ABSTRACT
We live in a psychoanalytic age in which many of the basic underpinnings of the classical model of mind and theory of the analytic situation have become untenable. There are many reasons for this in terms of developments both within and outside of psychoanalysis proper (see Racker, 1968; Levenson, 1972, 1983; Greenberg, 1991; Maroda, 1991, 1999; Mitchell, 1993, 1997; Davies and Frawley, 1994; Gill, 1994; Aron, 1996; Renik, 1996; Benjamin, 1998; Bromberg, 1998; Hoffman, 1998). The central, enormously impactful shift has been the realization that the analytic relationship is no longer usefully understood as the sterile operating theater Freud believed it could be. 1 The analytic relationship is not as different from other human relationships as Freud wanted it to be. In fact, the intersubjective engagement between patient and analyst has become increasingly understood as the very fulcrum of and vehicle for the deep characterological change psychoanalysis facilitates. This has made it impossible to sustain the pragmatic dissociations that aided earlier generations of analysts in their management of the often intense feelings that are generated on both sides of the analytic relationship.
