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.
Judy Kantrowitz is best known as the research psychologist/psychoanalyst associated with the Boston Psychoanalytic Institute's 1980s project on analysability (Kantrowitz 1987) and her later follow-up work on psychoanalytic post-termination assessments (Kantrowitz 1990). The apparent conclusions of her psychoanalytic research were that a substantially greater proportion of analysands derived therapeutic benefit than had developed an analytic process (e.g., transference neurosis and/or insight into core conflicts), yet one-third of the accepted analysands were judged unanalysable at termination. She confirmed that supportive factors play a much greater positive role than had been previously recognized. From the data collected it also appeared that the findings of a satisfactory dyadic match was associated with therapeutic benefits.
By the 1970s it had become clear that the analyst had ceased being regarded as a blank screen, and an interactional perspective was becoming a mainstream position, even though not openly acknowledged in the United States until this past decade. Most analysts retain an appreciation for conflict theory but now view the analyst as an active participant influencing the process If this point of view is accepted, the psychology of the analyst becomes as important an outcome factor as the patient's inner theatre.
Dr. Kantrowitz's interest in analysand/analyst matching led her to undertake this present project of reviewing 400 returned item questionnaires with clinical illustrations, and later 26 personal telephone interviews specifically looking at the patients' impact on the analysts and their work. Examples such as “I've learned [about experiencing aloneness] through lots of work with patients. none of it came up in my own analysis!” (p. 44). Analysts need to be aware of the nature of their own conflicts, particularly during analyses of patients' regressive issues, because of the initial tendency to inhabit the other through externalizations. At t