Discussion of ‘Listening and Interacting through Different Filters: Sessions with Nina’

Dr Foehl presents his sessions with Nina frankly, in clear writing without too much intervening theory, allowing me to imagine myself in his place, sharing something of his experience of the analysis and taking on board its powerful impact. This required me to find my own ways to understand the material, appealing to my own reading of the text, as well as my own intuitions, subjective responses and theoretical references. It seems to me that there is much that Dr Foehl and I would disagree about, because we approach the case from so very different theoretical and technical perspectives. This is a good thing, inviting dialogue about different ways of understanding the material.

In order to engage our dialogue, I should perhaps begin by explaining in what frame of mind I took in the case. The notion of analytic space (Britton 1998, 2003; Ogden 1986, 1989; Viderman 1979) came to mind again and again as I studied the material, not only because spatial metaphors abound in it, but also as a descriptor for some of its dynamics. Some prior discussion of this concept may be useful.

The way I see it, just as it takes three-dimensional space to turn over a two-dimensional sheet of paper to see what may be written on the other side, so the unique fourth dimension of psychoanalytic space is needed to allow the analytic couple to discover the unconscious scripts that govern their ordinary three-dimensional human relationship. It is the analysis of the transference and counter-transference, including their negative forms, which opens this extra dimension and confers its unequalled vitality and force of reality to the analytic relationship.

Although I agree with Mitchell (2000) that much of the origin, function and transformation of mind is relational, I do not believe that this is only so. The body and primitive forms of spontaneous unconscious phantasy (Isaacs, 1948) also contribute to the matrix (Mitchell 20