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When something new appears in the world it is always a reworking of something old. This is the paradox of the new: that it is never simply new but fundamentally linked to the past. It is in the link itself that the possibility of the new resides. This is also an apt way to describe the psychoanalytic act: establishing links to the past that bring something new into being. The exact sort of linking that can facilitate this event is one of the fundamental questions of the field.
Hans Loewald wrestled with this paradox of the new in his essay of a half century ago, On the Therapeutic Action of Psycho-Analysis . In that essay which seems ever more contemporary, Loewald explored the notion that for an effective psychoanalysis to take place the analyst must be seen as something new-a “new object”. This is a point of reference necessary for an analysis to begin. However that new object, or new object relation, is at the same time, something created by the analytic work itself. The new point of reference, the new object, or new relation, is simultaneously already there and also always created anew. It is the fundamental skill and responsibility of the psychoanalyst to know