Transformations and Development of Reality in the Psychoanalytical Field

Who is this analyst really? A question every patient asks and which can be traced through the woof of every analysis as the thread of an unwritten and often misunderstood story. We could obtain as true an answer as possible to this fundamental question by following the improvement of his intuitive and perceptive abilities and of his attention. Naturally we cannot fail to give due acknowledgement to the great linking and transforming force that is inherent in the patient's efforts to find out what the analyst really thinks and feels about him. “(…) It is difficult for the analysand to enucleate (…) the essence of what the analyst thinks about him (…) because the interpretations and constructions made by the analyst are nothing other than a putting into form of our deepest most nascent way of being, in as much as we are analysands; hence the analyst's thought is dealing with the birth of a further fragment of our identity” (Hautmann 1987). Difficult indeed inevitable, if the possibilities of transforming the patient depend on what the analyst really feels and thinks about him (Searles 1965). Psychoanalysts have come to realise that