You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
One of the essential features of a therapeutic change process is the ability to establish, within the therapeutic relationship, a sense of safety from which patients can engage and explore the many issues that bring them into therapy. Efforts to gain our patients’ trust so that they feel safe enough to expose their vulnerabilities and engage in a healing process remain at the center of the analytic enterprise, no matter the theoretical position of the therapist. In fact, in an otherwise diverse and sometimes fractious psychoanalytic field, the importance of safety is one of the few areas of near consensus. In our approach, we acknowledge the intersubjective nature of all relational experience and appreciate the powerful processes of mutual influence that reverberate between the analytic couple. As we see it, clinical engagement requires both partners to take risks, tolerate a sense of danger, learn to trust each other, and seek emotional safety through connection and understanding. In this article, we explore a number of perspectives related to building and restoring a shared sense of safety despite what we consider to be the necessary, inherent dangers of psychoanalytic engagement. We include two clinical vignettes that elaborate our views more fully.