Seduction, Surrender, and Transformation: Emotional Engagement in the Analytic Process

217 Pages·2002·82.01 MB·English

by  Karen J. Maroda

Seduction,
Surrender, and Transformation
RELATIONAL PERSPECfIVES BOOK SERIES
Volume 13
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RELATIONAL PERSPECTIVES BOOK SERIES
STEPHEN A. MITCHELL AND LEWIS ARON
Series Editors
Volume 1 Volume 7
Rita Wiley McCleary Charles Spezzano and
Conversing with Uncertainty: Gerald J. Gargiulo, editors
Practicing Psychotherapy in a Soul on the Couch: Spirituality,
Hospital Setting Religion, and Morality in
Contemporary Psychoanalysis
Volume 2
Charles Spezzano VolumeS
Affect in Psychoanalysis: Donnel B. Stem
A Clinical Synthesis Unformulated Experience:
From Dissociation to Imagination in
Volume 3
Psychoanalysis
Neil Altman
The Analyst in the Inner City: Volume 9
Race, Class, and Culture Stephen A. Mitchell
Through a Psychoanalytic Lens Influence and Autonomy in
Psychoanalysis
Volume 4
Lewis Aron Volume 10
A Meeting ofM inds: Neil J. Skolnick and David E. Scharff,
Mutuality in Psychoanalysis editors
Fairbairn, Then and Now
VolumeS
Joyce A. Slochower Volume 11
Holding and Psychoanalysis: Stuart A. Pizer
A Relational Perspective Building Bridges: Negotiation of
Paradox in Psychoanalysis
Volume 6
Barbara Gerson, editor Volume 12
The Therapist as a Person: Lewis Aron and
Life Crises, Life Choices, Frances Sommer Anderson, editors
Life Experiences, and Relational Perspectives
Their Effects on Treatment on the Body
Volume 13
Karen J. Maroda
Seduction, Surrender, and Transformation:
Emational Engagement in the Analytic Process
In Preparation
Emmanuel Ghent
Process and Paradox
James S. Grotstein
Psychic Presences
Rochelle G. K. Kainer
The Collapse oft he Self and Its Therapeutic Restoration
Stephm A Mitchell and Lewis Aron, editors
Relational Psychoanalysis: The Emergence of a Tradition
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Seduction,
Surrender, and Transformation
Emotional Engagement in the
Analytic Process
Karen J. Maroda
~ THE ANALYTIC PRESS
1999 Hillsdale, NJ London
Copyrighted Material
© 1998 by The Analytic Press, Inc., Publishers
First paperback printing 2002.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form: by
photostat, microform, retrieval system, or any other means, without the prior written
permission of the publisher.
Published by The Analytic Press, Inc.
101 West Street, Hillsdale, NJ 07642
www.analyticpress.com
Typeset by in Goudy Old Style 11/13 by Qualifax, Bloomfield, NJ
Index by Leonard Rosenbaum, Washington, DC
Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
Maroda, Karen J.
Seduction, surrender, and transformation : emotional engagement in the
analytic process 1K aren J. Maroda
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-88163-397-6
1. Psychotherapist and patient. 2. Psychoanalysis. I. Title.
RC480.8M37 2002
616,,89'17--dc21
for Library of Congress 98-50500
CIP
Printed in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3
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Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction
Chapter 1 11
On Seduction, Intellectualization, and the Bad Mother:
Underlying Assumptions of the Analytic Process
Chapter 2 49
On the Analyst's Fear of Surrender: Can Sex Be Far Behind?
Chapter 3 65
Show Some Emotion: Completing the Cycle of
Affective Communication
Chapter 4 87
Why Self-Disclosure Works in Spite of the Analyst's Imperfections
Chapter 5 105
Since Feeling Is First: Projective Identification and
Countertransference Interventions
Chapter 6 121
Enactment: When the Patient's and Analyst's Pasts Converge
Chapter 7 141
Therapeutic Necessity or Malpractice? Physical Contact Reconsidered
Chapter 8 161
Reflections on the Analyst's Legitimate Power and the
Existence of Reality
Conclusion 181
References 185
Index 195
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To my parents, Jean and Frank Maroda
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Acknowledgments
want to thank Lew Aron for his tremendously generous support,
which includes the invitation to participate in the Relational Book
! Series, and his careful reading and critiquing of the first draft of this
manuscript. I am also thankful for his ongoing collegial encouragement
and his appreciation for my ideas and ambitions. Lew Aron is that rare
individual who views his colleagues not as competitors, but as collabora-
tors in the advancement of psychoanalytic theory and practice. I also
want to thank Stephen Mitchell, co-editor of this series, who has sup-
ported my work over the past few years, particularly in encouraging me
to listen to my own voice, even if it strayed from the politically correct.
Practicing in Milwaukee does not provide me with many analytic
colleagues and I greatly value my national support network, which
includes not only Lew and Steve, but also the women of Section III,
Women, Gender & Psychoanalysis, who invited me to join the board
several years ago and whose members have offered their ongoing friend-
ship, collaboration, and enthusiasm. It's nice to know that even when
you have the misfortune of speaking at the same time as a star-studded
panel of internationally-known analysts, there will always be some famil-
iar faces in the audience.
vii
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Vlll Acknowledgments
I also want to thank Joe Reppen, who has probably done more to
further my career than anyone else. Since inviting me to contribute to
Psychoanalytic Books many years ago, I have done countless reviews in
that journal, and have been offered opportunities to write as a result of
Joe's faith in both my ideas and my ability to communicate them. He is
always there for me, ready to discuss any idea or potential project, always
with an openness and intellectual virtuosity that are invaluable to me.
It goes without saying that I am grateful to my patients for continuing
to educate me about the therapeutic process and myself. I want particu-
larly to thank the patients referred to in this book, especially "Susan,"
who gave me permission to write about them and who read and critiqued
what I wrote, letting me know when I had missed the mark.
Lastly, I want to thank my partner, Nicole Horvath, for endless hours
of listening to my ideas for this book and for her many creative contribu-
tions to my thinking, including the question from chapter one that she
posed to me: Does psychoanalysis exist without the bad mother? She has
inspired me to break out of my established ways of looking at things,
constantly challenging me to see the world in new and different ways.
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Introduction
he reconceptualization of the psychoanalytic situation as a two-
person event has caused dramatic upheaval in the analytic world.
T As we struggle to understand the many nuances associated with
the transition from a one-person psychology to a two-person psychology,
we naturally resist change as much as we embrace it.
The refrain of "This is nothing new-psychoanalysis has always ac-
counted ably for both the intrapsychic and the interpersonal" has become
a recognizably feeble attempt to maintain the status quo. Historically, the
same was said about developments in self-psychology, infant research,
feminist perspectives, the frequency and impact of early trauma, and the
critical importance of countertransference.
Happily, those who want to cling to the past and keep psychoanalysis
the same are in the minority. The clinical experience and research
evidence accumulated over the past fifty years have given birth to new
theories of individual development and, as a result, a new theory of
psychoanalysis. And this new understanding of the role of mutuality has
breathed fresh air and excitement into an analytic discipline moving
dangerously close to extinction.
The problem confronting analytic theorists and clinicians today is not
whether to change analytic theory and practice, but how to change them.
1
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