ABSTRACT
Dr. Levy provides us with a clinically rich case report highlighted by her observations of the patient’s behaviors as well as her own thought processes during this very productive treatment. I will attempt to demonstrate how traditional interpersonalists, particularly through Harry Stack Sullivan’s (1953a, 1953b) and later Ed Levenson’s (1988) operational perspective with their use of inquiry, might view this case. It is important to note that though the terms interpersonal and relational are often used interchangeably, they have become quite distinct. Traditional interpersonal psychoanalysis contributed several theoretical and technical innovations. The most radical was the reframing of the analytic process to be a function of a two-person, “participant-observer” model. In addition, they introduced inquiry as a major analytic technique; included the study of interpersonal security operations; expanded the field of intrapsychic phenomena to include “unformulated experience,” and further expanded the domain of analysis to include more difficult patients with an appreciation of the patient’s adjustment to living in the world. Of particular importance was Sullivan’s interest in the data for analysts’ inference with his emphasis on operationalism. In contrast, modern relational theorists emphasize a different level of inference as it privileges reverie, implicit knowledge, intersubjectivity, mutuality, and multiple self-states. Sullivan, in contrast, was concerned about the analyst becoming lost in reverie at the expense of not hearing the patient.
