ABSTRACT
Jay Greenberg's "Prescription or description: The therapeutic action of psychoanalysis" is the first article in the collection to have been penned by a new and younger generation of analysts trained in the interpersonal tradition. He criticizes the classical model for its assignment of priority in psychological development to intrinsic drive states over lived experience and the meaning attributed to the interpersonal experience. He argues that if development depends more on interpersonal life than on inherent, biological drive, then the events of the analytic relationship, and the subjectivity of the analyst, are important influences in the outcome of psychoanalytic treatment. He argues that mutual analytic interaction is not a strategy or a technique, but an inevitable consequence of any two people being on the same field of play. He observes that early interpersonalists, and Harry Stack Sullivan in particular, contradicted themselves by characterizing the analyst as one who participates in all respects while simultaneously knowing the nature of this participation.
