The Analyst's Experience of the Depressive Position : The Melancholic Errand of Psychoanalysis

In __The Analyst’s Experience of the Depressive Position: The Melancholic Errand of Psychoanalysis__, Steven Cooper explores a subject matter previously applied more exclusively to patients, but rarely to psychoanalysts. Cooper probes the analyst’s experience of the depressive position in the analytic situation. These experiences include the pleasures and warmth of helping patients to bear what appears unbearable as well as the poignant experiences of, limitation, incompleteness, repetition and disappointment as a vital part of clinical work. He describes a seam in clinical work in which the analyst is always trying to find and refind a position from which he can help patients to work with these experiences. __The Analyst’s Experience of the Depressive Position__ includes: An exploration of the analyst’s participation and resistance to helping patients hold some of the most unsettling parts of their experience. Cooper draws some analogies between elements of theory about aesthetic experience in terms of how we bear new and old experience. An examination of the patient as an artist of sorts and the analyst as a form of psychic boundary artist: just as the creative act of art involves the capacity to transform pain and ruin into the depressive position, so does the co-creation of how we understand the patient’s mind through the mind of the analyst. Clinical chapters which focus on helping patients move from paranoid to depressive positions, with an emphasis on the analyst’s personal participation in that process. __The Analyst’s Experience of the Depressive Position__ explores a rich, provocative and long overdue topic relevant to psychoanalysts, psychodynamically oriented psychotherapists, as well as students and teachers of both psychoanalysis and psychodynamic psychotherapy. In The Analyst's Experience of the Depressive Position: The Melancholic Errand of Psychoanalysis, Steven Cooper explores a subject matter previously applied more exclusively to patients, but rarely to psychoanalysts. Cooper probes the analyst's experience of the depressive position in the analytic situation. These experiences include the pleasures and warmth of helping patients to bear what appears unbearable, as well as the poignant experiences of limitation, incompleteness, repetition and disappointment as a vital part of clinical work. He describes a seam in clinical work in which the analyst is always trying to find and re-find a position from which he can help patients to work with these experiences. The Analyst's Experience of the Depressive Position includes an exploration of the analyst's participation and resistance to helping patients hold some of the most unsettling parts of their experience. Cooper draws some analogies between elements of theory about aesthetic experience in terms of how we bear new and old experience. He provides an examination of the patient as an artist of sorts and the analyst as a form of psychic boundary artist. Just as the creative act of art involves the capacity to transform pain and ruin into the depressive position, so does the co-creation of how we understand the patient's mind through the mind of the analyst. The Analyst's Experience of the Depressive Position explores a rich, provocative and long overdue topic relevant to psychoanalysts, psycho-dynamically oriented psychotherapists, as well as students and teachers of both psychoanalysis and psychodynamic psychotherapy. Contents 8 Acknowledgments 9 Introduction 10 1 Ruin and beauty I: Some basic assumptions and models of the analyst’s relationship to the depressive position 22 2 Ruin and beauty II: The analyst’s experience and resistance to grief and sense of limitation in the analytic process 38 3 The melancholic errand of psychoanalysis: Exploring the analyst’s “good enough”experiences of repetition 55 4 Exploring a patient’s shift from relative silence to verbal expressiveness: Observations on an element of the analyst’s particip 70 5 The analyst’s object relationship to the psychoanalytic process 91 6 The things we carry: Finding/ creating the object and the analyst’s self-reflective participation 106 7 Revisiting the analyst as old and new object: The analyst’s failures and the therapeutic action of psychoanalysis 125 8 Reflections on the aesthetics of the psychic boundary concept: Uses and misuses 143 9 he theorist as an unconscious participant: Emerging and unintended crossings in a post-pluralistic psychoanalysis 157 Index 179 1. Ruin and beauty I : some basic assumptions and models of the analyst's relationship to the depressive position -- 2. Ruin and beauty II : the analyst's experience and resistance to grief and sense of limitation in the analytic process -- 3. The melancholic errand of psychoanalysis : exploring the analyst's 'good enough' experiences of repetition -- 4. Exploring a patient's shift from relative silence to verbal expressiveness : observations on an element of the analyst's participation -- 5. The analyst's object relationship to the psychoanalytic process -- 6. The things we carry : finding/creating the object and the analyst's self-reflective participation -- 7. Revisiting the analyst as old and new object : the analyst's failures and the therapeutic action of psychoanalysis -- 8. Reflections on the aesthetics of the psychic boundary concept : uses and misuses -- 9. The theorist as an unconscious participant : emerging and unintended crossings in a post-pluralistic psychoanalysis