The Christopher Bollas Reader

by Christopher Bollas

Psychoanalysis, some have argued, has deserved the fate it has received in some legislative quarters: neglecting the facts of a patient’s life in favor of the more elite and arcane world of psychic events, it is no longer in a position to speak to the actual events of a patient’s life. When it comes to matters of abusive deeds done, this is for the police, oracular therapies, and victim support groups. Even a cursory walk through a bookstore will indicate scores of self-help psychology books relating to recovery from abuse. Little will be found in the section on psychoanalysis. But in psychoanalysis, is there a place for a new emphasis on deeds done in a patient’s life? Certainly the analyst can allude to the significant facts of a patient’s life even if he does not know their psychic rendering. So if a patient tells his analyst that his mother is a Puerto Rican Catholic and his father an Iranian Muslim, this may be of significance and now and then needs mention. It does not need interpretation – unless the clinician has some idea of its meaning – but it requires occasional utterance and allusive reference. If, as an adolescent, the patient moved from a large city school to a small village one, this fact too will need mention, even if the analyst has no personal investment in its significance. But why refer to these events if the analyst thinks that doing so dilutes the intensity of the transference?