Rhythms of dialogue in infant research and child analysis: Implicit and explicit forms of therapeutic action.


Increasingly psychoanalysis is attempting to integrate the essential “backdrop” of the implicit, nonverbal moment-by-moment process into the narrative domain of language and symbols. We present vignettes from an analytic case of a 3- to 5-year-old child, treated by the first author, to illustrate the integration of the verbal narrative with the implicit moment-by-moment process of vocal rhythms and “action turns.” We offer a method of explicating the integration of the two levels of meaning. Using second-by-second video microanalysis, we present selected sequences of analytic process, diagramming the details of the verbal narrative and its associated patterns of vocal rhythms and action turns. The article illustrates the vital role of the microprocess in therapeutic action in a child analytic case. Neither the verbal narrative nor the nonverbal process could be fully understood without reference to the other. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved)