Prelogical Experience: An Inquiry Into Dreams and Other Creative Processes

Psychoanalysis in a New Key

by Edward S. Tauber, Maurice R. Green

One of the foundational texts of interpersonal psychoanalysis, Prelogical Experience is a pioneering attempt to elaborate an interpersonal theory of personality that encompasses the nonpropositional, nonverbal dimension of human experience. Prelogical processes, the authors hold, cannot be consigned to infancy; rather they shape experience thru life & are especially salient in relation to dreams, emotion, perception & the arts. Of special note is Tauber & Green's elaboration of the clinical situation that grows out of an appreciation of prelogical experience. In a striking anticipation of contemporary thinking, they approach patient-therapist interaction in terms of the continuous exchange of "presentational data" by patient & analyst. These data enable patient & therapist alike to "know" more about the other than can ever be expressed in propositional terms. This perspective assigns an important role to what Piaget would term "the cognitive unconscious" in the clinical process. It likewise sustains a view of the countertransference-which includes the analyst's own dreams-as a vital source of presentational data about the patient.

208 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1959