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.
Our goal to understand analytic cure through pluralistic dialogue is seriously undertaken with the discussions of Dr. Fosshage and Dr. Friedman (this issue). Assumptions about the nature of man, his illness, and cure that undergird any therapeutic relationship differ significantly between the two discussants. They raise issues of analyzability, generalizability, and the analyst's authority. Is man a monad comprised of an internal structure and knowable as a separate object or dyadically created at the intersubjective interface that emerges between two people? Is cure through adaptation to another possible and sustainable? The issues are too numerous and far-ranging for me to address in this brief response, but I wish to respond to a few key inquires made by these discussants.
Before addressing the question “How does analysis cure?” Friedman (this issue) first posed another question: Whom does analysis cure? He answers: not my patient, and certainly not by him. He suggested that the early, pervasive trauma my patient suffered would have so obliterated any sense of self that she, in effect, had no self to analyze. I heard his supervisory concern as I engaged with this patient, and imagined his relief as he heard that I did receive his supervision: “Do not treat her, hospitalize her, provide a ‘less demanding form of therapy.’” Then, I sensed his dismay as I continued to work with Renee in an “intensive therapy.”
I do not hold the view that Friedman (this issue) ascribed to me that Renee must relive her past trauma and rapes. Rather, I share Fosshage's (this issue) view of therapeutic action occurring through a lived experience with