The analyst's approach and the patient's psychic growth.

Psychoanalysis, which shares many functions with other therapies, is built upon its unique concern for the unconscious forces active behind a patient's symptoms and difficulties. What defines psychoanalysis is the analyst's approach as a disciplined engagement in the service of exploring those forces and their roots, an approach that is the product of curiosity working in the service of the other. As a result of the analyst's actualizing this approach, the patient comes to benefit not only from whatever specific declarative interpretations and insights have been explicitly opened, but also, importantly, from observing and taking in the unspoken underlying psychoanalytic mental processes.

Outsiderness in human nature.

Outsiderness, the sense of self as outside the world of others, is an early factor influential in developing both the sense of self and the regard for others and otherness. After definition and discussion of the appearance of this force at different stages of life, a case illustration is offered. Clinical analysis is then viewed closely to explore how dynamics involved in mastering the sense of outsiderness may be essential to the analytic process.

Problems of collegial learning in psychoanalysis: narcissism and curiosity.

Despite clinical sensitivity when listening to patients, analysts have not fared well in hearing and talking to each other with respectful open-mindedness. Underlying factors are considered with particular focus on the interplay between self-aimed forces of narcissism and outward-aimed forces of curiosity. Included in examination of problems of collegial communication are limitations structurally inherent to the human mind (such as the need to abstract aspects of experience in order to focus attention plus the mind's tendency to categorical thinking), those derived from individual psychology (such as vulnerability of self-esteem), and those related to group dynamics (such as the problems attendant to new ideas and the allegiances they stir, parochialism and the development of radical schools, the competitiveness between schools).

Reading fiction and the psychoanalytic experience: Proust on reading and on reading Proust.

Reading can at times engage one emotionally and entail inner psychological experiences in ways akin to those in clinical psychoanalysis. In that light, after a general introduction regarding the import of reading, attention is turned to Proust, Freud's literary complement, as an exemplary instance to illustrate those similarities. Ideas of Proust on reading are followed by thoughts on reading Proust, with the ending of Proust's masterpiece used to illustrate a parallel to termination in clinical psychoanalytic experience.

The interpretive attitude.

From its start, psychoanalysis took as its primary goal the gaining of insight, and the analyst's interpretations as its primary technique for achieving that goal. Multiple factors, including the destructive impact of wild analysis and a growing appreciation of noninterpretive analytic functions, have brought those first principles into question. The author posits a conceptual division of the analyst's interpretive functions into declarative interpretations (content) and a procedural interpretive attitude (underlying process).

The analyst's witnessing and otherness.

The analyst's active though silent witnessing of the patient's self-inquiry is presented as an essential aspect of the analytic process. Witnessing, though rooted in the analyst's empathy and holding, represents a more advanced development of those functions based on relational muturation from union to self-other differentiation. Self-definition and regard for otherness are seen as intrinsically unitary.

Transference: "an original creation".

While the psychoanalytic process explores the past, it does so within the context of the immediacy of the present. A clinical vignette is used to demonstrate the distinction between unconscious fantasies which, though buried, are alive in the present, and the historical past which shaped those fantasies. On that basis, interpretations and reconstructions are distinguished.

From analytic surface to analytic space.

Utilizing a clinical illustration, the concept of the surface of the patient's mind, which arose early in analytic history, is reexamined in relation to the analytic space, the unique affective and communicative dyadic context of the analytic process. The shift from analytic surface to analytic space reflects in clinical theory the metapsychological shift from early structural views to current appreciation of compromise formation. Also, this approach permits broadening of consideration of active unconscious forces in both the patient and the analyst.

The gift of laughter: on the development of a sense of humor in clinical analysis.

Clinical analytic change often brings with it a maturing of the patient's sense of humor, leading to an internalized capacity to acknowledge pain and frustration while soothing oneself with wit. Both the nature of psychic functioning, especially the multiple meanings structured in words, and the nature of the dyadic aspects of clinical analysis contribute to this happy outcome. The structural similarities that jokes and humor bear to transference and self-analytic capacities are also considered.

Insight and the analytic dyad.

Insight reflects the unitary nature of psychic activity in contrast to the fragmentation created in abstracting categories for the purpose of study and discussion. The unique analytic clinical dyad offers a structure in which intrapsychic fragments can be actualized and integrated. As a result, the analyst's contribution is more crucially one of exploration than of revelation.

The analyst's words.

Evidence of the analyst's inner processing and self-analysis is built into his choice and use of words. The dyadic context in which he speaks and the internal formation of his words are examined and considered for their implications for the analytic process.