The Patient as Instrument of Change in the Analyst

Change in the patient sometimes requires change in the analyst. When progress in an analysis has ended, when resistances appear unmodifiable, or when transferences on both sides of the couch interact to produce a stalemate, problems in the analyst often contribute in significant ways to the impasse that has developed. Sometimes, the difficulties arise from failures of understanding, sometimes from unrecognized transferences in the analyst, and sometimes from errors of technique.

Whatever the source of the problem, however, the prescribed remedies are familiar: consultation with colleagues, further supervision, or more personal analysis. While each of these methods has proven valuable in helping analysts overcome difficulties that have impinged on the treatment, they are ad hoc solutions that ultimately must be replaced by the analyst's ability to work with himself.

Each analyst develops his own style of self-scrutiny, aided by the unique stimulation of the analytic situation. The sustained exposure to powerful unconscious forces, both in his patient and in himself, which are integral parts of that situation, inevitably awakens those unresolved conflicts in the analyst that are tapped by the particular features of each treatment. As gadflies, rabble rousers, and disturbers of the peace, patients prick us, pull us, and sting us to look inward and to grapple anew old with ghosts newly awakened.