Sandor Ferenczi's concept of the dialogue of unconsciouses: a clinical example.

There is no doubt that Sandor Ferenczi is one of the principal giants in the early development of psychoanalysis. While much of his work has not been given the credit it deserves, in recent times there has been a revival of his concepts and way of doing analysis as a route to understanding relational work today. One of Sandor Ferenczi's unique psychoanalytical concepts is the dialogue of unconsciouses. This concept is defined as the process when patient and analyst connect to each other, and a psychic process begins to form between the two unconsciouses. This idea of a dialogue between the two unconsciouses arose from his novel experiments with mutual analysis and advocating for a new kind of relationship. He further described the dialogue of the unconsciouses as a way of being with the patient and that if this dialogue is investigated within the therapy, in service of understanding the patient's life experiences and transference, the potential for change and transformation is possible. In this context, Ferenczi assumed that if careful and focused attention is paid to the dialogue of the unconsciouses, it could reveal for the patient unknown aspects about himself but also unknown aspects about his analyst. In this way, the patient may know more about the analyst than the analyst knows. The clinical implication is that the dialogue of the unconsciouses invites both participants to authentically engage with each other in a way that something new about self-other could potentially arise that was previously unconscious but emerged from within the interplay of both unconsciouses. While not much has been developed in recent years on the topic of the dialogue of the unconsciouses, especially with the use of clinical examples, this paper's main contribution is to i) acknowledge the work of Ferenczi by revisiting this concept, ii) discussing the clinical implications of the concept so that the potential for the client's personal development is brought into focus, as well as iii) presenting a clinical example to illustrate the concept because such examples are few.

The forward edge transference within self-psychology and the activation of inborn capacity through interpretation and internalization.

This paper builds on the ideas of self-psychologists Marian Tolpin and Richard Geist in two ways. Firstly, the idea of using forward edge transference as fostering the promotion of psychological health and well-being. I present two verbatim clinical examples showing the use of forward edge transference, and thus the intersubjective engagement between therapist and patient. I suggest that forward edge transference, rooted in healthy and self-affirming childhood experiences, can lie buried and forgotten. Secondly, using the same two examples, this paper adopts the notion of interpretation as a carrier of selfobject functions and shows how the interpretation of forward edge transferences has the potential to catalyse (forgotten) inborn capacity. Internalization, a part of selfobject function and psychic development, is re-thought of as a process in which an interaction between patient and therapist appears to (re)activate inborn potential/capacity for the patient rather than as something the patient 'takes in' from the other/selfobject.

A re-consideration of interpretation. A relational approach.

This paper is a discussion paper and it seeks to re-consider the Freudian psychoanalytic concept of interpretation within the relational approach to psychoanalysis. As such, it aims to argue the Freudian approach to interpretation is rejected because it is not relational but involves only the analyst as interpreter of the patient's experience. Instead, within the relational approach, it is suggested that if interpretation, as a process of making meaning of experiences, is re-considered as the outcome of the intersubjective relationship in which the process of making-meaning is essentially a co-creational process of the patient's experience of the analyst in the here-and-now, interpretation can potentially be an agent of change. The clinical implication is that interpretation must be the construction of the patient's meaning of his experience but within the relational context. A clinical verbatim transcript is documented as it illustrates this relational process in interpretation.

The use of the 'corrective emotional experience' and the search for the bad object in psychotherapy.

In this article the classical concept and the use of the 'corrective emotional experience' in psychotherapy is described. This concept is not widely accepted within the standpoint of contemporary psychoanalytic psychotherapy and object relations theories. It has an unfavorable reputation. However, this paper does not advocate discarding this therapeutic idea and action because it does have therapeutic value. The case is made that the search for the bad object, and patient's reenactment of early experiences as they had been, is a corrective emotional experience in that it is a reparative experience. Furthermore, the search for the bad object is necessary for attachment. In addition, the point is made that patients find and create the object, therefore, the corrective emotional experience must be viewed as something that patients find rather than what therapists do.