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Regression in the countertransference: working with the archetype of the abandoned child
Author(s) -
Bright George
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
journal of analytical psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.285
H-Index - 23
eISSN - 1468-5922
pISSN - 0021-8774
DOI - 10.1111/j.1468-5922.2009.01786.x
Subject(s) - countertransference , archetype , psychology , psychoanalysis , unconscious mind , transference , projective identification , relation (database) , identity (music) , psychotherapist , psychoanalytic theory , social psychology , developmental psychology , philosophy , aesthetics , computer science , theology , database
: The author describes briefly some experiences of his sense of non‐existence as an analyst in relation to five patients. He considers the possible countertransference significance of these experiences and puts forward a hypothesis that his sense of non‐existence as an analyst might be a clue to regression in the patient to the anxieties of a baby without a mother, even though other clinical evidence of regression might be lacking. Referring back to Jung's early formulation of transference and countertransference as aspects of the unconscious identity shared between analyst and patient, he further develops his hypothesis, suggesting that, in the cases he has presented, analyst and patient were relating through shared dynamic roots in the archetype of the abandoned child. He briefly demonstrates how the understanding thus achieved was of clinical use in the analyses of the patients he has presented.