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How does analysis cure? Joseph Lichtenberg and Stuart and Barbara Pizer each regard the analytic process as relational, but privilege different aspects of the relationship as curative. Through the poetry of Mary Oliver, the Pizers hold out to us that the only life that any of us, patient and therapist alike, can save is our own. As we “hold the hope” of a successful “pilgrimage to the other side of original suffering” for our patients, we need to contain continually our expectations that might lead us to pull out ahead, direct, cajole, or interpret, either through our theory or countertransferential belief that we can save our patients. For the Pizers, Renee's journey is the discovery of her own voice in the presence of another. We need to hold conscious that we do not know the timing or the terrain of the journey nor the patient's capacity to negotiate the obstacles along the way. I did need to learn, many times over, how to be with Renee so that she could begin to feel safe, safe enough to allow me to walk along side.
For Lichtenberg, the presymbolic, implicit nonlinear process in Renee's and my being together in these early years was essential to establishing a secure base, but as a precondition to the essential symbolic, verbal exploration. Lichtenberg asserts that the conjoint search for expansion of personal meaning is requisite to attain “a deeper transformation.” For him, all communication is organized around five motivational systems to which the analyst attends. He adds a sixth supramotivation: the collaborative, dialogic search for personal meaning. He rightly captures the guiding and sustaining role that my continual questioning and introspection—“What is going on here”—served in my work with Renee. But is it the curative agent within the relationship between Renee and me?