The Psychoanalyst's Corrections and the Patient's Emotional Experience

The basis for the unpopularity of the concept of the corrective emotional experience is that Alexander recommended that the analyst vary his behavior in order to accentuate the discrepancy between the transference and the “reality” of the analyst's behavior or personality. Precisely where he makes this recommendation is unclear; most of his comments are along the lines of the “analyst assumes an attitude different from that which the parent had assumed toward the child in the original conflict situation” (Alexander & French, 1946, p. 66). For example, the neutral, accepting, and calm stance of the psychoanalyst runs counter to the stance taken by the symptomatic, traumatic, or conflicted parent.

In essence, a corrective emotional experience is achieved when the original traumatic conflict is reactivated in the clinical transference and worked through by the patient's experiencing the discrepancy between what is expected of the analyst and the reality.

Alexander believed that intellectual insight is insufficient for cure, that change is possible only when the patient experiences something new in the treatment. He wrote:

I have tried to explain the therapeutic effect of the transference experience with the concept of the corrective emotional experience…. The