Continuation of Opening Phase to Early Middle Phase

Fourth Year Adult Psychoanalytic Training (APT)
2020-21, 2nd Trimester — Fridays, 3:30-5:00pm
Diane Wolman, MSW
Scot Gibson, MD

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December 11, 2020 — The Analytic Field: The Relationship and the Developing the Dyad

Presenter: Scot Gibson, MD

[-788 pages]

The various elements of psychoanalytic work (the frame, the setting, the particular ways of talking, relating, and listening) come together between the patient and analyst to create what is now generally called the analytic field.  This is a new element or interpersonal relation, contributed to by conscious and unconscious elements of both members of the analytic dyad.  Ogden has a similar concept, called the analytic third, and he wrote about this co-creation in a series of seminal papers from the 1990s.  Ogden stresses that understanding of the co-created nature of the analytic third is important, because it is partly by following one’s own reverie (as the analyst) that one understands what is being communicated between the dyad.  In other words – analysis is not just about listening to the patient, it’s also about listening to what the patient’s associations draw out in the analyst’s own mind, as the two are intimately connected in the field.

Silence is often a very important part of the field, and knowing how to work with it can be challenging.  Cooper discusses how the analyst is both facilitator of the analytic process but also can become (through the transference) a feared internal object. Understanding his patient’s silence as an expression of the conflict inherent in these two important roles was useful in helping him keep the field open, and not close it down by trying to promote a premature expressiveness.

Ogden, T.H. (1994). The Analytic Third: Working with Intersubjective Clinical Facts. Int. J. Psycho-Anal., 75:3-19.

Ogden:

One thing to keep in mind is that, as human beings, we cannot really multi-task — our attention can only be in one place at a time.  Note how Odgen allows his attention to leave the patient’s associations in order to follow his own.  How does this make you feel? What about the personal nature of your own reverie, and your own need for privacy?  Also — how does this compare to other types of therapy you may have learned?

Also, note how much Ogden stays in the present moment — both in his own reverie and in the thoughts he has about and the comments he makes to his analysands.  He does think about the patient’s past and development, but he most often just comments on what he feels in happening in the room at the moment, within himself, within his patient, or between the two of them. How does this compare with your ideas about psychoanalysis?

Cooper, S. (2012). Exploring a Patient’s Shift from Relative Silence to Verbal Expressiveness: Observations on an Element of the Analyst’s Participation. Int. J. Psycho-Anal., 93(4):897-91.

Cooper:

Pay attention to how Cooper is aware of the multiple roles he is playing for the patient — for instance, he is both the (somewhat) trusted facilitator of the process but also a feared object in the transference.  What other roles does he identify?

Note also his awareness of the multiple ways communication does and does not take place — speech is not always communication, and sometimes speech can be non-discursive communication, such as when it is communicating a defense.  And silence can have multiple meanings.

Note also his skepticism and examination of his own impulses as an analyst — his acknowledgement that he is sometimes “acting out” his own anxieties or biases.  How does this, and also Ogden’s reverie, compare to or differ from the ideas from the Schwaber article from last week on staying within the patient’s vantage point?

Optional Reading

Bollas, C. (2009). “Chapter 1: Free Association”, from The Evocative Object World, Routledge, pp5-45. 

Sandler, J. (1976). Countertransference and Role-Responsiveness. IRP, 3:43-47.

Ogden, T.H. (1996). Reconsidering Three Aspects of Psychoanalytic Technique. Int. J. Psycho-Anal., 77:883-899.

Ogden, T. (1997). Reverie and interpretation. In Psychoanalytic Quarterly, 66, pp. 567-595

Ogden, T.H. (1997). Reverie And Metaphor. Int. J. Psycho-Anal., 78:719-732.

Druck, A.B. (2012). Silence: Now More than Ever. DIVISION/Rev., 6:19-20.