ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the therapeutic implications of the views of the psychoanalytical relationship. The development of psychoanalytic objectivity and distance, which have to be combined with ready empathy, are similarly an arduous task for the analyst. The most neglected feature of the psychoanalytic relationship still seems to be that it is a relationship: a very peculiar relationship, but a definite one. Patient and analyst need one another. The patient comes to the analyst because of internal conflicts that prevent him from enjoying life, and he begins to use the analyst not only to resolve them, but increasingly as a receptacle for his pent-up feelings. The psychoanalytic relationship consists partly in the replacement of an object-relationship by a mutual identification, or rather by identification supplemented by an attenuated object-relationship. The psychoanalytic arrangements are designed to effect the breach for therapeutic purposes. The chapter considers how the atmosphere of psychoanalytic training and the organization of a psychoanalytical society could foster it.
