The Response to Self Development: On the Necessity of Parallel Development in Analyst and Patient

… in the rules of the game we all know that we will never challenge the baby to elicit an answer to the question: did you create that or did you find it?

… we cannot help but construct the real, even when it pleases us to think we are doing no more than perceiving it.

The therapeutic relationship is a continually evolving interplay between analyst and patient who, separately and together, create, recreate and respond to old imagos, new creations, phantoms in themselves and in each other. While a good deal of attention is being paid to self development in patients, what is neglected in the literature is an examination of the parallel response within the analyst to various developmental aspects which emerge in the course of treatment. It is my thesis that there is a complementary developmental process occurring within the analyst, and that the analyst's inability to “keep pace” with the patient results in developmental failure in the analysis. It would be particularly unfortunate to neglect this process as we become immersed in the current theoretical milieu, with its emphasis on and infatuation with narcissistic damage and emptiness. Empathy too often is mistaken for nurturance alone. In their eagerness to embrace this attitude many therapists emphasize the empathic response to the damaged self while neglecting the patient's growing autonomy, which may necessitate a very different empathic response indeed — perhaps even entailing more classical notions of abstinence or frustration. Implicit in my discussion is the notion that not only is there a complementary