Becoming of Use as an Analyst: Imagining Something that was Never there Before

Every analysis that becomes generative must be an original experience, in both senses of the word: an experience that reaches into the origins of the emotional life of the analysand and one that creates something entirely new. If the analysis goes well enough, these efforts lead the analysand to feel the oldness and newness to be an integrated whole. Analysands who have experienced an absence of intimate emotional connection early in life especially require that new psychological capacity be developed from their germinal potential as a means by which the psychoanalytic process is brought to life. In such cases, both analyst and analysand are required to find ways to expand their receptivity to sensory experience and to cultivate their imaginative capacities in a manner that make emotional growth possible. Through this process words become embodied and better able to articulate the analysand's self-experience and to create the experience of reciprocity with the analyst and with others in ways never before experienced.