Process and non-process in analytic work.

Abstract

The 'talking cure', named by Anna O. and discovered by Freud, has been widely expanded and diversified throughout our century. Our objective in this paper is to underline several points which seem to define the analytic process. We believe that forthcoming progress in psychoanalysis must arise from the study of clinical experience at its frontiers, at its topmost limits, in its failures. For this reason, we have concentrated our search on the analytic non-process, in the very places where the process stumbles or halts. This has led us to propose the introduction of several terms: 'field', 'bastion', 'second look'. When the process stumbles or halts, the analyst must question himself about the obstacle. The obstacle involves the analysand's transference and the analyst's countertransference, and poses rather confusing problems. The arrest of the process introduces us fully into the nature of its movement, its inherent temporality. If the process is to continue, then by what main-spring can we accomplish it? We describe this particular dialectic of processes and non-process as a task of overcoming the obstacles which describe its success or failure.