Maternal Subjectivity Behind the Couch: The Analyst’s Secondary Dependency and Its Implications for Political Psychoanalysis1

In the international discussion on psychoanalytic technique, there is a controversial discourse on the use of the countertransference. In this paper, I discuss positions that recognize the shared experiences of regression of analyst and analysand in the analytic process, focussing on undifferentiated affective states in the analyst and their effect on the process. Starting from the metaphor of the maternal analyst, I think about these positions through the prism of the current discourse on maternal subjectivity. The naturalization of motherhood and the consecutive denigration of secondary dependency of actual mothers on a facilitating environment is described and compared to the position of the analyst in the regressive process. Referring to feminist and psychoanalytic literature on motherhood and reproductive labor, I discuss reasons for resistance against the recognition of secondary dependency. I argue that the patriarchal structuring of society and psychoanalytic culture seems to be a defense against vulnerability and the recognition of emotional needs. I outline the implications of the full recognition of emotional needs of the analyst for our understanding of the psychoanalytic process. In conclusion, the possibility of expanding the concept of the psychoanalytic frame to political circumstances as facilitating environment of the mutual regressive process is discussed.