ABSTRACT
Wolstein's early portrayal of analytic impasses is remarkably similar to what Benjamin and Lewis Aron describes in his work on the third. The collaborative work and direct acknowledgment of the analyst's conflict that led to the resolution of the dangerous cruising behaviors and the associated analytic impasse. Gentile reexamined Winnicott's theory of transitional space by elaborating on several contemporary psychoanalytic theories of the third. As psychoanalysis became the dominant form of treatment in American psychiatry following World War II, the psychoanalytic establishment went to great lengths to differentiate psychoanalysis from other psychotherapies. Intent on aligning psychoanalysis with the growing prestige of medicine and its increasing specialization, the psychoanalytic establishment was determined that psychoanalysis be considered a form of medical treatment. Eager to differentiate psychoanalysis from what he considered the more primitive treatments of his day, which were based on suggestion, Freud repeatedly, proclaimed that he could eliminate suggestion from his treatment of patients.
