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Proteus reprised

  • Proteus was the mythical Greek sea-god able to change his shape at will. In the Odyssey, King Menelaos manages not to release his wrestler's hold on the mercurial trickster, and theory can, at last, return home. The myth has sundry and changing applications to the living experience of what goes on between patient and psychoanalyst. In one sense, the analyst's job is to be like Proteus, escaping the transferential grip whereby the patient tries to pin the analyst into characterological shapes of the past. In another sense, the patient is Proteus, and the analyst's job is to hold firmly to the process of future change, refusing to settle for one fixed version of selfhood. In yet another sense, both patient and analyst become Proteus, experiencing fluidly present senses of self as an inner subjective >I<, as an intimately relational >Thou< with >Thee<, and objectively, as one Other among others. Additionally, the myth insinuates within the psychoanalytic situation a potential transcendence of time.

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Metadaten
Author:R. Langan
Parent Title (English):International Forum of Psychoanalysis, Oslo (Scandinavian University Press) Vol. 6 (No. 1, April 1997), pp. 45-50
Document Type:Articles
Language:English
Year of first Publication:1997
Release Date:2012/12/13
Format:PDF-scan upon request / PDF-Scan auf Anfrage
IdNo:Langan_R_1997
Erich Fromm's Library and Erich Fromm Archive:Articles / Artikel
Licence (German):
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