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Phillip Bromberg has two major differences with the lexicon of classical psychoanalysis: that (1) it emphasizes cognitive and verbal experience over complex emotional communication, and (2) it underappreciates creative experience and spontaneity in the clinical situation. In Awakening the Dreamer: Clinical Journeys, he offers a revised psychoanalysis that is more in line with newer findings from attachment theory and mother–infant research, cognitive psychology, nonlinear systems theory, and neuroscientific approaches that see the brain as relational. It is a psychoanalysis that claims to bridge mind and brain, to take greater account of the right brain's mediation of nonverbal unconscious language, and to view the patient as co-creator with the analyst of an intersubjective reality. Bromberg writes:
In my view, if psychoanalysis is to remain a theory relevant to understanding the mind, and a therapeutic process relevant to healing the mind, certain concepts, such as unconscious conflict, interpretation of resistance, and unconscious fantasy, need to be rethought in light of our current understanding of self-states and dissociation. [p. 2]
And rethink these concepts he does. His “re-visionary” approach is rooted in the history and mission of the American Academy of