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.
SULLIVAN (1953) DEMANDED THAT the analyst not confuse inference with objective knowledge. He employed the phrase "bridging the gap" to highlight the analyst's mental efforts to apply meanings to the subjective experience of the patient. The analyst, he asserted, should never forget that conclusions about the subjective experience of the patient can only result in an inference, never a fact:
But when it comes to discovering what that person experienced subjectively, what meaning the situation had for him, we have only the report, the attempt to communicate by the use of words and gestures to us, of something that is extraordinarily private. … By responsive speech we are able to bridge the gap with inferences of high probability as to what is actually the case (Sullivan, 1953, p. 73).
Our panelists are taking Sullivan's challenge one step further, beyond the patient's speech and behaviors, by examining ways in which the analyst subjectively experiences the patient's "private world." The bridges of Projective Identification and Countertransference will be scrutinized to locate the nature of the links between the intrapsychic and the interpersonal within the analytic dyad. Interpersonalists are quite familiar with this task since analysis is seen in the context of an interpersonal matrix. Interpersonalists