The Anti-Analytic Third

Psychoanalysis is at its best when it is experience-near and there is enough alpha function (Bion, 1962), capacity to mentalize (Fonagy et al., 2002), or containment (Winnicott, 1958) for affects to be processed and understood anew. It is these processes that I believe are required for the generation of the creative analytic thirds that Ogden (1994) describes. They are also the capacities that are undermined when what I have termed “anti-analytic third” emerges in the consulting room.

Suffice it at this point to say that all of us have had moments when our capacities for mentalization and/or containment are suspended and we are overwhelmed by affect or are numbed and rendered mindless. In circumstances such as these, our more experience-distant concepts and theories can come to our rescue. In other words, our pregiven thirds of theory (Britton, 1997) can help us out of such impasses and set free the reverie required to generate the creative analytic third of which Ogden (1994) speaks. These analytic thirds are not pregiven, but emerge from the idiosyncratic analytic field created by a particular analytic couple. Pregiven thirds in the form of theories and concepts often facilitate this process, but not always. Indeed, as Benjamin (2004) points out, pregiven thirds may sometimes even hinder us if they act to constrain our freedom of thought. However, if we subscribe to the value of psychoanalysis, then we are entitled to hope that holding in mind its concepts and ideas can at times restore thought when it has been lost.

This paper hopes to introduce a concept of an anti-analytic third, a concept that it is hoped might serve to free our thought. The anti-analytic third refers to a mindlessness generated by a