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Patients seek psychoanalysis for many reasons—neurotic symptoms, psychosomatic conditions, relationship problems—yet in the final analysis, all the many reasons that bring people to psychoanalysis have to do with problems of the mind. The psychoanalyst constantly monitors his patient's state of mind and his ability to confront inner and outer reality, an ability that essentially depends on the patient's capacity for symbolic thinking. One of the curative effects of psychoanalysis is the enhancement of this capacity for symbolic thinking.
It is the purpose of this paper to show how the establishment of “triangular space” (Britton, 1989) in the analytic situation is linked with the development of symbolic thinking. The clinical material presented is taken in part from my analytic work, but also from cases presented by myself and colleagues in a supervision seminar with Ronald Britton.
The following diagrams depict what seems to take place in the analytic situation, seen from an outside point of view, much like that of the analyst, after a session, who is trying to observe what has happened in the session.
The first three diagrams represent the normal situation in analysis. The P is the patient as he experiences himself, the I-O is the patient's experience of his inner object. Both are part of his internal world. A is