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Dear Editors,
I have read the paper, Supportive interventions and non-symbolic mental functioning by Serge Lecours, with great interest.
For me there has never existed any discrimination of supportive elements in any therapy. Psychoanalysis does not use supportive elements. I have also had very good results when the non-symbolic has seemed totally to dominate the analytic climate, by tolerantly being present and listening carefully and working with free association.
We should try to define what we mean by support and how it differs from analytic interventions. You had problems with defining the difference between analytic intervention and support. You wrote that the supportive intervention you used with your case was not the common type of support because it was meant to (p. 905) prepare the climate for analytic work. I agree with you that one has to calm down overwhelming emotions to be able to continue the work. You call your support “more analytic in contrast to the less analytic”. I feel that it should get another definition as an analytic intervention in order not to be misunderstood.
Support is not a perfect method, but what is? My experience is that it is a questionable method even in therapy. For me, one who supports becomes dominating over the patient, when, on the other hand, an analyst for me is a co-worker. I think that it is not dangerous if the patient does sometimes suffer. I'm afraid that sometimes supporting can even destroy the possibility for development.