The Analyst’s Trust and Therapeutic Action

Abstract

The analyst’s trust, a neglected topic in psychoanalytic discourse, participates in therapeutic action—through the analyst’s emotional openness, “unobjectionable positive countertransference” (see Fox 1998), the holding environment, and the promoting of adaptive internalizations, among other ways. When the analyst’s trust—in the patient, in the analyst’s self, and/or in the psychoanalytic process—fails, crucial interactions may occur, capable of destroying treatment, or alternatively, of restoring mutual regulatory functions and potentially leading to important mutative processes. Patients benefit from analysts’ becoming sensitive to, having useful ways of thinking about, and working with their states of trust and distrust. The author presents clinical examples to illustrate these points.