Circling Science

Non-Interpretive Mechanisms in Psychoanalytic Therapy: The ‘Something More’ Than Interpretation

Daniel N. Stern, Louis W. Sander, Jeremy P. Nahum, Alexandra M. Harrison, Karlen Lyons-Ruth, Alexander C. Morgan, Nadia Bruschweiler-Stern and Edward Z. Tronick · 1998

Evidence
Conceptual work
Kind
Journal article
peer-reviewed
Method
Theoretical paper by the Process of Change Study Group, drawing on research into mother–infant interaction and dynamic systems
Published
International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 79(5), 903–921

Mechanisms

Studies a process a circle relies on, such as disclosure or synchrony, wherever it happens.

Argues that therapy changes people partly through ‘moments of meeting’ between patient and analyst, which reorganise the patient’s implicit sense of how to be with others; interpretation alone is not enough.

What it doesn’t show

A theoretical proposal: it reports no systematic data that such moments happen as described or that they bring lasting change.

Summary based on the abstract.

Directions that build on it

  1. A shared moment

    Builds on 8 works · 4 funding routes

    When one person in a circle feels met, does the other feel it too, and do they describe the same moment?

Links

Cite

Stern, D. N., Sander, L. W., Nahum, J. P., Harrison, A. M., Lyons-Ruth, K., Morgan, A. C., Bruschweiler-Stern, N., & Tronick, E. Z. (1998). Non-Interpretive Mechanisms in Psychoanalytic Therapy: The ‘Something More’ Than Interpretation. International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 79(5), 903–921. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9871830/