The analysand’s potential contribution as a supplementary therapist in the analytic process

Abstract

The paper attempts to explore the patient–analyst contribution to the analytic process – focusing mainly on the contribution of the analysand – and how their mutual influence might affect the outcome, sometimes beyond the analyst’s capabilities. This is approached through exploration of the co-creation of an intersubjective analytic field by the analytic dyad, in which the analytic phenomena occur, somehow in both participants, but in an asymmetrical way. Their co-creation of the analytic third in this space includes conflictual as well as healthy elements of themselves. The analyst’s professional self and the analysand’s healthy ego parts form an unconscious alliance directed towards a common cause, the progress of analysis, which unavoidably affects both. Clinical material and vignettes from three cases are presented. In these, becomes apparent that the patient can temporarily take over the analytic situation, permitting continuation of the analytic progress. It is argued that, through the above process, a patient can often help and support the analytic process, surpassing the weaknesses and defects that their analyst might have.

Key words:

• analytic process
• analytic relationship
• analytic third
• analyst–analysand
• professional self
• analysand’s influence

Notes

1 A separate issue sometimes raised is that of reverse asymmetry, in which the patient's abilities surpass or prevail over those of the therapist, and the analytic process ends up serving the patient's phantasies in an unconscious acceptance of their psychic and/or mental dominance. Naturally, this leads to an analytic impasse or distortion of the process.

2 If the analyst's aim is to dream what the patient expresses and, through discourse, give meaning to the signified, as the analysis progresses, he delivers not only the product of his thoughts, but also the method to approach and use them. This is the “inheritance” that patients receive, to apply in their own thoughts and dreams.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Dimitris Anastasopoulos

Dimitris Anastasopoulos, MD, PhD, trained in Athens and London (Tavistock Clinic), is a training and supervising psychoanalyst with the Hellenic Association of Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy and the Hellenic Association of Child and Adolescent Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy, of which he is a founding member. He was for a long time a member of the latter’s Executive and Training Committee and, since 2012, has been its Chairman. He was from 2001 to 2009 vice chair of the European Federation of Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy (EFPP), from 2005 to 2010 coordinator of the EFPP Child and Adolescent Section, and from 2007 to 2010 the editor of the EPPP’s book series. He has taught and supervised for the MA course in clinical psychology of Athens University and, from 1990 to 2014, the Cyprus Association of Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy, of which he is a honorary member. He has published a number of articles in Greek and English (in, among other journals, the International Review of Psychoanalysis, Journal of Child Psychotherapy, and Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy) and is the coeditor of psychoanalytic books in Greek and English.