Interventions in the Bipersonal Field

IT IS THE ESSENTIAL PURPOSE of this paper1 to develop a reconceptualization of the nature and function of interventions, based upon a study of their effects within the bipersonal field. This presentation will be derived primarily from an adaptational-interactional study of the unconscious communicative interaction between patient and therapist or analyst.2 This approach stands in contrast to existing studies of interventions, which appear to be based upon a classification founded on their manifest properties, rather than on an empirical study of their implications within the therapeutic interaction.

The present study is, then, a distillate derived from extensive clinical observations of the bipersonal field (Langs, 1976a); (1978b), (1978c), and from a recent detailed investigation of the listening process (Langs, 1978d). These efforts have generated a series of empirically derived and validated clinical hypotheses, some of which have related to the analyst's interventions. The present paper extends these initial endeavors by redefining the basic interventions, reconsidering the nature of validation, and studying the indications for, and timing of, the analyst's activities. It will also include proposals to discard certain currently accepted interventions because of their