ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book focuses on “intersubjective resonance and implicit operational theories. It argues that clinical discussion groups based on the Three-Level Model for Observing Patient Transformations (3-LM) enable people to reflect on the clinical common ground shared by psychoanalysts who have different theoretical frameworks. The book describes how a patient with panic attacks experiences herself through metaphors and images in her dreams, which are extremely disturbed by negative emotions, particularly fear, as she struggles to stabilize her self-representation. It takes up central questions concerning how people can observe the analyst’s interventions as they facilitate specific processes of change. The book describes in detail a sequence of remarkable changes in the analysis of a very difficult violent patient. It proposes a tentative framework to assess the weight of evidence in a clinical narrative.
