Susan S. Levine: Loving Psychoanalysis: Technique and Theory in the Therapeutic Relationship

Abstract

Despite the increased attention to countertransference and the relational turn in psychoanalysis, with few exceptions (i.e., Levenson 1994) little has been written about the analyst’s desire and its impact on the therapeutic process (Siebold, 2009). In Loving Psychoanalysis, Levine attempts to redress this lack. The book is a series of chapters, many of which are reprints of previously published articles. The theme that integrates these articles is Levine’s effort to explore the analyst’s desires, interests and participation in the analytic process. Her playful and considered explorations of clinical processes include examining ideas such as the Pygmalion myth, the aesthetics of analysis, and the application of chaos theory, which she offers as a possible way to understand complexity in psychoanalytic thought. In Chapter 1, Levine suggests that despite the numerous myths that exist, only two, Narcissus and Oedipus gained import in Freud’s psychoanalytic theorizing. She offers Pygmalion, first depicted by Ovid and subsequently adapted by Shaw, as another myth that has relevance for the analytic process. Drawing on other psychoanalytic thinkers, Levine urges us to expand our thinking about the analyst’s narcissistic desires. Aren’t we all potential Henry Higgens? Aren’t we all vulnerable to attempts at transforming Eliza Doolittle into the analyst’s image and likeness? In using Pygmallion as a cautionary tale, she also allows that psychoanalysis might be a shared fiction in which the analyst believes she will be unaffected by the story being created with her patient. Throughout this chapter Levine uses different theorists such as Winnicott, Lacan and Kohut to examine the mirroring function of the analyst as a necessary, but also problematic part of the analytic process. That the patient wants to cure his or her pain is only a part of how they come to choose the analyst or stay in analysis. The pain of the dyadic interaction, the reflection in the mirror, which is also a reflection of the analyst’s flaws, and the pre-oedipal love of the analyst by the patient are aspects of the treatment that are captured in the Pygmalion myth.