ABSTRACT
The issue of confrontation in the interpretive process is the focus of Chapter 9. Confrontation, both in attitude and action, is a central aspect of the interpretive process. Confrontation typically involves the confrontation of the patient’s defense processes deployed to protect the patient’s ego or to maintain a particular configuration of activated complexes. Confrontation also involves engagement of the patient’s resistance to change and a challenge to experience themselves in a new way. In addition to a general discussion of confrontation, confrontation patterns from the archetypal realm are also explored, particularly themes from fairytales and the Bible. The emotional difficulties encountered by the analyst around confrontation are discussed, especially as related to the analyst’s self-image, developmental experiences, cultural influences, and ambivalence toward confrontation. The willingness to engage from a perspective of confrontation creates an analytic tension of opposites that is essential to the analytic process. Finding a balance between the maternal and paternal aspects of analytic activity is a characteristic that differentiates a process that is analytic from one that is merely therapeutic.
