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.
The 'special event' in analysis, that is anything that alters or intrudes upon the basic analytic situation, crystallizes and may actualize transference fantasies and offers the analyst a good opportunity to give the patient insight with conviction about the transference. The 'special event' may prove especially useful in those patients who attempt for one reason or another to defensively keep the transference pale or quasi-non-existent. Not appreciating the important reverberations of these so-called reality or unforeseen events can lead to technical errors since they intimately involve transference, and the mishandling of the transference is the one error that may compromise an entire analysis. When 'special events' take place many patients appear to remain oblivious and silent to the intrapsychic clash between the analyst as a real figure and the analyst as a transference object. It is as if patients wish to return rapidly without analytic scrutiny to the safety and regression of the analytic situation and to the silent gratification of the transference.
Four clinical vignettes are presented to illustrate how 'special events' during psychoanalysis may mobilize and clarify crucial transference fantasies and problems and it is stressed that the analyst should always be attuned to the importance and richness of these events.