Theory in vivo

Due to a formerly held assumption that psychoanalytic theories operate exclusively in the positivistic manner associated with the natural sciences, current thinking on how they operate specifically or in their own terms is addressing a long-neglected task. In this paper it is suggested that inherent and acquired modes of theorizing interplay when an analyst is working; and that a dialogue involving these two modes which began in Freud's inner life has evolved into our communal conceptual discourse. A series of situationally connected interchanges with a female analysand, over a two-week period, is presented. An attempt is made to demonstrate some theorizing, not 'in vitro'--'in the test-tube' of abstraction, but where most use and discovery of theory happens, 'in vivo'--within the living experience of therapeutic analysis.