The Analyst as Transference and Developmental Object with Carla Neely, PhD (Washington, DC)

"As analysts, we have our own development - as humans, we have our own development. My view is that the work of analysis, if the developmental piece is present, requires some relatively sophisticated developmental capacity on the part of the analyst. The work is intimate, and the patient is going to know something of our inner lives, despite the fact that we work hard not to let our own selves interfere with the work. I think to truly trust the analyst, the patient has to believe that the analyst can tolerate knowing all of him or her. If you think about it, how many times have you heard patients say that nobody in the world quite knows him the way the analyst does? There's going to be something in that connection that doesn't happen anywhere else."

Episode Description: We begin by outlining the distinctions between serving as a transference vs. a developmental object for a patient. Carla writes about "affective honesty," which concerns the analyst's willingness to have their heart be experienced by a patient as malevolent or compassionate based on the patient's needs. We consider similarities between child and adult work, the differences between the 'corrective emotional experience' and being a developmental object, and her sense that a patient's "intimate experience can bring structural change." She presents a clinical example where her own authentic sadness helpfully enabled the patient to recognize her own - "we take on what the patient can't bear." We close with Carla sharing her personal analytic journey and stating, "I expect I will keep searching, as that is what analysts do."

 

Our Guest: Carla Neely, PhD, adult and child psychoanalyst, guest faculty, Cincinnati Psychoanalytic Institute.  Past President, Association for Child Psychoanalysis. Past faculty member at the Denver Institute for Psychoanalysis and the Washington, Baltimore Psychoanalytic Institute. Topics of her publications - sublimation, creativity,  developmental object, working through, and therapeutic action.

Recommended Readings: 

Hurry, Anne, ed., 1998. Psychoanalysis and Developmental Therapy. London: Karnac Books

 

Elliott-Neely, C. 1996. The analytic resolution of a developmental imbalance. Psychoanalytic Study of the Child. Vol. 51

 

Miller, J. 2013. Developmental psychoanalysis and developmental objects. Psychoanalytic Inquiry. Vol. 33

 

Tahka, V. 1993. Mind and its treatment. Madison, CT: IUP