MUTUAL ANALYSIS

Sándor Ferenczi viewed mutual analysis, a late notion in his work, as an active form of counter-transference that attempted to resolve the blockages encountered by classical technique in cases of particularly difficult patients. It was admittedly an unsuccessful innovation, but it remains useful as a limit case for any approach to the psychoses.

Ferenczi developed this technique in his Clinical Journal of 1932 (1988) and supported it with many detailed examples. It aims at allowing a patient in an intense regressive state not to be blocked by the treatment itself. In this active counter-transference, an illusory sense of reciprocity and a temporary symmetry need to be established so that with the trust thereby offered, the patient can gain access to the analyst's unconscious. This paradoxical attitude shows intuition taken to an excessive degree, since the perverse side effects of the technique are soon seen to be worse than the original difficulties encountered. So that he could struggle against "mutual co-subordination," Ferenczi doubled the very double bind that he was attempting to lift—a process that he described very clearly: "The exaggerated emphasis on the analytic situation against the patient's emotional convictions, makes him feel as if he has been coerced into a difficult position by means of suggestion" (1988, p. 96).

Ferenczi himself went on to establish the limits of his technique, since he detected a risk of paranoia in it. He concluded that it was a "last resort, rendered necessary by the insufficiently deep analysis of analysts." The classical technique had become, in his view, too pedagogical because of Freud's repugnance toward psychotics and perverts. In spite of his critique, Ferenczi acknowledged his own theoretical dependence on Freud and maintained that "the best analyst is a cured patient."

These thoughts on the handling of the counter-transference have given rise to several innovations among therapists treating the psychoses. Harold Searles developed the notion of the child as therapist of the adult and the patient as therapist of the analyst, as well as the notion of the "attempt to drive the other mad." Donald Winnicott, noting the "hatred in the counter-transference," pointed out that "technical purity is only an idealization in the Freudian sense, and abets repression." Finally, Michael Balint emphasizes that in the area of the basic fault, "words are not quite reliable" (p. 166).

Pierre Sabourin

See also: Framework of the psychoanalytic treatment; Resolution of the transference; Technique with adults, psychoanalytic.

Bibliography

Balint, Michael. (1968). The basic fault: Therapeutic aspects of regression. London: Tavistock Publications.

Ferenczi, Sándor. (1988). The clinical diary of Sándor Ferenczi (Michael Balint and Nicola Zarday Jackson, Trans.). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. (Originally written in 1932)

Searles, Harold F. (1965). Collected papers on schizophrenia and related subjects. New York: International Universities Press.

Winnicott, Donald W. (1949). Hate in the counter-transference. International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 30, 69-74.