Prelogical Experience

Published in 1959, Prelogical Experience is an early work of interpersonal psychoanalysis. It proposes a theory of personality that takes in the wordless, non-propositional side of human life, the part of experience that resists being stated as logical claims.

The authors argue that prelogical processes are not left behind in infancy. They continue to structure adult experience, with particular influence on dreams, emotional life, perception and the arts.

The book also applies this view to therapy. Tauber and Green describe patient and analyst as constantly trading what they call presentational data, which lets each person grasp the other in ways words cannot fully capture. Drawing on Piaget's idea of a cognitive unconscious, they treat the therapist's countertransference, including the analyst's own dreams, as a key source of information about the patient. Donnel Stern's introduction places these ideas within current discussions of psychoanalytic treatment.