“Cyclical psychodynamic theory was an attempt to reconcile these two lines of thought and the phenomena associated with each. It entailed a depiction of the ways in which, on the one hand, our behavior and experience–and even the unconscious dimensions of our psychic life–were profoundly influenced by the events and emotional nuances of what was actually transpiring around us, and, on the other hand, our response to that context was determined not by any “objective” property of what was going on but by our particular experience or interpretation of what was going on, by our unique, idiosyncratic, subjective take on those events. It is not a matter of one or the other - being governed by our inner world of deeply private and largely unconscious psychological meanings and inclinations or by the events and stimuli of everyday life. It is that each creates and evokes the other. Consistency is maintained both by our perceptual inclination to see the old in the new and by our behavioral inclination to evoke the old in the new.” (p. 104)
p. 106, quite active inference like.
But the anger that they struggle with is no longer the anger from childhood, and going back to its “origins” or “roots” may miss the key point–the patient’s whole way of life has become an anger generator, and that is what is most essential to understand. The anger the patient struggles with now is not the anger from the distant past but from experiences today and yesterday, and their cause is very largely the suppression of anger the day before that.
Similar patterns of internal state generating action in the world that end up maintaining or strengthening that same internal state can be seen in virtually every clinical case. The deeper one probes into the person’s history, experience, and unconscious wishes, fears, and fantasies, the more it becomes evident how powerfully they are all linked to the ongoing patterns between people in the patient’s life today. (p. 121)
In order really to understand another person, we must understand the impressive variability in both behavior and subjective experience that is almost certain to be evident if one pays attention to it. Almost everyone, from the sickest to the most healthy, feels good or does well in some settings and not others, with some people and not others, in some activities and not others, on some days and not others, and so forth. (p. 122)
230, 235, sullivan anxiety gradient 237, 238.
Last revised on August 20, 2023 at 15:30:43. See the history of this page for a list of all contributions to it.