Beginning the Treatment on a Personal Note: Creating Emotional Connection

Psychoanalysis reflects the minds of its creators and is an ethical practice in the sense that the theories with which we psychoanalysts identify are those that reflect what is most important in life to each of us. I present autobiographical material that points to the personal sources, even earlier than my psychoanalytic training, of my conviction that the creation of emotional connection between two actual persons lies at the heart of psychoanalysis and is the key element in the beginning of psychoanalytic treatment. I argue that the beginning of an interpersonal/relational treatment has more continuity with the beginning of non-psychoanalytic relationships than does the beginning of treatment carried out by analysts from other schools. I present what I believe are the reasons for this difference and offer comparisons and contrasts of these ways of establishing a psychoanalytic situation. The article ends with a brief clinical illustration.