Discussion of "The challenge of the strong adaptive approach" - Comment on Langs (2005)

According to the strong adaptive hypotheses of R. Langs (2005), unconscious processes within a patient pick up the precise interactional significance or core emotional impact of each act by the therapist, of which neither the therapist nor the patient is consciously aware. This initiates a search among millions of affect-image units within the mind of the patient until it finds and selects those that assemble around this core emotion to become a narrative that is analogous to the therapist's act. This matching narrative enters the patient's free associations. However, it is now a story about some other persons or interactional events in some other place, while at the same time it is about the meaning and implications of the specific action by the therapist that set this process in motion, of which the therapist and the patient were not consciously aware. An illustrative clinical example is presented.