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THE TREATMENT OF PARTICULARLY vulnerable patients has highlighted the importance of non-interpretive aspects of psychoanalysis. Non-interpretive work refers to those dimensions of psychoanalytic process which involve an elaboration of the patient's experience of the analyst as a subjective or an objective object rather than as an agent of enhanced self understanding (Winnicott, 1971). Here, the analyst (temporarily) suspends attempts to acquire a fuller apprehension of internal process in order to address the patient's need for a particular emotional experience with the analytic object.
An especially intriguing and difficult dimension of non-interpretive work is described by Winnicott's (1971) concept of object usage. Winnicott used this notion to define a developmental achievement that involves the acquisition of a secure awareness of the object's autonomous existence, of the patient's capacity for loving and hating without threatening the object's survival.
In the sequence one can say that first there is object- relating, then in the end there is object-use; in between, however, is the most difficult thing, perhaps, in human development; or the most irksome of all the early failures that come for mending. This thing that there is in between relating and use is the subject's placing of the object outside the area of the subject's omnipotent control; that is, the subject's perception of the object as an external phenomenon, not as a projection … after 'subject relates to object' comes 'subject destroys object' (as it becomes external); and then may come 'object survives destruction by the subject' … From now on the subject says: 'Hullo object!' 'I destroyed you.' 'I love you.' 'You have value for me because of your survival of my destruction of you' (Winnicott, 1971, pp. 89–90).