Opening Laplanche’s Window: Transference-Countertransference in Psychoanalytic Group Psychotherapy

Abstract

Comparing analytic activity to a spaceship launching, Laplanche (1999, pp. 231-232) suggested that there are “windows;” opportune interpretative moments. Laplanche emphasized the enduring impact of intergenerational “enigmatic messages,” such that all individuals cope with an essential “alterity” (otherness to oneself). He did not consider the countertransference implications. I propose that the analyst must also open the self-reflective window and pass through “originary situations” to prepare for intervention. In accordance with Kaes’ (2007, p. 98) formulation that “the unconscious is structured like a group,” I illustrate how unique windows of opportunity exist in psychoanalytic group treatment. Sharing and competing in a therapeutic space with “like me’s,” group members reexperience intense “horizontal” as well as “vertical” transferences, as does its leader. Clinical examples illustrate my efforts to mediate among interacting “translations” of early developmental experience—mine as well as other group members—to understand emerging psychic material.