ABSTRACT
The practice of psychoanalysis has gained a great deal from narrative innovations. These usually appear in the form of themes or headlines to use in giving accounts of clinical work. But because, in the usually shadowy realm of countertransference, it is not possible to draw sharp distinctions with confidence or to rule out a mix of influences, one must allow that, to varying degrees, loneliness can and often does enter into the feeling of aloneness. A 1994 issue of Psychoanalytic Inquiry shows, for example, how a group of Kleinian analysts in London employ to good effect a variety of thematic headings for a number of cases, each of which has many descriptive features in common with the others. This thematic variety has always been valued by clinical analysts for sparking their imagination and technical resourcefulness as they go on trying to be as helpful as possible to each of their analysands.
