Meeting of the Psychoanalytic Institute of New England, East

DISCUSSION: In reviewing the powerful impact of Dr. Gardner's presentation, Dr. Evelyne Schwaber considered, first, his work in relation to the analytic problem of "knowing" the "psychical reality" of another, particularly as it manifests itself through the transference. Freud's shift from the seduction theory to the fantasy theory of neurosis, she observed, cleared a path for the entry of psychoanalysis into the scientific era of relativity. Psychological reality, under the sway of intrapsychic forces, could no longer be seen as having an absolute objective measure, and, what is more, the nature of this reality becomes visible always through the agency of yet another psychical system, that of the analyst. What one comes to know of the patient's psychological reality, perceived most clearly within the transference, invariably emerges under the influence of the observer. One can, she continued, consequently only assume that "reality" exists somewhere in the dialectical relation between these two psychical systems, and that the patient's transference is therefore an amalgam of personal, historically determined meanings joined to those operating within a present shaped by the perceptual impact of the analyst on the patient's experiential field. What Dr. Gardner discovered in imagistic thought demonstrates not only the kind of subtle, interactive, preconscious sculpting of discourse that operates within the analytic field; it additionally highlights, Dr. Schwaber noted, the importance of the analyst's assumption of his or her impact on the patient's emerging transference. For it is in such an assumption and the subsequent search for our impact that we find those details of the analyst's person or circumstances which, as Freud noted in his postscript to the Dora case, are given meaning by the patient and thereby determine and define the transference. Before closing, Dr. Schwaber briefly explored her views on analytic technique as exemplified in the work of Dr. Ga