Unattainable Goals in Psychoanalysis

Chair Owen Renik introduced the panelists and posed three open-ended questions for them to answer: (1) Freud characterized psychoanalysis as an “impossible profession.” What does that mean to you? What are the advantages and disadvantages of that conception? (2) How can it be useful for an analyst to pursue an unattainable goal? Give a brief clinical example. (3) How can it be harmful for an analyst to pursue an unattainable goal? Give a brief clinical example. After each question was “answered,” there were exchanges among the panelists and with the audience.

Steven Cooper began by stating that there is a disadvantage to considering psychoanalysis an impossible profession. He spoke about the avoidance of accepting and integrating the limitations of our patients, ourselves, and the analytic process. Cooper emphasized the complexity of the psychoanalytic intersection between the minds of patient and analyst, stating that unconscious process is always limited by what the patient says and the analysts hears, resulting in a temporary state of awareness. Referring to the interaction of the analytic dyad as the “analysis of enactment,” Cooper emphasized how enactment is ubiquitous, constantly in need of analysis privately or aloud, is always in motion, and, by definition, limits an analysis. Further, the analysis of enactment—or interpersonal engagement—varies over time and becomes as difficult as the analysis of intraspychic conflict. All of this is due to the deeply personal nature of analytic work for the analyst and to the complexities of countertransference, which is highly influenced by the patient's wishes for infinite possibility. The analyst becomes the object of disappointment. Cooper cautions the analyst that idealization of the patient and the patient's sense of extemalization of