The Patient’s Objects in the Analyst’s Mind

Abstract

In every analysis, the analyst develops an internal relationship with the patient’s objects—that is, the people in the patient’s life and mind. Sometimes these figures can inhabit the analyst’s mind as a source of data, but at other times, the analyst may feel preoccupied with or even invaded by them. The author presents two clinical cases: one in which the seeming absence of a good object in the patient’s mind made the analyst hesitate to proceed with an analysis, and another in which the patient’s preoccupation with a “bad” object was shared and mirrored by the analyst’s own inner preoccupation with the object. The use and experience of these two objects by the analyst are discussed with particular attention to the countertransference.

• Internal objects
• transference-countertransference
• analytic interaction
• analytic relationship
• characters
• self- and object representation
• internal world
• unconscious identification
• gaslighting
• introjection
• object relations
• analytic narrative