Edward Tronick, PhD
/Dr. Tronick’s seminal work focused on the concept of repair of relational disruptions as a major change process in psychological development and the healing of psychological illness, elaborating on his original model of mutual regulation.
Dr. Tronick has published more than 80 papers representing cutting-edge contributions to understanding biological and scientific advances in physiology, genetics, and epigenetics from 2011-2021. Building up on his Still-Face Paradigm work, he developed a new experimental paradigm for evaluating the effects on the infant by mildly stressing the mother. Tronick’s contributions offer psychoanalysts a scientific basis for the link between relational experience in the dyad and psychological health or illness in the individual. His work has generated the concept of the 'something more' in analysis as meanings made, not conveyed, by language or narrative.
His work has reimagined both the infant and the analysand as more pro-active and co-creative than the passive model of both had suggested. The transference involves continuously operating implicit neurosomatic forms of meaning: the something more. The paradigm shifts our view of development and analysis to a discordant process of active agents engaged in finding shared meanings. A recent book, co-authored with Claudia M. Gold, MD, The Power Of Discord: Why The Ups And Downs Of Relationships Are The Secret To Building Intimacy, Resilience, And Trust (Little Brown. 2020) raises the profile of psychoanalysis as well as broadens the application of psychoanalysis.
Dr. Tronick, a developmental and clinical psychologist, is a Distinguished Professor of Psychiatry and Pediatrics, and Head Faculty in an Early Relation Health Fellowship at UMass Chan Medical School, and a member of the American Psychoanalytic Association and the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute.