Coparticipant Psychoanalysis: Toward a New Theory of Clinical Inquiry

Traditionally, two clinical models have been dominant in psychoanalysis: the classical paradigm, which views the analyst as an objective mirror, and the participant-observation paradigm, which views the analyst as an intersubjective participant-observer. Coparticipant inquiry emphasizes analysts' and patients' analytic equality, emotional reciprocity, psychic symmetry, and relational mutuality, suggesting that we are all inherently communal beings yet are simultaneously self-fulfilling, unique individuals. In this book, practicing psychoanalyst John Fiscalini defines coparticipant inquiry; articulates its major principles; analyzes its implications for a theory of the self and the treatment of narcissism; and discusses the therapeutic potential of the coparticipant field and the coparticipant nature of transference, resistance, therapeutic action, and analytic vitality. He lays out the therapeutic dialectics of the personal and interpersonal selves and discusses narcissism within its clinical role as the neurosis that contextualizes all other neuroses.