“Affective Honesty” as Example and Metaphor: Discussion of Holly Levenkron's “Love (and Hate) With the Proper Stranger: Affective Honesty and Enactment”

Abstract

Levenkron begins with the thesis that the analyst is never outside of enactments between herself and her patient. The analyst must enage these enactments with affective honesty, and this must be done during the sessions within which the events in question occur (i.e., in the heat of the moment, without necessarily being able to formulate the relevant unconscious meanings). Levenkron's contribution is her recognition of the necessity for the confrontation created by the analyst's affectively honest reaction to the attempt by both the patient and herself to force the relationship along certain paths.