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(These abstracts are sent to us by the editors of the psychoanalytical journals of the world, who send in a selection of those they consider to be the three most interesting papers published by them each year. We are publishing the complete abstracts, as space permits, in the interests of psychoanalytical communication and research. Feedback, particularly as to whether this feature has proved useful, will be gratefully received. Ed.)
In the specific search for a psychoanalytic interactional theory which would be compatible with its presently highly developed intrapsychic theory, and in the more general attempt to derive conceptions of reality more consonant with present-day thought in other disciplines, this paper takes a perspectival, relativistic approach. It follows a line of thought begun by William James and further elaborated by Alfred Schultz, Gregory Bateson, and Erving Goffman. Goffman added the concept of 'keys' to Bateson's 'frames' defining the 'worlds' of reality.
The key of the frame is analogous to the key of a musical composition. Change the key, and meanings at one level of the frame become in part altered at other levels. An everyday example of the different changes in keys made in one frame—of competitive struggle between peers—is the difference between actual fighting, play-fighting, and more and more abstract games. Add acknowledgment of the dynamic unconscious, and it can be seen that the keys can be changed downwards as well, to the levels of various unconscious fantasies.
A relativistic, pluralistic view of social realities, does not imply a hopeless 'equality' of truths. To the contrary, the analytic situation is one in which two minds, imperfect as they may be, engage in a long effort to come closer and closer to more and more complex estimations of truths about one of those minds, and the intrapsychic and interactional law