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Alexandra Harrison and Edward Tronick address two central issues for understanding how psychoanalysis may work. On a theoretical level they suggest a conceptual framework derived from nonlinear dynamics and systems theory to describe the therapeutic action of psychoanalysis in terms of the evolution of complex systems. On an empirical level they suggest that psychoanalysts need to incorporate a wider observational stance that has been most fruitfully used in infant research.
Harrison's patient Kate is not merely frightened by terrifying events and personalizing those events in terms of concurrent stresses. She cannot make progress beyond her initial terror. She cannot work through the experience to find further meanings or bring it into relation with other aspects of her life. She cannot think her way to a creative solution because the necessary thinking-fantasying-playing-dreaming (hereafter, thinking) is too dangerous. Perhaps her anxiety stems from realizing that such thinking could lead to the awareness of unacceptable ideas and fantasies.
Another possibility is that Kate sensed that working on the problem could lead to such complexity that ordered thought would be impossible. A central idea of nonlinear dynamics concerns the relationship