The Role of Psychic Illusions in the Psychoanalytic Process

There is a way in which psychoanalytic work is akin to an optical illusion. More properly, a psychic illusion, in which the same narratives and experiences may suddenly appear to be one thing or another and may switch about involuntarily. And, with some practice, they can be manipulated—not in the pejorative sense—with some dexterity.

While psychoanalysts may use a listening metaphor—invoking Theodore Reik's concept of the "third ear" (1949), referring to the analyst (or anyone) listening to the conversation with an extra ear to hear the deeper, emotional meaning in it, seeing is an equally important metaphor or analogy in analytic work.

Less obviously, there are tactile, motility, spatial, and bodily metaphors that pervade psychoanalytic understanding. Hence the role of "manipulation"—which has a concrete object-oriented quality in the sense of being able to see and shift things in one's inner psychic landscape or stage. The capacity to engage in this inner psychoanalytic functional work is something individuals can access and practice, to varying degrees based on temperament and baseline psychology. The psychoanalytic function of the personality is required for analysts to do the work—one of the key reasons psychoanalytic training includes personal analysis—and develops over time for analysands.

Where Fantasy Allows for Mutability

Such perceptual fluidity becomes most apparent in the process of transference, where the action of the illusion takes place and where fantasy allows for mutability. Transference is Freud’s way of discussing how people can distort their perceptions of the therapist, particularly experiencing them as-if they were figures important earlier in development, such as a parent. The development of such a “neurotic” transference to the analyst and the analysis of that transference is the main technique of traditional psychoanalysis.

“There is one special class of experiences of the utmost importance for which no memory can as a rule be recovered. These are experiences which occurred in very early childhood and were not understood at the time but which were subsequently understood and interpreted. One gains a knowledge of them 'through' dreams, and one is obliged to believe in them on the most compelling evidence provided by the fabric of the neurosis. Moreover, we can ascertain for ourselves that the patient, after his resistances have been overcome, no longer invokes the absence of any memory of them (any sense of familiarity with them) as a ground for refusing to accept them. This matter, however, calls for so much critical caution and introduces so much that is novel and startling that I shall reserve it for a separate discussion in connection with suitable material” (Freud, 1914).

Likewise, the analyst inevitably brings their countertransference into the arena. The two together experience “co-transference”, as I like to put it, which may be more or less integrated or fragmented, split or mutual.

Professional Experiences as Reflective of Inner Life

When people discuss their work within a psychoanalytic therapy frame, how they understand it, their relationship to it, and so on, a few implications stand out, as the analyst listens with the third ear for the transferential and projective elements. It is sometimes the case that the discussion can be construed as the disavowed workings of their own minds.

• What they are saying about their actual work is important, and listening with the transferential lens in place should proceed without interruption beyond clarifying questions.
• Anything like this may also be heard as a dream (Ogden, 2007).
• At an appropriate time, making explicit the potential parallels between the way work is seen and the inner structure and processes of the psyche can be a powerful tool to catalyze insight.
• The "real" aspects—including the frame, and the analyst and analysand's actual beliefs, personalities, and history—are extra-transferential. While they allow the psychic illusion, they are not themselves illusory.

External Politics in Psychotherapeutic Process

Per traditional psychoanalytic aesthetics and guidelines, politics generally has no place in the psychoanalytic process, at least no real place. Given that the transference-real pairing may be construed as a false dichotomy, politics certainly has a role in co-transferential processes.

One of the traditional prohibitions around politics is that it can disrupt the psychotherapeutic process. Another, is that it may represent the psychotherapist allowing their own issues—not the patient’s clinical concerns—into the room. The influence on the therapeutic process may be more or less covert and multifaceted; it may be implicit, largely nonverbal, and therefore more likely to be enacted outside of shared awareness.

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While politics should not enter the real parts of the interaction, the therapist may take on as-if roles, essentially taking a position as though they held a particular political belief, explicitly as a form of communication and therapeutic approach. There are many different psychotherapeutic schools that employ some form of role play—psychodrama, work with parts, speaking to non-present individuals, and more—all of which entail a degree of what might appear to be a thespian enterprise.

However, the role play takes place within the therapeutic frame, and not as a form of entertainment or performance art. Further, it should be open that this is role play and not an actual debate and should be approached with caution in an exploratory spirit, the play embraced as critical to learning and a core experience more generally.

The as-if dynamic and implicit communication demonstrate how the same content exists simultaneously on multiple levels of meaning and interpretation, whether it concerns political material enacted outside awareness, work discussions that parallel internal dynamics, or any other content that emerges within the therapeutic frame. They all participate in the larger psychic illusion that allows for therapeutic transformation.

The conversation always will return to the task of assisting the analysand in self-reflection and development. The illusory nature of inner experience is inherently part of the creative process of mental life, where things are protean, distorted, and may be experienced in many different ways, with varying degrees of reality, but are taken as real in the process of playing with fantasy.

Psychoanalytic approaches leverage the interpretability of experience, but must not misuse such a powerful tool. The ability of analyst and analysand to influence one another, and the inherent power dynamic, require the analyst to be ethical, thoughtful, and cautious, even while spontaneous and intuitive—because the purpose of the therapy is ultimately to serve the analysand's personal developmental needs and, by design, only the professional needs of the analyst.