Mutative Action: From Insight to Productive Use of Uncomfortable Countertransference Experience

Abstract

ABSTRACT The relative value of insight as a mutative factor in psychoanalysis has long been a central question in the literature. Most analysts of this generation believe that although insight has clear value, it isn’t normally sufficient to produce structural change in most patients. Alternatively, the tide has shifted strongly to the view that the analytic relationship per se, has more explanatory power in understanding why patients change. This essay attempts to deconstruct which elements of the analytic relationship might have the most mutative power. My argument reflects the belief that analysts’ productive use of uncomfortable countertransference experience is key to ideal therapeutic outcome, whereas failure to productively use countertransference experience, usually experience that is consciously recognized by the analyst, is the primary factor in contributing to compromised or failed analyses.