The Janusian Process in Psychoanalytic Treatment

THE PURPOSE OF THIS ARTICLE is to describe the operation of a specific creative psychodynamic process, termed janusian process, in psychoanalytic treatment. Although there has been a great deal of psychoanalytic interest in creativity and designations such as "creative analyst" or "creative therapist" are decidedly honorific, few attempts have been made to describe effective treatment as a creative process. Beres (1964), drawing on Kris's (1952) concept of creativity as regression in the service of the ego, attempted to draw analogies between communication in the literary creative process and in psychoanalytic treatment. Weigert (1964) proposed that the goal of psychotherapy was creative reconstruction, which she defined as "the integration of traditional ideals and freely chosen commitments and responsibilities on the level of maturity" (p. 13). Three phases of psychoanalysis were considered by Hulbeck (1963) to be creative: 1) the encounter which arouses creative curiosity in both patient and therapist; 2) a dialogue phase in which a creative experience arises when the influence of the analyst on the patient and the patient on the analyst is reduced to a minimum; 3) an articulation phase involving the definition or redefinition of the patient's and doctor's standpoints. Literature on art, music, and poetry therapy often focus on a patient's improved artistic creativity as a result of these specialized approaches, but this particular type of improvement has not been conceptually attributed to an intrinsically creative structure of psychoanalytic therapy.

Recently, the seminal articles of Ehrenberg (1990) and Feiner (1990) on play in the psychoanalytic treatment relationship, while not focused directly on creativity, have helped to suggest some linkage. Play was developmentally related by Freud (1908) to creative writing, and both childhood and adulthood play have been