Following Neal Miller's Footprints: Integrating Biofeedback With the Psychodynamic, Relational, and Intersubjective Approach

Abstract

Abstract This article provides a brief review of Neal Miller's translation of psychoanalytic theoretical concepts into operational behavioral research and explores relevant interactions of clinical biofeedback and psychoanalytic practice, both now and in Miller's time. Presently, psychoanalytic psychotherapists are more concerned with both the analyst's and the analysand's contribution to the intersubjective field of the therapeutic endeavor than with modifying biologically based, instinctual urges, as they were in Miller's time. Current psychoanalytic theory translates directly into the biofeedback therapeutic situation via the exploration of interpersonal relationship dynamics, or the intersubjective field, which includes the patient, therapist, and biofeedback instrumentation. All figure significantly in the patient's acquisition of a biofeedback task.