From Developmental Metaphor To Developmental Model: The Shrinking Role of Language in the Talking Cure

Abstract

Psychoanalysts have invoked infant development diversely to understand nonverbal and unspoken aspects of lived experience. Two uses of developmental notions and their implications for understanding language and the therapeutic action of psychoanalysis are juxtaposed here: Hans Loewald's conception of developmental metaphors to illuminate ineffable aspects of the clinical situation and Daniel Stern's currently popular developmental model, which draws on findings from quantitative research to explain therapeutic action in the nonverbal realm. Loewald's metaphorical use of early development identifies and thus potentiates a central role for language in psychoanalytic treatment. By contrast, Stern and his colleagues exaggerate the abstract, orderly, and disembodied qualities of language, and consequently underestimate the degree to which lived interpersonal experience can be meaningfully verbalized, as demonstrated here with illustrations from published clinical material. As contemporary psychoanalysis moves toward embracing developmental models such as Stern's, it is concluded, psychoanalysts accept a shrinking role for language in the talking cure.

The unsayable: a concept analysis

“…, Jones , Grotstein , Stephens , Brockmeier , Eifried , Gordon , Klein , Horner , Rogers , Cunningham , Ehrensaft , Mather , Shoham , Mitchell , Ready ). The unsayable is an intrinsic aspect of being human (Grotstein , Gordon , Harrell , Vivona , Ready ), a part of our ‘functional multi‐voicedness’ (Adams , p. 358). Further, there is a relational context to the unsayable in the understanding that others may not or cannot hear of our experiences (Rykov , Graffigna & Olson ), or they may interpret that expression is socially inappropriate (Bergman et al .…”

“…This attribute paradoxically highlights the unsayable as being interconnected with the sayable (Griffith & Griffith , van der Riet , Rogers et al . , Jonte‐Pace , Brockmeier , Vivona , Rogers , , Todorova , von Hippell & Gonsalkorale , Flegel & Anderson , Rykov , Rominger , Rubin & Winrob , Schick Makaroff et al . ) and with communication (Wheeler & Kivlinghan , Rizzuto , Ehrensaft , Schwappach , Shoham , Adams ).…”

“…, p. 570). Challenges arise where ‘speech fails’ (Rogers , p. 8), when one ‘cannot say what it really is’ (Shoham , p. 521), when something/someone is unperceivable (Mangini & Biederman ), when something is impossible to define (Johnson‐Laird ), or where there is non‐communication (Ludwig , Vivona , Schwappach , Shoham ). The tendency to avoid a ‘sensitive’ topic (Koppe , p. 329) also gives rise to the unsayable.…”

“…The most widely discussed aspect is a societal privileging of language/speech (Rogers et al . , Kruger , Gentile , Horner , Vivona , Rykov , Adams ). Discourses established by our society also deem what is and is not acceptable to discuss (Klein , Todorova , Rominger , Rubin & Winrob ), as well as what may be considered socially ‘taboo’ (Schwappach , p. 8, Graffigna & Olson , p. 793).…”

The Second Person

“…The latter focus on observed behaviors such as attachment patterns, contingent responses, and social referencing (Mayes and Spence 1994), rather than on dialogic factors (see, e.g., Litowitz 2005).12 A tendency to view the second person as an object in a dyad, rather than as a second person in a dialogue, may be one result of this preference for the visual over the verbal. Green (1996) suggested that the importation of findings from observational methodologies has had the effect of shifting our clinical emphasis from listening to seeing, and other writers have now begun to make similar observations about the recent turn away from language in psychoanalysis (Vivona 2006). .…”