ABSTRACT
Taking up the case of a young man who exhibited a constant distancedness in the analytic situation (introduced in Chapter 2), this chapter revisits, clarifies, and affirms some of the technical points made in the previous chapters by applying them to the case example. Walking the reader through the process of alleviating the analysand’s transference-resistance which had led to a combative analytic situation, Morgenthaler issues several warnings, two of which are of particular importance. First, urging the analyst to focus on the emotional movement that characterizes the transference, Morgenthaler emphatically warns against the analyst sharing in the analysand’s acting-out, as a confusion of id activities with ego-achievements is, according to Morgenthaler, very often the essential blocking point in an analysis, leading to legitimate disappointment regarding one’s analysis. Second, the chapter insistently emphasizes the centrality of the distinction between two modes of reaction revealed by the interpretive process: on the one hand, in the transference, the analyst may directly represent a particular figure from the analysand’s childhood. On the other hand, and often mistaken for the former, the analyst may merely prompt in the analysand ways of reacting that represent affects in connection with specific memory traces from the past.
