Dyadically expanded states of consciousness and the process of therapeutic change

✍ Scribed by Edward Z. Tronick; Nadia Bruschweiler-Stern; Alexandra M. Harrison; Karlen Lyons-Ruth; Alexander C. Morgan; Jeremy P. Nahum; Louis Sander; Daniel N. Stern

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1998
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 76 KB
• Volume: 19
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0163-9641
• DOI: 10.1002/(sici)1097-0355(199823)19:3<290::aid-imhj4>3.0.co;2-q

✦ Synopsis

This paper addresses an intersubjective issue that arises out of our model of therapeutic change: Why do humans so strongly seek states of emotional connectedness and intersubjectivity and why does the failure to achieve connectedness have such a damaging effect on the mental health of the infant? A hypothesis is offered-the Dyadic Expansion of Consciousness Hypothesis-as an attempt to explain these phenomena. This hypothesis is based on the Mutual Regulation Model (MRM) of infant-adult interaction. The MRM describes the microregulatory social-emotional process of communication that generates (or fails to generate) dyadic intersubjective states of shared consciousness. In particular, the Dyadic Consciousness hypothesis argues that each individual, in one case the infant and mother or in another the patient and the therapist, is a self-organizing system that creates his or her own states of consciousness (states of brain organization), which can be expanded into more coherent and complex states in collaboration with another self-organizing system. Critically understanding how the mutual regulation of affect functions to create dyadic states of consciousness also can help us understand what produces change in the therapeutic process.

RESUMEN: Este ensayo trata de un asunto intersubjetivo que sale de nuestro modelo de cambio terape ´utico: ¿por que ´los humanos tan fuertemente buscan estados de conexio ´n emocional e intersubjetividad y por que ´el fracaso en alcanzar tal conexio ´n tiene un efecto tan dan ˜ino en la salud mental del infante? Se ofrece una hipo ´tesis, la Hipo ´tesis de Expansio ´n del Estado de Conciencia en forma de Dı ´ada, como un intento de explicar estos feno ´menos. Esta hipo ´tesis esta ´basada en el Modelo de Regulacio ´n Mutua (MRM) de la interaccio ´n infante-adulto. . El MRM describe el proceso de comunicacio ´n socio-