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Old February 9th, 2005, 03:39 PM
judypickles judypickles is offline
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Join Date: Jan 2005
Posts: 7
Default Re: "Integrating control-mastery theory & research with other theoretical perspectives"

I agree with you wholeheartedly, Helene. A strength of the macro-plan theory is its focus on the directionality toward a vision of future possibilities. And I would add, helping the therapist (self-regulate) hold onto a big picture of the therapy while in the grip of the field in the moment-by-moment process.

I am arguing for 1) finding language and concepts that communicate better what we all seem to be adding in various ways here in our discussion, and 2) expanding our focus to address relevant and related areas that have a developed literature of research studies and related theories that might inspire us to ask different sorts of questions that we could then study.

Some areas that I have mentioned that excite me have to do with the dyadic process of developing moment-by-moment intentions with our lens of investigation up close. And I wonder too, if there might be relationships between that close-up process and the larger plan elements that we address, as Dan Stern proposes, the micro world is like "a world in a grain of sand." For example, there is sooo much infant research and attachment research with implications for therapeutic process that I find very exciting.However, it would take some study to get into that material to see how it might be relevant to the work of the group.

Beebe et al., Beebe and Lachmann, 2002, The Boston Change Process Study Group including Dan Stern, Lou Sander, Lyons-Ruth et al.,(many papers and Stern's 2004 book, The Present Moment) Gergely, Watson et al.'s work on contingency perception and attachment (Bulletin of the Menninger Foundation 65(3), Summer 2001) and application by Fonagy et al., in Affect Regulation, Mentalization, and the Development of the Self in which they discuss their social biofeedback model of parental affect-mirroring, specifically their description of affect-mirroring styles (Fonagy, Gergely, Jurist, & Target, 2002 pp. 192-202 for an introduction to the ideas). All of this work has direct implication for psychotherapy process that we could explore.
References have been made to the idea that our theory is interpersonal and some think intersubjective. But these are highly developed concepts within psychoanalysis (Stolorow et al, Benjamin, for example), infant research (see above), and cognitive science (Thompson, 2001) that involve ideas that we have not considered. Perhaps, we should better consider what those concepts are in other realms so that we can decide whether to explore these and related ideas in the context of our body of work.

I have to go, so that's all for now.
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