Searching for the Analyst’s Reveries
by Fred Busch, PhD
Abstract
Over the last 20 years the post-Bionians have begun nothing less than to spell out the beginning of the metabolizing process (reverie) in the analyst’s mind that takes place with under-represented mental states. This bold attempt leading to new discoveries, and its many possibilities for understanding patients, seems to have obscured differences amongst leading post-Bionians with regard to how they see the forms of reverie, and how they might best be worked with. With Bion’s perspective as a background, this paper explores three approaches, and how they differ with regard to whether one follows the views of early or late Bion. Technical issues associated with these views are raised. A clinical example is offered as one way to use reverie.
Link to Online Publication [fulltext can be requested from the library].
International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 99(3): 569-589, May 2018.
About the Author: Fred Busch, PhD, is a Training and Supervising Analyst at the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute, USA. He is the author of The Analyst’s Reveries: Explorations in Bion’s Enigmatic Concept (2019) and Creating a Psychoanalytic Mind (2013).
Previous Posts:
Murray M. Schwartz, PhD (2018). Psychoanalysis in My Life: An Intellectual Memoir. American Imago, 75(2), pp. 125-152.
Rodrigo Barahona, PsyaD (2018). Book Review of “Psychoanalytic Technique: Contributions from Ego Psychology” (Técnica Psicoanalítica: Aportaciones de la Psicología del Yo) By Cecilio Paniagua. Madrid: Editorial Tébar Flores, 2014. 426 pp. Psychoanalytic Quarterly, 87(2): 369-379.
Michael Robbins, MD (2018). The Primary Process: Freud’s Profound Yet Neglected Contribution to the Psychology of Consciousness. Psychoanalytic Inquiry, 38(3):186-197.
Mark Schechter, MD; Benjamin Herbstman, MD; Elsa Ronningstam, PhD; Mark Goldblatt, MD. (2018). Emerging Adults, Identity Development, and Suicidality: Implications for Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy. Psychoanalytic Study of the Child, 71:20-39, 2018.
Anton O. Kris, MD (2018). “Love’s Not Time’s Fool”: Some Continuities, Discontinuities, and Alterations in Psychoanalysis During My Lifetime. Psychoanalytic Study of the Child, 71:123-129, 2018.
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