The Play's the Thing: The Primacy of Process and the Persistence of Pluralism in Contemporary Psychoanalysis

One key source of our current conceptual diversity is a shift to an epistemology based on the radical idea that we can learn most about experience by studying experience itself rather than by looking for the causes of it. The resulting emphasis on experience-near, clinically based conceptualizations has left us awash in a pluralism of diverse, irreconcilable perspectives. The press in the field is toward ever-closer descriptions of our clinical work, to rethink anew our process without the encrustations of theory. In our attempts to describe process, we act on a necessary illusion. On one hand, our attempt to grasp the living moment of our clinical experience in tradition is an effort to preserve a vital activity for posterity. On the other hand, it risks calcifying creativity and belief into dogma. The resolution to this risk is a critical “humorous” acceptance of multiple perspectives from the open ground of an epistemológica! pluralism. The hope in our field is that it is grounded in a process that ever transcends our attempts to grasp it even as we discover, create and preserve the living act that we do.