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Alien3
(1994)
Edvard Munch: A Life in Art
(1994)
Can the Impossible Profession Help the Impossible Patient – Is Freud Relevant in the South Bronx?
(1994)
Review Malcolm Bowie: Lacan
(1994)
Since the middle of this century, countertransference theory has steadily evolved to a point where we now find abundant references in our literature involving extremely useful self-disclosive examinations of a broad spectrum of potentially disruptive countertransference responses. Our collective attitude of openness and even excitement at the potential usefulness of such responses in deepening our understanding of our patients, ourselves, and the nature of our work has been profoundly beneficial. And yet despite our advances from the early days of psychoanalysis when powerful countertransference was viewed strictly as an impediment, an atmosphere of disapproval and dread continues to pervade the phenomenon of erotic countertransference, which in turn contributes ironically to the alarming incidence of sexual abuse of patients by therapists of every orientation and level of experience. The roots of our collective intolerance are explored, beginning with Breuer's treatment of Anna O and Jung's entanglement with Sabina Spielrein. Case material is presented involving erotic countertransference, and a position is taken regarding future directions that are vital to our profession.
This paper proposes a conceptual and clinical integration of contemporary psychoanalytic theories that emphasize the repetitive dimension of the transference (the repeated relationship) and those that stress the developmental or selfobject dimension (the needed relationship). Such an integration is accomplished by enlarging our conception of the communicative matrix that includes transference, projective identification, and countertransference. It is suggested that patients actively seek to enlist the therapist both in old pathogenic interactional scenarios and in new therapeutically needed relational configurations. Thus, contrary to recent criticisms of the developmental paradigm, the therapist does not have to look outside the transference-countertransference matrix for a model of the developmentally needed relationship: the patient communicates it through a creative, proactive form of projective identification. The work of Racker, Sandier, Winnicott, Bollas, and various self psychologists is reviewed and found to support this reconceptualization. The paper then examines the theory of analytic cure in the light of this integrated perspective. It is suggested that the most compelling theories take into account the analyst's >embeddedness< in the transference – countertransference while recognizing the importance of the analyst's >mastering the countertransference< as the basis for providing a new developmental experience. The therapeutic models of Racker, Bollas, and Newman are described as exemplary in this regard.