You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
DAVID RAPAPORT (1951, P. 161) IN discussing Piaget's theory of mental development as a psychoanalytic paradigm, laments that "… the significance of communication in particular, and interpersonal relationships in general, for the development of human thinking, has been little appreciated and less explored." Harry Stack Sullivan, Rapaport asserts, is one of the few people who "… had a clear perception of this significance. … Sullivan coined the concept of 'consensual validation' to say that concepts and thinking become reality adequate only by being tested in interpersonal communication."
Piaget (1932, p. 64) provided a connecting link in his statement that "… between autism and intelligence there are many degrees, varying with their capacity for being communicated. These intermediate varieties must therefore be subject to a special logic intermediate between the logic of autism and that of intelligence." The significance of this fact in understanding the therapeutic process in psychoanalysis implies the existence of a field of communication within which the organization of thought moves from a more or less autistic level to a level of greater rationality. The quality of that field can itself be examined as a variable.
The psychoanalyst is dealing with mental processes and with a communication field which by their very nature are in a state of