Commentary: Blind Spots and Laziness: Two Ways of Becoming “Stuck”

Within the chapters by Ribeiro and Gonçalves as well as Freda and Pagliara, two related theories of how patients become “stuck,” necessitating a therapeutic intervention, are implicitly described. This commentary explores these theories, highlighting two related but different processes: the development of blind spots and lazy meaning making. Within the former, patients cannot see horizontally in order to identify other possible self-states that are supported in specific contexts, causing them to become stuck within a dominant negative self-narrative; while within the latter, patients are unable to examine their self-narrative horizontally, as a text open to interpretation and reinterpretation. In keeping with methods of idiographic science, these conceptualizations are then compared with current thinking in relational psychoanalysis.