The Role of the Patient-Analyst Match in the Process and Outcome of Psychoanalysis (Routledge, 2020) is a new book by a BPSI member, Judy Kantrowitz, PhD. The volume is a compilation of her previously published papers on the patient-analyst “match” and its effect on the process and outcome of psychoanalysis.
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The match between patient and analyst places attention on the dynamic effect of interactions of character and conflict of both participants on the process that evolves between them—a spectrum of compatibility and incompatibility that is relevant to the analytic work. Classical psychoanalysis had been viewed as a “one-person” enterprise, with one analyst interchangeable with another. Analysts’ experiences of countertransference reactions were viewed as unresolved conflicts, reasons to return to personal treatment, not inevitable and potentially informative about the current analytic work. This view began to shift in the 1980s, with Judy Kantrowitz’s work contributing to the development of the recognition that psychoanalysis was a “two-person” process. In this collection of her most significant papers, Kantrowitz explores the importance of the match, which refers to observable styles, attitudes and personal characteristics that may be rooted in residual and unanalyzed conflicts, triggered in any patient-analyst pair. Match is neither a predictive nor static concept. Rather it refers to the unfolding transaction that itself that may shift and change during the course of analytic work.
The introduction places the patient-analyst match in a historical context, emphasizing the current loss of focus on the character and conflicts of the individuals. Pulling together the history of the shift in theory from the one-person to two-person understanding of the psychoanalytic enterprise, The Role of the Patient-Analyst Match in the Process and Outcome of Psychoanalysis will be of great interest to contemporary psychoanalysts.
About the Author: Judy Leopold Kantrowitz, PhD, is a Training and Supervising Analyst at the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute and an Associate Clinical Professor at Harvard Medical School. She is the author of three books, The Patient’s Impact on the Analyst (1996); Writing about Patients: Responsibilities, Risks, and Ramifications (2006), and Myths of Termination: What patients can teach psychoanalysts about endings (2014). She is on the Editorial Board of the Psychoanaltyic Quarterly and has a private practice in Brookline, MA.
Members can borrow this and other books by Judy Kantrowitz from the BPSI library. Click here to watch the video of the Meet the Author webinar recorded on Sep 27, 2021.
