The Nature of Verbal Interventions in Psychoanalysis

This paper was Victor Rosen's last effort in psychoanalytic writing before his death. The manuscript was given to me as a revised second draft, and in rather polished form characteristic of Rosen's clear and logically rational style. Because I did not wish to disrupt the flow of his ideas and the mark of its author I have made only the most minor editorial changes.

The paper is in many ways a modest legacy of its author's intellect, but taken in the context of his other writings it contains many of the recurrent themes and concerns of his efforts. The exposition of a question, the narrowing of the discursive field, the application of clinical vignettes, and the concern with integration of language theory with psychoanalysis are all hallmarks of Rosen's work.

Having pursued a path along with him in his later years, I can pinpoint the origin of some of the logical philosophical discussion in the later part of the paper for our readers, for they are new in his writing. They grew out of a discussion Rosen gave of a paper by Benjamin Rubinstein, “On the Inference and Confirmation of Clinical Interpretations,” given at the New York Psychoanalytic Society Meeting on May 28,1968, and pursued further at a joint meeting of Rubinstein's seminar on Psychoanalysis and Philosophy of Science and the Psycholinguistic Study Group. In a large sense these inte-grative study groups of the New York Psychoanalytic Institute were the breeding ground for this integrative annual.

Of no less importance than Rosen's quest for Cartesian “clear and distinct ideas” was his “humane” view of clinical analysis. This paper is an exquisite melding of these two features of his work.

-Theodore Shapiro, M.D.