Some Thoughts on Stagnation and Resuscitation in Analytic Work

Predominantly, the analyst encounters dissociated personalities. His initial task is to be the listener, absorbing fragments as a tree absorbs the rain, while aware within his own depth of the potential unity of all life. The task is like a jigsaw puzzle; patiently, one segment at a time is dealt with. The undertaking can be perceived like struggling with an infinite number of splinters which have broken away from what might once have been, or may eventually become, a whole and continuous personality. With most patients, the analyst will do well if he pieces the fragments together by reintegrating some of the lost contents and associating them with consciousness. Thus, the patient's condition is objectified and brought into some general connexion with mankind and the human situation. In so linking the individual to the general human meaning of his particular predicament, he is rescued from being thrown back totally upon himself, into the isolation of his illness, his unconnectedness. With the recovery of a lost dimension, the patient may experience his creativity and therewith a measure of synthesis be achieved. He can become a person with sufficient consciousness to be a participant in the stream of life.

I share Jung's view that the analyst should not strive to achieve a radical ‘cure’ in all his patients; experience has taught me that a ‘rescue operation’ is the furthest that one can hope to go with many people, and it is not to be despised. The way to a totality of being is also the path to what is often a hidden and terrible danger. The very location where the jewel of wholeness is embedded is, at one and the same time, the place where the dragon of chaos has his den. The analyst needs to be constantly watchful, and not to impose his goals or his own personality on to his patient. He should rather work with inherited capacities, whatever they may be, and modestly strive to support the other to fulfil himself within his limitations, and to help him to