The Imprisonment and Liberation of Love: The Dangers and Possibilities of Love in the Psychoanalytic Relationship

Abstract

Is the analyst's love essential to liberating the patient's ability to love? Or might it represent a lurking reimprisonment in a stultifying and repetitive dead end? These questions are considered in the context of a reexamination of three seminal papers by Freud, Loewald and Benjamin and in discussion of detailed clinical case. The paper suggests that in order to fully accomplish the task of freeing patients to be able to love more fully and authentically in their real lives, the analytic relationship must be able to contain and embrace both the imprisoning and the liberating potential of love as real possibilities in the analytic engagement.

Notes

¹Freud's comments about keeping in mind the overall goal, and the implication of a kind of holding provided by ethical considerations, are perhaps a presentiment of what would later be elaborated as the concept of the “third” in Benjamin's (2004) sense.