Resumo

MARCONDES, Durval. Regression in countertransference. Rev. bras. psicanál [online]. 2016, vol.50, n.1, pp. 56-64. ISSN 0486-641X.

Psychoanalytic process is a rectification of the past. One of its basic conditions is reviving pathogenic events. This revival involves both the patient and the psychoanalyst. When the patient returns to the critical point of the genesis of his conflicts through regression, he may retake the developmental line which was previously damaged. This happens according to the circumstances of the patient-psychoanalyst relationship. Besides a regressive tendency, transference has also a progressive tendency which should be favored by the psychoanalyst, who is guided by the sharpness and the flexibility of his countertransferential skill. Interpretation is the way this skill comes up. Besides its purely intellectual meaning, interpretation includes other messages which are related to the psychoanalyst’s psychic attitude. The result is a transferential meaning in the so-called not transferential interpretation. It is transferential through the additional communications it contains, besides its specific intellectual content. Stimulating these implicit communications is what gives it its mutative function. The patient endows the analyst with the quality of propitious object (or euphrenogenic), which, as opposed to the unpropitious object (or dysphrenogenic) from his childhood, would have been the appropriate object to solve the patient’s psychic issues in the historical situation that has been revived in analysis. Psychoanalyst’s interpretative intervention is inspired by countertransference. Using an empathic participation in the patient’s issues and their reasons, the analyst becomes able to capture their deep motivation. The crucial element of this process is the identification. The author examines different types of regressive identification found in the analyst (patient’s infantile ego identification, unpropitious [or dysphrenogenic] infantile object identification, propitious [or euphrenogenic] infantile object identification etc.). These identifications let the analyst being conformed to the patient’s conflictive situation and interpretating it. The author mentions restrictive characteristics that are specific to these types of identification. His next focus is that identification may cause jeopardies, which result in certain kinds of countertransferential resistance. The deepest basis of this countertransference lies on what the author called regressive existential threat. There is an unconscious fear of being irreversibly absorbed in the analysand’s situation, and losing the psychic position of autonomy and safety. The psychoanalyst cannot stand following the patient in his regressive process; he is afraid of having the integrity of his own ego hurt. Angsts, which represent those jeopardies for the analyst, take on paranoid aspects (fear, facing patient’s fantasies) or depressive aspects (pessimism, guilt). Defenses, which are often used, have, on the one hand, an inhibitory characteristic (analyst’s immobility) and, on the other hand, an omnipotent feature (attitude of superiority). Several times, analyst’s omnipotence assumes the maniac defensive feature, which is expressed by an impulse to acting, for instance, in a strong tendency towards assurance, or a strong tendency towards an excessive production of interpretations. As we see, dissecting and better understanding the system of analyst’s regressive identifications and its role in the psychoanalytic practice are basic elements to explain the essence and the intimate mechanism of our technical resources.

Palavras-chave : psychoanalytic process; regression; transference; interpretation; identification.

        · resumo em Português | Espanhol     · texto em Português     · Português ( pdf )