The psychoanalytic experience and psychic change

In an effort to examine psychic change and the factors promoting this therapeutic growth on the psychoanalytic situation, the analytic material from three sequential stressful periods in an analysis is compared. The patient, an 8-year-old child, was particularly vulnerable to conflicts surrounding separation and abandonment and there were three long summer vacations in the course of his treatment. Reflections of his psychic growth are first underscored and clarified, and then elements of the psycho-analytic experience that prompted this change and growth are delineated and discussed. An integration of the insight oriented aspects and the interactional components of the psycho-analytic experience is suggested.