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Investigating the clinician's experience of aloneness in the therapeutic setting, Schafer identifies a number of inter- and intra-psychic resistances mobilized by clients to
create alienation and distance. Among the resistances he identifies are: ‘citation’, the ‘Proustian analysand’ (a term coined by Ernest Kris in 1956), ‘running an idea into the ground’, and ‘catch only a glimpse’. For each, Schafer supplies attendant behavioural manifestations in treatment, its developmental origins in the client's life, and its unconscious goal in the therapeutic relationship.
This analysis of specific resistances, with its focus on the relationship between early trauma and behaviour, and interpretative strategies for managing these seemingly intractable barriers, represents an important contribution to the field. As such, it is useful to therapists with varied theoretical orientations.
Schafer accomplishes this ambitious project with artistic flair and clinical acumen as exemplified by his description of the Proustian analysand:
Noteworthy in this case is the impression one gains of the self-indulgence through remembering that is very like enactment of masturbation on the couch. When that is the case, the analyst, as imagined by the analysand, is limited to the role of isolated and perhaps turned-on voyeur. Remembering has become a preferred form of sexual activity, which is to say that it has been sexualized.
Despite being impressed by Schafer's analysis of resistances, I found his focus on the countertransference experience of aloneness unconvincing. The interactional resistances he describes could generate many different responses and feelings in the analyst, one of which could be aloneness. Perhaps it is Schafer's particular capacity to resonate with this sense of aloneness that made many of these cases successful. In this light, I take his focus on aloneness as an example of a specific coupling occurring between him and his patients, and not a universal or archetypal respon