ABSTRACT

The thesis, then, is that psychoanalysis works not because of what it says but how it proceeds, throwing an ever-widening seine of inquiry that is of a semiotic nature. The uniqueness of psychoanalysis lies in its particular framing, which permits the participants to use themselves in an infinite regress of metacommunications about the data the patient presents about his or her life. The therapist's particular explanatory system is only a metaphor, a way of pulling things together, of parenthesizing data. It is neither intrinsically correct nor incorrect but, rather, a commentary on the interactional field. But since each commentary is a selection of position, however inadvertent an attitude about what is being told by the patient, every interpretation becomes an interaction.