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Behandlungskrisen und die Rolle des Analytikers. [Treatment Crises and the Role of the Analyst.] By Franz Peter Plenker, pp. 25-46.
This author focuses on the role of the analyst in the context of treatment stalemates. He begins by saying that there is a tendency among some analysts to interpret a patient's hurtful and negative words or behaviors toward the analyst as a jealous attack on the analyst's function, as a defense against dependency, or as the patient's inhibition about further growth. These interpretations are considered to be evidence of the patient's destructiveness.
Plenker suggests that treatment stalemates can also result from the analyst's inability or unwillingness to reflect on his contribution to the development of a treatment stalemate. He posits that such an inability is often connected with intensely negative feelings being evoked in the analyst by the patient, including feelings of rejection, devaluation, or dismissal, or worthlessness and ineffectiveness stemming from perceived attacks by the patient. The analyst unburdens himself and reverses his pain and helplessness by making overtly or covertly aggressive interpretations, attributing destructiveness to the patient. The author maintains that the analyst who understands the patient and the analytic situation in this way, and who responds with such theory-based interventions, views himself as a neutral observer of an analytic process that is independent of the analyst's emotional inner world.