Contrasting clinical techniques: A British Kleinian, contemporary Freudian and Latin American Kleinian discuss clinical material1

After introducing the panel, David Iseman underscored Fred Busch's initiative in bringing together participants interested in comparing clinical techniques across different schools of thought. Each presentation was followed by panelists' comments and discussion from the floor.

Robert Hinshelwood highlighted three central elements of current British Kleinian technique as a theoretical ground for his clinical illustration. First, following Klein there is a view that the interpretative process aims at a modification of anxiety during the session, an accurate interpretation bringing about a reduction or change in affect which is palpable to the analyst. Second, Kleinian analysis emphasizes how the analyst is inevitably drawn into playing a part in the phantasy activity of the analysand, and thus required to bring to consciousness and formulate the role he enacted within the session. This task dovetails with a conception of psychoanalysis as a joint learning activity aiming to produce new knowledge about the patient, a third feature of contemporary Kleinian analysis which can be traced back to Bion's notion of the K-link. The K-link itself becomes a focus around which the dynamics of the session unfold, and it can be resisted or attacked by the patient (and maybe the analyst).

This was shown in a clinical example relating his struggle with a transference-countertransference impasse in the early stages of analysis of a patient who induced him to play the part of an overbearing father who took over the patient's mind. Even a very benign interpretation (from the analyst's perspective) was experienced by the patient as an attempt on Hinshelwood's part to substitute his own thoughts for those of the patient's, or else to appropriate the patient's thoughts as his own. Hinshelwood realized that he had gradually pared down his interventions to simply acknowledging what his patient was saying in the vain hope of fostering a dialogue, in effect trying to change the role the patient