From Penis Envy as Bedrock to Metaphor: A Close Process Examination of the Analysis of Mrs. C

In this clinical discussion of Mrs. C, I discuss selected sessions from several time periods. Interspersed among the clinical material, I highlight various issues, particularly referable to the methodology utilized when the analyst proffered an intervention in contrast to what I might have said in the present. Mrs. C was in a “classical” analysis in the late 1960s and early 1970s. From the classical perspective, this was a period before the development and recognition of Paul Gray's close process monitoring. Gray's first paper was published in 1973. I highlight Gray's perspective, in contrast to other theoretical perspectives, because he worked within the “American classical tradition,” and his is a technique with which I am intimately familiar. Gray promoted an important technical recommendation, which he considered to be an extension of Anna Freud's basic work on the importance of defense mechanisms. Gray (1982) noted that his contributions undid the lag in psychoanalytic technique. He maintained that traditional psychoanalysts did not focus enough on defensive maneuvers by the patient as they appeared in the analytic sessions. He contrasted his version of defense analysis with what he called “traditional analysis” (Gray, 1996). Among the many distinctions between the two approaches, he highlighted a central differentiation:

In preparing for interpretations, traditional analysts turn their attention to awareness of their own “free associations” to the material. This may mean creative ways of resonating to their own unconscious (this is a listening capacity that cannot be taught) or drawing rapidly on their memory of acquired knowledge of hypothetically relevant dynamics or meanings.

In preparing for interventions, analysts practicing close process attention focus consistently on patients' verbal/vocal flow of material. Analysts' comprehension and memory of what they are observing in this manifest field is of central importance, but they do not use their own unconsci