Why Analysts Need Their Patients’Transferences

Abstract

This lead article to the Special Issue of the American Journal of Psychoanalysis, celebrating Charles Rycroft's life and work, was originally published in 1993. It is republished here with the generous encouragement and permission of Rycroft's widow, Jenny Pearson. This article is part of many, written by Rycroft on the psychoanalytic process and the role of projective identification in psychoanalytic training relationships. Here, Rycroft continues his thoughts in his previous paper, “On Ablation of Parental Images” (I965–1973), on the illusion of having created oneself. In the process of ablation of one's parental images and a search for replacement of them, the psychoanalyst is vulnerable to enact grandiose phantasies to become the new omnipotent parent in the analytic relationship. An overemphasis on the role of the transference can contribute to such phantasies of both analysts and their patients, interfere with the healthy growth of candidates, and become a process in which candidates surrender their healthy judgements and individual voices. The challenge in psychoanalytic training relationships is to reach a state of independence of thought, while at the same time achieve an ability to recognize the immense debt all analysts have to their analysts, teachers and even patients.