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International Forum of Psychoanalysis 17, 71-81, 2008
The authors propose the use of the narratological category of ‘character’ in psychoanalysis. They consider this notion useful in studying clinical material because it may help in making clearer the distinction between the clinical development of dialogue and the theoretical options that can be used to conceptualize the interaction. In order to facilitate theoretical comparison and effective technical integration, the authors outline three main schemes commonly found in different psychoanalytic traditions: (a) the models with a strong bias toward a reality-oriented approach, which could be defined ‘individual-historical’; (b) the models focused on the patient's internal world, which will be defined as ‘individual-phantasmatic’; and (c) the models centered on the study of the intersubjective clinical facts and usually referred to as theories of the ‘bipersonal psychoanalytic field’. The hypothesis developed in the paper is that the characters of the psychoanalytic materials are to be considered both as a part of a text, which is endowed with a certain stability in the patient's inner world, and as a component of a dialogue that is prone to living dialectical exchanges and transformations.
International Forum of Psychoanalysis 17, 91-103, 2008
Two definitions of the concept of analytic boundaries - the analyst's boundaries in the analytic relationship and the boundary between analyst and patient - focus, respectively, on the analytic function and the analytic relationship. A long analysis of a 20 year-old girl is characterized by the analytic work being slowed down by her chronic tendency to arrive late. A miscarriage very early in her pregnancy, occurring almost at the end of the analysis, produces associations and fantasies on ‘crush