The analyst’s style and its impact on the analytic process

Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association

H ow do we become analysts? In this essay I will present a trajectory of my use of my self and my understanding of the mutual influences my patients and I have had on each other over my professional life. The use of my self and the mutual influences my patients and I have on each other, of course, are about the patient-analyst match. I believe our engagement reflects a process of working through for me, as well as for each of my patients. Events in our lives also affect who we become as people-sometimes only in subtle ways and sometimes more significantly. Changes in our selves have reverberations in our work with patients. When I began my psychoanalytic training in 1968, we were taught that analysts were meant to be "blank screens." Patients could and would project their difficulties onto us. Who we were, our conflicts and character, were to have been smoothed out in our personal analyses and our personalities purged of the tendency to appear in our offices. Analysts were assumed to be interchangeable. I know this sounds like a parody of analysis. I also now know that many analysts, even then, were not like this, but it is what we were taught. I admit to having been incredulous. Really? Who we were as people would not enter our work with patients? Before my training, I had worked primarily with children and been relatively free in using my self intuitively in the work. My classical analytic training did help to provide a discipline for my spontaneity that was useful, but the idea that I, or anyone, could be grayed

The author focuses on the person of the analyst and particularly how it helps shape two key factors in psychoanalysis: clinical narration and the analyst's interpretations.

The Other Scene, 2013

The International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 2009

One has the opportunity and responsibility to become an analyst in one's own terms in the course of the years of practice that follow the completion of formal analytic training. The authors discuss their understanding of some of the maturational experiences that have contributed to their becoming analysts in their own terms. They believe that the most important element in the process of their maturation as analysts has been the development of the capacity to make use of what is unique and idiosyncratic to each of them; each, when at his best, conducts himself as an analyst in a way that reflects his own analytic style; his own way of being with, and talking with, his patients; his own form of the practice of psychoanalysis. The types of maturational experiences that the authors examine include situations in which they have learned to listen to themselves speak with their patients and, in so doing, begin to develop a voice of their own; experiences of growth that have occurred in the context of presenting clinical material to a consultant; making self-analytic use of their experience with their patients; creating ⁄ discovering themselves as analysts in the experience of analytic writing (with particular attention paid to the maturational experience involved in writing the current paper); and responding to a need to keep changing, to be original in their thinking and behavior as analysts.

2020

The therapeutic process is considered from the perspective of its impact on the analyst. Analysts undertake self-scrutiny, focusing on transference and countertransference reactions, in order to facilitate the treatment of their patients. However, this self-reflection also serves to continue and enhance the analyst's own personal understanding. In the course of analyzing patients, an interactional process develops in which many of the therapeutic aspects of analysis affect the analyst as well as the patient. A clinical example is offered to illustrate this process.

Psychoanalytic Inquiry, 2007

“I get so sick and tired of hearing about the various different schools of psychoanalysis and their great superiority to the other one—whichever it is. The possibility of arguing about their various merits is simply endless—as long as you don't anchor any of it to facts. I don't know of any scientific work that is not based on observation.” (W. Bion, 3.7.1978, in 2005 b, p. 39)In this article, we argue that it is essential to understand how the analyst applies his knowledge in the analytic situation to investigate the analytic process and develop research models to evaluated clinical hypothesis. We accept the premise that the analyst's theory influences technique and that an examination of an analysis involves an interactive process. We ask, “How do we understand the inseparable bound between therapy and research?” We argue that the understanding that develops in psychoanalysis is not research. For research to take place, an exploration of causal connections is necessary that includes the analyst's observations and thinking through out the analysis which can be evaluated by independent observers. We describe and demonstrate a research model based on an audio transcription and annotated comments of the analyst to convey his observations and thinking that can be evaluated by independent observers.

Psychoanalytic Perspectives, 2012

Psychoanalytic Quarterly, 1998

Psycho Analytic Psychotherapy in South Africa, 2013

This paper focuses on comments made by patients about the body of the analyst in therapeutic exchanges. The paper begins by exploring the nature of the asymmetry between analyst and patient and its theoretical foundations in psychoanalysis. The question is then posed as to whether considering some of the specific features of the form and timing of the references to the analyst's body in light of this asymmetry may help therapists understand the dynamics of particular therapeutic dyads. Making use of the existing literature and clinical material to support the argument, the paper suggests that using the nature of the therapeutic frame as a preliminary aid to interpretation may cast light on the extent to which references to the analyst's body can be understood as resistances to the defining features of the therapeutic frame, and in so doing illuminate aspects of the transference-countertransference dynamics.

British Journal of Psychotherapy, 1985

Psychoanalysts and psychotherapists do not always make correct interpretations. It is a difficult technique. Probably all of us make mistakes quite often. I shall argue that this is a very complex event-more than is commonly recognised. When it happens it needs close analysis in the session. Part of the complexity derives from the emotional work the analyst must do in recognising the situation, and which is avoided more often than is commonly recognised. He has to overcome his own narcissistic wishes-a task which will not escape his patient's attention. It is therefore complex because`the analyst who made a mistake' is a figure who plays a significant part in the transference and counter-transference. He is an object of great emotional meaning for both patient and analyst. I shall present material to show that theà nalyst who made a mistake' is experienced by the patient as an analyst who is defensive. A further bit of the complexity is that the patient may believe insistently that the analyst is mistaken, even when he is not. At such a moment the patient is divorced from the reality of his internal and external relations. This requires the same emotional work from the analyst to recognise that he is being perceived as an`analyst who has made a mistake'. And if the analyst is hesitant or resistant to recognise it, he does indeed make a mistake that confirms his patient's view of him. From the patient's point of view, the`analyst who made a mistake' and the`analyst who is being perceived as having made a mistake' are one and the same. In this paper I shall not distinguish between the two as I shall be sticking closely to the patient's experience. For the patient, he has a defensive analyst whose priority is to protect his own mind. If the patient detects a defensiveness, real or imagined, how will he understand it? The analyst's mental state