Toward a Triadic Relational Theory: An Introduction

The Name Of This JOURNAL, Psychoanalytic Dialogues, Has Been appealing and evocative to many of us because it alludes to a variety of important psychoanalytic conversations. Psychoanalytic Dialogues refers not only to the clinical exchange between analyst and analysand but also to the professional and scholarly discourse among the various schools and traditions of psychoanalytic thought and to the emphasis that this journal places on theoretical exchange and respectful debate—to the actual give-and-take between and among its diverse contributors as well as among its authors and readers.

The following exchange between Margaret Crastnopol and John P. Muller is much in keeping with this spirit of psychoanalytic dialogue in each of the respects just mentioned.

First, Crastnopol provides a lively and accessible account of the analytic conversation between her and her patient, Nancy, so that the reader may acquire a feel for the atmosphere of this analytic engagement.

Second, Crastnopol introduces a dimension of the treatment process that has been largely neglected in the analytic literature—she reports on her clinical experience of writing about Nancy and of getting Nancy's permission to present and publish what she is writing. Even more bravely, Crastnopol reports on the analytic experience in which Nancy reads the written material and reacts to it directly and indirectly with dream material, associations, symptoms, and transference—countertransference enactments.

As responsible clinicians, are we ethically bound to obtain patients' permission to publish clinical material based on our therapeutic work