On the therapeutic action of psychoanalysis

Abstract

In this chapter, the author review some contributions from Melanie Klein and post-Kleinian authors, and then outline with some detail the ideas put forward by the Barangers and other Latin American authors, and present some clinical material in order to illustrate the ways the author think psychoanalysis acts therapeutically. Post-Kleinian analysts, without radically changing the basic points, developed new ways of understanding psychic life, and as a consequence, of explaining the therapeutic action of psychoanalysis. When Sigmund Freud recommended the adoption of a state of “evenly suspended attention”, he meant that the analyst should be open to whatever arises, without prejudices of any kind, and without systematically seeking confirmation of any hypothesis. Adopting the position could help him in the delicate and what is even now the somehow mysterious process of the therapeutic action of psychoanalysis.