Psychoanalytic attitude as a step in the transference/countertransference relationship

When the psychoanalytic treatment process reactivates the "primary oral conflict" in the patient, the author recommends that the analyst put off transference interpretations in favor of reacting with the "analytic attitude". Only after the relationship between patient and therapist has been restabilized, can the elaboration of the early conflicts be considered. The concept of the analytic attitude is essentially a synthesis of "holding" and "containing" functions.     

"Seizing and freezing" on a significant-person schema: need for closure and the transference effect in social judgment

Two experimental studies examined the possibility that the need for cognitive closure (NfCC) affects the tendency to exhibit transference effects in social encounters. They reveal that the transference effect is more pronounced when individuals' (dispositional) NfCC is high (vs. low). In Study 1, this effect is demonstrated with respect to the transference of false memories about a newly encountered target person generalized from one's representation of a significant other. In Study 2, it is demonstrated with respect to the transference of both false memories and affective reaction to a new leader based on one's representation of a past leader. The discussion considers the role of motivation in the transference effect in relation to the social cognitive and psychodynamic views of transference.     

Supervision, transference and countertransference

The author discusses supervision, transference and countertransference as seen in the context of the clinical case of a patient who had been first seen as a training analysis case and who later, in a fortuitous way, was treated by the supervisor of the training analysis. The supervisor, who in the first instance did not recognize the patient, discusses the reasons for this unusual experience in terms of the presence and absence of transference during the analysis of this patient as a training case and the problems inherent in the task of supervising. The patient's feelings towards the first and the second analyst and the vicissitudes of transference and countertransference during the supervision of the training analysis and its influence on the presentation of the analytical sessions by the student are also detailed and discussed. The question of recorded supervision presentations and their possible influence on the dynamics of supervision is raised.     

Repression, transference and reconstruction

Whereas Peter Fonagy almost dismisses the importance of repression and the recovery of repressed and suppressed memory, the author believes that the analysis of repression retains importance in clinical psychoanalysis. Transference is a return of the repressed, with repressed memories embedded within a fundamental unconscious fantasy constellation. Moreover, transference is an essential, but not the only, route to the understanding and analysis of the patient. Nor should transference be confused with the real or new analytic relationship. The author does not regard the dynamic unconscious as definitely registered and retrieved in procedural memory, awaiting further research. A focus on the present 'self with other' model of therapeutic action neglects pathogenesis and the importance of childhood and its psychoanalytic reconstruction.     

Psychoanalytic psychodrama in France and group elaboration of counter‐transference: Therapeutic operators in play therapy

In France, psychoanalytic psychodrama is mainly envisioned in its individual form – that is, a single patient working with a group of therapists. Its originality consists in bringing together several clinicians within a clinical experience that is shared as a group. This experience is fundamentally different from traditional individual therapies, psychotherapies or group co‐led therapies. Its configuration may be confusing or overwhelming due to the large number of co‐therapists involved in the setting. However, thanks to group elaboration based on the transferential‐countertransferential dynamics induced by the treated patient, this potential ‘cacophony’ can lead to fruitful psychic development embedded in play. This is tied to the co‐therapists' positioning in the transitional space shared with the patient as well as to the patient's subjective appropriation of their initiatives. By reflecting on clinical material taken from actual sessions as well as from the exchanges and elaborations occurring at their margins, this article shows how psychodrama and group come to metabolize the transferential elements, shaping the engagement of participants in the context of improvised play.     

A patient's transference to the analyst's supervisor: effect of the setting on the analytic process

A case is presented in which the patient's transference to the analyst's supervisor became evident just prior to the switch from clinic to private patient status. The patient experienced the supervisor as a restraining father figure who protected her from acting on her erotic wishes toward the analyst. Analysis of this led to the recall of previously repressed memories of sexual wishes toward her brother, and the sense of protection from these wishes that she had gotten from the presence of her father. The literature on transference involving the supervisory constellation and the training setting is reviewed, and the concepts of split and institutional transference are examined. Factors inhibiting the analysis of patients' fantasies about the analyst's status as trainee, including the presence of the supervisor and the institute, are discussed.     

Beyond transference,countertransference, the silences and the opinion1

The author examines several works of an intersubjectivist trend, as well as writings by Hanly, Cavell and Bion, defending many of the named psychoanalysts' viewpoints. These viewpoints are expressed in the search and the struggle for truth, recognizing, like Popper, that truth exists but that we cannot know with certainty whether and when we touch upon it, only that this endless effort merits a lifetime's work because it is the attempt at an encounter with ourselves‐the true encounter. The author explains the criticisms by Green of Jacobs, and defends the maintenance of ‘a certain possible neutrality’ (Eizirik). He poses some questions with regard to Ogden's ‘third subject’, considering it, among other aspects, from the supervisory point of view, which may demonstrate the existence of ‘a certain possible objectivity’ of the emotional confl ict. He develops some criticisms concerning silence as an interpretative action by Ogden, and summarizes two case histories. Both were unconsciously attempting to manipulate the analyst intensely‐one of them to get the analyst to intervene in his love life, and the other to interrupt acting out.     

Psychoanalytic goals,therapeutic action,and the analyst's tension

The author draws a distinction between the goals of psychoanalysis and its therapeutic action. Goals are consciously (or at least preconsciously) held by the analyst, and can be clearly articulated. Ideas about the mechanism of therapeutic action, in contrast, are hypothetical constructs, and cannot be completely spelled out. This is bound to leave analysts in a state of tension; we are certain about what we are trying to do, but what we are actually accomplishing is elusive. This tension may be optimal for the analyst, because attention must be paid simultaneously to the idiosyncratic relationship in the dyad and to the broader purposes of the analytic engagement.