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The intersubjective link in perversion
Abstract
The author studies the intersubjective links which the pervert maintains with analyst or partner, attempting to indicate the differences between the investments in each case. Rather than accepting that empathy towards these patients is impossible to achieve and disturbs the countertransference profoundly, it attempts to show that these difficulties may be overcome if they are reinterpreted in the light of the theory of the intersubjective link. The author examines the theories and the practice of intersubjectivity and gives a definition of his approach to the link between two subjects. He applies these ideas to the case of a sexually masochistic female patient. The countertransference is marked successively by indifference, rejection and smothering. The analysis of the analyst's dream allows the situation to evolve. Failures in primary identification can result in domination over others and utilitarianism. The author examines the place of the challenge to the 'Law' and the father (in the attempt by the patient to put a theory to the test) in order to identify the figure of the witness in the pervert's intersubjective links. The desire of the transference would be marked by the figure of the witness rather than by that of the analyst as accomplice.
... Intersubjectivity purposefully tracks the nature of the relationship between therapist and patient as the subjectivity and (un)conscious of both collaborate in an open manner. Eiguer [32] describes the intersubjective relationship or ''intersubjective link'' between therapist and patient as reciprocal, in which each unconscious is influenced by the other. The therapeutic situation remains primarily the scene of the patient's psyche, but no longer exclusively so. ...
... Moodley [46] suggests calling this field a ''third space'', Baranger et al. (in Eiguer [32]) posit an ''intersubjective field'', Aron [26] mentions a ''triadic intersubjectivity'', Benjamin [19] writes about a ''rhythmic third'', Ogden about an ''analytic third'' [21], whilst Swartz introduces the intersubjective ''third voice''[23]. and disabling power – in turn, patient narratives might be enacted and shaped by anxiety and defense [23]. ...
Purpose:
This paper aims to show how an intersubjective view on disablist discourse and practice might craft an egalitarian space from which expert voices on living and working with intellectual impairment could emerge, and attempts to further bridge psychoanalytic and disability studies.
Method:
The paper shares the view on dispelling the notion that intellectually impaired individuals cannot benefit from psychoanalytic psychotherapy, and speaks to the slow progression of research on intellectual disability psychotherapies. It supports disability researchers' emphasis on moving studies from a third-person reporting style toward counter-hegemonic texts, and explores a way of forefronting impaired individuals' expertise.
Results:
The discussion shows how subjectivities of both psychotherapist and intellectually impaired patient can intersect - thereby raising previously subdued voices to enable social action for the expression of dissatisfaction, equal (moral) rights, individuality and freedom from disablist practices.
Conclusion:
Intersubjective work could offer a new way of understanding psychotherapy and research with intellectually disabled individuals differing in degree and manner of impairment; address effects of subaltern voice, marginalisation, disempowerment and defense by equalising therapist-patient power (im)balances; and by virtue of its scientific literature base, provide a contextual clinical account of disability psychotherapy and research as anti-discriminatory political and social processes. Implications for Rehabilitation Psychoanalytic intersubjectivity implies that there can be no analytic neutrality unaffected by the therapist's subjectivity, and that ongoing experiences of one's subjectivity are deeply influenced by the subjectivities of those with whom one is interacting. Cautious and thoroughly considered self-disclosure on the part of the therapist in experiencing the patient becomes a permissible therapeutic intervention. In intersubjective research texts, the experience of disability can ultimately be voiced by the real experts living with intellectual impairment in an often disabling world.
... To other analysts, however, the concept conjures meanings that are complex and clinically useful. Contemporary usages have been clinically revealing, including (but not limited to): Eiguer's (2007) study of the "intersubjective link," Purcell's (2006) discussion of the analyst's excitement in the analysis of perversion, Jim enez' (2004) phenomenology of perversion, Grossman's (2015) object-preserving function in sadomasochism, my (Celenza 2000) emphasis of libido in sadomasochism, Josephs' (2003) "perversion of the observing ego," Sanchez-Medina's (2002) hypothesis of "perverse thought," Carignan's (1999) clinical description of a EMBODIMENT AND THE PERVERSION OF DESIRE perverse transference, and Etchegoyen's (1978) thesis of transference perversion. For the purposes of this paper, I aim to build on Parsons' (2000) overview and recasting of sexuality and perversion in object relations terms. ...
... Les pervers narcissiques n'ont qu'un discours de façade pour masquer leur vide affectif. Leur fausse empathie permet de manipuler les autres [78]. Chez les psychopathes et les personnalités sadiques, la douleur suscitée chez autrui stimule de façon anormale les circuits de la récompense (amygdales et striatum ventral) [79]. ...
Résumé
L’empathie du soignant envers un malade et sa famille est une condition nécessaire à la création de soins fondés sur une confiance réciproque. L’empathie est une fonction psychique complexe mobilisant affects pour accueillir la détresse d’autrui, cognition pour déterminer ses désirs, conation pour mettre en œuvre les actions thérapeutiques et relationnelles utiles et efficaces éthiquement centrées sur le patient. L’empathie est innée, partagée dans diverses espèces de mammifères. L’empathie se cultive chez les êtres humains durant leurs parcours de vie. Elle a un coût émotionnel pour les praticiens de la santé, et si celui-ci devient trop pesant, la fatigue d’empathie peut conduire à un épuisement professionnel. L’insuffisance d’empathie chez ces praticiens a les mêmes inconvénients qu’une insuffisance de leur professionnalisme. Elle est donc essentielle dans la relation de soins, satisfaisante pour le malade, et par ailleurs, bénéfique pour la qualité de soins au travail des soignants. Nous explorons dans cet article les différentes facettes de l’empathie à partir d’une revue de la littérature dans le champ de la relation de soins.
... To other analysts, however, the concept conjures meanings that are complex and clinically useful. Contemporary usages have been clinically revealing, including (but not limited to): Eiguer's (2007) study of the "intersubjective link," Purcell's (2006) discussion of the analyst's excitement in the analysis of perversion, Jim enez' (2004) phenomenology of perversion, Grossman's (2015) object-preserving function in sadomasochism, my (Celenza 2000) emphasis of libido in sadomasochism, Josephs' (2003) "perversion of the observing ego," Sanchez-Medina's (2002) hypothesis of "perverse thought," Carignan's (1999) clinical description of a EMBODIMENT AND THE PERVERSION OF DESIRE perverse transference, and Etchegoyen's (1978) thesis of transference perversion. For the purposes of this paper, I aim to build on Parsons' (2000) overview and recasting of sexuality and perversion in object relations terms. ...
A contemporary definition of perversion is offered that aims to reveal a form of psychic functioning as a quality of being toward others in the external world, translating to a mode of relating toward internal objects, and/or a mode of relating toward one’s body as an object. This quality of being is contrasted with perversion denoting a specific set of behaviors, as in classical conceptualizations. Two schematics illustrate healthy and perverse phenomenological positions (i.e. identifiable within the person’s preconscious or conscious perspective and experience). These positions highlight ways in which perverse modes of experiencing can be depicted, by use of internal psychic positions and the extent to which these are integrated, interpenetrate one another or are truncated and foreclosed. In particular, a perverse internal psychic mode is proposed where affective, embodied, and pre-reflective self-experience is split off or dissociated. The case of Laura is offered as an illustration of a perverse mode of being and a perverse relationship to her body. I also suggest that perverse modes of relating towards others (primarily through objectification) is more common in males whereas the objectification of one’s body is more common in females.
... Ka€ es defines the subject as subject of the link, and enlarges Pichon Rivi ere's concept of spokesperson by adding the idea that in a group there is the speech bearer, the symptom bearer, and the dream bearer. Alberto Eiguer (2007) worked with Pichon Rivi ere before moving to France, and has drawn heavily on his work as well as that of Ka€ es. Hayd ee Faimberg, also in France, trained with Pichon Rivi ere from early in her training in Argentina. ...
Enrique Pichon-Rivière's work, fundamental to Latin American and European psychoanalytic development, is largely unknown in English-language psychoanalysis. Pichon's central contribution, the link (el vinculo), describes relational bonds in all dimensions. People are born into, live in, and relate through links. Psychic structure is built of links that then influence external interaction. Links, expressed in mind, body and external action, continuously join internal and external worlds. Links have two axes: vertical axis links connect generations through unconscious transgenerational transmission; horizontal axis links connect persons to life partners, family, community and society. For Pichon, treatment constitutes a spiral process through which interpretation disrupts existent structures, promoting new emergent organizations at successively deeper levels. Psychic and link structures evolve over time unless repetitive cycles stunt growth. For Pichon, transference is constituted in the here-and-now-with-me because of the analytic link. Pichon also undertook family and group psychoanalysis where individuals become spokespersons for unconscious links and family secrets. He developed operative groups that apply psychoanalysis to both analytic and non-analytic tasks. After describing Pichon's major contributions, the paper compares Pichon-Rivière's ideas with those of Klein, Fairbairn, Bion, Winnicott and Bowlby, and contemporary writers including Ogden, Kaës, and Ferro whose works echo Pichon-Rivière's thought.
... Because an intersubjective research space allows for the creation of a unique dynamic field between researcher and participant, this field cannot be formulated in advance of a research encounter. Beautifully termed as a space from which a 'matrix of possible stories' on working with intellectual disability can emerge, a creative space is brought into being for capturing a variety of unpredictable research outcomes and in which anything can happen (Ferro 2002in Eiguer 2007, p. 1136). ...
Background
Migrating nursing labour inadvertently reinforces South Africa's care drain, contributes to a global care crisis and forces us to reconsider migration motivation. This paper highlights issues that complicate psychiatric intellectual disability nursing care and identifies loci for change in an attempt to redress this care challenge.Method
An exploratory descriptive-interpretivist method investigated nurses' experiences of psychiatric intellectual disability work. Sixteen free association narrative interviews were collected in 2013. Thematic analysis allowed findings to emerge from the data.ResultsFindings reflect a number of themes: ‘relational interaction’, ‘care burden’, ‘system fatigue’, ‘infantilising dynamic of care’ and ‘resources for coping’.Conclusion
System fatigue contributes more to negative experiences of providing care than direct patient work, and nurses experience more relational reciprocity from patients than from institutional management. Organizations should meet nurses’ needs for burnout prevention, afford them impact in implementing institutional controls, and engage in a non-exploitative and non-exclusionary way.
Relational and field theories have much in common, despite divergent foundations. In this paper, several areas of divergence are selected, including the structure of the field as a relational matrix or as an unconscious joint fantasy of the couple; the fate and form of insight; and the nature of the unconscious as relational or ubiquitous. Differences in cognitive and attentional sets are identified and linked to different modes of insight. Using a clinical vignette, these divergences will be illustrated with an attempt to compare and contrast the two approaches through a discussion of how each lens highlights, expands, or forecloses different features of the analytic process. A mode of conceiving the unconscious as unstructured and multiple in potential is offered to reconcile divergent assumptions in therapeutic action. A consideration of Sandor Ferenczi’s clinical emphasis on relaxed technique, elasticity, and especially mutuality suggests that he would have been a field theorist were he among us today.
El trabajo de Enrique Pichon Rivière, fundamental para el desarrollo psicoanalítico de América Latina y Europa, es en gran parte desconocido en el psicoanálisis anglo-parlante. La contribución central de Pichon, el vínculo, describe los lazos relacionales en todas las dimensiones. Las personas nacen, viven y se relacionan a través de vínculos. La estructura psíquica está construida por vínculos que luego influencian las interacciones externas. Los vínculos, expresados en la mente, en el cuerpo y en la acción externa, continuamente unen el mundo interno y externo. Los vínculos tienen dos ejes: los vínculos de ejes verticales conectan las generaciones a través de la transmisión transgeneracional inconsciente; los vínculos de eje horizontal conectan a las personas a sus compañeros de vida, la familia, la comunidad y la sociedad. Para Pichon, el tratamiento constituye un proceso en espiral a través del cual la interpretación altera las estructuras existentes, promoviendo nuevas organizaciones emergentes a niveles sucesivamente más profundos. Las estructuras psíquicas y de vínculo evolucionan con el tiempo a menos de que los ciclos repetitivos alteren el crecimiento. Para Pichon, la transferencia se constituye en el aquí-y-ahora-conmigo debido al vínculo analítico. Pichon también emprendió el psicoanálisis familiar y grupal en donde las personas se convierten en portavoces de los vínculos inconscientes y los secretos familiares. Desarrolló grupos operativos que aplican el psicoanálisis tanto a las tareas analíticas como no analíticas. Después de describir las principales contribuciones de Pichon, el documento compara las ideas de Pichon Rivière con las de Klein, Fairbairn, Bion, Winnicott y Bowlby y escritores contemporáneos como Ogden, Kaës y Ferro, cuyas obras reflejan el pensamiento de Pichon Rivière.
L’auteur de cet article soutient que l’une des principales fonctions de la relation perverse est de pousser l’analyste à devenir le complice inconscient du patient par un « pacte pervers » dirigé contre le travail analytique et visant à dénier les aspects intolérables de la réalité. L’intensité de la force d’induction collusoire de la relation perverse conduit l’analyste à participer à des énactions transféro-contre-transférentielles ainsi qu’à la cristallisation d’une collusion silencieuse et chronique entre le patient et l’analyste dans le champ analytique aboutissant à la stagnation du processus ( cf . Le « bastion », Baranger et Baranger). L’auteur affirme que l’analyse de la pathologie perverse ne doit pas se limiter à la seule interprétation du fonctionnement intrapsychique du patient, mais également prendre en compte les informations obtenues par l’analyste dans sa participation aux énactions collusoires. L’analyste doit donc jeter également un « regard second » sur le « champ » analytique, à la recherche de bastions sous-jacents. L’auteur passe en revue les principales contributions psychanalytiques ayant éclairé le phénomène d’induction collusoire dans la relation perverse avant de l’illustrer en décrivant l’analyse d’un patient à la personnalité perverse. Pour ce patient, l’une des principales fonctions de son mode de relation pervers était d’amener l’analyste à devenir complice de son déni de la terreur de la mort. L’auteur souligne l’influence qu’exerce l’angoisse de mort sur le développement des bastions dans le traitement des patients pervers.
The author argues that one of the main functions of perverse relatedness is to induce the analyst into becoming the patient's unconscious accomplice in a "perverse pact" against the analytic work aimed at disavowing intolerable aspects of reality. The intense power of collusive induction in perverse relating leads the analyst to participate in transference-countertransference enactments and to the crystallization of a silent and chronic unconscious collusion between the patient and analyst in the analytic field, stagnating the process (bastion; Baranger and Baranger). The author claims that analysis of perverse pathology should not be limited to interpretation of the patient's intrapsychic functioning but should also focus on the information obtained by the analyst through his participation in collusive enactments; the analyst should also take a "second look" at the analytic "field" to detect underlying bastions. The author reviews the main psychoanalytic contributions that have clarified the phenomenon of collusive induction in perverse relating and as an illustration, describes the analysis of a man with a perverse character; in this patient, one of the main functions of his perverse relatedness was to induce the analyst to become an accomplice in his disavowal of his terror of death. The author highlights the influence of death anxiety in the bastions that develop in the treatment of perverse patients.
The author redefines and explains narcissism as a separate and distinct psychic dimension within the Freudian theory of instinctual drives. Taking an essentially clinical approach, he seeks to demonstrate the complementarity of his views to those of Freud. Among the facets of narcissism he focuses on in the course of his discussion are the concepts of narcissistic wholeness, narcissistic confirmation, narcissism as instinctual impulse, the narcissistic triad (or 'fantasy of the holy child'), moral or ideal narcissism, the phallus as symbol of narcissistic integrity, and, in particular, the narcissism-drive dialectic. He sees narcissism-anality as a bipolar axis around which the great questions of normal and abnormal psychology revolve. In addition to examining depression and suicide from this perspective, he uses this axis as a point of departure to develop an original theory of incest and the Oedipus complex and to explore the role of narcissism in psychoanalysis, in countertransference, and, more broadly, in the dynamics of the analytic situation and the therapeutic process. The idealist, the neurotic, and the psychotic are considered in terms of the success or failure of the temporary fusion between narcissistic, object-instinctual, and reality demands.
What are the origins of creativity and how can we develop it - whether within ourselves or in others? Not only does Playing and Reality address these questions, it also tackles many more that surround the fundamental issue of the individual self and its relationship with the outside world. In this landmark book of twentieth-century psychology, Winnicott shows the reader how, through the attentive nurturing of creativity from the earliest years, every individual has the opportunity to enjoy a rich and rewarding cultural life. Today, as the 'hothousing' and testing of children begins at an ever-younger age, Winnicott's classic text is a more urgent and topical read than ever before. © 1971 D. W. Winnicott, © 2005 Preface to the Routledge Classics edition, F. Robert Rodman.
Conversation of some kind with René Kaës about link
The author suggests that we think of object relations and of links separately, for they are psychoanalytic entities ruled by a different logic and that possess their own defenses, constitutive mechanisms, regulating principles, and associated notions. She makes a distinction between the history that determines the present and the history of that present. She quickly outlines some practical and clinical consequences of this approach.
"Stoller is not just a scientist but a lover of words and language. In this book, his text is as playful, charming, and serious as his topic. The mix, a scientific and aesthetic exploration of the erotic imagination, is almost as irresistible as one's own erotic daydreams. Observing the Erotic Imagination is for all professional and private students of the erotic."-Dr. Ethel Person "This book is a delight...He offers a model clinical illustration, brilliant and full of presence. Indeed, Stoller's entire book is a model of clear, elegant conversational prose."-Jerome B. Katz, M.D., Bulletin of the Menninger Clinic "Stoller presents new thoughts on his most provocative theory of the relationship between erotic excitement and fantasy of revenge and hostility."-Anke A. Ehrhardt, Ph.D. and Evan J. Elkin, Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent "Stoller's account is comprehensive and levelheaded."-Psychological Reports
Examines the complementarity of the analyst–analysand relationship. Transference–countertransference interactions are viewed as operating in a dynamic force field, with the analyst playing a much more active role than in the classical Freudian theory. The dynamic bipersonal field of the analytic situation is characterized by parameters represented by the explicit and implicit rules of the analytic contract, a spatial configuration (setting), a temporal dimension, mutual projective identification, and an essential ambiguity. The importance of the interpretative comment in analysis is examined. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
The author begins by drawing attention to the current crisis in psychoanalysis, in which, following the great initial discoveries, he considers a certain solipsistic trend inimical to the role of the other and of the acceptance of innovation this entails has come to hold sway. This situation can in his view be overcome by the introduction of new applications and practices, as in the past with the acceptance of Klein's ideas in the field of child analysis. Theory is in the author's opinion always the product of clinical practice in our field, a thesis he illustrates by an account of his own work with couples and families, where the patient is deemed to be not any one individual in the group but the group itself considered as a nexus of links. The implications and theoretical repercussions of this link-based conception are discussed at length and some novel terms are introduced - for example, the link between subjects, imposition, the social subject, the subject relationship and the multiple subject. Alienness and the ‘other’, and presence and absence, are shown to be important concepts and are distinguished from object relations. The author concludes with a reference to a new resistance, namely to linking, and its implications in relation both to personality and to phenomena such as ethnic and religious conflict.
After stating that the current tasks of psychoanalytic research should fundamentally include the exploration of the analyst's mental processes in sessions with the patient, the author describes the analytical relation as one having an intersubjective nature. Seen from the outside, the analytical relation evidences two poles: a symmetric structural pole where both analyst and patient share a single world and a single approach to reality, and a functional asymmetric pole that defines the assignment of the respective roles. In the analysis of a perverse patient, the symmetry-asymmetry polarities acquire some very particular characteristics. Seen from the perspective of the analyst's subjectivity, perversion appears in the analyst's mind as a surreptitious and unexpected transgression of the basic agreement that facilitates and structures intersubjective encounters. It may go as far as altering the Aristotelian rules of logic. When coming into contact with the psychic reality of a perverse patient, what happens in the analyst's mind is that a world takes shape. This world is misleadingly coloured by an erotisation that sooner or later will acquire some characteristics of violence. The perverse nucleus, as a false reality, remains dangling in mid-air as an experience that is inaccessible to the analyst's empathy. The only way the analyst can reach it is from the ‘periphery’ of the patient's psychic reality, by trying in an indirect way to lead him back to his intersubjective roots. At this point, the author's intention is to explain this intersubjective phenomenon in terms of metapsychological and empirical research-based theories. Finally, some ideas on the psychogenesis of perversion are set forth.
It is the art of psychoanalysis in the making, a process inventing itself as it goes, that is the subject of this paper. The author articulates succinctly how he conceives of psychoanalysis, and offers a detailed clinical illustration. He suggests that each analysand unconsciously (and ambivalently) is seeking help in dreaming his ‘night terrors’ (his undreamt and undreamable dreams) and his ‘nightmares’ (his dreams that are interrupted when the pain of the emotional experience being dreamt exceeds his capacity for dreaming). Undreamable dreams are understood as manifestations of psychotic and psychically foreclosed aspects of the personality; interrupted dreams are viewed as reflections of neurotic and other non-psychotic parts of the personality. The analyst's task is to generate conditions that may allow the analysand-with the analyst's participation-to dream the patient's previously undreamable and interrupted dreams. A significant part of the analyst's participation in the patient's dreaming takes the form of the analyst's reverie experience. In the course of this conjoint work of dreaming in the analytic setting, the analyst may get to know the analysand sufficiently well for the analyst to be able to say something that is true to what is occurring at an unconscious level in the analytic relationship. The analyst's use of language contributes significantly to the possibility that the patient will be able to make use of what the analyst has said for purposes of dreaming his own experience, thereby dreaming himself more fully into existence.
In this paper I suggest that the analysis of perversion necessarily involves the elaboration and analysis of a perverse transference countertransference. Both analyst and analysand contribute to and participate in the perverse transference-countertransference which intersubjective construction is powerfully shaped by the perverse structure of the patient's unconscious internal object world. In the fragment of an analysis that is presented, I illustrate the way in which the analyst makes use of his experience in (of) the transference-countertransference in gaining understanding of the perverse scenario that the patient is utilizing as a form of psychic organization, defense, communication, and object relatedness. I discuss the analyst's use of his own unobtrusive, mundane thoughts, feelings, fantasies, ruminations, sensations, and so on, in the service of understanding the perverse transference-countertransference, which understanding is utilized in the formulation of transference interpretations.
The perversity of the transference-countertransference is viewed as deriving from the patient's defensive use of particular forms of sexualization as a way of protecting himself or herself against the experience of psychological deadness. Compulsive erotization is understood as representing a method of creating an illusory sense of vitality. The subversion of the recognition of the experience of psychological deadness is achieved in part through compulsively enlisting others in the enactment of exciting, erotized. and often dangerous substitutes for the experience of being alive.
The author begins by noting the historical importance of perversion in the development of psychoanalysis and its potential for inspiring new ideas. Observing that cynicism is a component of perversion, he discusses some psychoanalytic views of the cynic and the role of the cynical attitude in politics. After a brief reference to the philosophy of the ancient Cynics and to irony, which he distinguishes from cynicism proper, he considers the clinical and theoretical aspects of cynicism and perversion in terms of representation/affect and hallucination/sensual pleasure. The connections with fetishim in particular are explored. The cynic is stated to possess an ethic of the negative, in which beauty is trampled underfoot by linguistic acts permeated with the subject's internal void, and to use a sexual theory translated into ideology. Specific elements of the cynic's logic include, in the author's view, a vindication of the mother's phallus, scepticism about the possibility of a male identification in the patient's father, and premonitions of the inexorable return of the non-human. These points, as well as the radical differences between perversion and cynicism on the one hand and neurosis and psychosis on the other, are illustrated by a literary example and the case history of a frotteur.
The author begins by drawing attention to the current crisis in psychoanalysis, in which, following the great initial discoveries, he considers a certain solipsistic trend inimical to the role of the other and of the acceptance of innovation this entails has come to hold sway. This situation can in his view be overcome by the introduction of new applications and practices, as in the past with the acceptance of Klein's ideas in the field of child analysis. Theory is in the author's opinion always the product of clinical practice in our field, a thesis he illustrates by an account of his own work with couples and families, where the patient is deemed to be not any one individual in the group but the group itself considered as a nexus of links. The implications and theoretical repercussions of this link-based conception are discussed at length and some novel terms are introduced--for example, the link between subjects, imposition, the social subject, the subject relationship and the multiple subject. Alienness and the 'other', and presence and absence, are shown to be important concepts and are distinguished from object relations. The author concludes with a reference to a new resistance, namely to linking, and its implications in relation both to personality and to phenomena such as ethnic and religious conflict.
In this paper, the author explores the idea that psychoanalysis at its core involves an effort on the part of patient and analyst to articulate what is true to an emotional experience in a form that is utilizable by the analytic pair for purposes of psychological change. Building upon the work of Bion, what is true to human emotional experience is seen as independent of the analyst's formulation of it. In this sense, we, as psychoanalysts, are not inventors of emotional truths, but participant observers and scribes. And yet, in the very act of thinking and giving verbally symbolic 'shape' to what we intuit to be true to an emotional experience, we alter that truth. This understanding of what is true underlies the analytic conception of the therapeutic action of interpretation: in interpreting, the analyst verbally symbolizes what he feels is true to the patient's unconscious experience and, in so doing, alters what is true and contributes to the creation of a potentially new experience with which the analytic pair may do psychological work. These ideas are illustrated in a detailed discussion of an analytic session. The analyst makes use of his reverie experience--for which both and neither of the members of the analytic pair may claim authorship--in his effort to arrive at tentative understandings of what is true to the patient's unconscious emotional experience at several junctures in the session.
The author views the analytic enterprise as centrally involving an effort on the part of the analyst to track the dialectical movement of individual subjectivity (of analyst and analysand) and intersubjectivity (the jointly created unconscious life of the analytic pair--the analytic third). In Part I of this paper, the author discusses clinical material in which he relies heavily on his reverie experiences to recognize and verbally symbolize what is occurring in the analytic relationship at an unconscious level. In Part II, the author conceives of projective identification as a form of the analytic third in which the individual subjectivities of analyst and analysand are subjugated to a co-created third subject of analysis. Successful analytic work involves a superseding of the subjugating third by means of mutual recognition of analyst and analysand as separate subjects and a reap-propriation of their (transformed) individual subjectivities.
It is the art of psychoanalysis in the making, a process inventing itself as it goes, that is the subject of this paper. The author articulates succinctly how he conceives of psychoanalysis, and offers a detailed clinical illustration. He suggests that each analysand unconsciously (and ambivalently) is seeking help in dreaming his 'night terrors' (his undreamt and undreamable dreams) and his 'nightmares' (his dreams that are interrupted when the pain of the emotional experience being dreamt exceeds his capacity for dreaming). Undreamable dreams are understood as manifestations of psychotic and psychically foreclosed aspects of the personality; interrupted dreams are viewed as reflections of neurotic and other non-psychotic parts of the personality. The analyst's task is to generate conditions that may allow the analysand--with the analyst's participation--to dream the patient's previously undreamable and interrupted dreams. A significant part of the analyst's participation in the patient's dreaming takes the form of the analyst's reverie experience. In the course of this conjoint work of dreaming in the analytic setting, the analyst may get to know the analysand sufficiently well for the analyst to be able to say something that is true to what is occurring at an unconscious level in the analytic relationship. The analyst's use of language contributes significantly to the possibility that the patient will be able to make use of what the analyst has said for purposes of dreaming his own experience, thereby dreaming himself more fully into existence.
After stating that the current tasks of psychoanalytic research should fundamentally include the exploration of the analyst's mental processes in sessions with the patient, the author describes the analytical relation as one having an intersubjective nature. Seen from the outside, the analytical relation evidences two poles: a symmetric structural pole where both analyst and patient share a single world and a single approach to reality, and a functional asymmetric pole that defines the assignment of the respective roles. In the analysis of a perverse patient, the symmetry-asymmetry polarities acquire some very particular characteristics. Seen from the perspective of the analyst's subjectivity, perversion appears in the analyst's mind as a surreptitious and unexpected transgression of the basic agreement that facilitates and structures intersubjective encounters. It may go as far as altering the Aristotelian rules of logic. When coming into contact with the psychic reality of a perverse patient, what happens in the analyst's mind is that a world takes shape. This world is misleadingly coloured by an erotisation that sooner or later will acquire some characteristics of violence. The perverse nucleus, as a false reality, remains dangling in mid-air as an experience that is inaccessible to the analyst's empathy. The only way the analyst can reach it is from the 'periphery' of the patient's psychic reality, by trying in an indirect way to lead him back to his intersubjective roots. At this point, the author's intention is to explain this intersubjective phenomenon in terms of metapsychological and empirical research-based theories. Finally, some ideas on the psychogenesis of perversion are set forth.
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