Anthony Bass

“E” Enactments in Psychoanalysis: Another Medium, Another Message

This paper explores sources of therapeutic action located in inchoate experience, in the often-preconscious resonance that is generated in that dimension of experience which we have come to regard as enacted in the transference/countertransference field. The living and working through of a wide range of problematic and reparative elements distilled in the analytic relationship are described as a crucial source of therapeutic action. A brief historical treatment of the place of enactment in different psychoanalytic traditions is followed by the explication of two different kinds of enactments: ordinary, quotidian enactments that form the daily ebb and flow or ordinary analytic process and (capital E) Enactments. The latter are highly condensed precipitates of unconscious psychic elements in patient and in analyst that mobilize our full, heightened attention and define, and take hold of, analytic activity for periods of time. Clinical vignettes by Theodore Jacobs and Margaret Black are discussed in explicating the latter distinction and considering its implications for technique.

It Takes One to Know One; or, Whose Unconscious Is It Anyway?

This essay explores the sometimes uncanny quality of unconscious experience and unconscious communication that often characterizes life in psychoanalytic relationships. As Ferenczi noted some 70 years ago, the psychoanalytic relationship may “significantly promote the development of subtler manifestations of receptivity.” Special qualities of unconscious receptivity and deep points of contact in the psychoanalytic relationship are explored, with reference to the history of psychoanalytic ideas (e.g., Freud, Ferenczi, Singer, Loewald, Symington) and to findings from other fields such as contemporary quantum science. Clinical vignettes are provided to illustrate such phenomena.

The Dialogue of Unconsciouses, Mutual Analysis and the Uses of the Self in Contemporary Relational Psychoanalysis

This essay explores the links between Ferenczi’s understanding of psychoanalysis as a radically mutual endeavor in which unconscious communication between patient and analyst flows in both directions, his experiments in mutual analysis as reported in his Clinical Diary, and the subsequent and ongoing development of a relational theory of technique. The essay examines the ways in which Ferenczi’s radical experiments in analytic technique expanded the possibilities for joint, direct transference/countertransference exploration, illuminating the complex permutations of implicit, as well as expressive and transparent ways therapist and patient can utilize the full range of feelings, thoughts, fantasies, body, and self-states that emerge in the field of therapy.

An Independent Theory of Clinical Technique Viewed Through a Relational Lens: Commentary on Paper by Michael Parsons

This discussion of Michael Parsonss exposition of the Independent Traditions clinical theory of technique compares and contrasts the British Independent and American Relational perspectives in regard to their approach to technique. In this discussion I will consider the question whether, given strong object relational influences on relational psychoanalytic theory, we are able to locate systematic differences in the way that Independent and Relational analysts attempt to work, to be with, and to relate to their patients in the psychoanalytic situation. Overlapping historical roots of the two traditions are considered, along with apparent differences in the ways in which the contributions of common ancestors, such as Ferenzci, are applied. I suggest that the integration of American Interpersonal School ideas with Object Relations theory in American Relational Psychoanalysis led to a different therapeutic sensibility, different ways of thinking about and participating in the analytic process from those that are reflected in the Independent Tradition as Dr. Parsons describes it. The discussion includes an imaginative reconsideration of clinical process along relational lines, in an attempt to clarify different emphases in technique between the two schools.

Three Pleas for a Measure of Uncertainty, Reverie, and Private Contemplation in the Chaotic, Interactive, Nonlinear Dynamic Field of Interpersonal/Intersubjective Relational Psychoanalysis

This discussion of essays by Cooper, Corbett, and Seligman explores some of the compatibilities, complementarities, strains, and challenges that have emerged in the synthetic and integrative efforts of relational psychoanalysis to apply both interpersonal/intersubjective ideas and those derived from a range of object relations theories in the development of a theory of technique of its own.

A Few More Thoughts on the Frame: Forms, Functions, and Meanings

This response to discussants David Scharff, Juan Tubert-Oklander, Boaz Shalgi, and Reyna Hernández-Tubert takes up some further considerations bearing on the variety of forms, functions, and meanings of an analytic frame. The metaphor of a “fractal,” drawn from chaos theory, is discussed, in terms of its relevance to the relationship between therapeutic process and the structure of the analytic frame, and between content and process. Multiple functions of the frame, both practical and symbolic, are considered. “Structuring” and “holding” dimensions of the frame are discussed, with particular reference to Winnicotts groundbreaking paper, “Hate in the Countertransference,” as well as his analysis of Margaret Little.

Mental Structure, Psychic Process, and Analytic Relations—How People Change in Analysis: Reply to Commentaries

This essay elaborates on some of the ideas set forth in “It Takes One to Know One” in response to Peter Shabads and Paul Williamss commentaries on that paper. In particular, the distinctions between process and mental structure and between unconscious process and relationship are explored and developed. An attempt is made to clarify some of the similarities and differences between British object relations perspectives and some U.S. relational ideas as they apply to these distinctions and their relevance to clinical technique.

Psychoanalysis in a New Key: Commentary on Paper by Randall Lehmann Sorenson

This essay, a commentary on Sorensons “Psychoanalytic Institutes as Religious Denominations,” explores a number of questions concerning the fate of psychoanalysis and the institutions that support it. How can psychoanalysis best survive its current travails, transcend the internecine conflicts that have always plagued it, and ride its contemporary reformation into a vital, relevant and creative second century? Approaches to training and to institutional structure at several contemporary relational psychoanalytic training programs are discussed and contrasted with more traditional models as a way of suggesting some promising directions for the future growth of psychoanalysis as a discipline.

“It Ain't Over ‘til It's Over”: Infinite Conversations, Imperfect Endings, and the Elusive Nature of Termination

Despite general agreement as to the importance and subtlety of managing the final (“termination”) phase of psychoanalysis, the way that analytic work is brought to a close has been both undertheorized and problematic in practice. How and under what conditions a psychoanalytic process might best be brought to an end is a problem that has plagued psychoanalytic theorists, clinicians, and their patients from the earliest days of psychoanalysis. Patient and analyst do not discover a “royal road” to the end of analysis. Rather, patient and analyst together forge a trail through the thickets of their work to a juncture at which they find that their paths can once again diverge. This paper attempts to explore the ways in which patients and analysts negotiate these most complex and elusive transitions. Analyst and analysand, having come to recognize the limits of their conscious awareness and the ultimate uncertainty at the heart of the psychoanalytic process, must live with the tension generated in the encounter between the inherent limits that eventually will herald the end of analysis and the recognition of new possibilities that beckon the pair into new byways of analytic exploration. Since we can never be certain when ending analysis forecloses promising avenues of new growth, or when continuing analysis constitutes a collusion between patient and analyst in eluding the difficult but ultimately generative ending of analysis, the author suggests that it is preferable to hold the notion of termination lightly, trying as best he can throughout an analysis to facilitate the exploration of its very boundaries, limits, and possibilities.

Regression, Self State Work, and the Developmental Perspective: The Application of Diverse Theoretical Perspectives to Working with Trauma

This paper explores the ways in which the author makes use of ideas associated with diverse theoretical perspectives in working with patients who have suffered trauma. A detailed vignette contributed by Dr. Rina Lazar serves as a point of departure for the author’s consideration of how theories of regression and self-states inform a developmental perspective, and are applied in the clinical psychoanalytic situation.