The Analyst’s Affect in the Therapeutic Relationship

Abstract

As analysts, our affect, whether spoken or unspoken, infuses our words and can counter their intended meaning. This means that as analysts we are vulnerable to having unconscious elements of our affective experience enter the therapeutic relationship in ways that can disrupt our analytic functioning. Such vulnerability requires an unwavering commitment on our parts to look to ourselves whenever a roadblock emerges in any treatment relationship. The three papers under discussion here are exemplary in that they highlight this essential process of the analyst’s searching self-awareness, ongoing self-monitoring, and pro-active processing of her affective experience in the therapeutic relationship, taking responsibility for its impact on every treatment.

Keywords:

• affect
• disruption
• influence
• intersubjectivity
• self-monitoring
• unintended

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Judy Guss Teicholz

Dr. Teicholz is a faculty member and supervising analyst at the Massachusetts Institute for Psychoanalysis. She’s on the editorial board of The International Journal of Psychoanalytic Self Psychology, has been a reviewer for Psychoanalytic Dialogues and has authored dozens of articles on a wide range of psychoanalytic topics. She co-edited the book Trauma, Repetition, and Affect Regulation and is the author of Kohut, Loewald and the Postmoderns. From 1977 to 1999 she taught and supervised in the Harvard Medical School Psychiatry training program at Massachusetts General Hospital. She has been an adjunct faculty member at BPSI and at the Massachusetts School of Professional Psychology as well as at several training institutes across the country.