Untying the Relational Knot: Commentary on Kenneth A. Frank's Paper

The postclassical psychoanalyst is an uncertain creature, inhabiting an environment of shifting clinical and theoretical perspectives. To a large degree, this uncertainty is the result of the waning of the classical “archeological” model of the mind and the belief that analysts could and should reconstruct only those things that “existed” in the patient. A consensus is emerging among analysts that such an objective task is not possible. Most analysts know that they shape and influence what the see in the analytic work, and they try to understand their contribution.

Relational theorists generally attempt to celebrate this mutual influence and, to various degrees, the uncertainty which it raises. In one way or another, they argue that self and other are the product of interaction—and that because clinical work allows us to see this mutual shaping in process, it enriches our understanding of therapeutic action. But the nature of this mutual influence and the treatment techniques that would most usefully harness it are controversial. Do patient and analyst find each other? Or do they invent each other? Or is it, as Winnicott suggested, for analyst and patient that finding and inventing the other exist in a paradoxical relationship? How much time and focus should the analytic couple spend on understanding each person's influence on each other? Is the transference-countertransference a silent environment that performs essential psychological functions or is its clarification the only truly mutative activity?