Analytic Mind Use and Interpsychic Communication: Driving Force in Analytic Technique, Pathway to Unconscious Mental Life

Abstract

Developed from established psychoanalytic knowledge among different psychoanalytic cultures concerning unconscious interpsychic communication, analysts' use of their receptive mental experience--their analytic mind use, including the somatic, unconscious, and less accessible derivatives--represents a significant investigative road to patients' unconscious mental life, particularly with poorly symbolized mental states. The author expands upon this tradition, exploring what happens when patients unconsciously experience and identify with the analyst's psychic functioning. The technical implications of the analyst's "instrument" are described, including the analyst's ego regression, creation of inner space, taking mind as object, bearing uncertainty and intense affect, and self-analysis. Brief case vignettes illustrate the structure and obstacles to this work.

Mentalizing countertransference? A model for research on the elaboration of countertransference experience in psychotherapy

“…Historically, CT was initially seen as a disturbance and later as an instrument of psychoanalytic work, depending on its construal as therapist's reactions stemming from unresolved neurotic conflicts ( classical view ) or his or her global emotional response to a particular patient, correlative of the latter's unconscious experiences ( totalistic view ; e.g., Gelso & Hayes, ). Additionally, a more recent trend often called constructivist tends to focus on a “third” entity created by each unique dyad and examine transference and CT as a function of this “field” (see M. J. Diamond, ; Gabbard, ).…”

Georg Groddeck: “The Pinch of Pepper” of Psychoanalysis

“…However, more recent interest among all schools in interpsychic communication and field theory has brought them closer together and closer to how Groddeck used Das Es in his clinical work which was as a way to sit with patients and to communicate at an unconscious level, something now described as interpsychic (Bolognini, 2004;Diamond, 2014) or intersubjective (Thompson, 2005). Such intersubjective communication was first described by Ferenczi as "dialogues of the unconscious" (Ferenczi, 1915, p. 109).…”

The Role of Unconscious Awareness of Teachers within Teacher-child Relationship

“…Their psyche meet at the unspoken area of the desires, expectations, disappointmens and power struggles. The teacher can educate herself for bearing uncertainty and intense affect of the students (Diamond, 2014). Macdonald (2014) proposes that emotional absence of the therapist can be persecutory for the patient.…”