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This panel, attractively but somewhat misleadingly titled, presented three cases in which the analyst had despaired at the lack of movement in the case, at the patient's seeming imperviousness to analytic understanding of the enacted fantasy, and had all but lost hope. In all three cases the “stuckness” was understood as a shared dynamic between analyst and patient, with the analyst experiencing deep immersion in a role unconsciously assigned by the patient. The analyst's ability to use this countertransference response and think about what was being enacted became a way into understanding the forces resisting change. We were treated to three evocative case histories in which the analyst found a solution, from within the patient's worldview, to resist the gravitational attraction of the stuck pattern, with each solution specific to the case but based on some shared principles. Thus, rather than offers of how-to advice, what emerged in a morning of generative interaction and little controversy were ideas about what the three cases had in common and what had helped.
Rosemary Balsam, as chair, introduced the panelists. She began by noting that what we refer to colloquially as “stuckness” is a clinical entity that overlaps with concepts such as “impasse,” “negative therapeutic reaction,” “enactment,” “repetition compulsion,” “countertransference,” and “transference” in its broadest sense. She added that Stanley Coen, who first suggested the panel, had chosen a “pragmatic” word “that we can all relate to in an immediate way, and the details of what any one of us considers a ‘stuck’ development in the analytic situation will be both overdetermined and multidetermined.”
Balsam referred to contemporary thinking on the topic, including the long-running APsaA discussion group run by Steven Goldberg and Judy