The Bipersonal Field

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"This volume introduces a new era for the techniques of psychotherapy and psychoanalysis. The bipersonal field and the therapist at the other, and views them as interacting along an interface within the frame of the field. Dr. Langs meticulously examines the contributions of both participants, investigating their influence on the therapeutic potential of the field and on the nature and meaning of their own interaction. This book is based on the transcription of five detailed case presentations made to Dr. Langs in a seminar on the technique of psychoanalytic psychotherapy. In his running commentary, Dr. Langs finds ample opportunity to demonstrate the pathology placed into the field by the participants, as well as their respective conscious and unconscious curative endeavors. He brings many new and important perspectives to the therapeutic process. Among his most original ideas are the following: The vast clinic importance of the management of the ground rules and boundaries of the bipersonal field. The appropriate and pathological aspects of the therapist's containing functions- his metabolism of the patient's projective identifications. These are illustrated clinically, as are misuses of the patient as an inappropriate container for the therapist's pathological inner contents. The concepts of therapeutic misalliances and bastions. These refer to unconscious collusion by the patient and therapist designed for pathological gratification and defense, and for temporary symptom relief without insight or adaptive inner change. Temporarily successful efforts of this kind are termed misalliance cures, while framework cures refers to their achievement through an alteration in the ground rules and boundaries. The importance of unconscious perception along with unconscious fantasy as the key intrapsychic factors in the therapeutic and in the patient's psychopathology, and the role of projective and introjective identification as the central interactional processes within the bipersonal field. The distinction between transference and non-transference reactions within the patient, and its crucial technical implications. The concept of interactional syndromes and resistances. These are symptoms and defenses in the patient to which the therapist has significantly contributed. They represent the pathology of the bipersonal field and can only be modified through rectification of the therapist's contributions and interpretation of their unconscious meanings for the patient. The utilization of dreams in psychotherapy, including the function of dreams as a means of communicating both unconscious fantasies and unconscious perceptions. A special group of dreams ins identified as designed unconsciously to cure the pathology of the bipersonal field. The patient's introjective identification of the therapist's pathological projective identifications, which are generated by errors in intervening and mismanagements of the frame. Based on his introjections, the patient unconsciously attempts to cure the sick therapist within himself- and thereby both the therapist and himself. In this connection, Dr. Langs describes the patients and other unconscious therapeutic endeavors on his behalf. In all, this is a landmark book that opens many new avenues for understanding the therapeutic interaction and for redefining the basic techniques needed for the insightful resolution of the patient's psychopathology. Dr. Langs's work is founded on a distinctive psychoanalytic methodology and on repeated use of the validating process. He works predictively and adheres closely to the material from the patient. Never before has a psychoanalyst so exquisitely demonstrated the patient's unconscious perceptiveness and astonishing creativity. Here is an opportunity to become involved in a clinical study that will prove a most memorable learning experience."- Publisher.