606
PARTISAN REVIEW
rative that is the analysand's life: traumas, associatibns, fantasies,
fears , ideals, hopes , and aspirations. In the process the analyst, too ,
endlessly learns and grows .
Such growth was demonstrated in the many case presentations ,
where specific theoretical approaches were mirrored in analytic tech–
nique and in the handling of transference and countertransference .
Iza Ehrlich, for instance, related some of the unconscious material
which came up with a patient after she announced that she was go-
ing to take an extended leave from her practice in six months. The
patient's anger was expressed in endless fantasies about the analyst,
whom she transformed in turn into a former Nazi youth and a Je–
hovah's Witness . Ehrlich described how her forthcoming absence
brought out some of the troublesome , unconscious neurotic ad–
justments in the patient and how upon her return the patient had
become more remote from her - and insisted that she no longer
needed her analyst.
Janine Chasseguet-Smirgel, before an upcoming separation,
was told by one of
her
patients: "You have no sexual life, you are too
old ." This immediate, negative transference soon brought up pre–
viously hidden trauma and explained much else about this patient
who "seemingly" was suffering from perverse sexuality. By focusing
on the connections between aggressiveness and sexuality and be–
tween sexuality and narcissism, said Chasseguet-Smirgel, the pa–
tient could recover affective links to a mother who was competitive
with her infant daughter, to early sexualization, and to "sexual
triumph over her mother." She had constructed a fantasy of Apoc–
alypse to incorporate into her psyche the hate of the primal scene she
had witnessed as a child . By getting back to the reality she had had
to destroy , this patient's analysis ultimately was "terminable ."
The last plenary session, chaired by Jacob Arlow, a doyen of
the New York Psychoanalytic Association, centered on issues of
techniques - the glue of
all
clinical theories. Dale Boesky, of Mich–
igan, pointed to the consequences of abstract theories on techniques
and to the impact of different levels of abstraction, from clinical to
philosophical- which Robert Waelder postulated over twenty-five
years ago . Boesky, however, detailed the ways in which concepts
help the analyst guide his patient in altering neurotic behavior by
changing pathological character structures, reducing the need for
punishment, and increasing the ability to experience pleasure. And
he reminded his listeners, on a less upbeat note, that in 1924 Freud
was still speaking of cure through the resolution of the Oedipus com–
plex, while by 1937 he expected only to strengthen the ego. Anne-
