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Dual coding: a cognitive model for psychoanalytic research.

Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association

|January 1, 1985

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Psychoanalytic theory may benefit from dual coding theory, which posits separate verbal and nonverbal systems. This cognitive psychology framework offers a more coherent model for understanding mental representations and verifying interpretations in therapy.

Area of Science:

Cognitive Psychology
Psychoanalytic Theory
Mental Representation

Background:

Current psychoanalytic theory implicitly uses a mixed model of mental representation, combining perceptual dominance and verbal mediation.
This mixed model, where verbal mediation characterizes conscious thought and perceptual dominance unconscious representation, faces challenges in hypothesis testing and falsifiability.
Existing models struggle with how verbal and nonverbal information interact, potentially leading to misinterpretations in psychoanalytic practice.

Purpose of the Study:

To propose the integrated dual code formulation as a more coherent theoretical framework for psychoanalysis.
To explore the implications of dual coding theory for psychoanalytic theory and therapeutic technique.
To suggest a new approach for verifying interpretations in psychoanalysis using principles from cognitive psychology.

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Main Methods:

Review and discussion of four theories of mental representation from cognitive psychology: verbal mediation, perceptual dominance, common code, and dual coding.
Analysis of the compatibility of these cognitive theories with existing psychoanalytic models.
Application of the dual code formulation to psychoanalytic concepts and the process of interpretation verification.

Main Results:

Empirical evidence predominantly supports the dual code theory, which proposes separate, interconnected systems for verbal and nonverbal information.
The current psychoanalytic mixed model is critiqued for its potential to distort or dissolve patient representations through language.
The dual code model suggests that the challenge in psychoanalysis is not verbal distortion but the failure of words to connect with nonverbal schemata.

Conclusions:

The integrated dual code formulation offers a more coherent and empirically supported framework for psychoanalysis than the current mixed model.
This cognitive framework allows for a more rigorous approach to verifying interpretations by assessing their linkage to stored perceptual representations.
Evaluating the imagistic content in patient speech can serve as an operational method to demonstrate the linkage between interpretations and nonverbal representations.