The structural ambiguity of analytical psychotherapy: conservative and transformative moments

Abstract

There is an ever-increasing convergence between the socio-cultural approaches of depth psychology: Adlerians have perfected the analysis of transference and counter-transference; neo-Freudians have introduced self-analysis; and neo-Jungians evaluate consciousness more broadly. However, they all aim to explore the dynamic conflictual action of the unconscious, with a view to conscious maturation of the personality and the analysis of transference as a therapeutic technique. Faced with an increasingly broad clientele requiring personality revision and modification, analysts can no longer set themselves solely therapeutic goals, but must also accompany these with other goals aimed at maturation. The overlap of these two stages of analytical intervention is the cause of its ambiguity, especially given the difficulty of managing the transference and countertransference dynamics of the maturation phase. In this phase, a transformative process begins in both the patient and the analyst, which causes co-knowing to become co-becoming. This co-becoming could evoke the original feeling of inferiority, unless the analyst—like the Adlerian analyst who is open to comparison with other schools—knows how to present himself as a participatory, tolerant, reassuring, supportive, and encouraging rescuer, who encourages transformation and frees the patient from the danger of perpetuating conservative moments that make analysis rigidly and formally linked to orthodoxies in which the analyst is supportive, and encouraging rescuer who promotes transformation and frees the patient from the danger of perpetuating conservative moments that make analysis rigidly and formally bound to orthodoxies in which the analyst is omnipotent