Endre Koritar - Surviving Deadness in the Analytic Experience
Etty Cohen - The Vicissitudes of Enactment in Analysis of Traumatized Female Patients – From Freud and Ferenczi to Contemporary Psychoanalysis
Franco Borgogno - “Coming from afar” and “becoming temporarily the patient without knowing it”: Two necessary conditions of analysing according to Ferenczi’s later works
Endre Koritar - Surviving Deadness in the Analytic Experience
The transference/countertransference (T/CT) analysis is considered to be central in the therapeutic effectiveness of the analytic process. Less emphasis has been placed on the actual experiences of analyst and analysand in the conflictual re-enactment of T/CT and its resolution.
In this paper, I will recount the experiences of a patient who was silent throughout most of the analysis, and my reaction, in fantasy and enactment, to this difficult experience-both for him and myself. I argue that it is the affective re-experiencing of past, repressed trauma of both partners in the analytic couple that has a therapeutic impact, leading to growth in the patient and also the therapist.
I contrast Freud’s emphasis on insight, making the unconscious conscious, with Ferenczi’s suggestion that the therapeutic impact lies in the repetition of past traumatic experience in the analysis but with the possibility of a different outcome with a more benign object, leading to symbolic representation of repressed trauma. I will review the works of Pearl King on the affective response of the analyst, Joseph Sandler’s work on Role-Responsiveness, Franco Borgogno’s work on Role Reversal, Ted Jacobs work on CT Enactment, Casement’s views on learning from the patient, and Ogden’s work on analysis of the analytic space in focusing on the actual experiences of both partners in the analysis.
Re-experiencing and symbolization in the T/CT of past traumatic experience can be an exit point from the endless repetition of trauma in internal and external object relations, and a new beginning in the patient’s life.
Etty Cohen - The Vicissitudes of Enactment in Analysis of Traumatized Female Patients – From Freud and Ferenczi to Contemporary Psychoanalysis
The tears of doctor and of patient mingle in a sublimated communion, which perhaps finds its analogy only in the mother-child relationship. And this is the healing agent, which, like a kind of glue, binds together … (Ferenczi, 1932, p. 65).
Ferenczi departed from traditional psychoanalytic techniques and devoted part of his career to developing the role of action in the analytic treatment of difficult patients. He recognized the equal significance of verbal and nonverbal communications in the therapeutic dyad and believed that communication is in itself a form of action.
Traumatized patients generally engage with us through actions (enactments) rather than words. In this paper I will discuss the meaning and evolution of various enactments by Freud and Ferenczi as well as their female patients within the therapeutic process. These enactments allowed patients’ traumatic past experiences to emerge.
Freud’s patient, Dora, and Sándor Ferenczi’s patients, Dm and B, as described in his Clinical Diary (1932), were all severely traumatized. By exploring Ferenczi’s and Freud’s clinical work, I will focus on the multiple meanings of the choices they utilized while working with traumatized patients. Distinguished formulations of therapeutic actions specifically addressing enactment will be addressed.
Franco Borgogno - “Coming from afar” and “becoming temporarily the patient without knowing it”: Two necessary conditions of analysing according to Ferenczi’s later works
