It Takes a Village Indeed: Reply to Corpt and Pizer

ABSTRACT

Corpt’s and Pizer’s recognition of the type of analytic treatment I term “analytic adoption,” and each sharing several of their own cases which they view along similar lines, adds credibility and breadth to the concept, and hopefully will lead to greater acceptance of, and interest in, the therapeutic needs of patients suffering from life-long psychic homelessness. Each expresses certain concerns about potential misinterpretations and misapplications of the language I use in delineating the principles of such treatments. I try to address these and, in the process, further clarify the complexities and paradoxical tensions involved in undertaking these kinds of therapeutic engagement while ensuring that they remain analytic.

KEYWORDS:

• Analytic adoption
• psychic homelessness
• needed relationship
• paradox
• essential frame

Notes

¹ I was very fortunate to encounter Kenny Newman at a formative stage in both my work with Elizabeth and my own career. He was ahead of his time in his recognition of the therapeutic needs of patients like Elizabeth and the hermeneutic of trust with which he approached such treatments.

² I have written in several contexts about my 9-year treatment of just such a “connection- resistant” patient (Stern, 2009, 2014, 2017).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Steven Stern

Steven Stern, PsyD is a faculty member of the Massachusetts Institute for Psychoanalysis and Clinical Associate Professor of Psychiatry at Maine Medical Center and Tufts University School of Medicine. He is a member emeritus of the International Council of the International Association of Psychoanalytic Self Psychology and serves on the editorial board of Psychoanalysis, Self and Context. His book, Needed Relationships and Psychoanalytic Healing: A Holistic Relational Perspective on the Therapeutic Process was published in 2017 by Routledge in their Psychoanalysis in a New Key book series. Dr. Stern practices in Portland, ME.