"Rules of technique in Psychoanalysis are invented at points of ambiguity, to help therapists feel their way along the edges of the unexplored. A patient who can tolerate the precariousness of such a place can sometimes help to show the way, much as moonlight, striking at the right angle, can guide a lost traveler through dense woods. This is what makes Anna O. and R. N. such powerful models: they were courageous enough to work right at the edge of the darkness.
Patients like this are desperate to have therapists who can bravely accompany them into the depths. Mental illness is exhausting. Having to add the burden of the therapist's fear can make it unendurable. Patients know they can't cure themselves. They need doctors who can bear witness to the terror and reclaim them from its power.
Many really gifted clinicians, like Ferenczi and Frieda, are unable fully to explain why they do certain things; they can only say what they tried. This is why Ferenczi's most important work is his 'Clinical Diary' and Frieda's is a text, 'Principles of Intensive Psychotherapy', a diary of a different kind.
Like people with exceptional skill of any kind, therapists like this do what feels right at the moment, making subtle adjustments as they go along. Attending simultaneously to many levels, they trust their intuitions, letting the patient's unconscious mingle with their own. They allow themselves to be guided "by instinct," whether or not they can explain what this means. Freud was just the opposite — better at describing his method than using it. But his descriptions were so brilliant and seductive that analysts have come to value theory over clinical accomplishment. Frieda may have helped to heal her patients, sometimes even the sickest ones, but she couldn't explain how she did this, which is why Freud has followers and Frieda doesn't."
Gail A. Hornstein, To Redeem One Person is to Redeem the World [pag 158]
Showing posts with label Ferenczi. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ferenczi. Show all posts
