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I was eager to discuss Dr. Rendon's paper because I too feel that ambiguity is an important aspect of the psychoanalytic process. In training psychoanalysts we must help our candidates tolerate, contain, embrace, and hopefully welcome and enjoy ambiguity, conflict, contradictions, and complementarities. Dualities between theory and practice; values and suspension of judgment; the personal and professional nature of the psychoanalytic relationship; the desire to help and the need to respect the patient's autonomy; the need to understand versus the limitations on understanding—these and many more are part of our daily navigational challenges. Ambiguity tolerance is one goal of psychoanalytic work with our patients as well. On the other hand, we must remember that students and patients and many experienced analysts will sometimes use ambiguity defensively or even as a solution to conflict. It is easy to use ambiguity and relativism to slip and slide away from responsibility and from experiencing one's own conflicts and motivations.
Dr. Rendon has packed an intriguing bag of riches into the concept of ambiguity: psychoanalytic philosophy, clinical observations, theory and speculation. He is also using ambiguity to describe the interfaces between subjective and consensual meaning; meaning and interpersonal dynamics; psychopathology and the capacity for insight; insight and interpretation; and theory and practice. Our job as audience and discussants is to unpack the bag, very much as Dr. Rendon tries to do with the patients he describes so well in his clinical vignettes. We'll take some of the contents out and look at them in some detail. Dr. Rendon has packed so much into each idea that I think this will be well worth our while.
Another metaphor that came to mind more than once is the notion that “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.” This is particularly apt for me for reasons I will come to in a little while. But in terms of this paper, I felt that no amount o