The Wish To Regress in Patient and Analyst

Abstract

The analyst's wish to regress is used as a paradigm of the “forbidden” topic of what analysts want from their analysands. The aim is to expand the subjective domain of analysts' awareness so that they can analyze better by grasping more of their temptations with patients before enactment can occur. Clinical examples illustrate how the author temporarily joined patients in wish-fulfilling mutual regression. Analytic process is disrupted when the analyst wishes to relinquish the more differentiated role of the containing and interpreting analyst in favor of more childlike relatedness both with the patient and with the analyst's internal objects. The author, expecting a more typical countertransference, had not anticipated that he might temporarily join these nonpsychotic patients in mutual regression. It is suggested that in the face of analytic impasse analysts should consider whether they might temporarily have joined the patient in mutually regressive wishes that have taken them away from more responsible analytic functioning.