Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association

http://apa.sagepub.com/ The Analyst's Desire and the Problem of Narcissistic Resistances

Mitchell Wilson J Am Psychoanal Assoc 2003 51: 71 DOI: 10.1177/00030651030510012001 The online version of this article can be found at: http://apa.sagepub.com/content/51/1/71

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THE ANALYSTS DESIRE AND THE PROBLEM OF NARCISSISTIC RESISTANCES

The ways in which the analysts desire for particular experiences with patients is inevitable and often leads to narcissistically based resistances are considered. Five propositions are examined: (1) that the analyst cannot help but have desires and want them recognized by the analysand; (2) that these desires frequently underwrite the analysts theoretical beliefs and technical interventions; (3) that narcissistic desires and their influence are ubiquitous among practicing analysts; (4) that the patient is often on the lookout for the analysts various agendas; and (5) that the patient often hopes the analyst will put his or her desire aside and listen so the patient can further his or her own interests. Lacans concept of the dual relation is central to this discussion. The neo-Kleinian position on narcissistic resistances is explored, as is the idea of the analytic third as a potential solution to the problem they pose. An extended case description illustrates the main points.

[S]ometimes it is only the mask of distance, of vanishing, that lets you speak, that gives you the freedom to say what you mean without immediately having to stake your life on every word. So much of the basement tapes are the purest of free speech: simple free speech, ordinary free speech, nonsensical free speech, not heroic free speech. GREIL MARCUS Invisible Republic: Bob Dylans Basement Tapes

Faculty, San Francisco Psychoanalytic Institute; Assistant Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, University of California, San Francisco. The author gratefully acknowledges helpful comments and suggestions from the following colleagues: Jonathan Dunn, Sam Gerson, Lee Grossman, Charles Fisher, Stephen Purcell, Owen Renik, Mark Scott, Thomas Svolos, and the JAPA editorial readers. Submitted for publication April 12, 2001.
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Though the meanings of [my patients] experience can be debated according to our theoretical preferences, and though there is a novel element in her recent contacts with me, I argue that finally it is her meaning that she unfolds within this setting . . . a new self-redefinition as subject, a search wherein she attempts to hold together more of the many strands of her existence. LEWIS KIRSHNER (1999)

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en years ago (1993), at the American Psychoanalytic Associations annual meeting in San Francisco, Lawrence Friedman stated the following: Professional wishes are no less wishes. Analysis is a real world activity. Analysts want to analyze. They like to watch patients in analysis. They want patients to accomplish analytic goals ( p. 19). Friedman, as the discussant to a panel presenting papers on Resistance: A Reevaluation, distilled the analysts activity to its essence: the analyst wants things from the analysis, from the analysand, and from being an analyst; the practicing analyst is a desiring being every step of the way. The four panel participants described intimate engagements with their analysandsengagements that involved struggle, negotiation, subtle coercion and conf lict, and resolution. One analyst desired that patients work effectively on their problems. Another wanted an experience in which the analysand felt present-tense to him; he wished for the patient to come alive in his experience of himself and his analyst. A third presenter was concerned with the patients fantasy of the analysts authority: this analyst believed that the proper focus of analytic investigation was the patients assumption that a hierarchy existed between them. The fourth analyst (the one Friedman applauded most generously) was a candidate in search of a control case, and she grappled straightforwardly with her desire for the new analytic patient she needed. Friedman pointed out that she was up front with her struggle to accommodate her wish to have a patient in analysis with the reluctance of her current prospect. The other analysts, to Friedmans ear, were less aware of what they wanted from their patients. Resistance, Friedman asserted, was as much about the analyst as the analysand. Friedman saw that each of the f irst three presenters assumed that his desire for a particular analytic engagement and process was inherent in psychoanalysis itself, in the technical application of theoretical
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principles, and in the goals of analysis (however defined). The analysts deeply held and deeply personal desires for particular experiences with their patientsworking on problems, coming alive in the analytic relationship, realizing the inhibiting nature of idealizationbecame clothed in essentialist notions of the psychoanalytic process. Human desire, Friedman tells us, is never absent from human endeavor. There is no such thing as natural work, devoid of human action and intention. As Friedman said in his summary of the analytic engagements the panelists described: Theres a demand for work here. . . . a bending of purpose, a conf lict of wills, a verdict of satisfactoriness. The analyst is not just a facilitator: he is a taskmaster and judge (p.13). Friedman, of course is making a larger point: the analysts desire for particular kinds of experience with the analysand is constitutive of the clinical phenomenon we call resistance. In this paper I explore different yet related aspects of the analysts desire,1 specif ically as it connects to the ubiquitous phenomenon of narcissistic resistances. I will describe what I consider to be an important, and arguably neglected, aspect of the analytic encounter. By no means am I pretending to paint a comprehensive picture of the psychoanalytic process. Running throughout this essay is my assertion of the narcissistic basis of the analysts desire, a desire to which the analysand is more or less sensitive. I discuss how the analyst cannot help but wish for certain kinds of experiences in the analytic process. And I will explore some of the ways in which the analysts wish for particular experiences can lead to iatrogenic resistances that have a narcissistic basis. I mean to add another point of view, overlapping to be sure, to the literature on the analysts subjectivity. By reframing the idea of the analysts subjectivity in terms of the analysts desire, I wish to emphasize that the analyst does not simply have his or her own point
1 My use of the term analysts desire, though inspired by Lacans (1981) theorization of the desire of the analyst (p. 231), is both similar to and different from it. In this paper I elaborate a picture of the analysts subjectivized desire and the ways in which this desire participates, for good and bad, in the analytic process. For Lacan, the desire of the analyst is desubjectivized and part of the structure of a properly conducted analysis. Lacan equates the desire of the analyst with the object a, or cause of [the analysands] desire (pp. 273274). In this ideal analytic structure, the analysts desire is enigmatic and, so being, allows the analysand to articulate gradually his own desires and position as subject. While overly rigid and idealized, Lacans desire of the analyst does suggest that there are analytically helpful desires and analytically unhelpful ones (a point I take up later in the paper). My overall emphasis here is how the analyst as desiring subject gets in the way of the analysands ongoing elaboration of his desire.

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of view (that is, his or her subjectivity) forever at play in the f low of clinical work; the analyst always wants something. I also intend this paper to offer a rebalancing of our consideration of the problem of narcissistic resistances in light of the signif icant and far reaching contributions of the neo-Kleinian school. These contributions, by Joseph (1989), Feldman, Spillius, Steiner, and Britton (in Schafer 1997), and Maldonado (1999), among others, have elaborated the nuances and subtleties of transference/countertransference configurations as expressions of the analysands unconscious fantasy and of a demand for the analyst to enact a certain role within that fantasy. Yet, as I hope to demonstrate, these writers insuff iciently emphasize the role of the analysts desire as a constitutive factor in these conf igurations. I discuss in some detail Lacans concept of the dual relation and use it to show that the nature of the role of the two participants in transference/countertransference enactments is at times impossible to read and easy for the analyst to misrecognize.2 The analyst is not, as usually described, simply responding to the role the patient has unconsciously invited him to play (Sandler 1976). The analyst puts pressure on the patient to play certain roles as well. It is this pressureat least in some of its more blatant formsthat Lacans concept of dual or Imaginary relations lays bare.
THE PARTICULARITY OF THE ANALYTIC ENDEAVOR

Contemporary psychoanalysts encounter certain questions again and again that ultimately weeach of usmust answer for ourselves. Here are some examples: Should the analyst try to be helpful, and what constitutes help? Should we help patients focus on their problems and goals and allow the process to venture wherever it does in the service of those ends? Should we focus on the here and now of the transference to the relative exclusion of the past or the patients outside life? Is the purpose of analysis to help analysands understand how their minds work or how to f ix their problems? How much self-disclosure, and what kind, if any, is helpful? Are we there to help patients discover something old and repetitive that plagues them or to create something new through the therapeutic relationship? Is the analysts countertrans2 See Lacan (1977b; 1988, pp. 241258; 1992, pp. 292301; 1993, pp. 9297 and 235244), and Muller (1995) for descriptions and elaboration of dual or Imaginary relations.

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ference experience ever unencumbered, or is it always a distortion of the patient based on the analysts desires and conf licts? All these questionsand many othersrelate to the impact of the analysts desire in the analytic setting. Obviously, I have falsely polarized pairs of questions that often rest most meaningfully in a dialectical relation with each other. Quickly we see that the analytic enterprise is radically situation-specif ic. These questions can only be answered in the context of an individual case or, more correctly, a specif ic analytic couple. If each party in the analytic situation is irreducibly subjective (Renik 1993a), then certainly there is something irreducibly subjective about any particular analytic pair (Jones 2000). Our desire for theoretical principles that are coherent and generalizable is inevitably frustrated by the odd peculiarities and mysteries of any particular human encounter. Along the nomothetic idiographic continuumthat is, the axis on which a science of general laws meets a series of individual, signature experiencespsychoanalysis as a practical endeavor is almost entirely idiographic. Given the particularity of the analytic enterprise, the analysts wishes continually underwrite his conscious theoretical commitments and technical choices. Against this theoretically pluralistic, yet clinically particularistic backdrop, one can catch glimpses of the analysts desire at work. By desire I refer to our unconscious and relatively totalizing way of structuring reality based on unconscious fantasies and identif ications. Desire is what drives our being intentional and involves our irreducible interest in preserving our view of our place in the world. By wish I mean specif ic and identif iable manifestations of this more all-encompassing, and therefore all-the-more-hidden, desire. Wishes can be more or less fulf illed and more or less conscious; desire cannot be fulfilled and is unconscious. When I say the analysts desire can be seen or glimpsed against the pluralistic backdrop of our clinical theories, I mean simply that each of us chooses our profession, our theoretical persuasions, and the kinds of experiences we want to have with our patients for our own particular reasons. The analysts specif ic wishes may be facilitative or harmful to a specif ic ongoing analytic process; this issue I will take up later in the paper. Whether harmful or helpful, our desires are engaged every moment we do analytic work.

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THE NARCISSISTIC BASIS OF THE ANALYSTS DESIRE

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One might argue that the analysts wishes for certain experiences represent unresolved neurotic conf lict. My claim is that these wishes are inevitable. Working has no basis unless one wants to get something from that work. And yet, more essential than the gratifications we might hope for in doing analytic work is the wishfulness inherent in our being thinking and feeling persons. The irreducibility of the analysts desire starts here. Opatow (1997) writes compellingly about the essential nature of the psychoanalytic view of the human subject (or the mind).3 The mind, never complete unto itself, is inherently wishful and seeks its own satisfaction. Opatow investigates this idea through Freuds concept of hallucinatory wish fulf illment. For Opatow, the metaphor of hallucinatory wish fulf illment is foundational for psychoanalytic theory; it is psychoanalysiss original scene. It is also the original scene of the mind as conceptualized psychoanalytically; that is, hallucinating a gratifying image is the genesis of the desiring subject, the subjects origin as subject. This scene, to summarize Freud, unfolds in the following way: in the absence of nourishment, the hungry infant attempts to satisfy itself (or aff irm itself) with an image (a memory) of feeding on the breast. Faced with pain induced by absence, the infant attempts to ref ind psychically the object of satisfaction. Opatow writes: An unconscious wish strives to actualize a sceneto revive it as a conscious event (p. 873). Opatows point is farther reaching because he argues that the psychoanalytic postulate that satisfaction can be hallucinated is not limited to a theory of unconscious fantasy. A hallucinated satisfaction is the foundation of thinking itself. Thus Opatow writes: What is transferred from unconscious to conscious in the movement up the ordered hierarchy of mind is aff irmation per se (p. 873). In other words, there is an inherently self-validating aspect to thinking and perceiving. There is no such thing as neutral thinking; thinking is suffused with a distinctly narcissistic, self-aggrandizing desire. I want to emphasize that I do not mean to imply something pathological in using the term
Though Opatows contributions (see also 1989) are only the latest in a long line of theoretical statements regarding the psychoanalytic conception of mind, in the paper discussed here Opatow offers a stunning synthesis of these statements into a compelling theoretical whole.
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narcissistic. Thinking is a self-preservative function, and in that very important sense is always already self-serving. If thinking is always already self-serving, then we necessarily tend to see ourselves, or ref ind ourselves in what we see around us. Pontalis (1981), in a trenchant discussion of the development of the concept of the self, of fers a similar conclusion: Narcissism is not a phase, nor a specif ic mode of cathexis, it is a position, an insurmountable and permanent component of the human being. Even the most intellectual functions (thinking), the most objective ones (perception of reality), and the forms of behavior which come closest to instinct (eating) are marked by it (p. 136). In addition to seeing ourselves in the physical and interpersonal surround of our lives, we also have a natural tendency to want others to recognize our perspectives, ideas, and feelings. Scholars of diverse intellectual backgrounds have reached a similar conclusion about our desire as human beings to have our desires recognized by others (Kojeve 1947; Lacan 1977a; Fukuyama 1992). By self-aggrandizing desire, then, I do not mean simply a selfcentered and solipsistic desire; I have in mind also ones desire for the others recognition and love. J. H. Smith (1991) puts it well: Anything anyone does, thinks, or feels is a manifestation of concern for ones being and being-with. Desire at one moment, anxiety at another, arise from a want of being and a want of the other (p. 92). Despite the signif icance of the analysts desire as a constitutive element in the analysts functioning, the role of narcissism in psychoanalytic theorizing has had a troubled fate. The point of view I have articulated so far is but one side of a tense argument that psychoanalysis has had with itself over the course of its history. Psychoanalysts have at times struggled with recognizing the deeper, more diff icult desires that motivate our analytic activity, although it should not surprise us to know that we also desire not to know certain things about ourselves. This struggle can be seen from the perspective of the history of the psychoanalytic theory of the ego and the self, which ref lects a tension between our living more fully with our being desiring subjects and our wishes for rationality, order, and objectivity. It is this opening up of our selfhood that we are after, to which this paper contributes. I would like to summarize brief ly important aspects of this debate to lend context and clarity to my argument.

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THE EGO AND THE SELF

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Many have remarked (see Laplanche and Pontalis, 1973, pp. 130143, for a detailed discussion) on the conceptual confusion of Freuds idea of the ego. The details of this confusion go beyond the scope of this paper. For the present purposes, I think it is fair to say that for Freud the ego stood for the I (or the self) as well as for a set of cognitive and regulatory functions that comprised a proto-neurological executive agency. In Freuds topographic model, the ego and self were essentially synonymous. As Freuds structural model gained in prominence, the narcissistic basis of the ego was deemphasized. American ego psychologists (Hartmann, for one) tended to highlight the egos rational capacities; in so doing, they insisted on a distinction between the ego and the self.4 With this theoretical separation of the ego from the self, the ego was more or less cleansed of narcissistic needs and inf luences. The theoretical status of the ego changed: it was now conceptualized as a set of functions that were relatively autonomous from the pressures of the drives (sex and aggression). Within American psychoanalysis, there has been a sea change from a preoccupation with the ego to the consideration of the self. One way to read the recent North American psychoanalytic literature on the analysts subjectivity in all its forms (see Bader 1993, 1995; Renik 1993a and 1993b; and Grossman 1996, 19995) is as an insistent argument against the ego psychological claim that there is thinking devoid of narcissistic investment (that is, thinking devoid of a self); and an argument against the technical precepts such a theory, in its strictest form, impliesprecepts like neutrality, abstinence, evenly hovering attention, and rational or logical interpretations aimed at the egos self-observing capacities. In this form of Freudianism, the ego never gains independence from the self. The ego and self form an indelible narcissistic structure. The analysts activityunderwritten by specif ic
4 Hartmann (1950) writes: It therefore will be clarifying if we define narcissism as the libidinal cathexis not of the ego but of the self (p. 85). 5 Bader describes cases that demonstrate his claim that the analyst makes choices to act certain ways with patients that are both strategic and authentic. Further, Bader demonstrates that the analyst, whether he or she knows it or not, is continually making choices. Renik emphasizes that the analysts interventions are often unwitting; if retrospectively examined, they can propel treatments forward. Grossman emphasizes the analysts necessarily limited ways of listening, his or her inherent uncertainty in the clinical situation, and the ways in which that uncertainty is handled clinically.

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wishesis imbued with, as J. H. Smith (1991) puts it, a concern for ones being (p.92).6 H. F. Smith (1999) tackles head-on the complexities of what might be called clinical epistemology (and does them intellectual justice), and stresses that the analysts actions are an admixture of forces, a compromise between sexual and aggressive urges. While thoughtful and wise, Smiths account does not capture adequately the narcissistic basis that underlies all perception, cognition, and action. Grossman (1999) describes well what I have in mind. In his paper, What the Analyst Does Not Hear, he writes: But I suspect that both our way of listening and our preference for theories are primarily consequences of our way of seeing ourselves (p. 95). Cooper (1996) offers a similar observation: . . . I would suggest that the analysts choices of how to formulate and conceptualize and the technique that follows from these choices are themselves the most blatant expression of the analysts subjectivity (p. 265). What may seem to be the practice of a rational-technical method is in fact suffused with desire, manifested by the analysts wishes for particular experiences with their patients.
THE ANALYSTS DESIRE FOR PARTICULAR EXPERIENCES

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How does this view of the ubiquity of narcissistic forces in the mind contribute to the kinds of experiences analysts want that lie beneath the surface of conscious intent? I start, again, with Opatows treatment of Freuds idea of ref inding the lost object. I believe the analyst desires to reexperience a particular kind of object relationship with analysands. This ref inding of the object relationship can, and does, take diverse and complex forms. The analyst may attempt to repeat with patients moments of relating that remind him or her of pleasurable past relationships. Alternatively, the analyst may wish to redress with patients a particularly painful past object relationship or persistent internal conflict (Renik 1993b; Jacobs 1991; McLaughlin 1991). For example, an analyst
6 As commonplace examples: the analyst who eschews any measure of therapeutic zeal (and, therefore, assumes a neutral position towards his analysand) is valuing that particular stance. The analyst who (1) presumes to be in a position of not knowing, (2) cherishes surprise, and (3) embraces the ubiquity of countertransference enactment is similarly involved and concerned with inhabiting that particular stance with patients.

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with an emotionally distant and unavailable parent may believe him or herself to have been the agent of that parents behavior and may worry, accordingly, about his or her own omnipotence and destructiveness; that analyst may hope to redress these worries by having emotionally close and intimate relationships with patients. Sharpe (1950) made a related point long ago. There she writes of the analyst who suffers from excessive therapeutic zeala persistent desire to be helpful and altruisticin order to manage his unconscious sadism. Such an analyst, uncomfortable with patients who keep their distance, may too quickly and urgently interpret their defensive posture and simply exacerbate problematic aspects of the transference/countertransference engagement. Gabbard (2000) captures my point in his discussion of the ungrateful patient. He writes: . . . I am suggesting that ungrateful patients, in particular, are likely to make us aware of our unconscious background wish to enact a gratifying object relationship that motivates us to return to the consulting room day after day (p. 699). Another important factor in the analysts desire for particular experiences is the analysts theory of mind and clinical process. Several analytic thinkers have noted the importance to the analyst of psychoanalytic theory as a loved objectthat is, a ref inding of a love that has been lost but never given up completely, now reestablished in the analysts identif ication with a theoretical model (Almond 1995; Caper 1997; Purcell 2001). The analysts relationship to theory has many important consequences for his or her functioning, some of which are clearly necessary for good analytic work to proceed. The analysts attachment to a theoretical perspective may be the wellspring of one of the gratif ications of doing analysis: the analyst may feel satisf ied, good, or whole if he or she is acting in accordance with a particular theory of mind or therapeutic process. The analyst may use theory as a way to maintain a feeling of independence from diff icult internal experiences, including feelings that the patient is trying to take over the analysts thinking and functioning. In other cases, the analyst may identify less with a theory and more with a former analyst or supervisor, and may wish to recreate certain loving or hating, soothing or exciting interactions and feelings he or she experienced as a patient or supervisee (Grusky 2000). The motivation to ref ind the lost object only partly answers the question of the analysts desire. The analysts assessment of a particular patients troubles, their probable causes, and the ways in which they
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manifest themselves in the day-to-day work of analysis are also related intimately to the analysts wishes and satisfactions. The issue is not simply what kinds of experiences the analyst seeks to re-create or redress by doing analytic work. The issue is how these desired experiences interact with the analysts conception of the patients problems, as well as with the patients own goals and desires for treatment. As I noted earlier, the analytic couples idiosyncratically evolving interaction of desires, subtly negotiated over time, determines the tone and quality of clinical process and outcome.7
DUAL RELATIONS: THE ANALYSTS DESIRE AND RESISTANCE

The analyst is always, in part, looking for the lost objects, trying to ref ind him- or herself in the patient and to see him- or herself as an analyst in day-to-day clinical work. The crucial question is how these desires facilitate or hinder a successful analytic process. For resistance does not reside in the patient. Resistance is fundamentally an intersubjective phenomenon. Boesky (1990) asserts that analyst and analysand co-create resistant moments in the analysis. Boesky writes: I am convinced that the transference as resistance in any specif ic case is unique and would never, and could never, have developed in the identical manner, form, or sequence with any other analyst. In fact, the manifest form of a resistance is even sometimes unconsciously negotiated by both patient and analyst (p. 572). Boesky continues later in his discussion: If there can be no analysis without resistance by the patient, then it is equally true that there can be no treatment conducted by any analyst without counterresistance or countertransference (p.573). Boeskys contribution suggests that there are useful resistances. If the resistant interaction becomes an object for mutual consideration, analyst and patient can understand the signif icance of this interaction in the service of the patients growing understanding of his or her subject position and the way he or she relates to his or her important objects. Though it is true that the analysts desire cuts both ways and can facilitate as well as hinder the analytic process, I want to focus in this part of the paper on investigating how the analysts desire contributes
7 See Goldberg (1987), Pizer (1992), and Aron (1996) for trenchant discussions of how analyst and patient grapple with their conflicting interests over the course of psychoanalytic treatment.

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to resistant moments that more seriously threaten that process. Analysts are tempted to see themselves in the analysand and overvalue their ideas about the patient. The analyst also wishes to have the patient recognize those ideas in some manner. The situation is complicated because the analysand often canvasses the analyst for signs of the analysts desire, or defends against noticing those signs.8 Among the analysands fundamental questions are: what makes my analyst tick? what does my analyst want from me? what does my analyst know? All analysts, of course, inevitably reveal aspects of themselves that provide the analysand with partial answers to those questions. Complications notwithstanding, the analysts desireas it is expressed through specific wishes and demandsengenders resistance when the patient feels forced to recognize it. Especially during moments of uncertainty or uncomfortable silence or interaction (in which the analyst feels in his bones caught in an enactment with a patient), the analyst is tempted to fall back for defensive purposes on certain cherished identifications with a theory, a supervisor, a colleague, or his or her analyst. Precisely when we feel lost we want to ref ind ourselves. My argument is that at these moments of ref inding ourselves we often stop listening to the patient, and wish the patient would stop expressing the part of him- or herself we are having diff iculty tolerating (Caper 2001). These resistant moments result from what Ogden (1988), following Lacan, calls misrecognition. The analyst, according to Ogden, fears uncertainty and not knowing. The analyst stops listening and fills the gap of uncertainty with his own thoughts, guesses, or surmises. 9As Grossman (1999) writes, . . . the villain in the piece is the analysts certaintya character trait, not a technical device (p. 95). Lacan (1993) offers a similarly skeptical critique of the analysts capacity to understand: The major progress in psychiatry since the introduction of psychoanalysis has consisted . . . in restoring
8 Steiner (1993), for example, writes: The patient is always listening for information about the analysts state of mind, and whatever form of interpretation the analyst uses, verbal and nonverbal clues give the patient information about him ( p. 390). 9 Lacan (1993) called this way of thinking the relation of understanding (p. 6). The analyst looks for patterns or relations among elements of the patients discourse. In order for the analyst to make sense of the clinical material, he must assume a self-evident starting point and then look for a change from that point. Lacan suggests that the starting point usually remains an unexamined assumption. Rabin (1998, 1999), an economist, amasses a substantial amount of data regarding how people use judgment under uncertainty that support Lacans analysis that in moments of uncertainty we tend to look for the familiar, to find what were looking for. In cognitive psychology this is known as conf irmatory bias.

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meaning to the chain of phenomena [produced by the analysand]. This is not false in itself. But what is false is to imagine that the sense in question is what we understand (p. 6). Some readers may feel that this clinical dynamic of the analysts imposition of his or her desire (and the effects of this imposition) is a reassuringly local clinical problem. My sense is, on the contrary, that this dynamic runs farther and deeper than is typically recognized, and manifests itself in countless subtle clinical interactions. The problem of the analysts desire and its ef fects is often tucked neatly under the issue of compliance.10 Different patients handle the dilemma of the analysts desire in different ways. Some comply by being seemingly agreeable (Joseph 2000); some rebel in subtle or not so subtle ways. As I have argued, the analysts desire thoroughly underwrites the analysts technique; therefore, any analytic intervention houses within it aspects of the analysts desirein the form of specif ic wishesfor some kind of response and recognition. Under the clinical circumstances in which analysts desire too strongly, or too unconsciously, to have specif ic kinds of experiences with their patients, iatrogenic resistances can result. The patient is put in the alienated position of needing to deal with the analysts desire. Though the analysts commenting on the patients response to an intervention may further the analytic dialogue, often interpreting the interaction by calling the analysands attention to it only feeds its reinforcement . In such diff icult clinical circumstances, which are more common than is usually acknowledged, there can be no clear way out. A crucially important aspect of these narcissistically based resistances is that, from a logical point of view, the dynamics asserted to be going on in the patient can just as easily be asserted to be going on in the analyst. Lacan called this way of interacting a dual relation. 11 Dual relations are inherently reversible. Both analyst and patient want the other to recognize their desire. When caught in a dual relationship, it is often diff icult to f igure out what is what; confusion results.
10 See the issue of Psychoanalytic Inquiry, 1999, Vol. 19: No. 1, for considerations of this topic. Levines contribution (pp. 4060) in that volume comes closest to the point of view articulated here. Of American psychoanalytic writers, Weiss et al. (1986, 1993) has grappled most seriously with the problem of compliance in the psychoanalytic process. 11 In this case dual can also be read as duel since the images of confrontation, standoff, and reversibility are essential aspects of Imaginary or dual relations.

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Joseph (1971) describes an interaction with her patient, Mr. B, that illustrates the diff iculties posed by the analysts desire for specif ic clinical experiences and the reversible nature of dual relations. Josephs focus on the patients emotional contact, or lack thereof, with the analyst is central to her clinical point of view. Her ideas on transference, specif ically on the totality of transference manifestations in the clinical moment, have inf luenced more than one generation of analysts. Everything the patient says or does has immediate transference meaning. In my estimation, the role of the analysts desire has no independent theoretical standing in Josephs conceptualization of the analytic encounter. Josephs focus on emotional contact and the totality of the transference leads her to consider patients reactions to weekends and holidaysperiods of time away from the analystas important topics for analytic consideration. In the complex case of Mr. B, Joseph describes a man with a narcissistic character structure and baroque sexual practices. While I assume that, as with all published clinical material, the analysts understanding of the case has a privileged status, I believe that the clinical information Joseph provides us offers itself to an alternative reading. Mr. B, well into his analysis, gets married over a summer holiday. Upon his return, a number of complicated interactions ensue between him and his analyst, including, among other things, an elaborate dream. I want to focus on one specif ic aspect of Josephs discussion. Mr. B tells his analyst that he was frightened to let her know about his recent marriage. He was worried that the analyst, as Joseph writes, would feel angry and left out, as if he ought not to have put the marriage before the analysis; almost as if he ought to have married the analyst. It becomes clear, Joseph continues, how much he has projected his own left-out infantile feelings about the holidays onto me, and feels me to be watching, left out and demanding (p. 445). Joseph does not make clear precisely what she said to Mr. B, but she strongly suggests that she interpreted to him his projection of his feeling of dependency onto her. Yet this is where things get tricky and where, I would argue, confusion can reign in the clinical moment. This is because Joseph wants clearly for Mr. B to admit his having felt left out over the holiday break. He doesnt acknowledge this, and therefore, in a very real sense, he is not acting in the way she wants him to act. More precisely, Mr. B is not thinking the way his analyst would wish him to think, in that he
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is not using the analysts interpretations to further his self-understanding. Mr. B, in other words, is not recognizing his analysts desire. One cannot help but wonder whether the patient has accurately concluded that the analyst feels the patient should have missed her, and, therefore, has understandable concern about thwarting the analysts wish that he acknowledge feeling left out and watching. In terms of the logic of the interaction, the assertion that the patient misses the analyst and uses omnipotent defenses to ward off his feeling of dependency could be made also about the analyst: the analyst is engaging in omnipotent thinking because she knows what is going on with her patient. Further, she wants the patient to relate to her in a very particular way that he is not doing, and in that sense she feels left out, yet she projects this feeling into him. All the assertions the analyst makes about the patient could be made about the analyst. The issue is not whether this reading is correct. The issue is that in a dual relation there is always an alternative, symmetrical reading and that it is arguably impossible to know which of the two readings is correct.12 I would like to compare Josephs approach to that reported by Gabbard (2000). Gabbards contribution is an example of cases reported with increasing frequency in our literature (see below) that describe the analysts contribution to a narcissistically based resistance. He also offers a partial solution to this clinical problem. Gabbard, in the case of Mr. F, wants Mr. Fs recognition for his (Gabbards) dutiful and steadfast service to him (p. 698). Gabbards desire, grasped by his perspicacious patient, contributes to a resistance. Gabbard writes about his desire in this way: [T]he childs desire for a long-denied gratitude may in adulthood take the form of a yearning to be appreciated by ones patients, even to the point of encouraging expressions of gratitude that are at odds with the patients best interests. In such a situation, the analysts need for gratitude may become apparent to the patient, who then feels that the analytic setting is being subverted to address the analysts needs (p. 700).
12 The difficulty in figuring out what is causing what in a dual relation is similar to the epidemiological axiom correlation is not causation. Cause and validity always require a third term to structure the correlation and make it meaningful. A similar question arises in Josephs most recent paper. She presents clinical material that suggests a reading like the one I have offered above (Joseph 2000). Also, the question of the analysts authority enters into the clinical picture here. I do not have adequate space to elaborate on this aspect of things here. The reader is referred to the entire issue of the Psychoanalytic Quarterly, Knowledge and Authority in the Psychoanalytic Relationship, Vol 65: 1265, for further consideration of the matter.

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Gabbard then ref lects on how his patient reacts to his analysts desire for recognition: Repeating the scenario that occurred with his parents, he sensed that I wanted him to fall in line with my expectations, and he derived great pleasure from digging in his heels and defeating me. I had failed to appreciate that he was trying to communicate to me that he was doing the analysis in the way he had to do it, and that my failure fed his own developmental difficulties in feeling appreciative (p. 705). Gabbard attributes the turnaround in the case of Mr. F to three factors: (1) his resilience in the face of his patients attacks; (2) his recognition of what he calls the two-person nature of the problem. My awareness that my countertransference resentment was contributing to the impasse. . . . (p. 710); and (3) successful interpretation of the patients internal conflict. No doubt Gabbard is correct. However, I would argue that the second factor, Gabbards acknowledgment of his countertransference resentment, is what allowed the stalemate to yield because the battle, at that point, was no longer joined. And with the battle no longer joined, there was, as Gabbard describes, space for both him and Mr. F to consider Mr. Fs conf licts and symbolize his experience. An additional point worth reiterating, and one that Gabbard acknowledges though in my estimation underemphasizes, is the fact that his desire for gratitudenot simply his resentment of his patients ingratitudecontributed to, and in important ways engendered, Mr. Fs resistance, the digging in of his heels. In light of this comparison between the clinical offerings of Joseph and Gabbard, I ask the following question: At the level of the resistance as experienced by the patient in the clinical moment, is there a difference between an analyst whose desire is expressed through a model of the mind and a clinical technique that emerges from that model (Joseph), and an analyst whose desire is manifested in the wish for a gratifying object relationship based on an unresolved conf lict from the analysts past (Gabbard)? It seems to me our conventional answer to this question is that the latter is much more suspect, because it implies that the analyst has more self-analytic work to do. Yet I suggest that both analysts are searching for lost objects, just different ones. One could argue that the former circumstance is more diff icult for the analyst to perceive and self-analyze because the desire is both expressed and hidden by a clinical technique that, at that particular clinical moment, is contributing to the resistance. At the level at which the resistance is joined, the patient may experience both desires similarly
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as the analysts demand for the patient to respond in a particular way, a demand that puts the patient in an alienated position. This is a very important issue, and one that requires further investigation.
SOLUTIONS TO THE PROBLEM OF NARCISSISTIC RESISTANCES

As I asserted above, the transference/countertransference dynamics engendered by the analysts imposition of his desire onto the patient are common, not uncommon, in day-to-day psychoanalytic work. Different models of clinical process use different words and concepts to grapple with what are, in my view, similar phenomena. For neo-Kleinians, the centrality of projective identif ication describes and accounts for the intersubjectiveor dual-relationresistances I have described above. For the self psychologist, the empathic failure is the central feature of analyst-engendered narcissistic resistances. For those oriented intersubjectively, the analysts irreducible subjectivity and countertransference enacting are constitutive of resistance and also the stuff of successful analytic treatment. While there are certainly important differences among these ways of conceptualizing clinical process, I am arguing here that such seemingly dif ferent conceptualizations are all attempts to deal with the ubiquity of narcissistic resistances in our work and analysts struggles with successfully negotiating them. Analysts struggle with narcissistic resistances precisely because we are intimately involved with our patients in their creation. While I believe it is true that the dif ferent clinical perspectives I mentioned above are trying to tackle the same basic clinical issue, I also believe that they have very different solutions to a common problem. To consider adequately these different solutions would require another essay. However, I do think it furthers my current discussion for me to summarize one of them brief ly. The solution that carries the most theoretical weight is the concept of the analytic third. By now it is fair to say that there is a signif icant psychoanalytic intellectual history behind this idea. I want to emphasize that this is a theoretical solution to a theoretical problem. This solution has clinical implications. Essentially, the solution to the problem of dual relations in the analytic setting is the establishment of a third term. Conceptually, the notion of the analytic third is isomorphic with oedipal relations (triadic structures as opposed to dyadic structures).
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This tradition of the analytic third started, after Freud, with Winnicotts transitional object. Lacans concepts of the Symbolic register and the big Other (1988, pp. 235258) were extensions of Winnicotts seminal idea.13 Green (1975) and Ogden (1994) have written extensively on the topic as well, incorporating Kleinian theory. Greenberg (1995) has contributed similar ideas from a more explicitly interpersonal psychoanalytic point of view. All of these analytic thinkers strive to f ind a way out of the problem of the analysts desire. Their collective answer to this problem is that if analyst and patient can f ind a way to talk about the patient such that their discourse feels to both participants like a shared object rather than a contested one, then the analytic third is present. Lacans solution was to avoid logical and sense-building interventions with the analysand. He emphasized punctuating that which is other to the patients conscious discourse, such as slips, repetitions, puns, forgetting, contradictions, and the like. These formations of the unconscious are, quite precisely, the analytic third.14 The concept of the analytic third and the clinical processes it informs can falsely suggest that analyst and patient easily cooperate in their pursuit of analytic goals. Often this is not the case. As I said above, analytic discourse can be contested rather than shared. This may mean, of course, that there are times when the analyst must confront the patient with what he or she thinks is going on and not back down. That is, there are times when the analyst must impose his or her thinking, his or her desire, on the patient and speak straightforwardly about the clinical situation at hand. This is an important clinical issue, a thorough discussion of which would take us beyond the scope of this paper. It is important to note that Joseph herself has made compelling arguments in this connection, especially with respect to the clinical issue of how the analyst might deal with omnipotent defenses of narcissistic patients (see Maldonado 1999; Joseph 2000; Purcell 2001). In spite of the clinical truth that, at times, the analyst must not back down from a particular point of view, it is fair to say that much of our clinical literature offers, or describes, the opposite solution to the problem of narcissistic resistances. Numerous analytic writers over
13 Lacans theory of the Symbolic has several other sources besides Winnicott most notably Levi-Strauss (1963)but it is fair to say that Winnicotts seminal idea of the transitional object has great kinship with Lacans Symbolic and his privileging of triadic structures. 14 See Wilson (1998), Laplanche (2000), and Poland (2000) for similar examples of otherness.

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the past ten years or so have reported cases where the analysis has turned from various degrees of stalemate to demonstrable progress when the analyst has managed to analyze or otherwise maneuver him- or herself out of a mutually created narcissistic resistance by understanding his role in the problem. Through this understanding, the analyst backs down, thereby removing himself from the f ield of contest.15 That removal allows the patient a sense control and autonomy and an ability to think more f lexibly. For example, Steiner (1993) grapples with the to and fro of the dynamics of projective identif ication in his paper on analyst-centered and patient-centered interpretations. Using a different theoretical languageyet clearly struggling with the same set of clinical issues described by LacanSteiner tries to f ind his way out of his and his patients mutually projecting onto each other. Steiners admittedly partial solution to this dilemma is, not unlike Gabbards, to take more of the interpretive burden onto himself and to put the stress on his own experience and the patients experience of him. This is in contrast to interpreting in a more objectivist mode by commenting on the workings of the patients mind and on what the patient is doing to the analyst. Others who have offered similar solutions to the same clinical problem include: Schwaber (1983, 1992); Viederman (1991); Renik (1993b); Hoffman (1983, 1994); Kantrowitz (1993); Almond (1995); H. F. Smith (1995); Chused (1996); Weiss (1995); Coen (1998); Grossman (1999). The point of debate here is whether the analysts backing down facilitates for the patient a necessary (and salutary) separation from the analysts pressure and desire or reinforces the patients use of omnipotent fantasy and other manic defenses. It may, of course, do both. Ones answer to whether this is a salutary step in the analysis would depend on many factors; ones theory of mind and clinical process and what counts as clinical evidence are but the most salient of those factors. This debate, in any case, points to the dialectical nature of clinical psychoanalytic work. In the natural history of a psychoanalytic treatment the analysts stance shifts and changes. Addressing the interaction, backing away from the patient, confronting the patient, insisting or not on ones point of viewmany things happen over the course of
Pizer (1992) describes an aspect of what I have in mind: [T]hose moments when the analyst stepped outside his or her accustomed position . . . have a quality of the analysts yielding to some subtlety of being in the patient . . . (p. 218; emphasis added).
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a treatment. As I said at the beginning of this paper, I am describing but an aspect of clinical process that often goes unrecognized.
CASE ILLUSTRATION

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This brief case summary is intended to illustrate some of the main points presented here. I hope it demonstrates how my own narcissistic issues and unresolved conf lictsin short, my desireclothed in a conventional theory of technique, contributed to resistant periods in the analysis. In some ways, what I relate below goes without saying because I describe in quite traditional ways how my countertransference contributed to an enactment. Of course, I am asserting a more universal clinical dynamic that is not limited simply to the particulars of this case. Mr. R, a divorced man in his early forties, had struggled through the f irst year of his analysis. He came for treatment because of periods of crushing despair and hopelessness about the future. Though talented in a number of areas, he was convinced there was something drastically wrong with him. He worried he would be alone the rest of his life. He was terrif ied of planning assertively for the future. He had diff iculty thinking about his career and the next direction in which he wanted it to go. He desperately wanted to remarry but worried endlessly about being rejected. Like Hamlet or Prufrock, he could not make a decision or let a woman know he liked her. The youngest of f ive children, he came from a middle class family where emotions were hard to read and conf licts rarely addressed. Though close to his mother when a young child, he had long since viewed his parents with embarrassment and some shame: they seemed unhappy, scared, and depressed. These feelings drove him, decades ago now, to move far away from the family; he struggled to call them or visit them, fearing the feelings of shame, anger, and sadness he often felt when around them. Mr. R often lamented: My parents dont seem interested in my life, what Im doing, or what Im feeling. My approach to his problems during this f irst year was to examine his conf licts with him, specif ically the imagined negative consequences of various actions, should he take them. We discussed his passivity and the safety he felt in keeping his distance from his friends and me. We touched on the gratif ication he got by complaining. We discussed his views of his parents as weak and depressed and his
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worries about surpassing them or moving beyond them. He felt his suffering was special and that he deserved special treatment and attention by his family and friends. He felt bitterly resentful when they didnt attend to him in this way. We discussed how he expressed his anger through the distance he maintained from people. When possible, I directed his attention to how these issues manifested themselves in the transference. Though he gained much insight into his masochistic stance toward his life and the world, none of this got us very far. In addition, my approach exacerbated his masochistic sense of analysis; much of the time he felt it an onerous burden. However tactfully and openmindedly I directed Mr. Rs attention to our interactionand especially to the atmosphere of struggle often between ushe took my observations to be criticisms that he was not letting me help him. In the terms I have used in this paper, much of the f irst year or so of analysis felt contested. What was my contribution to this contest? My subject position with respect to this patienta perspective gained only in retrospectcould be described as follows: I was a newly graduated analyst looking to build up my analytic caseload; I decided to work with Mr. R for a markedly reduced fee; I was without supervision. All of these factors contributed to an exaggerated therapeutic zeal on my part. Within this particular professional context in which I found myself, I identif ied with the patients struggles in a number of important ways that only exacerbated my desire to somehow change and cure him. For example: Mr. R regularly told himself to mellow out about things, especially about a woman he was dating. He told himself that its not a big deal whether things work out or not. As a younger man I myself had struggled with a similar way of thinking regarding a deeply held ambition of mine, and had realized my self-deception only when it was too late. With Mr. R, I wanted to redress a conf lict within myself (more accurately, a loss unsuccessfully mourned), with which I had struggled very much alone, and I did so by trying to assure my patient I was there for him and would help him avoid the selfdeception from which I had suffered. The ways in which Mr. R and I discussed this mode of thinking and the anxiety that lay behind it are too complex to characterize adequately. The end result, however, is easy to describe: Mr. R felt that I was telling him to stop thinking this way. Rothsteins description (1999, p. 544) of a sado-narcissistic enactment captures accurately
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Mr. Rs and my interaction around this issue. No doubt, given his masochistic character structure, he unconsciously involved me in ways that made him feel victimized. Yet, none of this awareness was available to him at that point in the analysis. What was available to me was a feeling, a strong sense of here we are again: once he started his complaints of despair, or his needing to mellow out and take it slow, I could already feel the enactment occurring, and most any intervention I made that addressed his discourse as defensive, as related to anxiety and worry, led inexorably to his feeling that I was telling him what to do or how to think. And a vitally important part of this feeling was my sense of guilt: I was contributing to a dynamic between us that, at this relatively early point in the analysis, felt contested, stuck, and in some ways damaging to him.16 I should emphasize that what I have just described was my subjective sense of a particular way in which Mr. R and I struggled during this part of his analysis. For Mr. Rs part, though he complained some, he voiced no concerns that the analysis was in some ways stuck or that I was contributing to the trouble. His attitude was characteristically passive: this must be how analysis is. After a while, for reasons I could not fully explain to myself at the time, I decided not to interpret the defensive aspects of his pseudo-nonchalance or his complaints of despair. I simply asked Mr. R to tell me more about these feelings. Over the next several sessions he did. And his way of speaking gradually came to have a different quality. He talked about his despair without massaging it. He had moments of genuinely questioning himself without demanding immediate answers from me or condemning himself for not knowing them. He found himself describing ways in which he orchestrated interpersonal situations so he would feel left out or dissed. At times, he realized, he made up scenarios so, as he said, I can feel angry and bitter and resentful. My understanding of our interaction was that as I stopped interpreting the defensive and gratifying aspects of his complaints (from the point of view of compromise formation) he felt I was not implicitly telling him to stop feeling what he was feeling; it was now okay for him to feel as bad as he wanted to feel and to complain about feeling it as
16 That Mr. R, like many masochistic patients, wanted me to feel guilty for doing my job (as a defense against his sadism towards me) is another, complementary reading of the material I have presented here. However, to point this out to him would have, in my view, further exacerbated the dual relation resistance I am describing. And the idea of my simply doing my job, or functioning analytically, obscures the desire that underwrites my doing my job.

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much as he wanted to complain. My sense was that his primary wish was to tell me how bad he felt without being thrown of f by me without my desire (or his perception of my desire) getting in the way. In this case my conscious wish was to help him look at the uses to which he put his despair. He was unable, at this point in the analysis, to examine our interaction and his feelings about the analysis without severe superego intrusion. In my estimation, there was no other way out of this infinite regress than for me to stop contributing to it. In keeping with what Gabbard (2000) and Steiner (1993) describe, when I removed myself from the f ield of contest, Mr. R felt much freer to think about himself. This showed in his ability, perhaps for the f irst time in our working together, to analyze himself. As he talked about the details of how bad he felt at times, he began to notice he was feeling better. He became more curious about his own thoughts and spoke more freely. He felt more in control and less overwhelmed. Soon after, for the f irst time in the analysis, he reported a dream: Im on some kind of raft with a couple of other people, off shore, not totally at sea, but Im afraid the waves might overtake us. The raft was made out of concrete, of all things. Youd think it wouldnt f loat but it f loated just f ine. We were out there for a purpose; we had a task to do or something. Thats all I remember. He reported this dream in his typically halting manner. We discussed his discomfort in telling me the dream. He had few ideas why he was feeling uncomfortable; he just was. This is how Ive felt a lot in here, though not recently. Deaf for the moment to his having said that, I said, I wonder whether you are worried that if you let your thoughts go about the dream you would be swept out to sea. He thought about that brief ly and said he didnt think so. Though there was the possibility we might get taken out to sea, he said in a more comfortable tone, I wasnt all that worried about that. He fell silent and became more halting, and after a while he said he had no more thoughts about the dream. I then asked him about the piece of f loating concrete. Yeah, strange huh? He was silent again for a bit. It was about the size of this couch. I said: Sounds like the dream has something to do with your thoughts about being here. In response he got realistic: Well, since I am lying on this thing it seems like it was just an easy source of comparison. . . . But I have been feeling stronger recently, more hopeful. Somehow the concrete is related to that feeling, which, I have to say, Im suspicious of, because its so foreign to me. Like the sea is my despair, and somehow
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I feel more conf ident that I can swim in my depression and handle it without getting swallowed up. I then asked about the other people who are also holding onto the concrete raft. Well, I think it was only one other person, not two. It was a man. We were doing something out there. We were supposed to be there, on a task of some kind. . . . I guess, he said with surprise, the other guy sounds like you. Its hard for me to acknowledge that this might be helping me and its feeling more like were in this together.
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Mr. R, obviously halting and tentative in this series of interactions with me, peers from behind his (sado)masochistic way of being and begins to see and experience something else, some other, less masochistic way of being. His subject positionas the defeated, helpless masochistis beginning to change. Mr. R talks to me differently, in a way that is both more his own and more our own . There is a sense of the third now, the dream and our talking, however tenuous and evanescent. When I set aside my conscious agenda, my technique, he begins to f ind his own faltering voice. I had wanted a certain experience with Mr. R that was underwritten by a theory of technique (defense analysis) and my own narcissistic concerns. I first caught onto my use of technique as an expression of my own defensiveness because I saw my approach was not working. Upon further ref lection, I realized it was being driven predominantly by an old struggle of mine. Then I saw through my own defensiveness, a defensiveness that amounted to my unwillingness to listen to parts of his mind as reflected in his speech. Who was being defensive? Who was being resistant? We both were, though I was in a position to do something about it. What emerged was a clinical process less contested than shared: we were more in this together. My desire shifted to a different one, more aligned to the patients interests at the moment. And I would again wonder whether it made any difference to Mr. R, at the level at which he experienced the resistance, what factors drove my contribution to it. If my unresolved conflict were not part of this particular clinical interaction, I still may have contributed just as mightily to the resistant atmosphere by my overall approach of interpreting anxiety and defense. The gratif ication I felt from this series of interactions with Mr. R was substantial. As Friedman says, I had reached a verdict of satisfactoriness. Yet my feeling of satisfaction was not based on any conscious
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agreement or assent on the part of Mr. R. Nor did I ask him to ref lect on why he was feeling more hopeful. It seemed to me that that would be another attempt on my part to claim some therapeutic territory for myself precisely when he was just starting to feel he had a right to some of his own. I felt good simply because I was able to get out of his way enough so he could begin to see himself. There is no easy resting place in clinical psychoanalysis. With Mr. R, in subsequent months, my more open and inquiring stance to which I had become quite attacheditself became a source of resistance. Mr. R had retreated again, though perhaps not as far as I feared. The hours had become labored and tiresome. I felt the need to address his retreating more directly, which I did. This time, as though I had enough credit in the psychoanalytic bank, he was better able to talk about his fears of me and others to whom he is close without the degree of suffering that had accompanied such interactions previously. Although Mr. R was now less brittle, my focusing too frequently, no matter how tactfully, on his anxiety often led to a more contested atmosphere. In the end, my maintaining a relatively f lexible stance and not being committed to any one way of being with Mr. R seemed to be the most important aspect of my working successfully with him. As Kennedy (2000) writes in his illuminating essay on the emergence of subjectivity in psychoanalysis: I suggest that things take place in various shifting positions between analyst and patient, where the subject opens up or closes down. This shifting becomes the basis for human subjectivity. Becoming a subject involves some sort of opening up; but one cannot ignore the closing down (p. 884). Clearly in the case of Mr. R, he and I both were emerging subjects. Any particular position of mine, while possibly salutary at one point in time in contributing to an opening up of the process, could at another contribute to a closing down, to stasis. While Friedman (1993) is right to emphasize that in psychoanalysis there is a demand for work . . . a bending of purpose, [and] a conf lict of wills (p.13), we can also say that the analysts recognition of his demands on the patient, his recognition of the desire and will inherent in the endeavor of analyzing, is the f irst step towards moving beyond the dual relation. Such recognition is often crucial in creating a space for something other to emerge, a third thing, born of the analytic interaction but slightly separate from the individual participants, a discourse less contested than shared.
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