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Abstract
In a bridging session after the sudden death of his analyst, I realized that Mr. X and I were both grieving for her. V had been my teacher, supervisor, and friend, and I knew her analytic voice from the inside. I heard it in my consulting room not only in Mr. X’s words but also in his relational patterns and expectations as they emerged as we moved along. Hearing V’s voice stand in such stark contrast with mine led me to reconceptualize the venerable concept of analytic voice from within contemporary psychoanalytic theory. My analytic voice freed Mr. X from V’s complex constraints, and my experience as Mr. X’s analyst unexpectedly came to free me. I have come to understand analytic voice as an emergent property of a complex dynamic system.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This article is dedicated to V’s memory.
A version of this article was presented on a panel at the 2014 International Forum of Psychoanalytic Education, San Francisco: “Voice: In the Consulting Room, in Psychological Research, and in Clinical Prose,” organized by Suzi Naiburg, Ph.D., LICSW.
Notes
1 Renik (Citation2003) has pointed out the ethical violations of aging analysts who depend on their patients and keep them entrained in analysis.
2 V always said that she could fill open hours with consultations, so her demand was not about the financial security of keeping her schedule full.
3 D. B. Stern (Citation2013) thinks that “whatever we can do to make it possible for the analytic relationship to evolve freely, without constrain or constriction, is the best way we have to encourage the freedom to experience. ‘Relational freedom’ underpins therapeutic action” (p. 227).
4 Horner (Citation2004) writes: “How a woman leads her entire life will either prepare her for old age, or it will fail to do so. Society will not do for her what she has failed to do for herself” (p. 35).
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Carol B. Levin
Carol B. Levin, M.D., is Faculty, Michigan Psychoanalytic Institute; Training, Supervising, and Teaching Analyst, Michigan Psychoanalytic Council; and Associate Editor, Psychoanalytic Inquiry.