The mutual search for self in the analytic dyad

Clinical material is presented from seven consecutive sessions in the third year of an analysis to show the way in which patient and analyst worked at the task of allowing each of their separate self and object representations to emerge. These emergent representations are ones in which different aspects of the self, both 'good' and 'bad', are gradually integrated. The continued tension in both participants between an infantile narcissistic view of self and object and a realistic integrated one is highlighted. The way in which the analyst's psychic work on the acceptance of her own narcissism aids the patient's integration of disowned aspects of self is discussed. This material is presented within the framework of ideas about the development of a theory of mind and of reflective self function proposed by Fonagy et al. (1993a, b) and in the context of recent writing on the analyst's unconscious participation in the analytic process, e.g. Levine (1994).