Partners in Thought ─ Working with Unformulated Experience, Dissociation, and Enactment

Building on the innovative work of Unformulated Experience, Donnel B. Stern continues his exploration of the creation of meaning in clinical psychoanalysis with Partners in Thought.

The chapters in this fascinating book are undergirded by the concept that the meanings which arise from unformulated experience are catalyzed by the states of relatedness in which the meanings emerge. In hermeneutic terms, what takes place in the consulting room is a particular kind of conversation, one in which patient and analyst serve as one another’s partner in thought, an emotionally responsive witness to the other’s experience. Enactment, which Stern theorizes as the interpersonalization of dissociation, interrupts this crucial kind of exchange, and the eventual breach of enactments frees analyst and patient to resume it. Later chapters compare his views to the ideas of others, considering mentalization theory and the work of the Boston Change Process Study Group. Approaching the link between dissociation and enactment via hermeneutics, metaphor, and narrative, among other perspectives, Stern weaves an experience-near theory of psychoanalytic relatedness that illuminates dilemmas clinicians find themselves in every day.

Full of clinical illustrations showing how Stern works with dissociation and enactment, Partners in Thought is destined to take its place beside Unformulated Experience as a major contribution to the psychoanalytic literature.

Donnel Stern, Ph.D., is Training and Supervising Analyst, William Alanson White Institute, and Faculty, NYU Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis. He is on the editorial boards of Psychoanalytic Dialogues, Psychoanalytic Inquiry and Psychoanalytic Psychology, and is the former editor of Contemporary Psychoanalysis. He is also the author of Unformulated Experience: From Dissociation to Imagination in Psychoanalysis (1997).

Introduction: The Embodiment of Meaning in Relatedness. TheConversation and its Interruptions. The Fusion of Horizons: Dissociation, Enactment, and Understanding. The Eye Sees Itself: Dissociation, Enactment, and the Achievement of Conflict. Partners in Thought: A Clinical Process Theory of Narrative. Shall the Twain Meet? Metaphor, Dissociation, and Co-occurrence. Opening What Has Been Closed, Relaxing What Has Been Clenched: Dissociation and Enactment over Time in Committed Relationships. Enactment in Dissociation Theory and Mentalization Theory: A Clinical Comparison. "One Never Knows, Does One?" Thoughts on the Work of the Boston Change Process Study Group.