title: Deconstructing the dialectic.
abstract: The author examines some of the newly offered ideas and concepts about the interaction of the patient and the analyst. This interaction is termed a dialectic in the sense of interacting forces and this study is called a deconstruction, which is an effort to see how unstable and self-contradictory these new ideas may be. They are examined in terms of viewpoints of analysis as a developmental process, the location of the data of analysis, and the technical modifications that follow from this changed theoretical vision. A clinical example is offered to demonstrate the resultant problems. The suggested present status of the impact of these new ideas is that of a family of related concepts with no unifying theory.
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Goldberg
mesh_terms: D006801:Humans; D011369:Professional-Patient Relations; D011574:Psychoanalytic Theory; D011575:Psychoanalytic Therapy