There are always third elements intersecting the analytic pair. One such element is the analytic community. The analyst is therefore never in a dyadic relationship with the patient, but always in a triangle. In relation to the patient, the analyst will be concerned with useful practices. In relation to the analytic community, the analyst will be concerned with consensually approved principles. This tension is constant in analytic work and in the analytic literature.
The author presents his view that the patient must find a home in the analyst's mind within which to tolerate the work of analysis. Analytic work and change are facilitated by the patient's experience of the analyst's mind as a place within which the patient exists as an internal object, toward whom the analyst relates with agency and freedom. To illustrate his way of working with the patient to accomplish this, the author presents case vignettes from his own practice and from the writing of Mitchell (1997, 2000) and Steiner (1994).
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