Psychoanalysis and maternal work--some parallels

This paper makes a comparison between a certain type of dilemma facing the analyst in his daily decisions about how to intervene and what to interpret, and the dilemmas faced by parents concerning what would be most useful, at a particular moment, in facilitating the growth of their children. Both analytic and parental strategies move back and forth between emphatic closeness and support, on the one hand, and more objective understanding--involving a 'vision of the future'--and facilitating individuation, on the other. The manner in which these strategies are used is inherently dialectic, and, one hopes, suited to the child's or patient's needs, but also depends on the style of the analyst. This similarity between the work of analysts and that of parents (assuming, of course, the basic differences between these two vocations!) is congruent with the growing prevalence, in almost all contemporary psychoanalytic thought, of object-relations theory.