THE PRISONERS-DILEMMA - GAME-THEORY AND THE THERAPEUTIC ALLIANCE

My aim in this paper is to describe how the therapeutic alliance evolv es during psychoanalytic treatment. Lindgren has shown that a coevolut ionary process can optimize the level of cooperation by the players in the game of prisoner's dilemma. This level is reached when strategies for recognizing reliable patterns in the sequence of moves by the oth er player have evolved. These are multiple memory strategies. Lindgren 's woll suggests that the analytic process must have sufficient fine f or multiple memory strategies to emerge if it is to achieve the necess ary level of trust for an effective therapeutic alliance to develop.