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Karen Maroda, a relational psychoanalyst based in Milwaukee, has written a new book, her fourth to date, about how analysts cope with their feelings of vulnerability, conflict, guilt, and shame. Along the way, she questions the validity of many contemporary analytic ideas that have become nearly enshrined in modern theories about doing analysis, including the requisite role of empathy, a misunderstanding about mirror neurons, the displacement of an analyst's own needs in how we practice, a downgrading of ‘insight’ as a therapeutic goal, and the prominence of ‘enactment’ in clinical discussions about the analytic process. She also addresses what she understands to be prevailing tendencies among analysts to hide their countertransference motives in order to avoid open conflicts with patients, a stance perhaps bolstered by our focusing on analogizing analysis to the mothering of infants.
Maroda writes about how changes in analytic practice have perhaps led, in regard to theory and interventions, to some throwing out the baby with the bathwater. ‘I find it odd that despite the original goal of analysis being “making the unconscious, conscious,” we now focus on an analytic experience that may or may not include insight’ (Maroda 2022, p. 163). An implication of this shift is that verbal interpretations and verbal exchanges have receded in thinking about how analysis helps people to heal. Addressing how a preoccupation with both neuroscience findings and early attachment research has re-shaped our profession, she continues, ‘To my mind, this necessitates an unsubstantiated generalization of the mother/infant relationship to the adult/adult analytic one, and the equally dubious application of mirror neuron research, as outlined here.’ (Maroda 2022, p. 166.) Prior to this statement, Maroda makes a compelling case against using mirror neurons as a biological substitute for defining empathy by citing other competing research showing that empathy is learned, not wired into our b