Eigen (2005), whose thinking represents well the Romantic sensibility in psychoanalysis, sees the analyst as more of an agent who evokes new experience than an instrument for understanding what is. Similarly, Lacan has suggested that the purpose of interpretations is to “make waves” (Eisenstein , 2007). Openness to traveling the emerging pathway, what Casement (1985) calls “learning from the patient,” is a sine qua non of an analytic process that seeks to expand the patient’s ways of being (Summers, 2005a ; 2012). It follows that the analyst must adopt a technical stance of not knowing. The tempting desire for omniscience among those who sit in the analytic chair runs the underappreciated danger of suffocating the openness required for self formation (Eigen, 1993a). Interference with the analytic space can be subtle, but the consequences may impair the patient’s freedom to explore the unknown. It can be seductive for both parties to enact the roles of knower and known, but the more the analyst is able to sustain the openness of the analytic space, the greater is the opportunity for the analysand to uncover new possibilities.
Although Bion’s admonition to greet every analytic hour without desire or memory is fanciful on its face, one can appreciate the spirit of Bion’s interpretation of the analytic stance as openness to the unknown. Eigen (1993a) interprets Bion’s dictum as an injunction to “opt for the primary of perception and attention over memory and knowledge” (p. 125) and cautions that attempting to control where the truth goes risks imposing on the emerging truth of the patient’s experience. And here we come to a fundamental shift in the analytic stance. We have now reconceptualized the analytic task from knowing the patient to engaging her being, an analytic attitude suggestive of Heidegger’s (1968/ 1954) concept of openness to Being. When the analyst adopts this way of attending to the patient, he has shifted his top priority from discovering new knowledge to receiving the being of the other. This interpretation of the analytic task does not obviate the role of understanding; it sees the value of insight in its ability to make contact with and expand the patient’s experience. In this sense, contemporary analysis accords with the Romantic value system articulated by Fichte’s (1848) statement that Being is prior to knowledge. Knowledge, or self awareness, subserves the creation of new ways of being and relating.
Summers, Frank (2013-05-20). The Psychoanalytic Vision: The Experiencing Subject, Transcendence, and the Therapeutic Process (p. 53). Taylor and Francis. Kindle Edition.
authentic analysis 