Challenging Fathers

Abstract

In this paper, I explore what I perceive to be the curative elements of Freud’s one-session consultation with Margarethe Lutz. There are numerous lessons to be learned about Freud’s use of his subjectivity, direct suggestion, transference–countertransference, and other points of interest for contemporary clinicians. In this meeting we witness a departure from—or a new understanding of—classical technique and in its place find a style that we might be more apt to think of as relational. Elements of my own subjective responses to Lutz’s recollection and the writing of this response are also discussed.

Keywords:

• Sigmund Freud
• Margarethe Lutz
• therapeutic action
• subjectivity
• relational psychoanalysis

Acknowledgments

Previous versions of this paper were presented at the Spring Meeting of the Division of Psychoanalysis (39), American Psychological Association, San Francisco, April 2015, and the meeting of the International Association for Relational Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy, Rome, 2016.

Notes

¹ Winnicott (1986).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Steven Kuchuck

Steven Kuchuck, LCSW, is Editor-in-Chief of Psychoanalytic Perspectives; Associate Editor of Routledge’s Relational Perspectives book series; board member, supervisor, faculty, and Co-Director of Curriculum for the training program in adult psychoanalysis at the National Institute for the Psychotherapies (NIP); and faculty/supervisor at the NIP National Training Program, the Stephen Mitchell Center for Relational Studies, and other institutes. He is a contributor to and editor of Clinical Implications of the Psychoanalyst’s Life Experience: When the Personal Becomes Professional (Routledge, 2014); The Legacy of Sandor Ferenczi: From Ghost to Ancestor (coedited with Adrienne Harris; Routledge, 2015); and an upcoming volume of analysts writing about the professional impact of their own analysis (Routledge, in press).