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The International Association for Relational Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy  |
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Relationalism: Self-expressions vs. Metaphors
by Nitza Yarom, Israel
With time I have been observing the entrapment in the use of metaphors. Metaphors in psychoanalysis can range between accepted concepts like the unconscious, oedipal dramas or intersubjectivity and more 'poetic' terms like 'the dead mother', 'psychic death', 'dissolving' or 'the analytic third', and its variation of 'the dead third'. The 'third' is a concept or a metaphor that has gained momentum especially in relational psychoanalysis to indicate an entity of 'a common ground'. As many things have become 'a third' (a social third, an analytic third, a dead third), it seems that generating more 'thirds' is taken as a progress, while it can in fact add to confusion. In responding to the above colloquium I felt that while dealing with the holocaust from a personal perspective, the above term is redundant. One (I) has holocaust- dead grandparents, with names and personal impact, not 'a third'; thus relating to the dead in a remote abstract metaphor – 'the third' – is missing a point. In practice, the key-concept of the 'the analytic third' creates a confusion about who is the owner of a particular phenomenon in the analytic arena. For example, when the analyst falls asleep – he may now-a-days claim (under the influence of this concept and thinking) that he is doing a favor to the patient, as he or she are sleeping the patient's sleep, while the patient is not even in the position to clarify with the convinced and sleeping analyst that he (the patient) feels betrayed and alone. The same can be said about 'the ill analyst', as can be seen in Ogden's example (1994, in supporting the notion of 'the analytic third'): how, while having a flu, he felt that it was the patient's feelings and bodily sensations that he was holding. Only when he was willing to listen to the patient's perception of his illness – she was invited to say that his flu (or physical state) terrified her, as she thought that he was going to die. The same is true for the (romantic) overuse of metaphors referring to death ('the dead mother', 'psychic death' and others), and to bodily processes and phenomena (like 'containing', 'dissolving' and others), as the analyst intends to be more precise and 'physical'. In reality, in supplying 'ready-made' metaphors to analytic processes when words are lacking and broken, silences prevail, and sensations of confusion and feeling lost are common - the contrary may be achieved, while being entrapped in the beauty of the metaphor. The relational perspective has offered psychoanalysis a unique element – the personal-subjective thinking and speech, to replace the meta-language of the past. It was a breath of fresh air to me when I first became familiar with it over twenty years ago, and that was my impression of other people's reaction while being first introduced to it. In pointing out the danger in the attraction to metaphors in psychoanalysis, I realize that any jargon within an organization brings its members closer to each other by inventing a common language. But in using a professional- abstract language of metaphors, the analyst cannot share a language with the patient or becomes detached from the narrative of experience. This was the gist of what Roy Schafer wrote about, when he tried to rescue psychoanalysis from the dominance of the meta-language of the past and this was the spirit that drove the 'forefathers' of the relational perspective, and this is, in my mind, its forte. One can understand that clinical work needs guiding principles and concepts, and one cannot 'invent the wheel' with each patient. Unfortunately, the dominance of the spirit of metaphors may generate the belief in supposedly being more accurate, creative and even ethical, the more metaphors are produced. Psychoanalysts are very creative people, some are very talented with words, but I feel that as analysts we should beware our narcissistic traps. The attractiveness of the concept 'the third' to the relational school increased via Aron's & Benjamin's original relational thinking, especially with regard to the responsibility of the analyst in a mutual relationship of a-symmetry. However, the fact that Ogden, who has put the concept of 'the analytic third' on the map, assumes that he is sick with the patient's sickness when he himself is sick with flu, shows, in my view, that metaphors can lead to the analyst's possible loss of ownership; the metaphor (e.g. of 'the analytic third') may overpower even when the principles of 'ownership' and 'a-symmetry' by and of the analyst are engraved in the relational agenda. The same can be said with regard to dealing with the effects of massive traumata – there is enough in the language of relations and affects, not to resort to the language of 'thirdness'. And the same can also be said with regard to the analyst's necessary readiness for attunement to bodily phenomena in the analytic process, which cannot be replaced by the use of 'ready-made' bodily metaphors. In reality, the exchange of two individuals in treatment may lead to a confusion of intimacy, truthfulness and professionalism, which needs to be straightened up over and over by relational principles. Resorting to 'the third' is creating a fiction that someone else is present in the room to take responsibility, instead of struggling with mutual understanding. It seems to offer a complex concept, when the reality of today's life for each person is complex enough and needs simple clarifying notions. It may also unnecessarily seem that the concept of 'thirdness' is more 'psychoanalytic' and using it serves as a proof of belonging to the 'true order' while presenting 'the code' (like 'the holy trinity'). A relational perspective is psychoanalytic in its spirit of commitment to self-observation in the patient, in the analyst with regard to the patient and to himself. I advocate that self-expressions should be safeguarded against the seduction of metaphors. Occasional metaphors can lift from concrete entanglements when spontaneously evoked by patient or analyst, not to be used as an illusion for a better reality.
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In this forum I would like to warn against the overuse of metaphors in psychoanalysis today, particularly within the relational perspective. This thinking has been conveyed in the last IARPP's colloquium "When the third is dead" (May 2012) and in other forums.