Cultivating the Improvisational in Psychoanalytic Treatment

This article juxtaposes two orientations to psychoanalytic theory and clinical action—the prescriptive, embodied in the metaphor of classical theater, and the improvisational, embodied in the metaphor of improvisational theater. The metaphor of classical theater is analogous to how the theoretical predilections of each school of psychoanalysis has its own set of prescriptions (“sets,” “roles,” and “scripts”) for how an analyst influences mutative moments of change with a patient. In contrast, the metaphor of improvisational theater refers to actions that arise on the spur of the moment, without preparation. These improvisational moments ineluctably communicate to the patient a special instance of authenticity, which may well be antidotal to the crushing reality of the patient's life of pervasive inauthenticity. They also enable analysts to more readily engage disparate, often dissociatively disconnected parts of the patient through imaginative intersubjective engagement with each. This may take the form of reverie within the analyst—from which his own mental state of play informs his interpretation. Still, at other times, it may involve a form of spontaneous engagement that conveys not only a moment of deep recognition but also the purest state of authentic engagement—that is, one that cannot arise with comparable impact when reflection precedes the analyst's action. In sum, the capacity for engaging in improvisation may well be one of the most defining capacities for the development of a genuine psychoanalysis.