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In the play The Bacchae of Euripides, the citizens of Thebes pride themselves on their rational and intellectual life. The god, Dionysus, presents himself and demands recognition: the repudiation of Dionysus leads to the tragic consequence of the enactment of the most extreme form of narcissistic cannibalism.
Freud, in ‘Analysis terminable and interminable’, one of his last papers, questioned the efficacy of psychoanalysis. He indicated that the power of primitive forces and defences is so strong that we may be too narcissistic in our belief that understanding can change mankind all that much. It is one thing to describe psychic processes, another to effect change in clinical practice.
Freud had already realised that insight and intellectual understanding were not enough. He recognised the power of transference love and advocated the adoption of the neutral position. In time, the transference became a clinical tool.
Today we use the understanding of transference and countertransference in an increasingly complex way and know that the experiences we have are not only those that the patient puts into us, but these experiences interact with the analyst’s personality and pathology. The narcissism of the analyst is no exception.
In ‘Instincts and their vicissitudes’ Freud contended that narcissism and hate were the earliest impulses and were later modified by love. If we accept this view and include Freud’s belief that all forces are common to us all, the analyst has to reckon with love, hatred, and the pursuit of truth as constantly interacting in himself, with subsequent distortions of truth, not
least by narcissism. To eat from the Tree of Knowledge carries with it the danger of attempting to become God.
The analytic setting is arranged as the best means we know of pursuing psychic truth, yet we arrange fees and times for our benefit as well as the patient’s. We pursue knowledge, partly for our own interest, and we are pleased if our patients do well and develop. We obtai