The sandwich model of the therapeutic action: "music and dance" in therapy with the traumatised child

This article represents an attempt to integrate the current development theory and the psychoanalytic theory into the study of therapeutic action. I explain the therapeutic action as something that takes place simultaneously in multiple domains. Therefore, the "sandwich model" adds two domains to what psychoanalytic theory deals with. These added domains do not describe change in linear terms, because they obey to the general principles of non-linear systems. They thematize different temporal levels. Instead of explaining the changes that occur over minutes, hours and years, they describe those that occur over very long and very short periods of time: centuries, seconds and fractions of a second. Very long times describe, for example, the formation of rivers. The very short ones, on the other hand, describe the micro-processes of interaction in the analytical pair; a much shorter time scale than the time needed for the articulation of words, therefore a non-verbal level. This is what could be called the "music and dance" of the therapeutic action. My thesis is that including these additional domains can improve the understanding of the therapeutic action.