On: The Comments of Warren Poland

Dear Editors,

We thank Warren Poland for his thoughtful letter about our paper. In closing he comments that he suspects we will agree with him. And indeed we do. We conceive of the analytic situation as constituted by the analyst and the analysand as separate individuals, as well as a jointly created third subject of analysis (the analytic third). Like Dr. Poland, we view psychoanalysis as both a one-person and a two-person enterprise. We make the point in the first part of the paper that needing another mind to contain what is not containable must be complemented by periods of solitude and isolation when one does his own thinking separate from the ‘other’. Such separation is never complete: the analyst never ceases to be powerfully influenced by his experience with the patient. In the same sense, separation from the analytic third is never complete. The three - the analyst, the analysand and the intersubjective third subject of analysis - stand in dialectical tension with one another. The analyst oscillates among various degrees of influence of these perspectives in the course of an analytic treatment, and juxtaposes the different perspectives in his own efforts to think analytically. We hope this clarification is helpful to Dr. Poland and to other readers.