My Psychoanalytic Journey

Evolving Concepts of Therapeutic Action Both Interpretation and Support Both interpretative and supportive interventions can be therapeutic. They reference the Menninger Psychotherapy Research Project, the final report of which was written by Wallerstein (1986). He “examined the treatments of 42 patients and found that supportive strategies resulted in structural changes just as durable as those brought about by interpretive approaches. Calling attention to our own idealization of insight, Wallerstein noted that interpretive and supportive elements are always intertwined, and supportive or relationship aspects of the treatment should not be denigrated.” Shift from Reconstruction to the Here-and-Now Reconstruction has been de-emphasized, “and we spend less of our time digging for buried relics from the patient’s past.” Instead, “much of our focus is on the way the here-and-now interactions between analyst and patient provides insight into the influence of the patient’s past on patterns

Introduction Drew Westen (1999) writes that recent cognitive science has provided evidence for the the following psychoanalytic propositions: (1) that enduring aspects of personality begin to coalesce in childhood, and that child- hood experiences play an important role in personality development, shaping in particular the ways people form later social relationships; (2) that mental representations of self, others, and relationships guide peo- ple’s interactions with others and play a substantial part in many forms of psychopathology; (3) that mental processes, including affective and motivational processes, operate simultaneously and in parallel, so that individuals can have conflicting feelings toward the same person or situation and can craft compromises outside of awareness; (4) that personality development involves not only learning to regulate sexual and aggressive feelings and wishes, but also moving from an immature dependent state to a mature interdependent on