The Christopher Bollas Reader

by Christopher Bollas

It might be viewed as comically ironic that psychoanalysis simultaneously is turning away from the value of history, removing itself from adjudicatory actions in relation to past facts, but the stakes are too high: more and more analysts are losing their right to consider their patients’ internal worlds precisely because of a disinclination to take the factual past seriously, ultimately handing over this function to actual detectives! Indeed, with the emphasis on the concept of the here-and-now transference observation, a new and limited kind of fact-finding is being proposed: it is being suggested that we can pass judgment only on the clinical fact. And what is that? These are facts of performative action. How the patient treats the analyst as both an internal object and an actual other is observable over time and can be interpreted. The analysand is free to dispute these observations, although over the course of the analysis he may accept them. But the analyst will shy away from commenting on deeds done in the patient’s life. It is claimed that this does not matter, since the facts that are truly pertinent to a psychoanalysis are those transpiring in the transference, and if things done to the patient in his or her childhood