Discussion of Lawrence J. Friedman's Article, From Gradiva to the Death Instinct

Put quite crudely, the issue, as I see it in this paper, is whether the analyst acts out with a patient or whether he tries constantly to remain sensitive to what is going on in the transference and to uncover its meaning to the patient. The analyst who remains silent, in the way described by Aull and Strean, must be seen as fitting in to some aspect of a transference pattern, or holding out against it, rather than analyzing it and clarifying its defensive and positive or negative meanings.

It seems from the examples given that the analyst must have been aware of an enormous amount going on in the room during the silences: for example, sleepiness, withdrawal or anxieties, anger, defiance and triumph being expressed by the patient. That the analyst withholds such information and refuses to do his job—i.e., uncovering what is going on and taking it back to its roots and its reasons—so far as he is capable, would seem to be a real disregard for analytic technique.

In Case 1 it is indicated that the patient's shy and inhibited behavior was connected with her wish to defeat and take over (as she may have experienced being able to take over the family with an ill mother and a weak father). It is odd, then, that the analyst remains silent, ostensibly in order that the patient should not feel engulfed, controlled and castrated by his interpretations, but actually demonstrating himself as controlled and castrated and therefore arousing the patient's subsequent violent outbursts and anxiety.

It appears, therefore, that the analyst here is dealing with what is really a patient's relationship to internal parents projected on to him, as if this could be got round by his not actually behaving in the same way as the internal parents are felt to behave. He seems to do this instead of trying to work out with the patient the whole building up of this picture which is lived out so vividly in the transference. Of course, it is clear from the discussion that after the silent period the ana