The Representational World in Psychoanalytic Therapy

In this paper we have illuminated some of the technical precepts as well as the therapeutic action of psychoanalysis from the perspective of a clinical theoretical framework which takes the representational world as its central focus. We have shown that suitable theoretical constructs for guiding psychoanalytic practice are to be found not in the domain of metapsychological entities, forces and energies, but rather in the systematic examination of the nature, developmental vicissitudes, functional significance, and therapeutic transformations of the representational structures which unconsciously organize a patient's (and therapist's) experiences. Such an emphasis on the forms and principles of organization which shape the subjective world finds rich theoretical support for the psychoanalytic enterprise in the intellectual heritage of modern structuralism. The uniqueness of psychoanalysis as a genetic-structural psychology is found in the distinctive units it has been scrutinizing since its inception—the recurrent, unconscious, archaically determined, affectively coloured representations of the self and object world which we seek to comprehend. articulate and change in our therapeutic work.