Epilogue: The Analyst's Involvement in the Creative Aspect of Analysis

A progressive analytic process relies significantly on the analyst's creative input. For example, the activities of sustaining and integrating opposite or multiple emotional tendencies expressed within oneself and the patient, and finding approaches that are in unison with the patient to further the psychoanalytic inquiry are all aspects of responding to the emergence of therapeutic puzzles. An important basis for psychoanalytic creativity is expertise in the principles of development, psychopathology, and treatment, as well as experience in practicing the craft of analysis. The analyst imaginatively draws on all his or her knowledge and skill, as well as life experience and inner responsiveness to the patient. Psychoanalytic creativity is geared ultimately toward a mutual expansion of inner and interpersonal affective communication.

Recognition of the high relevance to therapeutic process and outcome of the analyst's creative use of self supports the principle of a flexible approach to technique. Advances in treatment theory should flow as the cocreative aspect of treatment is demystified. A number of clinically relevant guidelines that facilitate the analyst's creative involvement in the analytic process were put forward in these pages. Some recent conceptualizations of the intra- and interpersonal conscious and unconscious mental processes and motivations involved in psychoanalytic creativity attempt to explain the creative process as much as possible. A more comprehensive theoretical understanding of the creative aspect of analysis could emerge, however, with fresh interdisciplinary discoveries of currently unspecified neurological processes that enable previously unconnected experiences to be combined (“the brain's alchemy,” Lichtenberg, 2012), along with developing advances in the theory of transitional phenomena, affect theory, learning theory, and theory of memory.

Alan J. Barnett, Ph.D.

Issue Editor