Chemistry and containing: the analyst's use of unavoidable failures.

Certain patients overwhelm the analyst's capacity to contain both the patient and the analyst's own unbearable feelings. Though some such failures of containing may lead fairly quickly to self-correction and others to clinical impasse, our focus is on an in-between state in which the analyst's ability to tolerate his inevitable failures and gradually to (re)establish his containing capacities through difficult self-analytic work can lead to significant change that might not otherwise be possible. The authors argue that this internal psychological work on the analyst's part, which may require considerable time, effort, and suffering, is an important aspect of "good enough" containing.

The dark side of analytic conviction: impasses of omniscience and complacency.

It is common for analysts to struggle with substantial periods of impasse, and with the associated subjective feelings of shame and failure, while analyzing patients who rely heavily on narcissistic defenses. Facing the feelings that accompany periods of impasse, while at the same time pushing oneself to take necessary creative risks, is a huge and painful task for the analyst if it is deeply confronted. These patients engage in false uses of the analytic process in which the pursuit of understanding is systematically undermined.

Conviction and interpretation: hiding and seeking with words.

A patient who was developing her career as a writer evolved a unique process of reading her fiction aloud during analytic sessions. This paper explores this unconventional approach and the inevitable illusions, fantasies, meaningful explanations, and creative fictions that form a part of every technical/theoretical choice. How do analysts reach an integrated, rather than a theory-led, sense of conviction about a theoretical/technical choice? The development of integrated conviction is illustrated by showing the accumulation of ordinary, everyday emotional responses that are gradually integrated with theory, over time, until the analyst achieves an inner feeling of fit.