Sacred Psychoanalysis - etheses Repository - University of ...

JG elicited an idealized, positive and clearly paternal transference where the hug from him
gave me more physical contact than I have experienced with my own father. PM was an
enigma as I have found it difficult to identify any particular transference. I liked him, felt he
had important things to say, noted he took risks in what he said but I was also left feeling
that a great deal was not said. I noted at the time of the interview that he was one analyst I
would have felt very comfortable being in analysis with. Reflection now suggests to me
that my meeting with PM could be a twin transference where he represented aspects of me
(Lewin 2004). Knowledge of transference phenomena is one aspect of interpreting the
impact of the interview of the person as in fact they are not transference objects, they are
people in themselves. Personal therapy has enabled me to identify these potential
transferences and therefore this awareness adds reflexive dimensions of how these might
shape meaning in vital human-to-human encounters.
Thirdly, the use of metaphors and dreams. In a ‘traditional’ psychoanalytic encounter a
patient/analysand lies on a couch out of eye contact with the analyst and free associates
while recalling their dreams. 386 In contemporary practice with a greater focus on
interpreting transference relationships, the use of metaphors is more common and the
subject of current debate. 387 Given the nature of psychoanalytic interviewing dreams are
less likely to occur and be available to use as a tool to examine unconscious
communications and meaning, although I did dream between the two interviews of JG.
Marshall argues that ‘metaphors provide the interface between the conscious and the
386
There are variations in clinical practice but this is what has become the myth of psychoanalysis as often
analysts repeat what they have experienced in their own analysis. The couch and the interpretation of dreams
form key images in the cultural iconography of psychoanalysis.
387
The journal Psychoanalytic Inquiry published its first volume in 2009 as a special edition on the subject of
metaphor.
239