Commentary on Paper by Lawrence J. Brown

Abstract

Brown's historical overview of post-Kleinian psychoanalysis traces key steps in the evolving and diverse practice of working in the psychoanalytic situation while regarding it as a two-person field. The Barangers' “The Analytic Situation as a Dynamic Field” is central to his narrative. I develop my understanding of the originality of their contribution in theorizing a situational unconscious, and of their continuing relevance for thinking about analytic listening and intersubjective collaboration. Brown presents a countertransference dream of his own along with the dream of a patient as an example of the Barangers' concept of the “shared unconscious fantasy” of the analytic couple. A detailed alternative reading of Brown's clinical vignette reveals an absence of fit with the Barangers' views on collaboration in the analytic situation. Some uses of Bion's “dreaming” and “becoming” are implicitly questioned as they risk encouraging the idealization of special states over process.

Notes

I thank Gilead Nachmani, PhD, and Sharon Kofman, PhD, for reading and commenting on an earlier draft.

¹I am aware that Grotstein has folded the psychic work of containment into “becoming.” As a seasoned clinician he is allowed to choose the degree of porosity he accesses in his work. But as theory, Grotstein's use of “alpha function” and “becoming” and “dreaming” are of a different level of abstraction from clinical experience.