ABSTRACT
The notion of analytic survival is one of those terms in common psychoanalytic currency, and it is as though we all know and understand the meaning. The recommendation of neutrality has been a source of much discussion within the psychoanalytic community, and there are views that it may not be achievable or desirable. Those who come for psychoanalysis or psychoanalytic therapy have, of necessity, resorted to ways of protecting themselves: through depression, self-sufficiency, compliance, drugs, perversions, or violence, to name a few. They have, in a very general sense, however, reached a point when the old ways are no longer serving them. One is the self-analytic element as an inner experiencing of oneself as an analyst, and the application of mind to such inner experience. The analyst must, therefore, constantly be attending to inner reactions to patients. Under the domination of their internal objects, analytic survival may pose a threat to their fragile internal world.
