ABSTRACT
In collaboration with sociologist Benjamin Nelson, Marie Coleman Nelson coined the term "paradigmatic psychotherapy." This chapter provides verbatim material which clarifies her technique. In the psychoanalytic treatment of pathological disturbances that are rooted in early infancy, the analyst is often aware of the need for more subtle intervention than is possible through classical interpretation, and for methods capable of initiating profound shifts in the patients energy economy. In general, the established clinical observation that maintenance of a certain degree of tension in the analytic patient is requisite for treatment implicitly acknowledges the somatic correlates of psychic change. Presenting a paradigm to the patient is not anything so crude as deliberately acting as a model for the patient to imitate—although this tactic might be selectively introduced to provide a dynamic context in which a given patient could become aware of chronically imitative behavior.
