The Perversion of Attunement: Fundamentals Gone Awry in the Service of an Ideal

Kohut's theory of cure rested on the centrality of the analyst's empathically attuned immersion in the patient's inner life. Salient to this idea was that along the bumpy, clinical road, the analyst at times would fail miserably in his or her attempt to empathize, as attempting to know the feelings of another is, at best, a sloppy affair, with even the best of the yield providing a mere approximation of what is inside the patient's lining. The analysis of the archaic wishes and longings that are activated in these inevitable miscarriages becomes the fulcrum of the unfolding treatment. Over time, with sufficient mutual curiosity and careful exploration of the analyst's failure, the neglect under investigation loses its wattage, and trust in the analyst as a beneficent selfobject is ultimately restored. The process subsequently resumes, and by the end of a successful treatment encompassing numerous rupture/repair cycles, new

satisfying relational configurations are stabilized with the patient making a better adaptation to living.

Pardon the oversimplification, but I would like to return to basics to assert a seminal point, being that acts of disruption between patient and analyst are deeply essential and ignite some of the most intense and worthwhile clinical exchanges. These upsets occur when the analyst does or states something that, however contrary to intent, is experienced as hurtful and disorganizing to the patient. Without these tears in the treatment, the repetitive discoveries of alternative narratives that spark the formation of new mental maps are severed from emergence. In emphasizing this conceit, I would like to shine the high beams on what I think has become a subtle, perplexing shift in practice fundamentals, away from the principles of rupture/repair and into a foggy domain that lends itself to a stagnation of th