Safety for the Analysand, Safety for the Analyst, Safety for the Dyad

Joseph Lichtenberg opened the panel by posing the question, “Is safety a feeling, an emotion, or an atmospheric something?” He pointed out that Joseph Sandler (1960), the first author to specifically explore the concept of safety, referred to the feeling of safety as the gateway regulating the movement of content from the preconscious into consciousness. Lichtenberg noted that the greatest attention to the issue of safety is to be found in the attachment research of John Bowlby, in which seeking safety and a secure base is shown to be central to the attachment process. Lichtenberg referred also to the contributions of Emmanuel Ghent, who wrote about homeostatic safety; to Jay Greenberg, who views safety and effectance as primary organizers of the mind; and, finally, to his own work, in which he refers to safety as an inherent aspect of the frame, one that applies to the entire domain of how we interact within an analysis.

Lichtenberg charged the panelists with the task of exploring how safety affects the analysand, how it affects the analyst, and how it plays out in the dyad. The panelists began with short presentations of their views on the question of safety in analysis; following their responses to one another, they presented case examples to illustrate their views. For reasons of confidentiality, this report will include only a brief summary of the material actually presented.

James Hansell began his presentation by acknowledging that despite its now frequent appearance in discussions of psychoanalysis, the concept of safety is still quite slippery and ill-defined. He made three points regarding safety: (1) the patient's subjective experience of emotional