Response

Dear Sirs,

I am very grateful for both these thoughtful and interesting responses to my paper, and for the opportunity to reply. I agree with Paolo Migone that one advantage of comparing psychoanalysis with a non-analytic approach is that it pushes one to define precisely what one means by psychoanalysis. It is also a valuable challenge to debate across different ‘psychoanalytic cultures’, as one's use of terms needs to be particularly clear. For example, I should have clarified that by using the terms ‘neutrality’ and ‘abstinence’ I was not suggesting that I subscribed to the myth of the ‘blank screen’ analyst. I was referring to the highly disciplined and somewhat counter-intuitive analytic stance, where one tries to contain one's immediate feelings and reactions, operating from a position of observation—of oneself, the patient and the relationship. Naturally the patient will react to everything one is and does (and doesn't do). However, at least we will have reduced some of the extraneous noise, and created for ourselves a baseline position. A more appropriate analogy than a blank screen, I think, would be a noisy, crowded room where you and another person are trying to talk. If you can't do anything else, at least you, the analyst, can turn the radio down!

I like the 1984 Gill paper that Migone refers to. If I have properly grasped it, Gill's way of thinking about the transference situation seems not unlike mine and that of many British post-Kleinian/Bionian colleagues. Migone may find Joseph's (1985) idea of the ‘total transference situation’ congenial. This broadens the definition of transference to encompass the totality of the patient's inner world as it is manifest over time in relation to the analyst and the whole analytic situation. It includes the regular way in which the analyst is unconsciously enlisted into enacting familiar scenarios with the patient. These interpersonal scenarios will take their form according to the patient's inner templates for obje