Commentary on “Behind, Beneath, Above, and Beyond: The Historical Unconscious,” by Timothy J. Zeddies

This paper is a thoughtful study of the role of the analyst in the life of his patient. The primary aim of the paper, as I read it, is to ameliorate the burden on the patient caused by an idealized transference to the analyst. Dr. Zeddies suggests that the traditional role of the analyst is itself an obstacle to analysis of the idealized transference, because it reinforces the analyst's personal feelings of grandiosity. According to his view, a negative effect of the analyst's transference interpretations is to make the analyst seem, falsely, to be the most important person in the patient's life. The article attempts to mitigate this effect by highlighting the embeddedness of the therapeutic dyad in an ongoing process of personal and cultural “history.” The causative influence of history is seen as a counterweight to the unwarranted influence of the analyst.

A problem I see with this analysis of the therapeutic dyad is that it fails to acknowledge the possibility that a competent analyst is aware of the issue of idealization and can help the patient work out his misrepresentations through transference interpretation. Instead, Dr. Zeddies generalizes from the work of analysts who are clearly failing in their role as interpreter. The motivation for transference interpretation, by a competent analyst, is not to glorify himself but to use the special intimacy of the analytic situation as a magnifying glass to understand the patient's typical thoughts, feelings, and behavior. The advantage of closely examining the transference is that the events of the transference are experientially accessible to both the patient and the analyst, and therefore available for mutual reflection and consensual validation. The patient and analyst are in a position to agree on what has actually happened between them, even if it takes them a great deal of work to do so. This is not the case with any other interpersonal experience brought to the analysis by the patient. The fact that the patient