Chapter 26. Bridging the Gulf

In Chapter 14, I spoke of the deep gulf separating the ‘child in the patient’ from his grown-up analyst and stated that a patient regressed to the level of the basic fault is, as a rule, unable to bridge it on his own. I posed there the question as to which part of this task should be undertaken by the analyst and which must be left to the patient. The first answer to the problem, how to bridge the gap, is the standard one: by understanding what the patient needs from the analyst. This understanding need not — and at times definitely must not — be conveyed to a regressed patient by interpretations but by creating the atmosphere that he needs. This entails tolerating and respecting the patient's analytic ‘acting-out’ and, in particular, in not urging him to change without any delay his non-verbal ways of expression into the verbal Oedipal form. In the previous Chapter, I have tried to summarize what I think should be done by the analyst. If my ideas will prove correct, they may explain the many difficulties that follow inevitably if an analyst, seduced by his patient's sufferings, tries to do more.

In particular, when dealing with these states, the analyst should bear in mind that on the whole he should try to avoid penetrating defences or undoing splits by incisive and correct interpretations since these might be felt by his regressed patients as disbelieving the justification or validity of their grievances, recriminations, and resentment. Instead, the analyst must sincerely accept all complaints, recriminations, and resentments as real and valid, and allow ample time to his patient to change his violent resentment into regret. This process must not be hurried by interpretations, however correct, since they may be felt as undue interference, as an attempt at devaluing the justification of their complaint and thus, instead of speeding up, they will slow down the therapeutic processes.

True, some patients feel that life is not worth living without their grievances and