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PPERSP 11(2):205-208 (2014) • DOI: 10.1080/1551806X.2014.897877

An Interview with Steven Kuchuck, Editor of Clinical Implications of the Psychoanalyst’s Life Experience: When the Personal Becomes Professional

Author: Sandra Buechler PhD

Sandra Buechler PhD

Sandra Buechler, PhD, is a Training and Supervising analyst at the William Alanson White Institute (WAW) and supervisor at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital’s internship and postdoctoral programs and the Institute for Contemporary Psychotherapy. A graduate of WAW, Dr. Buechler has written extensively on emotions in psychoanalysis, including papers on hope, joy, loneliness, and mourning in the analyst and patient. Clinical Values: Emotions that Guide Psychoanalytic Treatment (Analytic Press, 2004) examines the role of hope, courage, the capacity to bear loss, the ability to achieve emotional balance, and other factors in treatment, while Making a Difference in Patients’ Lives: Emotional Experience in the Therapeutic Setting (Routledge, 2008) describes her personal view of the process of therapeutic change. Still Practicing: The Heartaches and Joys of a Clinical Career (Routledge, 2012) looks at some sources of shame, sorrow, and resilience at various stages of a clinical career. Steven Kuchuck, LCSW, is the Editor in Chief of Psychoanalytic Perspectives and Associate Editor of the Relational Perspectives Book Series from Routledge. He is on the Board of Directors, supervisor, and faculty at the National Institute for the Psychotherapies, where he is also Co-Director of Curriculum for the four-year training program in adult psychoanalysis. He is a faculty member at the Stephen Mitchell Center for Relational Studies, the Institute for Expressive Analysis, and the Institute for Contemporary Psychotherapy in New York City, and author of articles that focus primarily on the impact of the analyst’s subjectivity on the clinical process. Most recently, he is a contributor to and editor of Clinical Implications of the Psychoanalyst’s Life Experience: When the Personal Becomes Professional, published as part of the Relational Perspectives Book Series. Address correspondence to Sandra Buechler, PhD, 235 West 75th Street, 11D, New York, NY 10023. E-mail:

Abstract

Sandra Buechler (SB): If someone new to the field reads your book, what do you hope they get from it?

Steven Kuchuck (SK): I hope that readers at all levels of experience will find inspiration to explore their own life and psychology for clues to the transference-countertransference, dissociated content, and other elements of the treatment. Newer clinicians, and perhaps not just those who are trained more classically, sometimes feel extra pressure to keep the more personal, “nonprofessional” aspects of conducting therapy outside of the room. I hope that by providing an opportunity to “listen in” on senior psychoanalysts who struggle to understand and make use of life experiences to deepen their work, newer therapists will feel supported in their own similar efforts. Although a lifelong challenge, it is often particularly difficult to manage and balance the overlapping intricacies of personal and professional influences in the earlier years of practice.

SB: Is there something you hope all readers take away from the book?

SK: Yes. To a large extent, the book’s title and subtitle really provide an answer to your question—in psychoanalysis, the personal and professional necessarily converge. Moreover, the subjectivity of the analyst, rather than being problematic, is a crucial part of the treatment process. Relational psychoanalysts have sometimes been criticized for going too far in the opposite direction of classical theory and privileging the analyst’s subjectivity over the patient’s. While I assume that most of us do believe in providing as protected a space as possible for the patient, not the analyst, to exist as the focus of attention, we have learned in recent years that when we attempt to stifle our subjectivity, we make vital parts of ourselves inaccessible and often even dissociated. These potentially lost thoughts and affects are ones that we need contact with in order to feel and better understand our patients’ dissociated material, who we are to each of them,