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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January 22, 2021 — The Analytic Field: Issues of Frame

[44 pages]

The psychoanalytic frame is in large part responsible for providing the safety needed for the analytic dyad to engage in this most intimate relationship.  In today’s class we will explore the nature of that safety by considering two aspects of the frame: the fee and the use of the couch.

Myers gets to the heart of the matter when she refers to what our responsibility to our patients actually is. She reminds us that the road to health involves being willing to work with our patients around difficult intrapsychic conflicts.  She walks us through the difficulties related to discussion of the fee for both analyst and patient and how the analyst’s fear of affects can foreclose on important analytic work. She does a beautiful job of discussing how assertion of the fee is a metaphor for the assertion of subjectivity, separateness, and desire and that assertion of these important aspects of personality leads to more intimacy and growth both in the analytic relationship and for analysands in their external lives.  Ross explores the use of the couch. He discusses how the use of the couch can assist in the patient’s developing sense of separateness and autonomy. My case write-up (Wolman) is an example of how the use of the couch assisted a patient with intrusive negative obsessive thinking to be able to develop a space in which he could explore the inner workings of his mind and open up a space for us to work together.

Midterm evaluations should be conducted at the end of this class. Discussion of how remote classes are handled and suggestions on how it can be improved will of course be very welcome. An outline to start the discussion is provided in a link below.

Midterm Evaluation Discussion Questions

Myers, K. (2008). Show Me the Money: (the “Problem” of) the Therapist’s Desire, Subjectivity, and Relationship to the Fee. Contemp. Psychoanal., 44(1):118-140.

Ross, J.M. (1999) Once More Onto the Couch: Consciousness and Preconscious Defenses in Psychoanalysis. J. Amer. Psychoanal. Assn., 47:91-111.

Wolman, D. (2015). “Mike Henry” Case Write-Up on use of the couch.

Optional Reading

Kravis, N. (2017) On The Couch: A Repressed History of the Analytic Couch from Plato to Freud. The MIT Press (selected passages)