Discussion of Ian Alger's Article, The Clinical Handling of the Analyst's Responses

Dr. Alger speaks for a method (cooperative exploration) of dealing with certain kinds of resistances in the patient which are created, in part, by the analyst's emotional life. Several assumptions are made, some explicit and some covert: (a) Some aspect of the analyst's emotional life will be discerned by the patient; (b) the patient will react to his perception of the analyst's response; (c) the patient's reaction will constitute a continuing resistance in the analysis; (d) the method of handling this resistance is by mutually cooperative exploration.

Questions immediately arise. Is the method advised by Dr. Alger to be applied to those situations where the patient does not discern the analyst's responses or does not react to them? If the patient's reaction to the analyst's responses does not constitute a resistance, does the attempt of the analyst to handle the nonexistent resistance aid or hinder the analysis?

It may be that, in idealizing a tactic initially designed to handle an accident in the treatment into a cardinal therapeutic strategy, Dr. Alger is introducing a method (a repeated and insistent parameter) which creates a more powerful resistance than the one he hopes to dispel. That Dr. Alger does not consider his technique simply as one to deal with accidents or artifacts but rather as a pivotal method of therapy is suggested by his recommendation that the analyst encourage the patient to express his feelings towards the therapist as a person when the patient has not introduced such material. Might it not be wiser at such a point to attempt to interpret the absence of expression of such feelings toward the therapist in terms of other material already furnished by the patient? Otherwise one risks leapfrogging important transference resistances in favor of pushing, or seducing, the patient into a placatory attempt to produce feelings.

Dr. Alger raises an important point—involvement, living the analytic experience, the issue of psychologic distance. The optimum