ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that an improvisational sensibility in relational psychoanalysis is a major vehicle for directly instantiating and playing with new possibilities in the "history and memory of coconstructed meanings between the analyst and patient'. Improvisational principles draw such performance arts as theater and jazz, and like these collaborative art forms psychoanalysis is an unscripted process. The outcome of the process, is not an art piece per se but about the personal transformation leading to the growth and healing of the patient. Improvisation as a form of human play distinguishes itself from another version of play and that is about competition. This version of play is in evidence in a host of adversarial gaming situations such as Scrabble, tennis, debate, and any form of play that is constituted by winning versus losing. The comparison of improvisation with 'mutual inductive identification' takes up the rich and largely unsettled question in relational psychoanalysis of the relationship of 'enactments, projective identification, and interaction'.
