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(Joachim Flescher, M.D. is Director of the Dual Therapy Research Bureau, New York, and author of Mental Health and Prevention of Neurosis and Dual Therapy and Genetic Psychoanalysis.)
To the Editors: My experience with conjoint therapy (since 1960) confirms fully most of Dr. Alexander S. Rogawski's observations and lines of reasoning [“Psychoanalysts View Conjoint Therapy,” The Psychoanalytic Forum, Vol. 1, No. 2]. In a recent publication I have tried to integrate conjoint therapy into the larger framework of genetic psychoanalysis. The latter rests, in my view, on the triadic principle, that is, on the proposition that the healthy development of an individual is predicated upon a well-balanced and equidistant (from each parent) position within the original family triad. Many puzzling observations in the analytic process and many technical difficulties may find both clarification and successful solution if we use this frame of reference.
Difficulties in resolving transference are contingent upon the tendency of patients to overidealize the analyst, a tendency which to a large degree is expressive of an exacerbated ambivalence. It takes courage and honesty to admit, as Dr. Rogawski did, that innumerable interpretations and working through often fail to reduce the strength of the patient's transference attachment.
While in the process of formulating my reaction to the panelists' views on conjoint therapy as published in The Forum, I participated in a discussion1 of Dr. Phyllis Greenacre's paper, “Overidealization of the Analyst and of Analysis: Manifestations in the Transference and Countertransference Relationships.” This paper was precisely on the dynamics and sequelae of overidealization in transference, and I shared with my colleagues at the New York Psychoanalytic Institute an important insight relevant to that problem and even more significant to the analytic methodology. I reached this insight through a decade of concentration on the dynamics of the analytic proce