Search

This paper hopes to enhance understanding about entrenched grievance in a couple of ways: (a) Initially, the paper reviews how entrenched grievance reflects melancholic states of mind in terms of its avoidance of the pain of loss and change. But the main contribution of the paper is likely to be found in (b), that is, via detailed clinical material, the paper illustrates how earnest efforts on the part of the analyst to bring understanding may lead to cognitive entrapments such as the convictions incumbent in the “knowing” analyst. Further, that this knowing analyst may need to become aggrieved, that is, narrow, impatient and concrete towards her patient’s entrenchment, and then to recogize this plight in herself before she can genuinely hear her patient’s grievance about her from a wider view, that is as a complaint from the “lively self”, deserving recognition. The clinical detail demonstrates that such recognition softened the patient’s grievance, allowing both members of the dyad to become more collaborative and open to the pains and growth available from mourning states of mind. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Measurement of countertransference (CT) has proven challenging throughout the history of studying this construct. We sought to determine the potential value of using a common measure of transference, the Core Conflictual Relationship Theme (CCRT) method, as a means of studying CT. The Relationship Anecdote Paradigm and the CCRT method were used to examine CT in two studies. In Study 1, we examined the correspondence between a therapist's wishes with significant people in her life (i.e., her parents and husband) and three long-term patients. In Study 2, we identified the interpersonal wishes of a different therapist and examined 14 of her sessions with 3 patients for evidence of how these wishes and needs were displayed in her clinical work. Analyses revealed that specific wishes in therapists' personal lives could be detected from projective interviews and these wishes were similar, but not necessarily identical, to wishes in therapists' descriptions of, and actual work with, their patients. Evidence of both chronic wishes and patient-specific wishes was revealed. These findings support the idea that the origins of CT reside in therapists' interpersonal wishes and that the CCRT may be a promising means of identifying CT in research, practice, and supervision. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Psychoanalytic theory and practice consider both transference and countertransference as cornerstones for understanding those complicated psychological phenomena which psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic psychotherapy bring to light. The relationship between a patient and a psychoanalyst has been the crucial point on which our attention and interest is focused. In the intersubjective space of psychoanalytic psychotherapy, all interactions between the patient and the analyst are considered to mutually influence each participant of the analytic dyad. Together with patients, clinicians get involved in ambiguous, uncanny and unavoidable enactments. The understanding of the latter requires from a psychoanalyst not only to contain the patient's anxiety and reflect on the patient's inner feelings but also to stay open to the gamut of feelings, anxieties and conflicts that arise from the professional's experience. I suggest that accomplishing the complicated task of understanding both the patient's and his own feelings and experience leads the analyst to the necessity of restoring links with himself. By means of clinical material, I make an attempt to show how the process of understanding an uncanny enactment becomes for the therapist a process of restoring the links in countertransference which, in turn, enables the therapist to interpret the patient's specific difficulties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]