An Interpersonal Perspective on Dreams: Commentary on Paper by Hazel Ipp

There is a wide variety of positions subsumed under the rubric of interpersonal psychoanalysis. However, they all hold in common two main parameters of investigation. First, there is some variety of detailed inquiry into the patient's life (past, present, real, fantasied). Second, there is close attention to the nuances of the patient—therapist interactional field. The therapist is considered a coparticipant in the creation of that field. Interpersonalists differ in how actively and openly they use their own participation, but a meticulous self-monitoring of one's own contribution to the interpersonal field is the vis a tergo of interpersonal psychoanalysis (Gill, 1983; Levenson, 1985; Bromberg, 1989; Greenberg, 1991; Ehrenberg, 1995; Aron, 1996).

The detailed inquiry serves two separate functions. First, asking questions serves to deconstruct the patient's iconic myths, the prepackaged version of his or her life. The stories tend to fall apart as inquiry proceeds. In this sense, inquiry operates much like free association. The second function is essentially Sullivanian in intent. Sullivan (1954) believed that it is necessary to grasp the nuances of the patient's idiosyncratic life experience. Where and how one lived are important. Emphasis on the contextuality of a person's life conveys the richness of individual experience. Rather than knowing that the patient felt rejected by a cold mother, Sullivan would want to know how, where, and when these interactions occurred (Kvarnes and Parloff, 1976). In his search for singularity, he went contrary to the implicit “scientific” desideratum of psychoanalysis (i.e., the establishment of valid generalities—classes of behavior that define