The Framework for a Model of Psychoanalytic Inference

1. EVIDENCE FOR CONFLICT

All of the elements in FRAME B, PROTOTYPE and INSTANTIATION l, Step 1 (above).

2. EVIDENCE FOR WANTING SUPPORT

A. P has expressed a w1sh for husband's approval (i.e. support).

B. WARRANT FOR GENERALIZATION (FRAME B, PROTO­ TYPE) suggests this is self-typical behavior.

C. P has expressed a wish for support from the boys' parents.

D. People in general want support when they are in conflict, i.e. this is "group-typical" behavior. INDUCTION: P WANTS SUPPORT FROM THE ANALYST.

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(end of f 20)

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3. EXPECTED VALUE : NOT GETTING SUPPORT DEFAULT ASSIGNMENT.

PREDICTION: P expects to not get support from the analyst.

CONTEXTUAL EVIDENCE: The analyst has not said anything up to this point in the session.

4. EXPECTED VALUE: HOSTILITY = DEFAULT ASSIGNMENT. PREDICTION : P will express hostility, either overt or covert toward the analyst.

Figure 5.

t ext ends. Nonetheless, the expected value for Event 3 supplies the default value as a prediction:

PREDICTION: The patient expects to not get support from the analyst.

And therefdre, we hypothes ize, she adopted a com­ promise solution: the delay dramatically apparent in Column 3, coupled with the elaborate background and justifications in Columns 5 through 9. Simply put, her delay can be stated as a symptomatic compromise between her desire for the analyst's ap­ proval and her expectation of not receiving it.

Inevitably this proposed explanation has the formal form of what psychoanalysts call a "trans­ ference" interpretation since the patient's delay is explained as an action directed toward the ana­ lyst . Our method has provided two reasonabl y pre­ cise transference predictions about events to come, namely, statements by the patient at some later time -- perhaps in the same session, perhaps not.

Th e second of these is condi tiona! upon the first: If P feels she has not gotten support from the an­ alyst, then she will expres s some form of hostili­ ty towa rd him. And we can examine our transcript s (and their maps) for statements bearing on these two predictions. (In this instance , both predic­ ti ons were confirmed.)

CONCLUSION

We have gone into a lot o f detail in order to illustrate the method of constructing maps and f r ames and to demonstrat e the fun c tion of each in r epr esenting these two kinds of knowledge that we have pos t u lat ed to underlie an analyst's intui­ tions. We find it quite astonishing to discover so much de tailed and definable structure in just three short paragraphs comprising less than 1/ l O,OOOth of the total analysis. But the true potential of this approach lies in the develop­ ments of frame systems with overlapping events. Even in the narrow domain we have examined there is at leas t one additional frame on the theme of TOGETHERNESS, and it clearly shares the Conflict event with the Support frame. If we enlarge our domain t o include the entire session and other sessions, it is easy to find variations on the t heme of Delay by substituting for the action of talking actions such as touching, telephoning, shopping and sexual activity. Moreover we also find variants in which another person (e.g . father, mother) r eplaces the patient as subject as well as instances in which the objects of the ac tion are variables (e.g. husband, analyst, etc . ). Taken to­ gethe r th ese variants would constitute a frame sys­ t em on the theme ; and taken with other themes with ov<.' rlapping events we would have a more complex and interes ting frame system that might begin to approach the complexity (or simplicity) of an ana­ l ys t's ac tual representation of such patterns.

~1at analysts refer to as unconscious fantasies could readily be represented as a frame system in whi ch the patient is unaware of the connections among events in event sequences or of the rela­ tionships among different instantiations or dif­ f e r ent frames in the system. We would want to examine the text for childhood instantiations that would give us clues to the origins of the default assignments. Minsky's description of the conse­ quences of early childhood conflicts can hardly be improved upon :

... default assignments would have s ubtle, idio­ syncratic influences on the paths an individual would tend to follow in making analogies, gener­ alizations, and judgments, especially when the exterior influences on such choi ces are weak. Properly chosen, such stereotypes could serve as valuabl e heuristic plan-skeletons; badly selec t­ ed, they could form paralyzin~ collections of ir­ rational biases . Because of them one might ex­ pec t, as reported by Freud, to detec t evidences of early cognitive structures in "free associa­ tion" thinking (pp. 228-229).

We have postulated that the main function of the mapping stage is that of classification, a sorting out of the interlocking narratives and the undoing of the surface disfluencies and discontinuities to establish the connectedness of the seemingly dis­ connected elements. We have further proposed that this classification facilitates the second step of the cognitive process , which is to identify the relatively invariant structured sequences of events that are r epeatd ove r and over with symbolically equivalent expressions of the events, repeated with subjects and objects of the action as variables. Our basic claim is that these PE frames stand as the basis for inductive inferences, for the predic­ tions entailed in them and for the organizing of the data for their confirmation or disconfirmation.