Revitalization, Growth, and Fabulous Functional Narcissism

ABSTRACT Deriving from Freud’s initial concerns, the classical tradition regarded the analyst’s self-disclosure as being technically problematic. Yet with contemporary theorizing, there has been an appreciation of how the analyst can also function as a new object in the transference to facilitate the emergence of the patient’s potential. Viewed from this perspective, the analyst’s judicious use of self-disclosure can be the impetus for becoming this new object. In a recent choice to create and perform in a well-publicized musical autobiography entitled Dr. Bradley’s Fabulous Functional Narcissism, I had to consider that my audiences would be partially made up of my patients. What would they make of the tell all intimate disclosure that made my show so compelling? This paper discusses the surprisingly powerful positive impact my musical autobiography had on their psychotherapy with me. I illustrate how this extra analytic contact (seeing their analyst perform) created both generative and revitalizing enactments that fostered my patient’s growth. Seeing the transference as involving this provisional dimension opens up the possibility that extra-analytic contacts can meet the patient’s emerging transference needs and free the patients to experience and explore new realms. Two cases examples are cited.