"Bright Spot," a Variant of "Blind Spot"

The idea of "blind spots" in the analyst has long been a subject of discussion. "Bright spots" for the analyst, on the other hand, have not been described or discussed before. I use the term "bright spot" to indicate a subject that has especially vivid meaning for the analyst and is endowed with rich associative elaborations based on readily available personal experience. When a patient talks about such a subject, the analyst has the feeling that he or she knows in detail exactly what the patient means. Because this feeling may be illusory, a bright spot may prevent adequate analytic exploration.

My introduction to the idea of bright spots occurred at the time of finishing analytic training.1 During a consultation about an analytic patient, I related one analytic hour in which the patient talked about her college experiences. She referred to the fact that those years had not been very good ones for her, which was well known to us, and I mentioned to my supervisor that there developed the usual flavor of low self-esteem connected with this subject, mostly having to do with the academic pressures of that place. He asked if there had been more details about the college experiences, and I responded that as it happened I knew very well exactly what she meant, since I had attended the same college and my own experiences there were still vivid for me. He pointed out that this was a bright spot for me, and that perhaps I was not listening with my customary attention. It seemed to him that I had not noticed, as I usually