Theorizing the social in psychoanalysis. Review Neil Altman: The Analyst in the Inner City: Race, Class, and Culture Through a Psychoanalytic Lens

  • This author describes how poetry infuses her way of thinking, feeling, and writing and her way of working analytically. She introduces the concept of a nonanalytic third – the analyst's personal, intimate, and substantially abiding relationship to some body of experience unrelated to materia psychoanalytica. She posits that this nonanalytic third, the nature of which is unique to each analyst, constitutes a source of enrichment, texture, and dimensionality as well as personally compelling metaphors that the analyst may offer to the patient as other-than-me substance and a placeholder for cultivating the potential in the discourse of analytic potential space, in addition to serving as a facilitator and comfort for transition when the analyst must recognize and promote the necessary ending of an intimate analytic relationship. Using Stephen Mitchell's notions of intersubjectivity and also using the analyst's and patient's separate role responsibilities in the creation of a context for the absence of conscious intentions, the author develops her concept of the nonanalytic third and the particular contribution of poetry to clinical process. These ideas are illustrated with a detailed case example of an unfolding analytic process that includes an e-mail exchange at the time when a shocking form of nonanalytic third appeared – September 11, 2001.

Export metadata

Additional Services

Share in Twitter Search Google Scholar
Metadaten
Author:Barbara Pizer
Parent Title (English):Psychoanalytic Dialogues, Vol. 15 (2005), pp. 057-084.
Document Type:Articles
Language:English
Year of first Publication:2005
Release Date:2017/11/20
Format:xerox upon request / Fotokopie auf Anfrage
IdNo:Pizer_B_2005
Erich Fromm's Library and Erich Fromm Archive:Articles / Artikel
Licence (German):
Einverstanden ✔
Diese Webseite verwendet technisch erforderliche Session-Cookies. Durch die weitere Nutzung der Webseite stimmen Sie diesem zu. Unsere Datenschutzerklärung finden Sie hier.