You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
'The wilder manias of pseudointimacy which serve as a desperate camouflage (for hopelessness) could also be seen as desperate gambits to retrieve what has never been gained. It cannot be denied that the strained smile or the joyous laughter that often substitutes for friendship at a dinner party, bears some relation to the giggling of a hebephrenic or the grimace of catatonics.”1 To retrieve what has never been achieved is a sad and futile quest. The psychoanalytic relationship can never replace what was absent in the past. It can provide a new relationship and life experience and can clarify what was missing and may still be missing in the life and life history of the patient. This viewpoint is not shared by many analysts, particularly those who attempt to work with more severely disturbed patients. The analytic interaction often takes the form of a parent-child relationship with the explicit aim of providing to the patient what was missing from childhood. Some refer to simple nurturance and others talk of building structures where there once were structural deficits within the patient.
My primary thesis is that the analyst's promotion of parent-childness in the analysis of adult patients may appear as a form of analytic intimacy but is more often too hierarchical in nature to be either considered intimate or genuinely respectful. That is, the effort to be a better parent to the patient can seem benevolent but, as Farber suggests, may be a camouflage for any number of other problems in the analytic relationship.