• search hit 20 of 43
Back to Result List

Review Essay: Constructivism with a Human Face

  • Philip Ringstrom presents improvisation as an important dimension of the analytical process. I propose that we take this idea even further and look at the ability to improvise as the desired goal of analysis or therapy – to live one's life as a free, responsive, and spontaneously expressive person. Improvisation is the normal mode of human communication. In a natural, healthy life, we do not write down what we are about to say before we say it. We simply say and do, prompted by the incalculable mixture of conscious and unconscious influences that shape the self at that time and place in our development. The two things one hopes to avoid in psychoanalysis and therapy are rigidity on one hand and chaos on the other. Improvisation, the natural and spontaneous flow of activity that is also self-discovery, presents the happy medium between these extremes. To improvise means on one hand not to be constrained by the forces of habit, fear, and conformity and on the other hand not to be constrained to act randomly or impulsively without reference to context, but to be able to perceive the true outlines of the situation in which one finds oneself and to act accordingly as the need arises.

Export metadata

Additional Services

Share in Twitter Search Google Scholar
Metadaten
Author:Stephen Nachmanovitch
Parent Title (English):Psychoanalytic Dialogues Vol. 11 (2001), pp. 771-784.
Document Type:Reviews
Language:English
Year of first Publication:2001
Release Date:2017/11/20
Format:xerox upon request / Fotokopie auf Anfrage
IdNo:Nachmanovitch_S_2001
Erich Fromm's Library and Erich Fromm Archive:Reviews / Rezensionen
Licence (German):
Einverstanden ✔
Diese Webseite verwendet technisch erforderliche Session-Cookies. Durch die weitere Nutzung der Webseite stimmen Sie diesem zu. Unsere Datenschutzerklärung finden Sie hier.