ABSTRACT
The author reflects on the interaction between the analyst’s dedicated attention to the patient’s internal object relations and the analyst’s self-reflective participation. Our stops and starts of attention to the patient’s internal objects and our own is in some sense one of the most important elements of our personal participation. The author suggests that the patient’s and analyst’s needs for privacy and the illusion of privacy in the presence of the other, undertheorized within relational theory, is not at odds with an emphasis on valuing the patient’s capacity for a “read” on the analyst. Needs for privacy and the illusion of privacy held by patient and analyst are usefully integrated with any psychoanalytic theory and form part of the basis of intimate regulatory systems between two people. Finally, the author regards relational theory as a meta-theory, a theory that is aimed at a different level of theoretical discourse than most if not all other clinical theories. As a meta-theory, it targets overarching considerations in clinical work, such as the one focused on in this paper, namely the intimacy and necessity of private self-reflection.
