The Analyst’s Vision of the Patient and the Dialectic of Interpretation

Abstract

Abstract Often neglected in analytic discourse is the fact that the analyst inevitably forms a vision of the patient. Loewald was a lone voice in illuminating the fact that the analyst could not treat the patient without a vision of who she could become. The thesis of this paper is that inherent in the analyst’s vision of the patient is a dialectic of discovery and creation. Because the analyst’s vision is inherently limited by the phase of the analysis, it will be disrupted by the evolution of the analytic material. The analyst’s vision will be transformed initiating a dialectical process between the development of the analytic process and the analyst’s vision. This vision is always predicated on what has been seen in the analysis and who the patient may yet become. Because this vision guides the interpretive process the dialectic of vision is the dialectic of interpretation,