ABSTRACT

But why such a strange, crusty, Edwardian indirection, so different than his first comment to himself? There are other ways of being oblique. Essentially Sullivan is making an interpretation of content. He is saying to the patient something of what he thinks the parents have done. But he is also makig another interactional communication. He is saying to the patient: I am aware that you are aware that what you are saying about your parents' beneficence is sheer boloney. You do not believe it but you expect me to believe it because you think we are all hypocrites aligned against you. I'm not stupid enough to try to be friendly toward you because you would think I'm trying to butter you up, but I thought I would let you know that I'm in on the game. Now, that sounds rather more like R.D. Laing and of course it may not be what Sullivan had in mind at all. But it seems to me it is equally as probable as the idea that he was simply trying to spare the patient anxiety by a studied indirection. In essence it is a very complex communication to the patient about the layering-upon-layer of awareness in his life, in Laingian paradox, about what he doesn't know he knows about what he doesn't know he knows.