivism than they do in >open-minded positivism.< In the constructivist view, what had been known before on the basis of theory, research, or cumulative clinical experience is not discarded rather, the authority of that knowledge is subtly diminished in proportion to a subtle increase in respect for the analyst's personal, subjective experience as a basis for what the analyst does or says. Several examples are given of the way this attitude can affect practice.}, language = {en} } @article{Hoffman, author = {Hoffman, Irwin Z.}, title = {Enactment: Analytic Musings on Energy, Language, and Personal Growth}, series = {Psychoanalytic Dialogues Vol. 06 (1996), pp. 005-053.}, journal = {Psychoanalytic Dialogues Vol. 06 (1996), pp. 005-053.}, abstract = {Merton M. Gill's (1914-1994) contributions to psychoanalytic theory are reviewed. Gill's ideas are discussed as they relate to three fundamental challenges facing psychoanalysis: (1) defining the nature of psychoanalysis as a discipline, (2) defining the nature of the psychoanalytic situation and the optimal psychoanalytic technique, (3) finding ways to study the psychoanalytic process empirically. In all three areas special attention is paid to continuities and discontinuities in Gill's thinking over time. With respect to the first challenge, Gill's contributions to classical metapsychology are described as well as his subsequent repudiation of that perspective and its replacement with a >person point of view.< With respect to the second challenge, Gill's writings on hypnosis, on the initial psychiatric interview, and on psychoanalytic technique are reviewed. Gill's later emphasis on the analysis of transference and on the analyst's contribution to the patient's experience are shown to have precursors in his earlier work. Finally, Gill's hermeneutic, perspectivist orientation is described along with his longstanding commitment to systematic empirical research on the analytic process, a commitment he felt was not inconsistent with hermeneutics. Despite the points of continuity in his ideas, Gill's career was marked by radical changes in his point of view, so that one can find him, at different times, standing on opposite sides of fundamental controversies in the field.}, language = {en} } @article{Hoffman, author = {Hoffman, Irwin Z.}, title = {Of Innocence and Experience: Commentary on Paper by Stuart A. Pizer}, series = {Psychoanalytic Dialogues Vol. 08 (1998), pp. 791-804.}, journal = {Psychoanalytic Dialogues Vol. 08 (1998), pp. 791-804.}, language = {en} } @article{Hoffman, author = {Hoffman, Irwin Z.}, title = {Reply to Commentary}, series = {Psychoanalytic Dialogues Vol. 10 (2000), pp. 823-846.}, journal = {Psychoanalytic Dialogues Vol. 10 (2000), pp. 823-846.}, abstract = {This paper explores the interrelationship between patients' exercise of will to make advances in an analysis and their readiness to forgive their analysts for their human limitations. There is a thin line between idealization of the analyst, probably a necessary component of the process, and resentment of the analyst for his or her privileged position in the world and in the analytic situation itself. The patient's >progress< emerges as a kind of reparative gift, one that implicitly overcomes the patient's tendency to withhold such change out a sense of chronic, malignant envy. Particularly poignant in terms of its potential to elicit the patient's reparative concern is the situation in which the analyst is struggling with his or her mortality because of aging or life-threatening illness. In this essay two clinical vignettes are presented to illustrate some of the issues that this situation poses. One begins with an elderly patient appearing at the door of the analyst's (the author's) home the day of his return from the hospital after coronary bypass surgery. The other begins with an analyst who is terminally ill appearing at the door of a patient who is threatening suicide. The two stories are compared in terms of their implications for human agency, the exercise of will, and the coconstruction of meaning in the face of mortality in the analytic process.}, language = {en} } @article{Hoffman, author = {Hoffman, Irwin Z.}, title = {Response to Commentaries}, series = {Psychoanalytic Dialogues Vol. 11 (2001), pp. 469-497.}, journal = {Psychoanalytic Dialogues Vol. 11 (2001), pp. 469-497.}, abstract = {Major points of three reviews - by Malcolm Owen Slavin, Ruth Stein, and Donnel Stern - are highlighted and further elaborated, particularly the broad existential foundations of dialectical constructivism, the importance of dialectical thinking, and the centrality of the struggle with epistemological and moral uncertainty in this perspective. Several counterpoints are formulated - for example, the seemingly paradoxical commitment to a definitive theory of the process, the place of objective facts and universal principles in experience that is fundamentally ambiguous, and the pragmatic necessity for commitment to particular understandings and courses of action in the light of the passage of time and of mortality. Some clinical examples are presented to illustrate the dialectic of ritual and spontaneity as reflected in the tailoring of the frame to suit particular analytic relationships. Precursors of dialectical constructivism in the author's early work are identified.}, language = {en} }