Among the most astute comments concerning what it means for an analysis to be alive has come (as one might expect), not from an analyst, but from a novelist and essayist, speaking in 1884 about the art of fiction:
The good health of an art which undertakes to reproduce life must demand that it be perfectly free. It lives upon exercise and the very meaning of exercise is freedom. The only obligation to which in advance we may hold a novel, without incurring the accusation of being arbitrary, is that it be interesting. [Henry James 1884, p. 49]
James’ statement about the novel (and implicitly about the relationship of writer and reader) has important relevance to the art of psychoanalysis and to the understanding of the relationship of analyst and analysand. The idea that above all an analysis must be interesting is for me both self-evident and a revolutionary conception (cf. Phillips 1996). To be interesting, the analysis must be free to “exercise ,” to shape itself and be given shape in any way that the participants are able to invent. The freedom to “exercise” is the freedom to experiment : “Art lives upon discussion , upon experiment, upon curiosity, upon variety of attempt , upon the exchange of views and the comparison of standpoints” (H. James 1884, pp. 4445). When the analysis is alive, it unselfconsciously manages for periods of time to be an experiment that has left the well charted waters of prescribed form; it is a discussion fueled by curiosity and by variety of attempt; it is an endeavor that depends upon genuine exchange of views and comparison of standpoints.
Ogden, Thomas (1999-12-31). Reverie and Interpretation: Sensing Something Human (pp. 7-8). Karnac Books. Kindle Edition.
authentic analysis 