CHEMISTRY AND CONTAINING: THE ANALYST'S USE OF UNAVOIDABLE FAILURES

Certain patients overwhelm the analyst's capacity to contain both the patient and the analyst's own unbearable feelings. Though some such failures of containing may lead fairly quickly to self‐correction and others to clinical impasse, our focus is on an in‐between state in which the analyst's ability to tolerate his inevitable failures and gradually to (re)establish his containing capacities through difficult self‐analytic work can lead to significant change that might not otherwise be possible. The authors argue that this internal psychological work on the analyst's part, which may require considerable time, effort, and suffering, is an important aspect of “good enough” containing. The unique chemistry generated between patient and analyst plays an important role in both establishing and maintaining this kind of productive analytic process.     

BROWN ON SELF-KNOWLEDGE AND DISCRIMINABILITY1

Abstract:  In her recent book Anti-Individualism and Knowledge , Jessica Brown has presented a novel answer to the self-knowledge 'achievement problem' facing the proponent of anti-individualism. She argues that her answer is to be preferred to the traditional answer (based on Burge, 1988a). Here I present three objections to the claim that her proposed answer is to be preferred. The significance of these objections lies in what they tell us about the nature of the sort of knowledge that is in dispute. Perhaps the most important lesson I draw from this discussion is that, given the nature of knowledge of one's own thoughts, discriminability (from relevant alternatives) is not a condition on knowledge as such.