Reply to Commentary

Ringstrom states that our perspective on negotiating conflict and deception/self-deception “finds a resonating chord” in his double bind model. He uses our case—Edward and his analyst—to illustrate how metacommunication concerning paradoxical binds was the fulcrum around which something “truly transformational” happened in that therapeutic relationship. We, too, feel an important “resonating chord” both in our shared sense of the inevitable impasses and binds in treatment and our sense that, in the process of dealing with these binds, the possibility of relational movement towards genuine intersubjectivity emerges (Aron, 1991; Benjamin, 1995). Yet, as we read him. Ringstrom also seems to imply that a) his emphasis on the paradoxical, mutually negating, aspects of the relationship between the patient's and analyst's needs differs fundamentally from our emphasis on the conflict between them (and within each of them)—conflict rooted in their divergent needs, and, b) his emphasis on loosening the double bind through metacommunication differs fundamentally from our emphasis on the process of internal and interactive negotiation.

We do not believe that the key differences in our views of the process of dealing with the inherent contradictions and binds in treatment entail such a dichotomous view of conflict versus paradox or of negotiation versus metacommunication. As we view them, significant human conflicts cannot really be separated from paradox as something about which “one can choose” (conflict) versus something about which “one cannot” (paradox). In short, we view these concepts less as