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This is my third presentation in a series devoted to the subject and process of feedback in psychodynamic therapy in which communication and hermeneutics (the study of the methodological principles of communication and explanation) are major footings for the work of therapist and patient. The feedback of spoken as well as nonspoken language and behaviors do not simply communicate information and send messages but also “comment on, make judgments about and conceal or rationalize actions that are already going on” (Bateson, 1956; Berger, 1964, Scheflen, 1972). Context, complexity, levels and channels, difference and difference between differences, metacommunications, values, proprieties, and cultural background are some of the many factors defined earlier in cybernetics (Wiener, 1950), information theory (Shannon and Weaver, 1949), and general systems theory , which need to be considered in understanding both the feedback and its appropriateness to increase self-esteem, self-understanding, and wisdom in living, which can lead to self-empowerment and change.
Just as the Balinese people dance not to the melody of the music but to its accompaniment, therapists need to perceive through listening and other sensory modalities the many levels of communication between themselves and the patient, inside the patient and inside themselves for their feedback (based on understanding the patient) to be on “target” and thus “hit the mark.”
I have previously presented issues related to feedback (Berger, 1994, 1995) such as preparation for free associations to emerge, the frame and the matrix, interventions, silences, transference, countertransference, the analyst as the instrument, the power of metaphors, empathy, sharing of the therapist's self, including psychophysiological reactions in the session and other aspects and introduction of issues of mortality, death, and abandonment, as well as others.
Strupp (1957) presented five dimensions for assessing how therapists operate in their f