The transfer is the resurgence of the feelings of the past; it is a phenomenon inherent in every affective relationship, but whereas the ordinary transference is lived innocently, without elaboration, the analytical transfer is made explicit, revealed by the practitioner and worked in session, hence the expression “working on the transfer”.

Is the word still liberating? can it really help to rebuild itself?

Can she also destroy?

Freeing speech is the goal of the analytic cure

The goal is for the patient to reconcile with himself by exposing internal conflicts and ending up with what he has, what he is. It is not a question of modifying one’s personality but of enriching him with what he already has in him.

Do you think there is a risk of destructuring the patient?

We think that the work of interpretation which is the privileged and specific tool of the analyst must be formulated at the moment when the patient approaches himself to an awareness otherwise he risks being destabilized because the interpretation is no longer an opening on the unconscious.

Are there therapies without speech? what do you think they are worth?

There are no therapies without speech. Psychoanalysis privileges the verb whereas certain therapies take more into account the body and the emotions to appease the tensions, to free the stubborn emotions and to evacuate the anger, without excluding the speech. We are thinking of these psycho-corporal and emotional therapies, born on the West Coast in Esalen, California, such as Gelstalt therapy, bio-energy rebirth, holotropic breathing, primal therapy, psychodrama, etc.

A patient can speak during a whole session without it being liberating, the words becoming a sort of unconscious screen not to confront the essential.

For some patients, bodily mediation can facilitate access to speech and allow emotional, often cathartic, emergence that may not have been possible in an essentially analytic setting. It goes without saying that a verbal integration, at the end of the session, is essential to elaborate what has been lived during the emotional and bodily moment. This order of affects allows the patient to leave the session “standing”

What is the importance of silences?

It is the silence of the analyst that will allow the liberation of speech: the analyst often uses silence as the motor; he frustrates the patient for a period of time until the transfer is established; the patient confronted with this silence will speak while trying to get the analyst out of his silence by trying to charm him, to move him or to attack him. In the absence of an analyst’s response, the patient will then be able to talk about his past, his childhood and even his early childhood.The intervention of the analyst on the background of silence takes a lot of weight and strength.

What are the constraints of the analysis?

Psychoanalysis is often a long and expensive treatment, sometimes painful.