Indeterminacy & compromise formation

Implications for a psychoanalytic theory of mind

Bibliographic Data

ID8971112
AuthorsBradley S Peterson (0000-0001-5737-225X, Columbia University and the New York State Psychiatric Institute1051 Riverside Drive, Unit 74New YorkNY 10032USA, corresponding author)
Year2002
Volume83
Issue5
Pages1017-1035
Publication date2002-10-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe International Journal of Psychoanalysis (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0020-7578 • E-ISSN: 1745-8315
PublisherTaylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1516/00207570260338728
PMID12427262
OpenAlexW4248183731
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited17

The meanings of communications between analyst and analysand are replete with alternative interpretations and ambiguity. Interpersonal meaning is inherently indeterminate, and so too is intrapsychic meaning. Indeterminacy of meaning, in fact, is an intrinsic feature of all psychic experience. In the clinical domain, indeterminate meaning is the psychic basis for forming and sustaining neurotic patterns of behaviour. This recognition has important implications for effective psychoanalytic intervention. Despite the inherent indeterminacy of meaning, it is not true that 'anything goes' when trying to make sense of the data that comprise psychic experience. Wittingly or not, analysts employ specific operational constraints to decide which among numerous alternative, competing interpretive schemes is the one that we accept as the 'accurate' and 'true' understanding of our experience. These constraints are employed by all rational systems and are important components of scientific theories and other explanatory domains. Neurotic symptoms and compromise formations do not recognise these constraints. They make freer use of indeterminate meaning to satisfy simultaneously the multiple competing demands of mental existence. Indeterminacy underlies the intense gratification afforded by neurotic symptoms and other transitional phenomena, in that it allows us to gratify simultaneously and as fully as possible our potentially contradictory desires that conflict with social and moral proscriptions. This simultaneous gratification afforded by compromise formation is why neurotic symptoms are so intractable to treatment. If conflict is one defining feature of the mind, then indeterminacy and compromise formation are the others

Cognitive psychology · Compromise · Epistemology · Indeterminacy (philosophy · Indeterminism · Meaning (existential · Psychic · Psychoanalytic theory · Psychotherapist · Sociology · Academic and Historical Perspectives in Psychology · Mental Health and Psychiatry · Philosophy · Philosophy and Theoretical Science · Psychology · Psychotherapy Techniques and Applications · Social Psychology

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