Analysing real issues in the analysand's life

Abstract

I try to show that throughout the analytical process, real issues arise which require analysis; these may relate to time changes, fees, endings of the week or of the term and ultimately the ending of the analysis. The patient's capacity to handle the pain of feeling excluded relates to the patient's internal objects as they are re-experienced in relation to real events in the analysis. These patients ‘experiences of real events, past and current, may be closely bound up with early unconscious phantasies which colour and even dominate the way these events were and are experienced and negotiated. I have particularly emphasised the intersection of real events in the patients’ past and current lives with real events in the analysis and have tried to indicate ways in which they might be addressed in analytic work