Perhaps no contemporary analyst has done more than Theodore J. Jacobs to broaden the scope of the classical psychoanalytic situation. He has demonstrated the value of the analyst's emotional response to patients as a way of knowing and has integrated the interpersonal dimension of analysis with the traditional focus on the intrapsychic. He has sensitized analysts to the significance of the nonverbal sphere, in which gesture, movement, posture—indeed, the entire realm of action and enactment—may be signifiers of the feelings and fantasies of analyst and patient. In these ways he has redefined the psychoanalytic process as an ongoing communication, within and beyond language, that involves the unconscious of both analyst and patient.
It is fitting, then, that Jacobs, clinical professor of psychiatry at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and a training and supervising analyst at both NYU (where he chairs the Child and Adolescent Division) and the New York Psychoanalytic Institute, will deliver a plenary address at the upcoming meeting of The American.
Jacobs's work is particularly impressive because it went against the currents of his time. When he began his training in the early sixties, the auditory sphere was privileged, and “counter-transference” was most often viewed as interference—a hyphenated dirty word. Ideally, the patient's words would be listened to with evenly suspended attention for every subtle nuance of the patient's meaning, while the analyst— a “blank screen”—might sit with eyes averted, receptive to the rhythms of association. But right from the beginning of his work as an analyst, Jacobs felt powerful responses to his patients and believed these might be of use. He set about tracking his reactions and using self-reflection to understand analytic communication. By “self-reflection” he does not mean self-analysis; he feels that although valuable insights can be achieved through self-reflection, analysis is better done with another person (a successful analysis, he allows, opens pathways that make effective self-analysis at least possible).
For many years Jacobs lectured and published his clinical findings in elegantly written papers, an effort culminating in his masterful book, The Use of the Self (IUP, 1991). But the idea that the analyst's feelings may be a part of his work with patients, along with the responsibility that this entails, seemed to threaten many traditional analysts. And so, for almost a decade, Jacobs and his work were roundly criticized. Nevertheless, he persevered. It is a testament to the cogency of his ideas, as well as to the strength of his character, that they are now widely accepted.
A man less modest than Ted Jacobs (and there are many in the field) might have declared himself the leader of a new school of psychoanalysis. Jacobs, however, sees his work as the development and synthesis of ideas that were always present, if at times latent, in classical theory and technique. He traces his analytic lineage to Isakower, who spoke of the “analytic instrument” as a joint creation of patient and analyst. Arlow's work on shared unconscious fantasy has also been important to him. In Hans Loewald and in the recent infant research of Daniel Stern, he sees the acknowledgment of both object relatedness and the instinctual life of the baby—a coexistence central to his thinking. Other teachers and supervisors to influence him during his training at the New York Institute were Lilian Malkov and Annie Reich. When he showed up for his first supervisory session with the latter, he was surprised to see her chair placed at a right angle to the head of the couch, so that patient and analyst would each have a full view of the other.
His supervision with Annie Reich, together with the research of Charles Fisher on subliminal perception, instilled in Jacobs a sense of the importance of the visual sphere in analysis. As an undergraduate at Yale, he had studied with Frank O'Connor, a master of the short story form, who taught him the power of visual detail in imaginative writing. Jacobs has himself published several short stories and is a devoted reader of literature. This literary bent has enabled him to use vivid, concrete detail in re-creating an analytic “scene” in his scientific writings. In this he is very different from many of his predecessors, who wrote of the countertransference dimension in highly theoretical terms. His writing, rich in specifics, is acclaimed for its directness, clarity, and wit.
Freud, of course, is Jacobs's obvious predecessor; in both can be found a powerfully vivid writing style, an understanding of the unconscious resonance between patient and analyst, a penchant for self-reflection, and a faith in the elasticity of psychoanalytic theory. Like Freud, Theodore Jacobs believes in the evolution of psychoanalytic theory, brought about by judicious modifications tested over time. The analytic profession may look forward to the further development of his ideas and the enrichment of their discipline.