Truths, Reveries, Internal Moments of Meeting: Reflections on the dialectics of the analytic relationship

Abstract

Conceptualizing intersecting psychical dynamics taking place within the analytic relationship, the concept of truth is considered as an integral element of the patient's unrepresented, subjective self-experiences, particularly in respect to traumatic aspects. Truth is also conceptualized as a process of exploration of traumatic elements emerging dynamically in the context of transference.

During such processes, it is possible that the patient's traumatic truth may collide with certain aspects of the analyst's mental life affecting deeply his/her phantasy and stirring strong feelings and representations of traumatic self-experiences of personal and subjective meaning. These instances are vital intersubjective aspects of the analytic relationship. They facilitate the exploration of the patient's unconscious inner truth and are signified as internal moments of meeting, emphasizing a psychical interchange between the analytic dyad and creation of a mental-cradle, a space for exploring and representing the patient's traumatic self-experiences.

Clinical material is provided from the psychotherapy of a young woman with borderline psychopathology and unrepresented traumatic parental loss and migration. Discussion brings together basic theoretical conceptions regarding dynamic, joint mental functions of transference and countertransference and indicates the utility of actualizing disturbing countertransference experiences and the analyst's personal recourses and subjectivity for the exploration of the patient's truth.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Maria Ginieri-Coccossis

Authors

Maria Ginieri-Coccossis, Assistant Professor of Clinical Psychology, Department of Psychiatry, Medical School, University of Athens, Greece; Psychoanalytic psychotherapist in Personality Disorders Unit, Department of Psychiatry-Eginition Hospital; Author of several articles and chapters in textbooks.

Grigoris Vaslamatzis

Grigoris Vaslamatzis, Associate Professor of Psychiatry, Department of Psychiatry, Medical School, University of Athens, Greece; Director of Personality Disorders Unit, Department of Psychiatry-Eginition Hospital; President of Hellenic Society for Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy; Author of several books and articles and editor of Countertransference: Theory, technique, teaching (Karnac Books, 1993) and The Edge of Experience: Borderline and psychosomatic patients in clinical practice (Karnac 2001).