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Clinical Interaction and the Analysis of Meaning is a valuable contribution to the ferment which currently seems to be roiling psychoanalysis most vigorously: the significance of interpersonal interaction in theory and practice. Applying a Piagetian framework to the contemporary interactional perspective, Dorpat & Miller present a structuralist developmental theory of psychopathology, and a model for the here–and–now dimension of analytic process. I will summarise their theory, appraise what I consider to be its value, and then register some criticisms.
The mind, as viewed by Dorpat & Miller, is 'a processing system that organizes the elements of lived experience into personally meaningful units of information' (p. 106). It does so by means of cognitive operations which determine the categories of meaning assigned to events. These cognitive processes evolve in an ontogenetic hierarchy, the detailed characterisation of which was Piaget's life's work. At each developmental stage, mental contents are constructed by applying the current cognitive operations to elementary sensory data. Among the mental contents so constructed are representations of the self in interaction with the environment. These are organised into distinct units, called 'schemata', which are abstractions representing patterns or regularities in experienced events.
Schemata are the structures comprising this model of the mind. New experiences are assimilated to, and thus given meaning by, existing schemata. Even more: perception itself is guided by schemata. Because they include a set of expectations about unfolding experience, schemata direct attention to certain sensory data, leaving other data unnoted. Of course, the loop is not closed tight; unexpected aspects of experience can be recognised, whereupon existing schemata may be modified to accommodate these novel features. So far, all this is standard Piaget.
In this book, two types of schemata are distinguished. 'Organising schemata' a