ABSTRACT
This chapter begins with R. Schafer’s development of the narrative turn, focusing especially on his rejection of classical metapsychology. It suggests that fictionalism compels us to critically examine key psychoanalytic concepts, the objects and experiences to which they refer, and, perhaps most crucially, the narratives in which they are embedded. For those who envisioned psychoanalysis as providing valid knowledge and contributing to a more general science of the mind, fictionalism signaled the dissolution of the aspirations. Although critical of the narrative turn, D. P. Spence disputed M. Eagle’s negative assessment, especially the idea that psychoanalytic interpretation devolved into mere storytelling. Psychoanalytic fictionalism more closely resembles mathematical fictionalism, a discourse that generates valid knowledge so long as it is linked to an appropriate base discourse. Significant about Transference Focused Psychotherapy (TFP) is its unique relationship to psychoanalytic theory, in particular to K. Kernberg’s contemporary object relations theory, which has been deeply influenced by the work of Melanie Klein and Edith Jacobson.
