Developing a Psychoanalytic Practice

• Published in: Psychoanalytic inquiry 2000-10, Vol.20 (4), p.574-593
• Main Author: Bernstein, Stephen B.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• ISSN: 0735-1690; 1940-9133
• DOI: 10.1080/07351692009348908

This paper examines two methods of developing a psychoanalytic practice. The first is an "internal" approach that helps a patient make the transition from therapy to analysis with the same analyst. This may be accomplished by attenuating the patient's unconscious fears of analysis as a facilitator of an anticipated regressive loss of control and as a reactivator of feared desires and impulses. Increased motivation for analysis may also result from a therapy that leads the patient to an awareness that an ongoing level of distress is internal, together with the experience of a deepened therapy and of the analyst as safe and potentially providing relief. The second method of developing an analytic practice is an "external" approach that provides others, such as analytic, mental health, medical, and academic colleagues, an experience of the analyst as person and some idea of the type of work he or she does.