The Analytical Process Journeys and Pathways

The term 'psychoanalytical process', though occurring but rarely in Freud's works, has become firmly established nowadays despite being hard to define, explain, or pin down in conceptual or meta-psychological terms. Although it is often employed as equivalent to 'psychoanalytic work', currents of thought that draw on the idea display a certain ambivalence, for it can relate both to a theory of treatment (the practice of analysis) and to a theory of mind (a theory of psychic functioning). Before developing his own original perspectives about the consequences of the heterogeneity of psychic functioning, the author examines how various practitioners have approached this subject since Freud. He shows how each has shed useful new light on this issue, leading to a diversity of points of view, thereby justifying the idea of the 'process' within psychoanalytic treatment.

Series Editor's Foreword , Introduction , Some preliminary observations , Apprehending psychoanalytic treatment and processes , Representing the psychoanalytic process , Contributions by certain authors , Initial encounters , Movements and changes , The nature of defence mechanisms and anxieties , The heterogenous nature of psychic functioning , Transferences , Sándor Ferenczi: a negative transference somewhere between transference love and love for psychoanalysis , Esther, or a transference love which dare not speak its name , Psychic homosexuality and transference , Negativising transference , A historical example of negativising transference: the “young Russian” known as “the Wolf Man” , Narcissism and the psychoanalytic process , Different levels of listening , Mr E , The process as a combination of suffering, pain, and pleasure , The analytic process and the question of trauma , Conclusion

Thierry Bokanowski