Discussion of Arthur A. Gray’s “Living Truthfully Under Imaginary Circumstances: Improvisation in Psychoanalysis”

In this discussion of Gray’s paper I show how he misrepresents the dialogical (Strasberg–Johnstone influenced) tradition of improvisation—the one most commonly in use in psychoanalytic literature—by asserting that its “appeal” is “that analysts could feel in charge by using words to extricate themselves from tight spots” (p. 729). In bolstering his argument, Gray completely misrepresents my improvisational episode with a patient named “Daryl” (Ringstrom, 2007). Having denounced the dialogical approach as essentially stemming from countertransference resistance, Gray then asserts his Meisner-influenced improvisational approach is the one that facilitates psychoanalytic therapy exhibiting “Living Truthfully Under Imaginary Circumstances,” echoing the title of his paper. By contrast, I show that Gray’s “three exchange improvisational” technique not only does not evince any significant impact on his treatment of his patient Coleen but also bears little resemblance to Meisner’s improvisational “Repetition Exercise” that Gray professes to be copying, or to it exhibiting anything very improvisational in analytic treatment at all.