What is a Clinical Fact? Clinical Psychoanalysis as Inductive Method

This paper is an inquiry into the nature of clinical facts in psychoanalysis. The attainment of representability of psychic reality being requisite for insight, the author examines inductive processes on the part of both analyst and analysand, which are to be considered proper aspects of the study of clinical facts. It is argued that the analyst chooses his interpretations guided in good measure by nonverbal material, based on how he intuits that he is 'used' by the analysand and the ways the analysand feels 'used' by him; such nonverbal clues on the nature of the unconscious relational 'frames' operating in sessions guide him to select relevant associations from the universe of the analysand's verbal utterances. He thus comes to voice his interpretations, purveying a 'mapping' of psychic reality that typically makes use of a new viewpoint for description. Insight is achieved when the analysand attains ostensive refutation or redefinition of his unconscious 'theories' about the relationship, and this happens only in concrete individual situations, when the effects of his relational unconscious 'theories' come to be contrasted observationally in diverse 'screens', perceptual and mnemic, against the background of the analyst's neutrality: in such a way unconscious 'theories' attain the Pcs.–Cs. domain of the 'no'.