ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on an aspect of a clinical psychoanalysis which may only occasionally develop into its full potential but which is part of almost all persons' analytic experience: regression to dependence. The kernel of regression to dependence in psychoanalysis is an ordinary abandonment on the analysand's part of reporting or thinking oneself out; during silence, he experiences something else. To understand regression to dependence, it is important to differentiate between the analysand's uses of silence. The regressive side of the experience is characterized by the giving up of higher ego functions, and the childlike aspect of it is characterized by a relation to the analyst which mirrors a child's 'good-enough' dependence on the mother who looks after the child's ego. The fundamental modes of perception seem to be a part of the progress of regression to dependence. Regression to dependence allows a person to gain important insights from within the self via fundamentally intrasubjective means.
