The Analyst's Desire and the Problem of Narcissistic Resistances

Wilson, Mitchell

doi:10.1177/00030651030510012001

Cited by 34 publications

(31 citation statements)

References 38 publications

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“…I have called this clinical phenomenon the dual relation resistance (Wilson 2003). As is now well recognized, the space caused by lacking is a source of trouble for both patient and analyst.…”

Section: The Appeal Of Plenitude-or the Analytic Space And Its Discomentioning

confidence: 99%

“Nothing Could Be Further From the Truth”: The Role of Lack in the Analytic Process

Wilson¹

2006

J Am Psychoanal Assoc

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It is an oft-noted clinical phenomenon that the analyst's mistakes are beneficial to the analytic process. Although the analyst's mistakes, misunderstandings, and faulty functioning have been described by psychoanalysts of various theoretical persuasions, no overall theory has been advanced to account for this clinical phenomenon. To address this theoretical lacuna the central Lacanian notions of lack and desire are brought to bear. In particular, lack, or nothing, is presented as an essential working condition of the analyst, one that if understood, recognized, and tolerated can positively inform the analyst's attitude. By contrast, theoretical biases that privilege presence can obscure lack as an important contributor to the analyst's attitude. A clinical case demonstrates that both analyst and patient struggle with deep anxieties generated by lack, and that both are repeatedly tempted to solve these struggles by settling for obsessional solutions.

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Section: The Appeal Of Plenitude-or the Analytic Space And Its Discomentioning

confidence: 99%

“Nothing Could Be Further From the Truth”: The Role of Lack in the Analytic Process

Wilson¹

2006

J Am Psychoanal Assoc

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“…Clinical theory for many years has been uncomfortable with action and gratification, and with the analyst's desires (Wilson, 2003). As countertransference became increasingly regarded as inevitable and potentially constructive, it was possible to consider that the analytic dyad plays out significant mutually influencing interactions beyond interpretation (BCPSG, 2010;Jones, 2000) and that the analyst contributes desires and receives gratifications (Celenza, 2010;Ehrenberg, 1992;Maroda, 1998).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The total personality of the analyst affects the total personality of the patient" (p. 357). A more contemporary version of this idea is expressed by Wilson (2003): ". .…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Our greater willingness to look at the unique contribution of the analyst's personality and life experience has opened the study of such a pervasive effect on treatment (Jacobson, 2010;Kirshner, 2012;Kuchuck, 2014;McLaughlin, 2005;Thompson, 1956;Wilson, 2003). The hypothesis of this paper is that the residua of powerful life experiences have led me to facilitatelargely unconsciously-women patients in the direction of getting pregnant.…”

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confidence: 94%

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Patients’ Pregnancies During Treatment: The Influence of the Analyst’s Psychology

Almond

2015

Psychoanalytic Dialogues

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Psychoanalytic therapists are today far more aware of countertransference effects, intersubjectivity, and mutual influence. The area that has been explored least in this two-person appreciation of psychoanalytic process is the effect of the psychodynamics of the therapist in a wide sense-that is, how the therapist brings a whole psychology, with a wide array of potential transferences, to each treatment. Triggered by the unexpected announcement of a patient's expecting a baby, the author reviewed his practice and found that a large portion of his women patients ages 30-45 had become pregnant during therapy or psychoanalysis. The particulars were varied: how much the patient wanted a baby, whether the treatment was psychotherapy or psychoanalysis, the patients' personality structure. Was the analyst's psychology a common factor? The paper presents three quite different case examples and examines whether and how the author's developmental and inner experience of women, sexuality, pregnancy could have contributed to a dyadic process that, in turn, could lead to pregnancy. If such effects happen, then it is important to look beyond and behind "anonymity" and "neutrality," as well as momentary countertransferences, to the real-life effects that we have in our treatments.In the course of 40 years of clinical work I have, naturally, seen quite a few women in the child-bearing years. My subjective sense, looking back, is that a disproportionate number of these women have gotten pregnant. 1 The individual situations are tremendously varied, and there is no way to prove my assertion of "disproportionate." Even if there have been an unusually large number of pregnancies, basing this impression on the experience of one analyst makes it impossible to know whether this is simply a statistical aberration, or, on the other hand, whether it is unremarkable, typical for the age range of my particular population of women patients. In this paper I ask the reader to accept the possibility that this was unusual. Was I the common factor? Could I be working, interacting with women patients in some way that made pregnancy likely? 1 A very rough review of my practice suggests that more than one third of the patients in the possible group got pregnant during treatment, and another third had a child subsequently (letting me know), for a total of two thirds of the total. My impression is also that this proportion increased to roughly half, as my practice continued, and I saw more women in the latter part of the child-bearing years (ages 30-45). As a baseline comparison, the average child-bearing rate for the age group 30-45 in recent years is 5.5%/year. If my treatment contacts averaged 5 years in length, the "control group" rate would be 28%. My patient population tended to be in the 35-to 45-year-old range, where the "control" rate would be 17%.Correspondence should be addressed to Richard Almond, M.D.,

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“…Admittedly, some might take issue with this assertion; unfortunately, I cannot fully elaborate it here. But analytic thinkers have over the past two decades focused attention on the analyst's subjectivity (Renik 1993b) and desire (Wilson 2003) and developed an extensive picture of enactment (Jacobs 1986;McLaughlin 1987;Chused 1991;Renik 1993a), countertransference (Racker 1957;Sandler 1976;Pick 1985), the reversibility (or bidirectionality) of projective mechanisms (Lacan 1988;Steiner 1993), and the contradictions to be found in a naive view of analytic neutrality (Renik 1995).…”

Section: O N T E M P O R a R Y V I E W S O F T H E A N A Ly S T ' Smentioning

confidence: 99%

Putting Practice Into Theory: Making the Training Analyst System Coherent

Wilson

2010

J Am Psychoanal Assoc

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The question of the training analysis demands a complicated set of answers that engage the issue at different levels of human organization. Historically, the training analysis has been the central feature of the tripartite model of psychoanalytic education. Internal and external pressures have burdened the training analysis and called its legitimacy into question. This problem of legitimacy amounts to a lack of coherence in the training analyst (TA) system. This lack engenders idealized fantasies of the role of the TA, in which the TA embodies special talents and attributes, and of the system that sanctions that role. This idealization is haunted by its opposite: a melancholic devaluation of psychoanalysis and a fear that it will collapse. Recent literature on the analyst's position in the psychoanalytic process emphasizes the analyst's position as decentered and conflicted. The analyst's decentered, conflicted status goes against this idealizing impulse. An attempt is made to wed analytic values, and what we know about the analyst's role in the analytic process, into a more coherent, consistent position regarding the analysis of candidates.

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The Analyst's Desire and the Problem of Narcissistic Resistances

Cited by 34 publications

References 38 publications

“Nothing Could Be Further From the Truth”: The Role of Lack in the Analytic Process

“Nothing Could Be Further From the Truth”: The Role of Lack in the Analytic Process

Patients’ Pregnancies During Treatment: The Influence of the Analyst’s Psychology

Putting Practice Into Theory: Making the Training Analyst System Coherent

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