Reply to Mitchell
(2001)
Every new theoretical development in psychoanalysis tends to lead to counter trends or calls for a return to a more pure version of analysis. Some critics of psychoanalysis' relational turn view this theorizing as excessively interpersonal, using the most literal definition of this latter perspective – psychoanalysis as simply an I – Thou relationship between two conscious people. Jeanne Wolff Bernstein, for example, starts with the assumption that unconscious minds can be studied independently from those persons engaged in the study. It then follows for such critics that, in interpersonal/relational analytic action, the person of the analyst has become too central and intrusive in the process, obscuring the examination of patients' unconscious mind.
Clinton and the Empty Self
(1994)
The analyst's countertransference feelings of love, particularly sexual love, have been subject to minimal examination in the literature. In this era of expanding psychoanalytical models, it appears that some theories of therapeutic action lend themselves more to addressing such themes than do others. There is always considerable overlap among psychoanalytic models, although there are nonetheless some clear differences in the way countertransference affect is experienced, filtered, and utilized.
Beyond the inevitability of countertransference feelings is the question of countertransference enactments. From a two-person, participant-observer or observing-participant perspective, enactments are inevitable. The analyst becomes influenced by the patient (and influences the patient as well) and enmeshed in the patient's internalized interpersonal configurations. Analysis works not by avoiding such action but by analyzing from within the interactional system. Analysts who are different from one another become engaged in different ways, since the person of the analyst is a significant variable. This article, using case examples, explores two analyst-related variables, age and family configuration, to expand the examination of countertransference enactments and some effects on the analytic process.