The Infantile in the Psychoanalyst at Work

In order to define the Infantile and to examine its role in the analytic relationship, I considered this concept from both its developmental and structural status. I based my position on Freud’s view of a double Unconscious, together container of the repressed and drive source. I also used jointly both Freudian models of the psychic apparatus, that I do not consider as exclusive from each other, but as complementary, although not always easy to put together. This led me to consider the peculiarities of the criteria for the termination of the analyst’s personal analysis, and to try and describe the economic situation of repression in the psychoanalyst at work. By observing the impact of the Infantile-of-the-analysand upon the system PCS-CS of the psychoanalyst, I dealt with the odds and ends of the lack of representation and I tried to examine the situation and the future of the blind spots issued from such an impact.

The Clinical Relevance of Interdisciplinary Research on Affect Regulation in the Analytic Relationship

After more than a century of existence, theoretical development, research, and clinical practice within the psychoanalytic movement have consistently demonstrated that psychoanalysis is not a unitary and autonomous discipline. This has been evidenced by the various ways in which psychoanalytic thought and practice have been informed by and have established a dialogue—more or less fruitful—with related disciplines (neurosciences, developmental psychology, psychotherapy research, attachment theory and research, feminism, philosophy). This dialogue has contributed to a better understanding of the functioning of the human psyche, and therefore of the analytic process, informing clinical interventions. In turn, it has enriched research on psychoanalytic practice and process, underlining the fact that research in psychoanalysis is fundamentally about clinical practice. Since its origins, psychoanalysis has made explicit the work on the patient-analyst relationship as the terrain in which the analytic process unfolds. For its part, research in psychotherapy has demonstrated the relevance of the therapeutic relationship for the good development and outcome of any psychotherapeutic process. This supports the argument that research in clinical psychoanalysis should be research on the impact of the analyst interventions on the analyst-patient relationship. In this context, a central element of what happens in the analytic relationship refers to affect communication and therefore, affect regulation, which is manifested in the transferential and counter-transferential processes, as well as in the therapeutic bond. On the other hand, affective regulation is found at the crossroads of etiopathogenesis, complex personality models and psychopathology, allowing the understanding of human functioning and the staging of these configurations in the patient-analyst relationship. In this way, research on affective regulation in the analytic process is proposed as a path that exemplifies interdisciplinary research and scientific pluralism from which psychoanalysis enriches and progresses as a discipline. The case of a line of research on affective regulation in psychoanalytic psychotherapy is illustrated. The need to resort to other disciplines, as well as the translational value of our research and its clinical usefulness, is discussed.

Embodied Attunement and Participation

The analyst’s embodied attunement and participation arises within an embodied analytic relationship. Understanding this “deep structure” of the interaction and attention to this level of interaction opens up new modes of engagement and therapeutic action. The importance of embodied attunement is supported by recent research and theories that the developing mind is shared and dialogical through bodily communication, by rhythms of cadence, tone, intensity, and movement. The analyst’s embodied awareness of two bodies together and their interpersonal rhythm is the “tool” used to gauge the pulse, vitality of connection, and particular rhythmic qualities of a uniquely shared world. This provides a read on the most elemental way the dyad shares emotional experience (or fails to). The analyst’s embodied participation is interpretation in another mode. Clinical examples illustrate how embodied attunement and intentional participation work in the session, and their therapeutic effect. Failures of attunement are also discussed in terms of how the analyst recognizes these failures and his internal process of reattunement.

Impossible Ethics

The proper practice of psychoanalysis repudiates a rule-based code of ethical conduct. A conflict exists, however, between Freud’s rejection of the Biblical commandment to love one’s neighbor as oneself and his development of psychoanalytic techniques that demand something very much of this ilk. Other essential conflicts in analytic practice include the impossibility of removing the analyst’s desire from the analytic relationship, the unruly nature of unconscious processes in both analyst and analysand, and the après-coup nature of ethical recognition. A discourse of ethics is recommended in which analysts are called on to consider the ethical demands of each clinical moment. Ethical demands on the analysand, as well as the analyst, bring to light the way in which analysis rests on the foundational ethical situation into which humankind is born.

Emerging From Deadness: A Microanalysis of the Analytic Relationship

Video microanalysis, a technique developed by infant researchers, is used to understand the withdrawal that developed between analyst and analysand when the latter resumed use of the couch after a period of sitting up. The case includes three excerpts of microprocess, accompanied by descriptions of content apart from explicit verbal material, content such as tone of voice, speech patterns, facial expression, and body movements, along with diagrams showing the second-by-second vocal rhythm coordination of analyst and analysand. Supervision using the video, as well as the analyst’s viewing the video with the analysand in a modified use of video feedback, widened the pair’s understanding of the determinants of their mutual participation in withdrawal and a feeling of deadness, thus freeing them from the repetition of an enactment. It is shown how (1) movement to the couch created an affectively heightened state that brought central psychodynamic aspects of the analysand’s experience to the fore; (2) video microanalysis allowed access to previously unavailable content; and (3) understanding of unconscious, dynamically determined conflicts and defenses embedded in body movement, facial expression, speech tone, and rhythm patterns illuminated facets of the co-created relatedness between analysand and analyst.

The Regressive Magic of Words in Psychoanalytic Treatment

The clinical vignettes evoked in this text open up, I hope, new lines of thinking and reflection, necessary in approaching the following fundamental issue: what does the archaic aspect of the analytic relationship consist of, considered a determining element for the changes and transformations induced by the psychoanalytical protocol? An indispensable question for the deepening of means of evolution for the psychoanalytical technique, directly determined by the diversity of personality structures and defence mechanisms which the method has been confronted with the past years. All the more so that what can be brought to light from the past never represents a faithful witness of the prehistoric age, but rather a heterogeneous product to the extent that every stage of life traversed by the human subject modifies in its turn « primitive » experiences. This is also the reason for which states of pathogenic regression do not allow an exact reconstitution of original situations. Especially since there is not much said about origin. Only the paradox can be noticed, that the origin is different from the archaic. An archaic that continues to produce meaning in the present, forcing psychoanalytical practice and its practitioners to adapt to modernity, thorough the strangest and most unexpected clinical forms thus convoked.