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.
We would like to thank Dr Schwaber for the observations on our paper. Here are our responses to the questions posed.
First, we consider the psychoanalytic process to be essentially asymmetric. This is not to say that the patient does not constantly invite us to engage with the most problematic areas of ourselves and our countertransference. Nevertheless, we would be worried if we were to think that the psychoanalyst had insufficient tools of technique to manage the situation, so that psychic movements could not become equal and reciprocal.
With regard to the second point, we consider that what is evoked in the analyst or perceived in the analyst by the patient, though it can be used in the cure, has basically to do with the unanalysed remainder of the analyst. Concerning ‘nonverbal shifts and communications’, we would like to know better what the author means. Nevertheless, we consider consciousness alteration to be essential for the recovery of what is no longer present in the conscious mind.
On the third point, we should like to recall Freud's statement that the unconscious is not directly recognisable but is evident only through its ‘footprints’, so that we think that all psychoanalytic process is based on inferences and reconstructions.
We thank again Dr Schwaber for giving us the opportunity to discuss these questions more deeply.
Cordially,
20 April 2005