Psychopharmacotherapy During an Analysis

In what follows, the reader will be presented with case material pertaining to an analysand's wish for psychopharmacotherapy from his analyst during his analysis, the analyst's response to his patient, and the analyst's efforts to understand his patient and himself as the material unfolded. A discussion will follow, which attempts to explicate some of the confluence of forces at work in the patient and the analyst that conspired to produce a resistance-counterresistance enactment. The enactment proved to be an intensive and illustrative foray into a major transference resistance for which the wish for pharmacotherapy became an opportune vehicle. The commencement of pharmacotherapy furthered the analytic process in this case. The medication proved “effective” because both it and the act of obtaining it from the analyst were imbued with overdetermined transference meanings. The presentation begins with a brief summary of the current status of psychopharmacotherapy in its interface with psychoanalysis.

It is merely a reminder of the obvious to acknowledge the ubiquity of psychotropic medications in current mental health care. Their general acceptance and usefulness in many cases has prompted the adage that psychiatry has transitioned from being the medical specialty that deals