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The Analyst as a Person: Fromm's Approach to Psychoanalytic Theory and Practice

  • Sonia Gojman traces many contemporary innovations in psychoanalytic technique to Fromm's explicit humanistic approach to psychoanalysis. As Gojman notes, Fromm emphasized the need to know the patient from within (from >center to center<). This requires from the analyst an openness to use his own experience as a vehicle for understanding the patient. Fromm legitimized the patient's observer role in the analytic process, and he supported efforts to abandon a mythical neutrality in favor of adopting a role as an observant participant who affirms not only unconscious truths but also steps toward health. Gojman notes that these changes in technique--a term Fromm was reluctant to use since the stance he advocated was not simply a matter of the head but of the heart--are consistent with contemporary intersubjective approaches and with some of the positions advanced by Casement, Gill, and Mitchell, among others. Gojman also points out that in Fromm's discussion of technique in the Cuernavaca seminars, he repeatedly emphasized the analyst's unconventional attitude, his aliveness, his honesty, a profound interest in patients and their well-being. According to Fromm, these were all key ingredients to diminish the patient's resistance within the psychoanalytic process and increase the patient's confidence in the analyst. Gojman courageously looks into the realities of psychoanalytic institutes, where analysands are exposed to their therapist as teachers and colleagues in a variety of situations. This leaves training analysts in an extremely difficult position, >surrounded by analysands and former analysands as junior colleagues, creating situations of high-risk professional communication in groups ridden by all kinds of secrets and nonusable information.< Gojman proposes that rather than treat issues such as prestige and power in psychoanalytic institutes as nonexistent or useless sources of information, that the process be analyzed from the perspectives of the analyst and the analysand, each with different positions in the group structure. Needless to say, this effort is demanding for analyst and analysand alike, but may come as a relief >acknowledging our real participation and not struggling to conceal it.<

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Metadaten
Author:Sonia Gojman de Millán
Parent Title (English):M. Cortina and M. Maccoby (Eds.), A Prophetic Analyst. Erich Fromm's Contribution to Psychoanalysis, Nothvale and London (Jason Aronson Inc.) 1996, pp. 235-258.
Document Type:Articles
Language:English
Year of first Publication:1996
Release Date:2012/12/13
Format:PDF-file upon request / PDF-Datei auf Anfrage
IdNo:Gojman_de_Millan_S_1996
Writings about Erich Fromm (Secondary Literature):Articles / Artikel
Erich Fromm's Library and Erich Fromm Archive:Articles / Artikel
Licence (German):
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