The dynamics of reassurance

This paper describes the process of splitting that leads to the establishment of a set of 'versions' of the self and the object, and the relationship between them. The author suggests that the mechanism of reassurance is called into play when a particular anxiety-laden version becomes central, disturbing the patient's psychic equilibrium. The patient then strives to restore the state that he has lost, either in phantasy, or by attempting to draw the analyst into a familiar enactment. A brief description is given of a patient who felt most threatened by the prospect of the analyst being able to think for himself. This challenged more familiar and comforting versions of the two of them involved in the repetitive enactment of earlier object relationships. It is suggested that, paradoxically, the analyst's capacity to make his own observations and judgments invokes for the patient the presence of a third figure, with all the accompanying oedipal anxieties and threats. However, the patient's experience of true reassurance is ultimately derived from his belief that he has not succeeded in replacing the oedipal triangular relationship with one in which he and the analyst are exclusively involved with one another.