A Contemporary Kleinian Perspective on Trust: Discussion on “The Analyst’s Experience of Trust and Mistrust”

Abstract

Dr. Novack presents a very stimulating and important paper discussing concepts of the analyst’s trust of the patient. Several issues are raised in my discussion, stemming from the difference between a phenomenological experience near analytic approach and a structural approach emphasizing unconscious processes in the analytic relationship. The first issue that I raise involves problems of power that reflect problems in the relationship of asymmetry and mutuality in general, and specifically as we focus on trust in the analytic relationship, which seems to demand an egalitarian relationship between patient and analyst. I discuss trust as involving experiences outside of conscious experience involving implicit relational knowing, the dynamics of projective identification, and the need for the analyst to symbolize—give voice to—the patient’s terrifying belief that she could never have a valued man. I suggest that the difficulty that arose with her patient, Julia, was not a casual mistake but could be seen within the context of a modern Oedipal struggle about being a powerful and successful woman.