Developed from established psychoanalytic knowledge among different psychoanalytic cultures concerning unconscious interpsychic communication, analysts' use of their receptive mental experience--their analytic mind use, including the somatic, unconscious, and less accessible derivatives--represents a significant investigative road to patients' unconscious mental life, particularly with poorly symbolized mental states. The author expands upon this tradition, exploring what happens when patients unconsciously experience and identify with the analyst's psychic functioning. The technical implications of the analyst's "instrument" are described, including the analyst's ego regression, creation of inner space, taking mind as object, bearing uncertainty and intense affect, and self-analysis. Brief case vignettes illustrate the structure and obstacles to this work.
Keywords: Analyst's mind and psychic functioning; analytic field; analytic instrument; analytic technique; analytic third; containment and self-reflexivity; creative regression; interpsychic communication; mind as object; pathways to unconscious; poorly represented mental states; therapeutic action.
© 2014 The Psychoanalytic Quarterly, Inc.