FROM PERCEIVING TO INTERPRETING - THE INN ER WORK OF THE PSYCHOANALYST

For more than fifty years the cognitive process of an analyst has aime d at decoding the unconscious of a patient by the use of external and internal perception. Since the 'talking cure' gets us into contact wit h our patients without looking at each other, just by the use of word presentations, the images of the internal objects, the thing presentat ions may easily sneak in. In the place of the 'Objective Analyst' usin g Freud's 'one-person-psychology', a psychoanalyst is emerging who, by enriching the transference-countertransference process with his own a ssociations, becomes more and more involved as a subject (person), the more so, the less the patient is able to distinguish between word pre sentations and thing presentations. Intersubjective perception in Bion 's sense makes use of the analyst's subjectivity in a two-person-relat ionship. His ability to share the patient's regressive movement in his own experience and at the same time to give an interpersonal meaning to it in the Here and Now, is a basic characteristic of his interpreta tive work. Since the interpretation aims at creating a shared percepti on of the interper sonal psychoanalytical process, it has to be develo ped tactfully and in due consideration of the heat of the transference .